"Parks? Really? There are trees?"

"Ma.s.ses of them. And Ireland, where I've a small piece of property, has still more. A plenitude of trees. A positive welter of trees. You'd very much like Ireland, I think."

She smiled. "I'd love to see it one day."

Once again Oscar felt as though he were hovering at the brink of a precipice.

And once again he leaped. "Then you must permit me to show it to you."

She turned to him again. She laughed. "I don't think I'd be able to persuade Horace to take a trip to Ireland."

Oscar smiled. "Well, naturally, the invitation doesn't extend to Horace."

Her smile became quizzical.

Oscar said, "Elizabeth, since the first moment we met I've known that you and I were destined for something grand. There are some souls so finely attuned to one another that instantly, when they meet, they fuse. They become a single ent.i.ty. I've known, since I saw you that first night, that we were such souls. I flatter myself that you've known this as well."

Now the smile was pleased-no, delighted. She put her hand along his thigh. "It has been grand, hasn't it?"

"And it will be grander still. You'll love London, I know you will. The galleries, the shops, the. restaurants, the parks, the homes. We'll find ourselves something modest at the start-" He laughed. "Which will no doubt astound everyone who knows me. But this modest little haven of ours, Elizabeth, together we'll transform it into something wonderful, something so stylish it shall become the envy of the entire city. And that shall be, as I say, only at the start, only for a year or so, perhaps. I have great prospects, Elizabeth. Glorious prospects. Soon my play will be produced in New York. Afterward, it's certain to be produced in London. And then, as soon as possible, we'll move into something still more suitable."

Her smile had gone from pleased to quizzical again, and then it had simply gone. "Oscar," she said, "Horace and I are going to get married."

He put her hand over hers. "I understand how you must feel. He seems a good man-a bit limited, of course, but essentially good-and I know how it must trouble you, the idea of bringing him any pain or distress. But you needn't worry, Elizabeth. I'll speak with him myself. I accept the responsibility, and I accept it gladly. Once he learns what's pa.s.sed between us, what we've become to one another, I'm certain that he'll free you from any promises you may've made. It's what any decent chap would do."

"He already knows what's pa.s.sed between us."

Oscar looked off. "Perhaps," he said thoughtfully, "perhaps it's not a matter of our becoming something. Perhaps we were conjoined even before we met. Perhaps the Hindu sages are right-perhaps through countless lives, countless millennia, you and I-" He turned to her. "What? What did you say?"

"He already knows what's pa.s.sed between us."

He frowned. "You've told him, you mean?"

"Of course."

He smiled, hugely pleased. "But that's splendid! He knows, then. He understands. And surely he'll set you free? He wouldn't stand in the way of your happiness?"

Her hand was still lying on his thigh, his own still lying atop it. Now she used hers to push lightly at him, once, twice, like a gentle mother trying to rouse a sleeping child. "Oscar, Horace and I are getting married."

"But Elizabeth, haven't you heard what I've been saying? There's no need for you to marry Tabor. I shall provide for you. Admittedly not on quite the lavish-one might almost say extravagant-scale that Tabor does. As I mentioned, for a short time, possibly for as little as a month or two, we shall be forced to live perhaps a shade more modestly than either of us would like." Perhaps a shade more modestly than a beggar would like. But he would sell his prints and his Meissen pottery. They were all such beautiful things, all so carefully selected, each in its own way a small masterpiece. But no sacrifice, finally, was too great.

Still, it was a pity about the Meissens.

"But afterward," he said, "once the play is produced, I'll be rich, Elizabeth. We'll find exactly the sort of house we both deserve, and we'll furnish it with the most lovely furniture in London." New prints, new Meissens! "We'll travel to Paris and we'll buy art. There are some brilliant artists working now in Paris. We'll travel to Italy for tapestries. We'll-"

"Oscar," she said forcefully. Her beautiful face as rigid as a mask, she spoke to him slowly, deliberately: "I am not going with you to London. Horace and I are engaged. As soon as he gets his divorce, we're going to get married. Don't you understand? I love him."

"You love him? Elizabeth, that's quite impossible. The man's a gnome!"

"He's the richest man between here and San Francisco."

"The richest man?" Why did he keep repeating, like some buffoon, everything she said? "What on earth does money have to do with love? Elizabeth, what we have, you and I, is something that no amount of money can buy. The union of two exquisite souls, the joining of two poetic temperaments-this isn't a thing that can be purchased."

Her face softened. "Oscar," she said, and again she placed her hand on his thigh. "I'm extremely fond of you-"

"Fond!" He was doing it again; he could not stop himself.

"And the time we've spent together has been a tremendous amount of fun-"

"Fun!"

"But I love him, Oscar. You have to understand. Before I met Horace, I didn't have a dime to my name. All my life, from the time I was a little girl in Minnesota, I've had to scrimp and save just to get by. I've cleaned other people's houses. I've taken in laundry. I've spent the whole afternoon sweating like a pig while I was boiled dirty shirts and stinking underwear. I've worked until the blisters on my hands split open and I left b.l.o.o.d.y fingerprints on everything I touched. Horace has saved me from all that. For the first time in my life I'm free. I can go where I want, do what I want. I can be what I want."

"But I'm trying to tell you, Elizabeth, that very soon, in a matter of weeks, I'll be rich myself. Not so rich-I admit it-as Tabor, but rich enough to support you with style and grace and comfort."

She smiled, shook her head. "Oscar, I love him. He lets me be myself."

Wounded now, he snapped, "And who else, pray, could you possibly be?"

"He gives me complete freedom. He knows who I am, and he loves who I am. He lets me be, Oscar. How many men are like that? How many men are strong enough to give their women complete freedom?" She smiled suddenly. "How many men would let their women carry on an affair with a handsome young poet?"

He stared at her, aghast. "He knows? You're saying that he knows?"

"Of course he knows."

"Of course," he repeated stupidly. "Wait, yes, you said before ... You told him?"

She nodded. "We have no secrets."

"About us? About everything? You told him about everything? Our time together? At the house? And the other night, at the place with the Chinese person?"

She nodded.

Oscar was dizzy with shock. All the secrets of his soul, the heights and depths of his existence, the crushing pains and the ineffable transports of childhood-he had told her everything. He had emptied himself, disemboweled himself, into her slender white hands-and she had danced off to Tabor and the two of them had picked over the entrails. To Tabor! To that insufferable swine, that boar, that bore, that boor!

"How?" he said, and he heard his voice crack. "How could you do it? How could you betray me like that?"

She smiled softly, patiently. "Oscar, I didn't betray you. I never told him what we said, what we talked about. And I never went into any details about what we did."

"Details? Good Lord, woman, it's not something that requires details."

"Oscar, Horace knew that night, the night we met you, that I'd be making love to you the next day. We talked about it."

"You talked about it?" Perhaps he was going mad. Perhaps for the rest of his life he was doomed to repeat everything that was said to him.

"I told you, Horace lets me do what I want. He could see that I was attracted to you. He knows I love him, and he knows that I'll never leave him. So we discussed it. He promised not to return to the house until late the next day."

"My G.o.d! The two of you sat there talking about this? Like some dreary shopkeeper and his wife planning a holiday in Brighton?"

"Oscar, why are you so upset? Nothing has changed. We still have time to spend with each other. We have this morning and we have this evening in Leadville, after your lecture."

Stunned, he could only stare at her. Nothing had changed?

The woman couldn't see that his entire world had changed?

She lifted his hand to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Only a determination not to appear ridiculous stopped him from ripping the hand away.

Again she smiled. "Life is short, Oscar. Do you really want to throw away the few moments that you and I have left?"

"Madam," he began.

She opened the front of her coat and slipped his hand between the folds of fur. He could feel, against the back of his knuckles, the silken fabric that encased her breast; and he could feel, beneath it, the shape and density of her flesh.

And then he could feel, beneath his own trousers, the acute and rising interest taken in all this by Freddy Phallus.

Absurd! Betrayed first by the woman, and now by his own wobbly glands!

"Oscar," she said, and she moved his hand up along the arc of breast. "Make love to me. Here. Now."

"Better do it, boy," said a loud gruff voice across the clearing. "Gonna be the last p.u.s.s.y you ever get."

He wheeled about, felt her fingers curl like talons into his hand.

It was, of course, Biff the Behemoth, Biff the Bear. Beside him stood his friend with the eyes of a stoat. Both of them were wearing the same clothes they had worn back in Denver (probably the same clothes they had worn for the past decade)-the friend looking thin and sly in his gray canvas duster, Biff looking immense in his greasy black buffalo fur. Biff had added a piece of apparel today: an old top hat, bent at an angle midway up its stovepipe length. Both men were grinning in dull, stupefied antic.i.p.ation, and both were holding revolvers, and both of these were pointed at Oscar.

OSCAR WAS SURPRISED to discover that he was not the least bit surprised. The bears who had shambled into his life over the past twenty-four hours-he saw now in a burst of understanding-had clearly been portents, prefigurings of the bulky, burly, bearlike giant who stood twenty feet away across the clearing, holding a large gun in his large meaty hand.

And even supposing that those other bears had never appeared, Biff's arrival here, after what Elizabeth had said, seemed fitting and inevitable. It was part of a natural progression: first you learn that you have been betrayed, and then you learn that you are about to be plugged.

But Oscar also discovered, an instant later, that despite having just realized that the remainder of his life was destined to be empty, desolate, a vast trackless waste of crushing loneliness and despair, he had no wish to surrender it to anyone, and particularly not to an oaf like Biff.

He slipped his hand free from Elizabeth's, and he stood.

"Ah, Biff!" he said heartily. "Splendid! I was afraid, for a moment there, that you might not turn up. But better late than never, eh?"

Above Biff's fiat broad nose, below his swollen, misshapen forehead, his beady brown eyes narrowed in puzzlement.

Oscar unb.u.t.toned the front of his velvet topcoat. "You're looking, by the way, absolutely smashing. Is that a new hat?"

"Hey now," growled Biff. "Don't you move."

Oscar shrugged the topcoat from his shoulders and kept talking. "It suits you, I must say. Simple, uncluttered, just the thing for an evening's amble on the prairie. And you wear it with considerable elan." He folded the topcoat and, bending over, laid it alongside the blanket. Beneath his tweed suit coat his skin suddenly felt the cold: the chill pinched at his nipples and sent a shiver rippling over his flesh. But perhaps it was not only the chill which was responsible.

He saw that Elizabeth McCourt Doe was watching him, her beautiful violet eyes opened wide. Standing upright, he continued: "And you know, Biff, I don't believe I mentioned how much I admired that fur coat of yours."

Biff growled, "You listen here, boy-"

Oscar clapped his hands, rubbed his palms together, turned to Biff's friend: "Now Darryl-it is Darryl, isn't it?"

Darryl nodded his narrow, spa.r.s.ely bearded head, then he frowned and turned to Biff as though seeking instructions.

Oscar said, "You've a watch, haven't you, Darryl?"

Darryl looked at Oscar, looked back to Biff. "How come we don't just shoot him, Biff? And then we can go ahead and pork the b.i.t.c.h."

"Listen, boy," Biff growled at Oscar.

"No watch?" said Oscar. "Well, here-" Oscar unhooked the watch fob from his belt loop, tugged the watch from his pocket, and tossed it lightly toward Darryl. Clumsily, head back, using his left hand and nearly losing the gun from his right, Darryl caught it, slapped it up against his chest.

"Mind you don't drop it now," said Oscar. "It isn't worth much intrinsically, but it has an enormous sentimental value. I stole it from my father." Once again he clapped his hands together.' "Right. What I propose are rounds of three minutes each. We should fight for a total of, oh, I think perhaps ten rounds. That ought to be sufficient. Darryl, you'll act as timekeeper."

Darryl had been studying the watch. Now he looked up, frowning again, at Biff.

"Biff," Oscar said, "you might want to remove that coat. I think you'll find it a bit restrictive. And naturally you won't need your gun."

Biff produced a guffaw. Guffaw, Oscar decided, was definitely the only word for the sound Biff made, low and moist and throaty: huh huh huh huh. "Dude," he said, and shook his big bulbous head, "you are one f.u.c.kin' crazy a.s.shole."

Oscar shrugged. "Well, Biff, if you feel that ten rounds aren't enough, I've no objections to fifteen."

Biff guffawed again. "First thing," he said, "Darryl here can't tell time nohow." Another guffaw-either at Darryl's deficiency or at Oscar's presumption. "Second thing, I ain't gonna fight you, dude. I don't got to. I got a gun." He held it up slightly sideways, as though thinking that Oscar had not yet noticed the thing. "See, what I'm gonna do is gut-shoot you. Drill some lead right into yer belly. Two shots, I figger. Take you least an hour to kick off, an' it hurts like blazes the whole time. I gut-shot a fella once in Laredo, and he was beggin' me somethin' horrible to finish him off. And then, see, while you hold onta yer guts and watch us, me and Darryl here, we're gonna p.r.o.ng your woman every ole which way, back and front and sideways. And then I'm gonna gut-shoot her."

Oscar crossed his arms over his chest and he nodded. "Well, Biff, I think that's an excellent plan. Really top drawer. You fulfill my every expectation. I was just saying to Elizabeth-Elizabeth, this is Biff, the chap I spoke about-I was just saying to Elizabeth that if I know my Biff, he'll have devised something truly inventive for the two of us. And you know, funnily enough, the subject of gut-shooting did come up. I said-didn't I, Elizabeth?-I said, I wonder whether Biff has given any thought to the idea of gut-shooting? I mean to say, gut-shooting has a purity, a cla.s.sic simplicity, that might elude the average chap. But it hasn't eluded you, eh, Biff? Well done!"

Biff was looking puzzled again.

"Naturally, though," said Oscar, "before we get to all that, I know you'll want to continue where we left off, back in Denver. Believe me, Biff, the interruption of our boxing match was as distressing to me as it was to you."

"You don't listen good," Biff said. "There ain't gonna be no boxing match. I'm gonna shoot you. Right smack in the belly."

"Oh, I know that, Biff. I expect nothing less from a man of your caliber." Oscar chuckled. "Caliber, eh? Isn't it wonderful the way our words will sport with themselves? But Biff, seriously now, there's a time and a place for everything. And clearly this is the time for us to finish what we began back in Shantytown. I know how you'd hate for Elizabeth or for your good friend Darryl to think, even for a moment, that you were perhaps frightened by the idea of a boxing match."

Biff guffawed once more. Without taking his eyes off Oscar, he said, "Darryl?"

"Uh-huh?"

"You figger I'm ascared of this p.i.s.sant windbag?"

"No sirree, Biff. You ain't ascared-a n.o.body."

"Then I guess it won't bother you none if I go ahead and put a bullet in his guts."

"Well, s.h.i.t, Biff, that's just what I been sayin' all along."

Biff shook his head in mock sadness. "Gee, dude, I'm real sorry about it, but looks to me like it's okay to blow yer belly out."

Beside him, Darryl hooted with laughter.

Oscar slipped his hands into his trouser pockets and shrugged. "Fine, then, Biff, if you insist. But I'm astonished, I confess, to see you reveal this timidity. Particularly in front of a lady whose charms you covet. There you are, a true-blue American, a man obviously in the prime of health, and yet you quake in your boots at the idea of a few rounds of fistfighting with an English poet. Biff, I'm dreadfully sorry to have to say this, but your behavior leaves me no choice. You, sir, are a coward."