"Raised there?"

"Yes."

"Parents?"

"I don't know who my parents are. I was hatched from an egg. A duck egg. It was a miracle. You must have read all about it. There's even a Catholic church in Chicago named after the event. Our Lady of the Duck Egg."

"Very silly indeed."

"Thank you."

"Parents?" he asked again.

"That's not fair," she said. "You can't ask the same thing twice."

"Who says?"

"I say."

"Is it that horrible?"

"What?"

"Whatever your parents did."

She tried to deflect the question. "Where'd you get the idea they did something horrible?"

"I've asked you about them before. I've asked you about your childhood, too. You've always avoided those questions. You were very smooth, very clever about changing the subject. You thought I didn't notice, but I did."

He had the most penetrating stare she'd ever encountered. It was almost frightening.

She closed her eyes so that he couldn't see into her.

"Tell me," he said.

"They were alcoholics."

"Both of them?"

"Yeah."

"Bad?"

"Oh, yeah."

"Violent?"

"Yeah."

"And?"

"And I don't want to talk about it now."

"It might be good for you."

"No. Please, Tony. I'm happy. If you make me talk about them ... then I won't be happy any more. It's been a beautiful evening so far. Don't spoil it."

"Sooner or later, I want to hear about it."

"Okay," she said. "But not tonight."

He sighed. "All right. Let's see.... Who's your favorite television personality?"

"Kermit the Frog."

"Who's your favorite human television personality?"

"Kermit the Frog," she said.

"I said human this time."

"To me, he seems more human than anyone else on TV."

"Good point. What about the scar?"

"Does Kermit have a scar?"

"I mean your scar."

"Does it turn you off?" she asked, again trying to deflect the question.

"No," he said. "It just makes you more beautiful."

"Does it?"

"It does."

"Mind if I check you out on my lie detector?"

"You have a lie detector here?"

"Oh, sure," she said. She reached down and took his flaccid p.r.i.c.k in her hand. "My lie detector works quite simply. There's no chance of getting an inaccurate reading. We just take the main plug"--she squeezed his organ--"and we insert it in socket B."

"Socket B?"

She slid down on the bed and took him into her mouth. In seconds, he swelled into pulsing, rigid readiness. In a few minutes, he was barely able to restrain himself.

She looked up and grinned. "You weren't lying."

"I'll say it again. You're a surprisingly bawdy wench."

"You want my body again?"

"I want your body again."

"What about my mind?"

"Isn't that part of the package?"

She took the top this time, settled onto him, moved back and forth, side to side, up and down. She smiled at him as he reached for her jiggling b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and after that she was not aware of single movements or individual strokes; everything blurred into a continuous, fluid, superheated motion that had no beginning and no end.

At midnight, they went to the kitchen and prepared a very late dinner, a cold meal of cheese and leftover chicken and fruit and chilled white wine. They brought everything back to the bedroom and ate a little, fed each other a little, then lost interest in the food before they'd eaten much of anything.

They were like a couple of teenagers, obsessed with their bodies and blessed with apparently limitless stamina. As they rocked in rhythmic ecstasy, Hilary was acutely aware that this was not merely a series of s.e.x acts in which they were engaged; this was an important ritual, a profound ceremony that was cleansing her of long-nurtured fears. She was entrusting herself to another human being in a way she would have thought impossible only a week ago, for she was putting her pride out of the way, prostrating herself, offering herself up to him, risking rejection and humiliation and degradation, with the fragile hope that he would not misuse her. And he did not. A lot of the things they did might have been degrading with the wrong partner, but with Tony each act was exhalting, uplifting, glorious. She was not yet able to tell him that she loved him, not with words, but she was saying the same thing when, in bed, she begged him to do whatever he wanted with her, leaving herself no protection, opening herself completely, until, finally, kneeling before him, she used her lips and tongue to draw one last ounce of sweetness from his loins.

Her hatred for Earl and Emma was as strong now as it had been when they were alive, for it was their influence that made her unable to express her feelings to Tony. She wondered what she would have to do to break the chains that they had put on her.

For a while, she and Tony lay in bed, holding each other, saying nothing because nothing needed to be said.

Ten minutes later, at four-thirty in the morning, she said, "I should be getting home."

"Stay."

"Are you capable of doing more?"

"G.o.d, no! I'm wiped out. I just want to hold you. Sleep here." he said.

"If I stay, we won't sleep."

"Are you capable of doing more?"

"Unfortunately, dear man, I'm not. But I've got things to do tomorrow, and so have you. And we're much too excited and too full of each other to get any rest so long as we're sharing a bed. We'll keep touching like this, talking like this, resisting sleep like this."

"Well," he said, "we've got to learn to spend the night together. I mean, we're going to be spending a lot of them in the same bed, don't you think?"

"Many, many," she said. "The first night's the worst. We'll adjust when the novelty wears off. I'll start wearing curlers and cold cream to bed."

"And I'll start smoking cigars and watching Johnny Carson."

"Such a shame," she said.

"Of course, it'll take a bit of time for the freshness to wear off."

"A bit," she agreed.

"Like fifty years."

"Or sixty."

They delayed her leaving for another fifteen minutes, but finally she got up and dresssed. Tony pulled on a pair of jeans. In the living room, as they walked toward the door, she stopped and stared at one of his paintings and said, "I want to take six of your best pieces to Wyant Stevens in Beverly Hills and see if he'll handle you."

"He won't."

"I want to try."

"That's one of the best galleries."

"Why start at the bottom?"

He stared at her, but he seemed to be seeing someone else. At last, he said, "Maybe I should jump."

"Jump?"

He told her about the impa.s.sioned advice he had received from Eugene Tucker, the black ex-convict who was now designing dresses.

"Tucker is right," she said. "And this isn't even a jump. It's only a little hop. You're not quitting your job with the police department or anything. You're just testing the waters."

Tony shrugged. "Wyant Stevens will turn me down cold, but I guess I don't lose anything by giving him the chance to do it."

"He won't turn you down," she said. "Pick out half a dozen paintings you feel are most representative of your work. I'll try to get us an appointment with Wyant either later today or tomorrow."

"You pick them out right now," he said. "Take them with you. When you get a chance to see Stevens, show them to him."

"But I'm sure he'll want to meet you."

"If he likes what he sees, then he'll want to meet me. And if he does like it, I'll be happy to go see him."

"Tony, really--"

"I just don't want to be there when he tells you it's good work but only that of a gifted amateur."

"You're impossible."

"Cautious."

"Such a pessimist."

"Realist."

She didn't have time to look at all of the sixty canvases that were stacked in the living room. She was surprised to learn that he had more than fifty others stored in closets, as well as a hundred pen and ink drawings, nearly as many watercolors, and countless preliminary pencil sketches. She wanted to see all of them, but only when she was well-rested and fully able to enjoy them. She chose six of the twelve pieces that hung on the living room walls. To protect the paintings, they carefully wrapped them in lengths of an old sheet, which Tony tore apart for that purpose.

He put on a shirt and shoes, helped her carry the bundles to her car, where they stashed them in the trunk.

She closed and locked the trunk, and they looked at each other, neither of them wanting to say goodbye.

They were standing at the edge of a pool of light cast by a twenty-foot-high sodium-vapor lamp. He kissed her chastely.

The night was chilly and silent. There were stars.