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imprint of his body against her bosom still, the firm pressure of his tiny fist wrapped about her finger. Adam was just a part of it, she knew … but he seemed to embody it all, everything she stood to lose.

“Henri, I can’t, I just can’t do it,” she told him, a great aching hollow opening inside her. Tears streamed down her cheeks faster than she could mop them up with her handkerchief. “I’m a great-aunt now. Laurel’s had a darling baby. Makes me more like a grandmother really.” Even Annie had said so, hadn’t she? “His name’s Adam … and he’s beautiful, just the most beautiful child this side of heaven. And Laurel needs me, and the baby does, too. And I guess I need him. Besides, I’d just about die of homesickness, and don’t you dare tell me otherwise. And don’t tell me I could visit, or my girls could, because it’s not the same thing and you know it. And, another thing, would you tell me where in the whole of Paris on Sunday morning I could buy a warm bagel?” She stopped, not because she’d run out of arguments, but she’d run out of breath.

For the longest time, except for the rustling of longdistance static, the line was silent.

Finally Henri spoke.

“Just now, I was remembering our last few moments together in Grenada, before our planes … how we never said good-bye, not the words. Perhaps we knew one day there would come a time for speaking them.”

She smiled through her tears, surprised at the keenness of the hurt she felt. Her heart had been broken so many times, she’d have thought there’d be nothing left of it. But thank heaven he understood; he wasn’t going to fight it. In fact, he must have known since last night, when she seemed hesitant in the first place, and had been preparing for this ever since. Gloom welled up in her like a creek threatening to overflow its banks. What could be more wonderful than the joy of spending the rest of her life with Henri?

“I love you,” she told him.

“Even if I cannot give you bagels?” he teased, but

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she could hear the heartbreak in his voice, and how he was struggling to keep it light.

“Mais oui, ch้ri,” she ventured in her atrocious French. “Oh, Henri, what do I say now?”

There was a long silence, in which Henri seemed to be losing his struggle. Finally, he spoke, but his voice had the choked, tinny sound of a man close to tears.

“Just say ‘Au revoir. ‘ After all these years who can tell what tomorrow will bring us?”

Dolly knew it was time to hang up, but she clung to the receiver. If she let go, she felt she’d be severing something, some vital artery that could never be made whole again. But even as she held on, she could feel it all unravelling, everything they’d shared, her hopes and dreams, even her memories of Henri, the solidness of him in bed beside her, his hand steadying her elbow as she tottered across the street in her impossible heels. Lord, was this really happening?

“Au revoir,” she spoke softly into the receiver. A tear dripped from her chin onto the coiled phone cord, shimmering there like a raindrop on a spiderweb before dropping off.

“Au revoir, ma poup้e.”

Dolly placed the receiver gently, gently in its cradle, as if the slightest pressure might shatter it. Then, sitting as tall and erect as Clint Eastwood on his saddle, she began straightening the clutter of order forms, invoice and phone slips scattered over her desk. A food editor from Newsday was interviewing her at four, then afterwards she had a meeting scheduled with Helmut Knudsen to see the new boxes he was designing for Valentine’s Day. And tomorrow, the Children’s Aid luncheon, then …

She stopped, her hands fluttering to rest on a stack of five-by-seven index cards on which she kept names, addresses, and birthdates of her regular customers, to whom she always sent a small box of truffles on their birthdays.

She let out a small, choked cry, then sucked in her breath, and thought, If I keep moving, keep busy, then I won’t have to think about it. Not ever. And anyhow, I’m

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no worse off than I was yesterday, so what’s the big deal?

When her desk was in order, Dolly reached for the mirrored compact and array of lipsticks she kept in the top right-hand drawer, next to a box of tissues. Bill Newcombe was picking her up at seven-thirty. This time he had tickets to Grease, and she couldn’t exactly go looking like a rabid raccoon, now could she? Peering into the cornpact’s mirror, she wiped at the mascara under her eyes with a tissue. She’d wear her red Halston with the sequined straps; if she got real lucky, he’d take her dancing afterwards, and she’d be so wiped out when she got home she’d fall asleep before she’d even slipped out of her spike heels.

She wouldn’t let him stay over, though, no matter how much he might want to, because, Lord, there was nothing worse than crying into a pillow over a man who ain’t there … and praying the one lying next to you won’t hear.

it’s not much of a honeymoon,” Joe said, smiling at the sight of his wife curled in the platform rocker by the radiator with Adam, dead asleep, draped over her shoulder like a sack of flour. “I wish it could be Bermuda, or even the Poconos.”

“I like it just fine right where I am,” she replied, cupping a hand about the baby’s head while she rose, carefully, her upper body held erect, looking like a goldenhaired geisha in her silk kimono. The front of her robe, where she’d been nursing Adam, had fallen open, Joe saw. He glimpsed the curve of her breast, creamy-white, with just a touch of rosiness-the color of a Babcock peach. He felt oddly stirred by this, the sight of her with her robe innocently open, and his son asleep on her shoulder. His son! He could hardly believe it, but, yes, the adoption papers had been filed, and in six months or so Adam would

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be legally his. A minor technicality. He couldn’t have loved Adam any more than if the boy had been his own flesh and blood.

But Laurel … what he felt for her was different, more complicated. Yet here they were, newly weds. Christ. What was he doing? How could he possibly hope to make a go of this when not once in the four weeks they’d been married had he been able to look her in the eye and honestly say, “I love you”? He felt a swell of guilt break inside him.

“Need any help with him?” Joe asked, following her as she padded barefoot into the bedroom, where Adam’s crib was set up next to their double bed. Looking around him, he still felt a mild shock at the transformation of his spare bachelor’s quarters into this jumbled nest of baby furniture, crib quilts, diapers, tiny stretchy sleepers, and assorted jars and containers. Not to mention Laurel’s strew of painting supplies, drafting board, canvases stacked against the wall, and clothes-a welter of slips, bras, lacy underpants, nightgowns, leotards, tights, Tshirts, which seemed to have sprouted up overnight, like some mysterious jungle.

“Hand me a clean diaper,” she whispered. “For under his head.”

Joe handed her a flannel diaper from the stack folded on the changing table by the crib, and she spread it on the mattress before lowering Adam onto it, facedown: Adam, six weeks old, with vaguely Chinese eyes and a thatch of black hair that made him look like a miniature sumo wrestler, grunted in his sleep, and jerked his knees under him. In his yellow-terry stretch sleeper, with his padded bottom hiked up in the air, he looked so comical that Joe chuckled softly. He felt pierced by a shaft of love so intense that it seemed to radiate out into the darkened room, making everything around him glow. His eyes on Adam, he groped for Laurel’s hand and squeezed it.

“Look at him, with his little butt in the air,” she said, smiling. “He looks like a Beatrix Potter hedgehog.”

“Why does he do that?”

“Fetal position. Makes him feel more secure.”

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“How do you know so much? For a novice, you seem to be awfully good at this.”

“You forget. I got plenty of practice when I was living at Rivka’s.” She laughed softly. “Rivka used to call me her little mamaleh. Now I know what she meant.”

Joe pulled the knitted blanket with bunny rabbits embroidered around its edges-a gift from Dolly-up around Adam’s hunched shoulders. The baby squirmed a bit, making faces in his sleep, then was still. Joe never got tired of watching Adam.

“It’ll be nice when he has his own room,” she sighed. “But I’ll kind of miss this … the three of us, all together.”

Joe thought of the ten-year-old Cape Cod-style house in Bayside they were trying to buy. They’d made a low, but fair, offer. He hoped the owners were as eager to sell as Jack Neidick, the realtor, had led them to believe.

“I talked to Jack this afternoon,” Joe told her, keeping his voice low, though Adam could have slept soundly in an IRT tunnel at rush hour. “He said they’re still thinking it over. They’re supposed to let us know by the end of the week.”

“That’s nice.” Laurel’s mind, he could see, wasn’t on the house in Bayside, or on any house. She stared down at her son, clearly besotted.

Then she looked up, and Joe saw that he, too, was part of her enchantment. He felt a rush of pleasure mixed with shame. Why couldn’t his love for her be as unclouded?

You married her, didn’t you?

But a marriage license was no guarantee of love. Laurel deserved better than a halfhearted commitment. He remembered Annie’s bitter words, how she’d reminded him that he wasn’t doing Laurel any favors. But, no, it wasn’t a question of rescuing her—Laurel, he knew, could manage just fine on her own. If anyone was being rescued, Joe reflected, it was him. He needed this … Laurel … Adam. A wife, a family. He hadn’t known how much until now … or maybe he’d always known, deep down, and hadn’t wanted to face it. The rest-the deep emotion, like what he felt for Annie-would follow, wouldn’t it? What was standing in his way?

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Annie.

Joe felt his heart catch.

Yes, dammit, he loved her. There was no question. But was she ready to settle down and be a wife? He wasn’t so sure. He believed in her dream, applauded her for going after it, but the fact remained that she was totally absorbed in Tout de Suite. She didn’t want children until she was more settled, she’d once told him, and knowing Annie, Joe guessed that that wouldn’t be for a very long time. She thought she loved him, wanted him, and maybe she did … but trying to pin down Annie would be like laying bets on blackjack—sooner or later, you were bound to come up shortchanged.

But in spite of all that, he knew he would have married Annie anyway. If Laurel hadn’t needed him more. If the thought of sharing with Laurel this new life he’d helped bring into this world, his son, hadn’t suddenly seemed more urgent than anything else. And Laurel herself-she was so there, so immediate, he couldn’t help feeling-after an age of running to keep up with Annie, running toward her the way you would toward a snowcapped mountain that always seems close enough to touch but which you never seem able to reach—that he had at last arrived somewhere warm and safe.

Joe gazed at Laurel, and saw in his mind a different Laurel, the young girl who’d looked up at him with such trusting eyes. Would he be able to keep from disappointing her? Would he grow to love her the way he loved Annie?

Right now, there was only one thing he felt sure of: He wanted her. With her hair scrambled about her shoulders, her eyes a little puffy from lack of sleep, her kimono half open, she looked so sweetly desirable, he ached to take her in his arms.

But he held back. In the month since they’d gotten married-a short, almost businesslike ceremony at City Hall, attended only by Dolly and a stone-faced Annie—he had not made love to her. Her body needed time to heal. Six weeks, the doctor had said. He hadn’t minded, really. With Adam laying claim to her body, and noisily demanding nearly every minute of her attention, theirs

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was far from the romantic honeymoon newlyweds were supposed to have.

It wasn’t just Adam coming between you. It was Annie, too. Admit it, buddy-boy. You wished it was her wearing your ring.

Joe felt something in his gut wrench. Maybe. Okay, yeah, he did think about Annie a lot. He wondered if she missed her old apartment upstairs, if her new place down on West Tenth was as comfortable. He wondered if she missed him.

But here, now, this minute, it was Laurel who was causing his pulse to race. Maybe it wasn’t love, strictly speaking. Maybe it was just that old black magic, desire. But there it was.

In the baby-smelling silence, Joe captured a strand of her hair and twisted it about his forefinger. She smiled, and drew closer, letting him reel her in until their foreheads were almost touching. Her face seemed to grow misty, as if wreathed in fog, her hair a golden blur … and he realized her breath was steaming his lenses.

Joe, his heart beating much too quickly, stepped back and took off his glasses, laying them down on the changing table next to the crib. When he looked back, he saw that Laurel had let her kimono slip to the floor.

He’d watched her undress before, but this time it was different. He felt something cut through him, a shock of delight, as if he’d been swimming in a cold lake and had hit a patch of warmth.

Naked, she seemed to shimmer in the light filtering in from outside, her skin the silvery white of a moth’s wings. Christ, she was beautiful. Even with her belly softly rounded and shot with fading purple stretch marks, and her breasts like heavy fruit ready to drop. Those things, in his eyes, made her even more beautiful. Almost a stranger to the Laurel he remembered from not so long ago-a tall stalk of a girl dashing about in blue jeans and baggy Tshirts.

He came to her then and kissed her, aware of a trembling that seemed to emanate from deep within his gut.

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She tasted sweet, and smelled even sweeter … like Adam. Joe stroked the small of her back, marvelling at its delicate, shell-like curve and the cool silk of her skin. He felt a delicious, tantalizing ache spread through him. This time he knew he could let himself go. He’d given her body time to heal. Given himself time, too … time he’d needed to let it sink in that he was truly married to her.