e dressed quickly, lank fingers buttoning his blue pin-striped
shirt.  He pulled on his trousers and zipped the fly, the two vertical
creases rising up his pant legs like wires. His hair fell flat against
his head, his cheek no longer flush.  I knew why he was hurrying.  He
had dinner waiting.
	"Are you coming Thursday?"
 	I nodded.  There was that smell again, of wool and sweat.  I
wrangled my feet one at a time inside the leather flip-flops I bought at
the beach the summer before.  I thought maybe if I moved in slow motion,
so would he.
	"Did she say what time?"
	I dawdled before answering, like maybe I hadn't exactly heard. 
"Seven."  Groping on the floor, he found his shoes where I'd kicked them
under the dresser.  He slipped them on.
	"Seven?"  His brows pressed together, a tiny volcanic peak.  It drew
attention to his hairline, how far it had receded, but I didn't say
anything.  I knew from Evelyn he didn't like talking about his hair. 
"That's right," he said. He didn't always remember what his wife had
planned.
	His arms steered through jacket sleeves, and I saw the glinty flash
of turquoise satin lining.  The only missing piece now was the tie,
which hung on the back of my chair. It was part of a set, chair and
desk, lemon yellow with powder blue trim, my mother's attempt at
decorating when I was nine.  The tie had red diagonal stripes, the
skinny end in front pointing down like a road sign to nowhere.  We lived
on the fourteenth floor, my mother and me, though because of her job she
wasn't much around.  Really, we lived on thirteen, but they didn't call
it that for good luck. Thirteen didn't exist -- the elevator had no
button for it --or it was sandwiched so small between the twelfth-floor
ceiling and the chestnut cream pile carpet on my bedroom floor that you
couldn't even see it.
	He picked up his briefcase.  It wasn't exactly planned, this time. 
He had caught me going up the elevator.  I was getting the laundry from
the basement -- it was one of my chores.  The elevator opened on the
first floor and he got on, coming home from work.  The Turkins lived on
twenty, one floor down from the penthouse, in the front of the building,
where the apartments are twice as big and have a river view. From the
white sectional sofa in their living room, you could watch tugboats
hauling barges of garbage downriver to be dumped in the sea.  I sat
there sometimes when the kids were asleep.  I'd press my chest and
elbows into the back of the sofa, knees deep in tapestry cushions, and
wait, watching the lights slink across black water.  They were so slow. 
I played a game where I made them go faster by thinking them so.
	After he got on the elevator, the door rolled shut, and we lifted
upward.  The hum of the motor beneath the floor was like wind.  He slid
his hand under my chin and cupped it like an egg.  He didn't have far to
bend; he wasn't that much taller, five-eleven, maybe.  His hands were
always clean --the smell like a pinewood forest.  His face drew close to
mine, his thin dun lips widening in a smile.  I closed my eyes before
the kiss.  I never looked.  His tongue was spongy and sweet against the
smell of Tide.  We passed eight, and a pair of my mother's skin-color
pantyhose got knocked to the floor.  Picking it up, he held it by the
stiff elastic waistband, dangling it forefinger to thumb high over the
basket.  He was like the snake charmer on cartoons and the pantyhose was
the cobra, whirling up from the basket.  He dropped the pantyhose on the
pile, where it collapsed to nothing, a useless membrane.  My arms were
beginning to ache. I saw the number fourteen articulated at the top of
the button panel in flaming segments.  The door opened, and he followed
me out.  My mom was in Cincinnati.  By then, I could no longer count the
times we'd done it.
	It wasn't like I was a virgin.  There was Doug Sandler. He was a
senior.  At school everyone thought he was mature because he had
sideburns.  For his eighteenth birthday, his father, who lived on a
houseboat in Miami, gave him a credit card and a room booked at the St
Regis.  We stayed two nights.  We did it three times more after that in
his room at home late my junior year, but each time was less fun.  He
kissed the undersides of my breasts, which I liked okay, but once he was
inside, it seemed he forgot I was there.  He was fast, and his
fingernails were always dirty, like he worked in soil, when he mostly
spent his time playing computer games, building imaginary cities only to
raze them, headphones on his head like an alien, the sound of Metallica
leaking out.  He didn't talk much.  Later I found out he was sleeping
with Deanna Percy.
	I had worked for the Turkins since the end of tenth grade.  Twice I
spent the month of August at their A-frame house on Fire Island,
watching their kids on the beach, a girl and boy, and carting home
groceries in a wagon.  He started by giving me presents.  Evelyn gave me
stuff, too, mostly track suits and gear she got for free from the
company where she worked before she had kids, but it was different. He
had waited, he told me later, until I got into college and got my track
scholarship.  It put a limit to the arrangement, he said, a built-in
expiration date for what he called our experiment.
	The presents started my junior year.  First was a video on
cross-training.  Next was a book on Grete Waitz.  Then in May, he said
he wanted to start running himself and he asked me to help him train.  I
said sure, only I was a sprinter, and at his age he'd probably want
endurance more than speed. He should know; he was a doctor, only he
wasn't that kind of doctor.  He was the kind people told secrets to,
plucking Kleenex from the box and shredding it.
	I went to one myself, when I was six.  My mother made me -- it was
after my father left -- but I didn't talk.  He had a beard, and I could
swear I saw something moving in it. Hung on his wall were carved wooden
masks he had bought in Peru, mouths gaping as if in shock, as if they
could somehow hear day after day the horrendous confessions his patients
were uttering.  His office was high up, hanging over the East River
Drive like a drawer extended too far.  Beyond the slippery gray traffic
was the East River, which the shrink said wasn't a river at all, though
it looked like one to me. He made me play with a set of colored boxes in
graduated sizes, one as small as a spool of thread, the biggest the size
of a toaster.  They were smooth, with the smell of a woodshed.  I wanted
to stack them one on top of each other in two piles and stand on them
like they were stilts and make myself a giant.  But all I did was set
them in order, fitting one inside the other like Russian dolls until
they were all contained inside the biggest.
	In August, he gave me a bikini.  It was cotton boucle and yellow,
the color of French's mustard.  Even my mother liked it, though I told
her I had bought it myself.  I liked it okay, only I hadn't worn a
two-piece since I was nine. They exposed too much, like my belly button
mole, which I don't like people seeing.  All I had was my black
racer-back Speedo from the summer before.  It kept my stomach
bluish-white like a glass of skim milk.
	It was a late Sunday afternoon, the sky behind him like a blood
orange.  Against the glare of the sun, I could barely see his face, but
he was smiling like already he knew my secret.  We were on the patio at
their house in Fair Harbor. Music and laughter floated up from a party
next door.  Evelyn was seated on a chaise, her slim, tired body wrapped
in a giant gardenia-print scarf.  She made me call her that --Evelyn --
though I called him Dr J.  I still think the name Jeremy is ugly. 
Evelyn had been ranked seventh on the junior tennis circuit, and one
season she played doubles at Forest Hills -- you could tell from the
curved musculature of her arms.  She was drinking Campari; he had
scotch.  Eliza and Jesse were inside watching a video.  He handed me a
small shopping bag from Bloomingdale's, white tissue spilling from the
top like sea foam.  Inside was the bikini.  They watched as I lifted the
two faltering pieces from the bag, the top half only a pair of triangles
on a string.  Evelyn made a sound like "Mmmmmmm," like it was something
good to eat. "It's from both of us," she said, though later he claimed
he chose it himself.  When I didn't wear it for almost a week, she sat
me down -- just the two of us -- and asked if I didn't like it.
	"Schuyler," she said, her cool, fluttery hand landing on my knee,
"You should enjoy your figure.  Now.  While you have one."  I was
wearing a sweatshirt and cut-offs, the bleached white threads hanging
around my thighs like fringe.  "Try it on."  She insisted.  We were in
their bedroom.  The furniture was all bamboo, the chairs upholstered in
a print of blue parakeets.  I changed in the bathroom and modeled the
bikini for her.  She lit a cigarette -- she never smoked in front of
him.  He was in the city seeing patients.  Sometimes I smoked with her. 
She threw one of those big flowery scarves at my head and draped it
around my shoulders like a cape.  She told me to push my hips forward
and sway a little, to walk like my limbs were coming unscrewed.  We were
both of us laughing, smoke filtering from her lips in a hazy film.  She
pointed to the mole on my stomach and called it fetching.  That was the
first time I felt pretty.
	I thought maybe he would give me a present today, after following me
off the elevator.  I sat on the bed waiting, feet tucked under, knees
together, my white Nike T-shirt pulled down like a dress.
	"Don't forget," I said, pointing.  "Your tie."  
	He grabbed the necktie and stuffed it in his jacket pocket.
	"Aren't you putting it on?" I asked.  I liked tying the knot. 
Usually he took it off in the cab, he said.  I shrugged and turned to
the bookcase.  I should have gotten rid of those Madame Alexander dolls,
but it wasn't the first time he saw them.  He'd been in my room before. 
With a sigh, he pulled the tie from his pocket.
	"Go ahead."
	I kicked off my flip-flops in triumph and stood on the bed, still
made from the morning.  He didn't like getting under the covers.
	"First one under, second one -- "
	"I know."  The silk was smooth to touch, like rosewater. I looped
the tie around his neck and under his collar making the ends just so. 
The first time I did it was like an secret initiation rite.  I loved the
science of it, how you started with the wide end way below the other. 
Do it right and they even out.  Finished, I pressed the knot high
against his Adam's apple.  In the small moment before letting go, it was
like I had him completely, lassoed like a horse.
	"That looks good."  I crossed my arms on my chest.
	"I have something for you," he said, tucking my hair behind my ear. 
I was glad I washed it when I came home from school.
	"What is it?"  Standing on the bed, I was taller than him by at
least a head.  I bent my knees to even it out.
	"I don't have it here."  He stroked his necktie like it needed
calming.  "I didn't expect to see you."
	"Where is it?"
	"Next time."  He looked at his watch.  "I'm late."
	"Tell me what it is."
	"You'll see.  It's a graduation present, a little early."
	"Is it something to wear?"  I looked at his briefcase. It was
cowhide, the kind that opens standing upright, the sides pleated like an
accordion.  It could hold more than you'd think.  He caught my gaze.
	"It's not here."  He paused.  "All right.  It's something you wear,
but not for warmth."  He laughed.  "Now I'm going."  He kissed his
fingertips and raised them in the air goodbye.  His palm was flat, the
skin no older looking than mine.  He picked up his briefcase and headed
for the kitchen.  I heard the back door click shut, but just barely. He
was careful that way, taking the stairs and not the elevator.  I stepped
into the bathroom and studied my face in the mirror.  When I'm nervous
the birthmark above my eyebrow darkens around the edges.
	I put on my gear and ran the two miles up to Grant's Tomb and back. 
Back then, it was the only way I could feel clean, working up a sweat. 
I pictured the organs of my body purging themselves of so many microbe
toxins through the million glistening expellant pores of my skin.  I saw
my veins and arteries like the great dark Hudson down below except in
miniature, with so many accumulated layers of trash and sewage lurking
unseen.  When I got home I ran a bath and soaked, scrubbing my legs and
arms with the loofah.  The dead gray skin rolled away like tiny
elongated vermin.
  				                ***
	hursday night, once Eliza and Jesse were asleep, I started my
search.  I thought I would recognize it as soon as I laid eyes on it,
like it would have my name on top.  I pictured a shallow wrapped box,
square perhaps, like a box of chocolates, with a red satin ribbon.  My
hunch was underwear.
  	Inside their bedroom, the shades were pulled all the way up. 
Across the river, behind the scattered buildings, the sun had left a
skimming glow.  I thought of all the lives over there and how none of
them could see me.  Opposite the bed was a chest of drawers, the oak
grainy and dark like cinnamon sticks, as high as my chin.  The mess on
top was his: loose change and cuff links, the name card from a
pharmacological conference in Phoenix, a brown paisley cummerbund.  I
picked it up and ran it by my nose; it had no smell at all, like a sheet
of wax paper.  I knelt down to search the drawers.  There were six of
them, each one opening with resistance, the dry wood grinding to dust.
	The bottom drawer was the first one I searched.  Folded inside were
sweaters, sealed in plastic for summer, the mangy smell of moth balls. 
I reached into the corners -- nothing. The next two drawers had dress
shirts -- stripes of every width in Popsicle colors, each collar
standing at attention, fixed in place with tissue paper and pins.  I
pictured the lingerie he'd bought me in the same pastels -- a matching
set, panties and bra, in chartreuse or pink -- anything but white. 
Maybe a push-up bra.
	Next were socks -- dozens -- matched in pairs and rolled together
like giant sour balls.  Evelyn did that.  I had watched her sort laundry
on Fire Island; she matched my socks that way, too.  My hands roamed
among them, brushing up against the sides of the drawer until something
sharp drove under my fingernail.  I pulled back my hand and saw the
blood filling the space beneath the nail in an arc.  Splinter.  I
squeezed the skin around the puncture to make the sliver come to the
surface and sucked at it.  The culprit was shorter than I expected, less
than an eighth of an inch, and it left beneath the nail an emptiness, a
hole so big I could almost see into it.  I was determined.
 	Only the top drawer was left.  I opened it.  Inside were boxer
shorts, pressed and folded.  I groped inside until I felt something in
the back corner.  This had to be it.  My heart was thumping.
	It was an old handkerchief box, and it was empty. Suddenly, I felt
winded, like when you sprint too fast too soon without first warming up.
 Maybe someone could see me from across the river after all, and I
thought of giving up. I retreated to the bed, pushing aside a dress
Evelyn must have considered wearing, white with black polka dots.  I
almost never wore dresses, but I decided to try it on, peeling off my
T-shirt and jeans, as if maybe the dress would tell me where to look. 
The neckline was low, and the waist a little big, but with the belt, the
dress fit like it was mine.  I pressed my palm across my breastbone; it
was like naked.
	The mirror behind the bathroom door caught my reflection.  I turned
my head a certain way to look like Evelyn.  She was beautiful in the way
that only sportswomen can be, but most of them are not.  Like my coach. 
She was athletic looking, but she wasn't feminine or pretty.  Evelyn was
all three.  I might have felt guilty for sleeping with her husband
except that once, when he first suggested we do it, he made it seem she
was having an affair herself.  He said they had an understanding.
	I studied my reflection.  Extending two fingers, I drew a
make-believe cigarette to my mouth, narrowing my eyes like Evelyn.  Then
I heard crying.
	The two children shared a room and inside Jesse was standing on his
bed, all his weight on the safety rail, his mouth turned down and
quivering.  He was not yet four.  I picked him up and held him against
my chest.  The back of his head felt damp and hot.  I stroked it lightly
with my hand, like it was something that could shatter, a crystal globe.
Sometimes I pretended we were orphans, me and Jesse, and we'd been left
to live together in an abandoned cabin.  Sometimes I pretended I was his
mother.  He had been slow to talk, but once he started, it was like he
was making up for lost time.
	"They robbed us," he said at full volume.  Eliza was sleeping.  I
told him to whisper.
	"Who did?"
	"The doormen.  They had helmets.  They knocked down the door and
took my fire truck."
	I told him it was only a dream, that I had just checked the door,
and it was locked, and the fire truck was on the shelf, and he should go
back to sleep.  "Anyway, you know the doormen.  They're your friends."
	"What if they break in?"
	"They can't.  The doors are all locked."
	"Where's Mommy?"  I laid him back down on the bed and tucked beside
him a ring of measuring cups.  They were his favorite toy.
	"They went out.  They both did.  Remember?"
	"That's Mommy's dress."
	"No," I said, "it isn't.  It's mine.  She just has one like it."
	He lay on his stomach, knees bent, feet tucked under.  I stroked his
back, its length piteously small.  His breaths deepened, and his body
relaxed into sleep.
	I returned to their bedroom.  The room now was dark; I hadn't
touched the lights.  My hands itched to resume searching; I pulled open
the drawer of one of the bed tables. It was like my hands had taken
over, and the rest of my body was following inert, the back of my neck
tingling, my fingers electric.  Inside the drawer, beneath newspaper
clippings and a bus map, was a photograph of Evelyn and Dr J at a party.
She was dressed in a sleeveless black dress, holding in one hand a
highball and a miniature French flag, like they were at a Bastille Day
party.  Her other hand was draped on his shoulder and perfectly
manicured, her fingernails like opals. Her hair was longer, and she wore
it loose, nearly to her waist, and she was laughing, her cheekbones like
plums.  They were probably not yet married.  She was looking into the
camera.  He was looking at her.  She was beautiful.
	In the back of the drawer was a black lacquer box with a checkered
inlay.  The top lifted off.  Inside was a stash of jewelry, all sterling
-- a set of bangles, a locket, a necklace made of silver mesh like some
delicate, fine chain mail.  I picked up the locket and opened it
expecting a secret, but it was empty, tarnish blackening my fingertips.
	Then I saw the charms.  There were four of them, hanging from a
silver link bracelet, though there was room easily for eight.  It seemed
unfinished, as if the owner had tired of it.  A martini glass, a race
car, a woman's pump, and a tiny Empire State Building.  My favorite was
the race car.  I snapped the bracelet on my wrist.  The telephone rang.
	"It's just me," said Evelyn.  I straightened myself on the bed,
smoothed the back of the dress under my seat, her dress.  I had
forgotten she would check in.
	"They're both asleep."  The charms clanked against the receiver.  I
switched ears, left to right, the hand set wedged in the crook of my
neck and fingered the martini glass.
	"The dinner is a total disaster," she said.  I heard the intake of a
cigarette.  "Jeremy is going to kill me, dragging him into this."  They
were meeting a former colleague of 
hers.  She was angling to get her old merchandising job back, having
taken a leave since Jesse was born.  As she talked, I stared close-up at
the photograph.  They looked so happy, and I wanted to know why weren't
they happy now?  I pictured her at the other end of the line, leaning
into the restaurant pay phone beside the door to the ladies', dressed as
she was in the photograph, though she left that night wearing trousers.
She asked if the kids ate dinner.  Then she asked about me.
	"There's a chicken leg in the fridge."  She paused.  "If you don't
see anything you want, order Chinese.  There's money in the kitchen
drawer."
	I thought of asking her about the photograph.  I wanted to know
where it was taken and when -- how many years had passed -- and if she
still had the dress.  But then I'd have to explain how I found it.  We
said goodbye and hung up.   She was so nice; she made me uncomfortable.
	When they came home, I had changed back into my jeans. I heard the
elevator door trundle open before the key turned in the lock.  I was
sitting on the sofa, my search abandoned, waiting, my calculus text open
to a page of practice equations, none of them done.  Evelyn appeared
first, set down her black suede shoulder bag, and said hello.  She put
eighteen dollars on the table in the foyer for me and kicked off her
shoes.  I thought she might come to the sofa and talk, but she went
straight for the children's room.  Somehow I knew they'd had a fight.  I
picked up my bag to leave.  Dr J stood by the door, watching as I shoved
the cash in my front pocket.
	"Everything all right?" he asked, his voice unnaturally cheery.  As
if to betray him, lines of concern crossed his brow.  That was how he
looked at me in front of Evelyn: lips pressed shut and pickled, a
certain abstracted affection in his eyes, detached and unquantifiable,
as if I had come to him as a patient.  It made me wonder sometimes what
that would be like, meeting him in his office just to talk about me.
	"Fine," I answered, inhaling the word.  I couldn't look at his face,
so I looked at his shirt.  It was rumpled.  I recognized the stripe --
there was another like it in the drawer.  His tie hung crooked.  He kept
staring.  I felt myself blushing so much I thought my cheeks might
burst.  I stepped toward the door.  It seemed strange, in that moment,
that he was the same person who stood naked in my bedroom Monday.  I
thought of dropping my knapsack, throwing myself against him, and giving
him an open-mouth kiss like it would prove something, only I didn't know
what.  But I wasn't risking it.  Besides, I didn't like kissing him
enough to make the gamble worthwhile.  The truth was lately I couldn't
even talk to him in public.  I felt okay talking to Evelyn in front of
him, but if I had to pay even the slightest attention to him in front of
her, I couldn't organize my thoughts, like his fingers were riffling
through them.  On that count Evelyn had always been easier.  In a weird
way, maybe I thought that getting close to him was a way of getting
close to her.
	"Nice shirt," he said.  I looked down to remember which one it was. 
It was a T-shirt, peach colored, with tiny flowers embroidered around
the neck.  I said thanks.
	He had one hand on the door knob, his shoulders hunched. He leaned
forward and reached for his pants pocket.  I called "Good night" to
Evelyn, not too loud because of the kids, and as I passed through the
door, he pressed something into my hand and closed my fingers over it. 
He shut the door behind me.
	On the stairs, standing on the landing between seventeen and
sixteen, I opened my fist and looked.  It was a twenty-dollar bill,
folded so many times, all I saw were the digits, zero and two.
***
t wasn't until the next morning that I realized the top of the
Empire State Building was jabbing into my cheek.  The bracelet was still
on my wrist.  Straight away, my brain started spinning.  I hadn't meant
to steal.
	Keeping the bracelet was out of the question, but how would I get
rid of it?  In the meantime, I couldn't leave it at home, because my
mother might find it.  I had to wear it to school, which it turned out
wasn't so bad.  If anyone asked me where I got it, I would lie.  It was
a graduation present, I would say, from my father in Baja California.
That was the postmark, the last time we heard from him.  But nobody
asked, though more than once I clanked the tiny charms against my locker
to get someone to notice.
	I decided to call Dr J.  I thought I could go to his office and hand
him the bracelet so he could slip it back in Evelyn's box.  Once I was
there I thought maybe he would let me lay down on the couch and talk.  I
imagined the couch like an operating table, only upholstered in black
leather and lower to the floor.  Later I found out he didn't have a
couch at all; his patients sat in a chair.
	I called his office and got his machine.  His voice on the tape was
more gentle than usual and more deliberate, as if he expected everyone
who called to be distressed.
	"It's me.  Schuyler.  It's an emergency, kind of. Please call me at
home."
	Forty minutes later, the phone rang.  He asked me why I called.  I
told him I had something to tell him, but I couldn't say over the phone.
	"Can't this wait?"  He was clearly annoyed.
	"I thought I'd come to your office."  He was silent. "Please?"
	"Schuyler, what is this about?"
	Finally I told him.  Three times I heard myself saying the words,
"by mistake."  But to him it was no big deal; he hardly cared.  I asked
if he would put it back in the box, but he refused.  He said I should
keep it until the next time I came over, and do it myself.
	"She'll never notice.  She never wears that bracelet."
	It might have worked except that over the next few days the bracelet
started making me nervous.  I felt like a thief. It was bad enough
having to remember taking it off when my mother came home; that was one
thing.  It got so when I wore it, I couldn't think about anything else
-- I kept staring at the tiny charms -- fingering the race car and the
shoe -- so I took it off for good and stashed it in my closet.
	But things got worse.  I stopped sleeping through the night.  I
would wake up at three a.m. and check the closet to make sure the
bracelet was still there.  I started to hate that bracelet.  I tried
running longer distances after school to knock myself out -- I thought
it would help me sleep.  It didn't.
	The next Friday was the last day of school for seniors and I decided
I had to do something.  I never wanted that bracelet.  If I wanted
anything, it was the photograph, which I would have snitched over the
bracelet any day.  At night when I couldn't sleep I imagined taking it
to school with me next year and pinning it on the wall above my desk.  I
could tell people they were my parents, or at least my aunt and uncle. 
How would they know otherwise?
  	Walking home from school, I saw that photograph in my head, the
delicate pose of her hand, the same hand that brushed the crumbs from
Jesse's mouth and combed out tangles in Eliza's hair.  Things began to
make sense: this wasn't about the bracelet.  This was about Evelyn.  I'd
never thought about it before, how I had deceived her.  How much did she
know?  He said they had an understanding, but I was fooling myself if I
thought I knew what that meant.  I got home, changed into gear, and took
a run.  Afterward, I stood under the shower and tried to devise an
explanation.  I went upstairs and knocked on her door.
	He wasn't yet home, as I'd figured.  She was alone with Jesse.  I
followed her into the kitchen, and she offered me a coke, but I said no
thanks.  We sat at two sides of the table, only a corner between us. 
Jesse stood next to her, pressing his small weight against her leg, in
his hand a charred wooden spoon.  My palms were spotted yellow and damp.
I had washed the bracelet and wrapped it in a square of paper towel and
stuffed it in my pocket.  I placed the wad on the table between us like
an offering and began to cry.
	"What's this?" she asked.  I couldn't talk.  I'd broken into a
sweat, every bend in my body suddenly flushed and wet. She opened the
paper.
	"Oh, that."  She lifted the bracelet from the makeshift wrapping. 
Jesse came to attention.  He reached for the race car, but his mother
preempted him, raising the bracelet over his head.  It dangled from her
fingers unclasped, a serpentine row of silver links, catching the light.
 "Where'd you find this?"
	I swallowed.  "I was just trying it on, and I forgot to take it
off."  I wiped my nose on the back of my hand and sniffled, only the
sound came out like a snort.  "It was a mistake."
	"Of course, it was."  She touched my shoulder, and I felt the warmth
through my shirt.  Jesse was suddenly laughing, as if he spied a happy
ending.  "Do you like this bracelet?" she asked.
	I shrugged.
	"Honestly, do you?"  She shifted in her chair, stretching her legs
beneath the table.  I wiped my nose again and nodded.
	It was a gift from an old boyfriend, she said, a man she knew when
she first came to New York.  "Jeremy hates it.  He says charms are for
children."  She fingered the tiny martini while she talked.  She said
she couldn't wear it in front of Jeremy.
	"He gets terribly jealous, you know."
	"He does?"
	She waved her hand and rolled her eyes as if to say she didn't want
to talk about it, or perhaps she thought it too obvious to explain.  She
paused, and in the silence between us I thought maybe she was telling me
something.  I felt immensely stupid.  I wanted to confess everything and
be forgiven.  I thought if I told her, she might still love me, and
nothing would be changed.  I felt the words forming deep in my throat,
but then she was talking again, and the moment was lost.
	"I was trying to think of a graduation present for you. What about
this?"  
	She slipped the bracelet around my wrist and shut the clasp.  The
metal links were cool and lively against my skin, and in that moment I
felt split top down like a log, like I was two people at once, one of
them me and the other someone else looking down on me and askance,
though both of them strangely me.  I was a liar.  I felt ashamed and
unworthy, like I was nothing but emptiness, the mass and liquid of my
body a shapeless sack of waste.  I wished I was Jesse; I wanted to crawl
inside Evelyn's lap and weep.
                            *** 
	wo weeks before graduation, I got a card from my Dad. My mother
said it was like him to send something conspicuously early or send
nothing at all, as if waiting too long would make him forget.  It was
from California, the state, and it was oblong, hinged on top.  On the
front was a picture of party balloons and "Happy Birthday" in colored
block letters.  He had crossed them out and in tilting ball point script
written "Congratulations" instead.  Inside the card was a pocket for
cash, with an oval cut-out to show the face on the bill: Ben Franklin,
his hair as long as mine and set in curls.  I pictured him standing
buoyant with his kite and key in the rainy dark, waiting to discover
electricity. There wasn't a single other thing I knew about him, though
junior year in U. S. History I made a B minus.  My mother took the card
from my hand.  "This goes straight to the bank," she said, but I
snatched it back.  If you put that in the bank, I said, it's like any
other hundred-dollar bill, not one from him.  I stashed the card and the
cash in my jewelry box, under a paperweight medal I won in a race, face
down, to give Ben's eyes a rest.
***
	he next time I saw Dr J alone was the Thursday before Memorial Day.
 We were in their apartment.  Evelyn had gone to Fire Island a day early
with the kids to open up the house.  It was her last summer not working,
she said, though she no longer counted on getting back her old job.  She
planned to spend July and August at the beach, and she had asked me to
go with her and help with the kids.  I would tell her no, though I
didn't yet know how.
	We were sitting, he and I, across each other at the glass dining
table, waiting for pizza.  The long wall opposite the window was lined
with bookcases, hardcovers mostly, some of them medical texts.  It was
eight o'clock.  I had let him kiss me, but that was all.  I didn't miss
the sex.  I never liked it as much as he did.  Mostly it made me feel
connected.  I hadn't wanted to see him, only I thought I should say so
in person.  I was hungry, and the pizza was late.  I felt like picking a
fight.
	"If I were one of your patients," I asked, "how would you
psychoanalyze me?"  He pulled back in his seat, his mouth slightly open.
 He looked as if he'd swallowed a bug.
	"I don't understand what you mean."
	I said it again.  He shifted his weight in his chair, finding his
balance, and the chair creaked.
	"It's not exactly appropriate, is it?"
	"But what if you had to, like for evidence in a trial?"
	"What gave you that idea?"  He folded his hands on the table, the
knuckles pointed like arrowheads.  His forehead broke out in lines,
first two, then many, ribs of skin on skin.
	"I made it up.  So what would you do?"
	"What do you mean, what would I do?"
	"You know what I mean."  He was playing dumb.
	"Do you want to be psychoanalyzed?"
	I stared at him.  I tried to imagine how it would be, going to his
office for consolation and advice, hoping to be saved, as if he knew
every faceted truth in the world and he could dispense them to me, one
by one like jewels.  He leaned closer.  "Do you want to see someone?"
	He meant a psychiatrist.  I thought of making a joke --how I was
seeing one already and what I wanted was to dump him.  But I guess I did
want someone.  I wanted a confessor, only I didn't want a stranger; I
wanted to tell my secrets to someone I knew.
	I waited too long to answer, and he took over the conversation.
	"I never gave you that thing I promised, did I?"  Almost three weeks
had passed since he mentioned that gift I'd gone crazy searching for.  I
didn't like thinking about it. Evelyn's bracelet, which I had made a
point that night of wearing, was enough.  I wanted to keep asking about
his psychoanalyzing me, but he was already out of his chair.  He left
the room, shirt tail hanging in back.  He had the walk of a non-athlete.
 He never did train, though he bought the gear and asked me a million
questions.
	He reappeared with a small turquoise box.  I wondered where he had
it hid.
	I untied the white satin bow and lifted the top.  Inside was a slim
gold link bracelet with a diamond set in the center.
	"I got it before."
	"Before what?" I asked, looking up.
	"Before she gave you that one."  He pointed his chin at the bracelet
on my left wrist.  "I think you'll like this one better.  It's worth
more."
	He snapped his bracelet on my other wrist.  I stared at it.  This
bracelet was delicate and more feminine, each link intimately knotted
with those beside it.  The round diamond was its showpiece, and at
different angles it loomed larger than it was, as if cut for deception,
flashing and multi-faceted.  But he was wrong.  I liked Evelyn's
bracelet better.
	The pizza arrived, extra cheese with green peppers, but my appetite
was gone.  He started talking about the summer. I kept hoping to ask
again about being his patient, but he talked so much I couldn't cut in. 
I remembered what Evelyn said once about him being what she called Type
A and destined for heart attack.  He ate his pizza fast, first one
slice, then another, and a third, and between hurried bites he said he
didn't want me stuck at the beach with Evelyn.  He said I was old enough
to get a job that wasn't baby sitting, and he wanted me here, in the
city.  His words were pressured, as if someone had clicked a stopwatch
and he was being timed.
	"If you stay in the city," he said, sponging his lips with a napkin,
"we could do things."
  	"What things?"
	He finished his slice and sipped his coke.  He didn't drink beer or
scotch alone with me.  He said I was underage. I wondered what he would
say if he knew that at the beach last summer Evelyn had served me
Chianti.
	"Whatever you want."  He pushed away his plate and leaned forward. 
I saw his reflection in the dark glass of the table, his head and
shoulders swelling as he neared me, his lips and nose distended.  "You
don't need a job.  I'll take care of you."
	"I'm going to the bathroom."  I felt sick.  I got up and started
walking.  I didn't actually need the toilet; I only knew I had to get
away, but it was no surprise when I found myself standing in their
bedroom.
	I walked straight to Evelyn's bed table and pulled open the drawer. 
The lacquer box was there.  And the photograph. I thought of taking it,
but then I realized I didn't want it anymore.  It would only make me
sad.  They had been a sort of family to me, and I was separating from
them.  I knew I would feel the loss.
	I lifted the lid of the box, my heart hammering inside my chest like
it does before a race.  Inside, the silver bangles flashed with light. 
I unsnapped the gold bracelet from my wrist and dropped it inside.  It
slid, gemstone first, then each articulated link, beneath the baubles
and trinkets and disappeared.

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