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“Jesus,” he said again.

Annie shouldered past him, forgetting, until she felt herself step into the coffee’s wetness, that she hadn’t even thought to put her slippers on. She still had on her pajamas too, under the coat she’d thrown on before stepping out her front door into the hallway. She probably looked awful. No makeup, her hair standing up in damp spikes where she’d scrubbed with a washcloth along her hairline. But what did that matter now? She wasn’t going to make love to Joe, not now, not ever.

She moved out of the narrow vestibule into the living room, not bothering to take her coat off, or wipe off her wet feet before she stepped onto the zigzag-patterned rug. She heard the door click shut behind her, and glancing back, she saw Joe standing there, not following her. The trail of her footprints on the floor seemed somehow to be pointing at him, accusing him.

Then in three long strides he was beside her, reaching out to help her off with her coat. Annie jerked away, bumping her hip against the slatted arm of the couch. Everywhere around her, sharp angles—blocky Mission oak furniture, a low glass table on which stood a pair of wrought-iron arts-and-crafts candlesticks—all seeming to prod and poke at her. An old movie poster—Bogie in trench coat with a cigarette slanting from a corner of his downturned mouth—glowered at her from the wall.

“Don’t,” she said.

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EILEEN GOUDCE

Joe’s arms dropped to his sides. He looked startled. No, more than that, shocked … bewildered even. As if she’d pulled off a mask, and underneath was a face different from the one he’d always known. A stranger’s face.

Then, all at once feeling wildly hopeful, Annie was wondering if this might be some kind of absurd mistake, or a bad dream. Could she have imagined Laurel telling her she was pregnant? Or maybe what she’d just imagined was Laurel saying Joe was the father …

“Annie, for Chrissakes, what is going on?” He managed to grab hold of her elbow, and she could feel his fingers squeezing, pressing into her, paralyzing her somehow. “Listen, you don’t think I knew, do you? Is that why you’re mad? You think Laurey told me, and I kept it from you?”

“Stop it,” she hissed. She couldn’t believe he was doing this, lying to her, pretending not to know anything.

“Stop what? I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“How can you just … stand there … acting as if … as if you didn’t know? You bastard.”

She saw color flare along the side of his neck, and his eyes grow hot and shiny, the look he got once in a blue moon when he was about to lose his temper. But then with visible effort, he dropped her arm, and brought himself under control, stepping back, holding his hands out as if to ward off an onrushing car. On the wall behind him, a print of a red-and-black Lichtenstein abstract seemed to jump out at her. Next to it was another, smaller worka Joe’s Place menu from years ago adorned with Laurel’s graceful drawings, full of birds: a pair of mourning doves, a kingfisher, a peacock, a flock of tiny sparrows. He must have framed it and hung it while she was away. God, suppose he really loves her. She felt a hot shaft of pain, piercing her chest.

“Okay, I can see you’re not in any kind of mood to sit down and talk about this rationally, but do you mind telling me what the hell you’re so pissed about?” He spoke slowly, enunciating each word as if to calm himself. “I

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mean, if I’m going to be hanged, don’t I at least first get to be accused?”

“Laurey told me. About you and … and everything.”

There. That guilty flicker. In his eyes, just now. Unmistakable. So he had meant to keep this from her. Annie wanted to hit him, hurt him, make him suffer the way she was.

“What’s ‘everything’? What was there to tell?” His face, like a hand clenching, seemed to close, become unreadable. “I figured it would blow over. I figured that as soon as some goodlooking, artistic-type guy took her by the hand, she’d fall in love and forget she’d ever felt that way about me, in fact, she’d be embarrassed. Look, I don’t know what you’re getting so upset about. It’s between Laurel and me. It’s got nothing to do with you.”

Nothing to do with her”! A huge pressure was building inside her head, making it feel as if her skull might split open.

“Now”-Joe was looking at her steadily, grimly”let’s start over. And let’s take it slow this time. Laurel’s pregnant?” He raked a hand through his hair. “Are you sure? I mean, hell, suppose she and some guy went just a little too far, and now her period’s late, and she’s ready to call out the marines-“

“Joe.” Annie felt as if she was screaming, but somehow her voice was almost normal, even weirdly muted, the thud of a muffled clapper against a bell. “Joe, I can’t believe you’re doing this … trying to pretend it wasn’t you. I know, dammit.”

“You think I …” He stopped, cocking his head a little to one side, looking at her with the stunned disbelief of someone being arrested for a crime he didn’t commit. He shook his head, tiny squares of light dancing across the surface of his glasses.

“I don’t think. I know. And if you ever come near Laurey again, if you ever try to talk to her, or even phone her … if you ever so much as nod in her direction … I swear to God I’ll find a way to have you locked up. I’ll have Laurey say it was rape. I’ll say you r-rape-Oh, God,

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Joe, how could you? How could you do this?” She was , sobbing now, her whole body seeming to fold in on itself. She sidestepped, sagging against the wall to her right. “I trusted you! Laurey trusted you! How could you do this to us!” i

“I didn’t-“

“Stop it! Stop lying!”

“Damn it, will you just listen!”

Out of nowhere, with the shock of a meteor crashing into a cornfield, Joe’s fist came looping at her, a rush of air kissing her cheek; then his hand was smashing the wall inches from her head. There was a crumping sound, followed by small chips that struck the side of her face in a stinging hail, and then in her nostrils the chalky smell of plaster dust. She could taste it, too, a slight grittiness on her tongue.

Annie was too stunned to move. She felt herself collapsing, but managed to lock her knees, brace herself against the wall. She was numb, trembling.

That blow was meant for me. He wanted to hit me.

Oh God, how had all the sweetness of just a few hours ago come to this?

Annie remembered once, years ago, being on a cable car in San Francisco that lost its brakes going down a steep hill. That horrible screeching sound, everybody petrified, screaming, one man leaping off. She wanting so badly to hide her face in Dearie’s skirt, but knowing that that wouldn’t stop it, so she forced herself to look, frozen with terror, watching the cars jerking out of the way to avoid them, the pavement that seemed to be roaring at her like a great ocean wave. And worst of all, the squeezing pain in her stomach, from knowing that there was no way of stopping the car, or of getting off.

By God’s grace-or at least that’s what Dearie said it was-they’d struck a double-parked delivery van that jarred and buffeted them to a stop. And miraculously, except for the man who’d jumped off, no one was hurt.

But now no miracle could stop this car. She and Joe

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were here in it, and it had lost its brakes. Jump off or stay on-either way, they could never be saved.

Two stairs. Three … five … seven … eight. She counted them as she climbed them. Now she was on her landing, fumbling with her key, which seemed to want to jump out of her hand, letting herself in her front door. When she snapped on the light, Laurel, asleep on the sofa bed in the living room, jerked upright, swollen-eyed and blinking.

“Annie!” she cried. “What happened? God, you look as if you’ve been mugged. Where have you been? What’s wrong?”

It all came tumbling loose from wherever it had been anchored inside her. Annie staggered over and collapsed in the chair by the sofa, cupping her hands over her eyes to shield them from the light that suddenly seemed to be stabbing them.

“Joe … I told him.” Her voice came in quick, gasping sobs. “But he … he said …” She stopped, remembering that look of wounded perplexity she’d seen on his face.

And then she knew this had to be a nightmare, because she heard Laurel, in a small, stricken voice, cry, “Oh, Annie! I didn’t mean to make you think it was Joe, not really … not at first … it just came out that way. Joe … he didn’t… he never …” Then an odd, defiant gleam stole into her eyes, her voice becoming stronger, more sure. “I wanted him, though. I wished it was him. I still do.”

Annie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She looked up, trying to focus her stinging eyes on her sister. Slowly-so there could be absolutely no mistaking it this time-she asked, “Are you saying Joe is not the father of your baby? That you and he aren’t lovers?”

“It was someone from school,” Laurel said. “Jess Gordon. I knew him from Brooklyn. It was just… well, I’m not in love with him or anything.”

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EILEEN GOUDGE

“But you are in love with Joe.”

Laurel held her gaze, tipping her chin a fraction higher, as if challenging her.

“Yes.” No apology. No excuse.

“Why did you lie, then? Why did you tell me …” She started to choke, and clamped her lips shut before a sob could escape.

/ didn’t even give him a chance to explain. I didn’t believe him. God, oh God, will he ever forgive me?

Gently, in a clear voice that held no regret, Laurel replied, “I didn’t tell you he was the father, Annie. That’s just what you heard. “

Anger flared in her-sharp, galvanizing. She stood up, jerking to her feet as if propelled by some unseen force. “Damn it, Laurey, don’t you put this on me! Don’t you dare! You may not have said the words, but you wanted me to believe it was Joe!”

“I didn’t mean to. But when I realized that you’d misunderstood, well…” Now Laurel’s voice caught, and her eyes narrowed. Annie could see that she was trembling. “You love him, don’t you? You want him for yourself. It’s not me you’re upset about, the fact that I’m pregnant. It’s just Joe. You’re mad because you thought you’d lost him. Isn’t that right? Well, isn’t it?” Her voice rose to an alarming shrillness.

Annie, before she could stop herself, was lunging forward, grabbing Laurel’s thin shoulders and shaking her. “How could you? God, how could you? Haven’t I always watched out for you, done everything for you? How could you do this to me? How.”

Framed by the absolute whiteness of her face, Laurel’s large, clear eyes seemed to cut right through Annie’s, right through to the back of her skull. “You never asked,” she said with a bitterness that seemed utterly unlike the Laurel she had always known. “You just assumed that wherever you went, I’d follow … but, Annie, you never asked. You’ve always done just exactly what you wanted. So maybe now it’s my turn. Maybe for once I’d like to be first.”

Annie stepped back, stunned by the force of the

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sudden hate she felt. How could she hate her own sister so? But right now, she did. She hated Laurel so fiercely she had to keep her arms locked at her sides to keep from striking her.

“Do what you want then,” she snapped. “Just don’t expect me to be there when you do need me.”

Annie stared at the empty store with the FOR LEASE sign in its boarded-up window. Definitely not a great neighborhood-Ninth Avenue between Fourteenth and Fifteenth-and it was stuck between a drearylooking Hispanic barbershop and an appliance repair store with a pair of old TV sets throwing a flickering bluish glow over the snowy sidewalk below.

Could this be the right place? Shivering as gusts of wind whipped around her, Annie glanced at the address Emmett had given her, which she’d scribbled on the back of a grocery receipt. This was it, all right. But, God, what a dump! She noted the empty half-pint bottles littered in front of the door, and her heart sank even further.

A former coffee shop, Emmett had said, and it supposedly had a very large kitchen in the back. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it looked. Maybe once he showed her the inside.

The last place she’d looked at, down on Hudson Street, had seemed almost ideal. It was a charming Village location, and it would have needed hardly any renovation. But it was also three times the rent.

Annie glanced at her watch. Quarter to twelve. Emmett would be here any minute. All of a sudden, she couldn’t wait to see him. To hear his voice explaining how if this or that wall were ripped out, what a magnificent space this could become.

Annie marvelled, not for the first time in the past

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four months, how lucky it was that at what had to be the lowest point in her life, Emmett Cameron had showed up. She remembered him calling, a couple of weeks after that awful night with Joe. He was in New York, he told her; he’d gotten a job in a friend-of-a-friend’s realestate firm through some connection he’d made in France. Could she meet him for dinner that night at the Chelsea Hotel? ป

Seeing him waiting for her, beer in hand at El Qui- • jote’s massive old-fashioned bar, wearing that cowboy grin, she’d felt something in her let go, as if she were stepping off some shaky platform she’d been trying to hold her balance on. An hour, maybe two … she could escape for that long, couldn’t she? And then Emmett was walking over, hugging her, so solid. She’d felt safe, grounded, and at the same time, oddly charged, every circuit in her body suddenly alive and crackling.

Then they were in a booth with a pitcher of sangria, catching up on everything … Emmett’s terrific deal on a furnished studio just down the street, opposite London Terrace, and this great chance he had to make a go of it in the realestate business, where a lot of guys his age made six figures just from leasing office space. Not that he regretted his time at Girod’s. Just the experience of living in Paris was well worth Pompeau’s slave-driving. But chocolate making, he’d realized, was not ever going to be his thing.

She, in turn, had told him how excited she was about going into business for herself … and about her so far exhausting and fruitless search for an affordable location. Emmett didn’t know if he could help, but he said he’d talk to the guy in his firm who specialized in retail.