For a moment they just sat in silence, soberly, looking into each other's eyes.

"You're a different man up here," she said.

"Than where?"

"New York. This seems to be your climate, your ambiance."

"Am I better for it or worse?"

"Better, I think. I haven't caught you looking melancholy since we drove up from Denver. And you seem ten years younger."

He laughed. "That's just what I was thinking about you when you walked in tonight."

"Maybe we ought to set up housekeeping in a place like this and never go down off the hill." There was a note of wistfulness in her voice. "Maybe I'm a mountain woman, myself."

"I have some money," Michael said, "and there's more coming to me when I reach thirty-five, but if I want to continue eating I'm afraid I have to stay in New York."

"Ah, New York," she said ambiguously. "You hate it and love it at the same time. Everything presses on you-the good things as well as the bad things. You always seem to be behind schedule there. Here you go fast on skis-there it's your soul that's racing. Here, hardly anybody seems to read the newspapers. You forget there's a war on, people killing each other in the jungle, Americans. In New York, when you read the Times you feel it's intolerable, that your own security, your good meals, your warm bed is unbearably selfish. You look at the faces of the people in the street and you wonder how they can take it day after day. Don't you ever feel that way?"

"I know what you mean about the other people but I can't do anything about it, so I try not to think about it."

"Are they liable to take you?"

"I'm too old. I'm safe." What he didn't tell her was that when he was twenty-four, in his last semester at Wharton, when the war in Vietnam was accelerating, he had, after a particularly boring class in statistics, almost without thinking about it, gone down to a recruiting office and said he wanted to enlist. The sergeant at the desk had looked at him dubiously, as though he were drunk or on dope, but had helped him fill out the form and sent him on for his physical ex- . amination. The doctor who examined him was a weary, slow-moving captain who looked too old to be just a captain and who kept humming tunelessly to himself as though the whole business bored him. But when he put the stethoscope above Michael's chest he became more interested. After a minute or so he stepped back and took the stethoscope plugs from his ears and said, "Sorry, son."

"What does that mean?"

"It means the Army can't use you. You've got a heart murmur. Maybe you'll die young and maybe you'll live to be a hundred, but either way it won't be in uniform. You can put on your shirt now." Michael was stunned. The last time he had been to a doctor had been in Green Hollow when he had had a bout with pneumonia, but that had been more than a year before and the doctor hadn't said anything about a heart murmur then.

He had kept the news to himself. He hadn't told anyone that he was going to enlist and now he wasn't going to let anyone know that he had been rejected. But he brooded over it and finally went to see the doctor at the University Hospital for a checkup. He told the doctor about the heart murmur and the doctor ran a series of tests on him. "Mr. Storrs," the doctor said, "either that Army doctor is the least competent man in the history of military medicine or he's running-a one man campaign against our being in Vietnam. Your heart is as normal as could be. My advice is to forget the whole thing." Michael couldn't forget it, but he didn't try to enlist again. From time to time he couldn't help but wonder what his life would have been like if he had run up against another doctor in the Army hospital that morning.

"Safe," he repeated to Tracy. He could have said, saved, and told her the story, but it wasn't the sort of thing you wanted to talk about on your honeymoon.

"I'm married to a safe old man," Tracy said. "Thank God."

On Friday, he ran the downhill race. He had scouted the course the day before and memorized the points where he would have to check if he didn't want to wipe out. It was a tough course, long, with difficult sneaky turns and a couple of places where you were in the air for twenty feet or so and some hidden, sharp drops. He had borrowed a helmet, but had neglected to get himself long racing skis and now, looking at the course, he regretted it. He knew he would regret it even more later. He had a late starting number and he watched intently as the men before him made their descent and noticed that the good ones hardly checked at all, taking everything full out. When his turn came and he skated off he knew he wasn't going to check anywhere, either. He had never gone so fast and even with his goggles his eyes began to tear and he nearly made it to the finish line, where he knew Tracy was standing, watching for him. But just before the last schuss there was a bump that sent him into the air unexpectedly and he came down in a pinwheel, his ski tips digging into the snow. Luckily, the skis came off and he rolled downhill another fifty feet of snow, head over heels, before he came to a stop. He stood up quickly to show Tracy that he was unhurt, but he had to limp down the rest of the way because his knee had twisted in the fall.

As he approached where Tracy was standing next to the patrolman, the young man said, "Your husband is out of his ever-loving mind. I should never have let him talk me out of taking away his lift ticket."

But Michael was grinning as he came up to her. "A marvelous run," he said.

"But not for old men," the patrolman said, his voice unfriendly, and turned away.

Michael looked after the man puzzledly. "What's wrong with him?" he asked Tracy.

"By the time you were in the middle of the course," Tracy said, "he said you didn't know the difference between skiing and Russian roulette."

Michael shrugged. "Kids. They think they know everything. I'm a safe old man. Now let's go to a doctor and have him tape up my knee."

He limped off, Tracy holding his arm, without watching the rest of the race. For the rest of the honeymoon he didn't put on a pair of skis again and they had a fine time spending all day and all night together.

When they got to New York Michael finally moved into Tracy's apartment. Except for an old leather chair that Michael liked to read in, he sold his furniture to a junkman. "Ten years too late," Tracy said.

She turned out to be a good cook, and smugly satisfied with the place they were living in, with themselves and each other, they felt no need for anybody else and rushed home immediately after work to help each other in the small kitchen, eat on a table before the fire with a bottle of wine, spend the evening reading and comparing notes on what they had done during the day. When Michael was sent out of town on a job he tried to cut his trips as short as possible and called home every evening for long talks with Tracy over the telephone.

The euphoria of their honeymoon lasted until the day Aldridge was killed and she told him she wanted a child.

CHAPTER FIVE.

The following Saturday morning he woke early. Tracy was still asleep and he dressed quietly in a pair of old corduroy pants and a windbreaker. But before he could get out of the room, Tracy woke and said, "Good morning." He was on the other side of the bed and he could see her looking at him, observing how he was dressed.

"Good morning, darling," he said and went over and kissed her. She moved her head quickly so that he just brushed her cheek. She smelled of sleep and faintly of perfume. "I'll be back by the middle of the afternoon," he said.

"Where're you going?"

"It's just. . ." he began.

"Don't tell me," she said. "I know." She turned so that her back was toward him, and covered her head with an upthrown arm.

"You have to understand," he said, "I. . ."

"Don't try to explain. I'll see you later."

He shrugged and went out of the room.

When he got to the field in New Jersey, the wind was gusting and the wind sock blowing, first in one direction and then another. McCain and his assistant, a lanky blond boy, were in the shed, drinking coffee. McCain looked up at him, without surprise, as he entered the shed. "Early today, aren't you, Mr. Storrs?" McCain said. They had seen each other twice during the week, at the two funerals, but had said nothing to each other.

"I have things to do in New York this afternoon," Michael said.

"I thought I'd just take a couple of nice little mediocre jumps and get back. Am I the only one this morning?"

McCain nodded. "The only one," he said. "Trade's been slow this week. And the weather's not so hot. You sure you want to go?" "Sure."

McCain got up slowly and after Michael had put on the jump suit and boots which he kept in a locker in the shed, and the lanky blond boy had helped him strap on the main parachute and the flat back-up belly parachute, they all went out to where the plane was still tied down next to the strip. "The wind's tricky this morning," McCain said, as he started the engine. "Stay well north of the field." There was a stand of tall pines that bordered the southern end of the field and it was a standard warning each time McCain took anybody up. "It's not a day to do anything fancy. Pull it at no less than three thousand. Understand?"

"Okay."

McCain gunned the motor and they took off. The plane shuddered and bucked in the wind. Michael had felt sleepy and slow-moving all the way out from New York but now the cold slap of the wind coming through the open door woke him completely and he felt the old expectation, an electric sense, total alertness, the tingle of mindless, ecstatic, primitive pleasure, as the adrenaline started pumping.

At 7,500 feet, McCain gave him the signal and he went out. There was the great feeling first of immense, unguided abandonment to gravity, then of soaring exaltation as he hurtled through space, planing, swerving, supported by the rushing air, purposeful as a bird. His hand was on the rip-cord handle and he didn't bother to look at the altimeter on his wrist and the stand of pines was getting closer and closer, now seeming to be rushing up at him, dark in the windy morning sunlight. It was with regret that he pulled and felt the jerk as the parachute opened above him and he pulled at the toggles to keep away from the stand of pines. He landed hard, with the wind throwing him over at the last moment, not twenty yards from the edge of the woods. He snapped out of the parachute harness and stood up, breathing deeply, sorry it was over, his mind and spirit drowned, overwhelmed, full only of flight.

Gathering the parachute together he walked toward the shed while McCain circled the plane down for a landing. He was in the shed, pouring himself a cup of coffee, when McCain came in. McCain was frowning, biting his lips.

"Mr. Storrs," McCain said, "I told you stay away from the north side."

"The wind. . ."

"I know all about the wind," McCain said harshly. "Tell me, Mr. Storrs, at what altitude did you pull?"

"I would say, twenty-five hundred, twenty . . ."

"I would say more like a thousand, Mr. Storrs. If anything had gone wrong, you'd be lucky to have the time to say, Mother, Mother and we'd probably be scraping you off the ground right now," McCain said, his voice like granite. "I told you three thousand, as always, didn't I?"

"I just felt everything was going fine, and gave it an extra few seconds. It's a beautiful morning."

"So it is, Mr. Storrs," McCain said. "And it's the last time you jump from this field. Two men died here last Saturday and I don't want to make it a weekly habit."

"Whatever you say, Mac." Michael shrugged. "What do I owe you?"

"Nothing," McCain said. "The last two jumps, today and last week, are on the house."

"As you like it," Michael said. He was still feeling too high from the jump to be angry or even annoyed. "Thanks for everything." He put out his hand but McCain turned away without shaking it and poured himself a cup of coffee.

"Listen, Mac," Michael said, "I didn't kill anybody and I didn't kill myself, what's the big deal?"

"Not this time." McCain sipped noisily at the hot coffee. "I had my doubts about you all along. I don't have any doubts about you anymore. With your leave, I'm going to call your charming wife and tell her she'd better take care of you."

"Call anybody you want," Michael said testily.

"I'm going to suggest sending you to a priest or an analyst or your family doctor or a rabbi or a guru or whoever, who could persuade you that it's better to live than to die, Mr. Storrs."

"That's bullshit, Mac."

McCain smiled faintly. "Take your gear," he said, and watched while Michael rolled up the jump suit and took off the jump boots.

"Now drive carefully," he said. "The highways're full of cops on Saturday."

The apartment was empty when he got home. There was a note from Tracy, propped up against the telephone. "Have gone to visit my parents. Will be home late Sunday night or in time for work Monday morning." It was signed "T."

He crumpled up the note and threw it into a wastebasket. "T." Not "Love, T." or "Please call me, Tracy" or "Why don't you get into the car and drive out, too, darling?" In time for work Monday morning-not in time for love. And how did she get out to the Hamptons when he had used the car to drive to New Jersey? Probably one of her old friends hanging around, hanging on, hoping for the best or in this case the worst.

Not even sure which day she was going to get back. Sleep alone, my dear, one night, two nights, what does it matter?

And no little homely note of domesticity-no message that there was a steak in the icebox for him or that they were running short on Scotch, why didn't he go out and buy a bottle for the weekend?

You go your way, the note said, I will go mine. The rebuke was clear. He wondered if McCain had actually called her, as he had threatened, with his talk of psychoanalysts, priests and rabbis, and that was why she had left.

After the beauty of the morning, the freedom of the sky, the cozy little apartment, all neatly tidied up, was like a prison. They were getting to him, they were enclosing him. The they was not specific in his mind.

Angrily, he picked up the phone and dialed her parents' house. Might as well have it out here and now. Your husband arrived on your scene equipped with certain needs, tastes, aberrations, if that's what you want to call them. He is devoted to challenge, the illusion of escape. The equation is simple-ten minutes of flight, of conquering danger, equals five days from Monday to Friday. It concerns you only peripherally, except that it permits me to live joyously with you. I will not be trapped with female caution. You are not my mother forbidding me to climb trees. This is not Syracuse.

The telephone kept ringing. There was no answer. He let it ring ten times then hung up. They were all punishing him. He imagined Tracy standing guard over the telephone in the house within sound of the ocean, not allowing anyone to pick it up, saying, I am married to a madman, guarding the telephone. He is a young man but is already mourning his youth, is proving to himself that he will never grow old. On weekends and holidays he reverts to childhood. On our honeymoon he could easily have made me a widow. Let him make his choice. My absence shows him that I have made mine. I will not be treated as though my life is of no importance. Marriage is a double compromise and the sooner he learns it the better.

Michael slammed down the telephone. Be reasonable, he thought, maybe they are all out taking a walk along the beach and in ten minutes they'll come back and she'll pick up the phone and call and ask him how it was and if he wouldn't like to come out in time for dinner.

He went into the small room off the living room that she used as a studio. A piece of paper with a half-finished design in water colors was pinned to the drawing board. Flowers, in bright, childish colors. It was impossible that a woman who could paint so gaily, such fragile, perishable things, could be adamantly determined to curb him to her will. His mother, too, had seemed frail and perishable. But she, he remembered, had perished.

He went back into the neat, bright living room. Suddenly it seemed to him that nobody had ever lived in it, that it was like those make-believe rooms, adroitly lit, cleverly arranged and tempting, that appeared in the show windows of furniture stores and vanished overnight, to be replaced by another, equally attractive make-believe one the next day.

The telephone didn't ring.

Wifeless, he thought, wifeless. Those nights before they were married, when she had said that she couldn't see him and had offered no explanations, where had she gone, whom had she seen, what had she done? I am nobody's jailer, he had once told her. But had he meant it? And she, who had not volunteered an answer, what was the secret meaning in her silence?

He had a small desk in the corner of the room where he went over the reports he brought back in the evening and where he wrote his letters and kept his checkbooks. On it there was a photograph of her -it was in color and had been taken on the lawn of her parents' house on a bright summer day. She was sitting on a garden chair, a book on her lap, her hands folded loosely over it, her shoulder-length hair, which she usually wore up in the city, free and almost blue-black in the sunlight. She was wearing a pale blue blouse with short sleeves and a long blue skirt and her arms were tanned and rounded, her face rose, the expression on her face serious, almost questioning. Not for her the new unisex style. Her femininity was grave, the heritage of centuries, somehow challenging, demanding homage and protection. He was overcome by longing as he looked at the photograph. It had been taken before they had met that night at the theatre. By whom-her ex-husband? Whoever it had been, the photographer had fully appreciated her qualities. Lady in a garden. In full bloom. Floral, fragrant metaphor. From an earlier, gentler time. "Will be home Sunday night or in time for work Monday morning. T." Contradictions. The centuries moved on. Customs changed.

He tried the telephone again. Still no answer. Saturday afternoon, Saturday night, urban revelry, stretched before him-a desert. He could not bear the empty show window apartment, full of silent reproach. He dialed again, but this time a number he knew well, from before his marriage.

"Josey speaking." A light eager voice, a particular familiar way of answering the ringing at the bedside instrument.

"Michael," he said.

"Ah, the lost bridegroom."

"Lunch?" he asked.

"Why not?" Without hesitation. How many dates, with how many other men, had she broken, without hesitation, for him?

"One o'clock?" he said.

"Will do." She had picked up the phrase from him. "Promptly." "The old place," he said.

"Of course."

"You're a reliable lady."

"My vice," Josey said. "I'll wear a red rose in my hair so you'll recognize me."

"No need."

"It's been a long time, bridegroom."

"Not so long."

"I!ll be lightly clothed."

He laughed. "I'm not thinking beyond lunch," he said.

"I am," she said. "I'm on champagne these days."

"What else is new? I'll have it ready in a bucket."

It was her turn to laugh. Her laugh was a curious giggle, low and girlish. He had been charmed and amused with it for a long time, because it was in such contrast to the way she looked-tall and haughty and disdainful. She had been a fixture in his life for years, off and on, if any woman could be said to have been a fixture in his life before Tracy. There were no grappling irons between them. When he called, after a month or so of silence, she would say, "Ah, you're convoking me again," but with no complaint in her voice. She had been a simple but stunning young girl when she had come to New York from Alabama, had had a brief but dazzling success as a photographic model, had married rich and divorced rich and had enjoyed every minute of everything, as she sometimes said when people tried to talk seriously to her. "I am the net," she had once told him, giggling girlishly, "under the tightrope of numerous marriages."