Come to the Edge_ A Memoir Part 10

Then he wanted to go a little farther. And once we did that, he wanted to land. I refused. I had agreed only to come past the point. We had no spray skirts, I argued, and we hadn't seen another boat since we'd left Great Pedro Bay more than an hour before. But he was seductive-the water was calm, we didn't need spray skirts-and he wanted what he wanted. He also knew more than I did about the sea, about anything outdoors. He had opened these worlds to me. But more to the point, in Negril I had glanced at the book John had brought, and the idea of landing on one of those beaches and enacting our very own desert island Tantric s.e.x fantasy was alluring.

We moved in for reconnaissance, staying behind the break, but the same swells that had seemed so gentle farther out were now larger. They were also breaking on something well before land. We drew closer, and I saw it-darkness in the water. Danger between paradise and us.

"It's a reef-turn back, King," I heard myself saying in a voice much higher-pitched than my own. We paddled back out and conferred.

"You're first mate and I'm captain, but we're a team and I need you behind me," he said. "If we pull in and you say no for any reason-any reason at all-I'll turn back." He kept his eyes on me and waited. There were the bits of dried salt on his large brown shoulders.

I wanted that desert island fantasy, sand and all. I also wanted to feel powerful, as afraid as I was. And somewhere in the mix, I wanted to please him.

"Okay. But you promise promise?"

"Don't worry, I promise."

We advanced again. A reef. We went back out, paddled farther down the coast, and pushed in once more. Another reef. By now I was tired and ready to give up, but he pleaded. As we got closer, he spotted a break in the coral just wide enough for the kayak. Risky but not impossible.

"If we're going to do this, I need you with me. And I need you to paddle hard, so we can pull ahead of the break. I can't do it alone. What do you say, are you game?"

I nodded. And as captain and first mate, paddle we did. John steered us expertly through the chute with the waves rumbling beneath us. At some point, I was frightened and wanted to stop, but he shouted above the roar, "Too late. No turning back, Baby. Paddle. Now!" He was laughing. We were going to make it. We were almost there, a stone's throw from the beach, when suddenly the tide pulled back to reveal what had been hidden-a large boulder blocking the narrow entrance to dry land.

We were going to wreck. No way around it or through it. I was in front. Beneath the bow, my broken limb lay immobile from knee to foot in its shiny blue brace. My leg and the boat were sure to shatter. I closed my eyes and waited, too afraid to cry.

Then there was a whoosh of sand against the canvas bottom. Not rock-sand. Just as we were about to hit, a wave came, just high enough to carry us over the rock. We-and our craft-arrived without a scratch. John hauled the kayak up. I hobbled out with my soggy crutch, the day pack, and the mango. We caught our breath, unable to speak.

I know now we were in shock. I thought it was just me who was terrified, but then I saw John, my captain, John, who was never afraid. Unable to be still, he paced the beach muttering something, his eyes wide and to the ground. "Don't tell Mummy, don't tell Mummy," he repeated like a mantra to no one. Mummy wasn't there, and he wasn't talking to me. I could have pa.s.sed my hand in front of his eyes, and he would not have blinked. It was then that the danger we had been in really hit me. John John was afraid. I had never seen him like this-not skiing down a chute in a whiteout in Jackson Hole or nearly colliding with a gray whale in Baja. There was an exhilaration about him, a high. He was almost smiling. Then he noticed that his hand was shaking. He held it out to show me, and we marveled that it continued to shake for the next fifteen minutes. was afraid. I had never seen him like this-not skiing down a chute in a whiteout in Jackson Hole or nearly colliding with a gray whale in Baja. There was an exhilaration about him, a high. He was almost smiling. Then he noticed that his hand was shaking. He held it out to show me, and we marveled that it continued to shake for the next fifteen minutes.

We didn't speak as we set up camp on the small beach. The mangroves on either side grew down to the water and made it impossible to walk to the next beach over.

I took the brace off my leg and left it leaning on the kayak with the crutch. Then I hopped to the towel he had laid out and sat down with the book, the damp copy of Mantak Chia's Taoist Secrets of Love Taoist Secrets of Love. John planned to explore the reef. Broken and mottled, it stretched out from the beach for about half a mile, but lengthwise it seemed to go on forever. Close in, the water was shallow-in some places, no more than ankle-deep-and he tightened the laces of his sneakers so that he could walk on the sharp, dead coral to the deeper spots to dive.

Neither of us broached the question of how we were going to get back. But I knew John, and it was best to let him go off on his own. Physical activity calmed him. As he walked away, swim goggles draped over his shoulder, he turned back to me. "Don't eat my mango, Baby," he yelled.

I smiled and watched him disappear behind the mangroves. I wanted him-his tanned body, his jones for adventure. Even his mango h.o.a.rding. I wanted all of it. We'd been together a long time, but desire was always there. It ebbed and flowed, but the current stayed strong between us.

I took off my white bikini and lay back. The sound of the waves grew faint, broken by the reef. The sun felt good on my body. For this moment, we are safe For this moment, we are safe. We would find our way back. It would be okay. It always was with John. I believed that when I was with him, nothing could happen to me. I believed it, even on that remote beach with the reef out there waiting.

I woke to the sound of voices. There were no roads that we knew of on the high cliffs above, just jungle and goat paths, but through the leafy green, I saw five men making their way down to the beach. Red men-our deserted beach, no longer deserted. Had they seen me? I called for John, but there was no answer.

When they reached a large pile of wood near the rocks on the far side of the beach, they began to place the branches that they were carrying on top. I was sure I smelled smoke. Then one of them saw me and began moving down the beach, stick in hand. As I scrambled for my sarong, I saw the headlines-NAKED ROMP: JFK GAL PAL RAPED, ROASTED AND EATEN.

John was nowhere to be seen, and my crutch was too far away to hop to. My hands trembled. I gave up on the bikini top, shoving it under the towel with the book, and pulled my sarong up over me, knotting it tightly under my arm. Before the men approached, I succeeded in getting the suit bottom somewhere in the vicinity of my thighs. My first thought was to keep the men talking until John got back.

The largest one sat near me, and the rest towered above. With his red hair and freckles, he looked like one of the locals from Treasure Beach, but his patois was harder for me to understand. How had I gotten here, he asked. I pointed to the boat, then realized they would see the crutch and know I couldn't walk. The youngest sat on his haunches. Was I alone? Married? Oh, yes, I said, and my husband will be back any minute. The leader lit up a joint and offered me a hit off the enormous spliff. Jamaican hospitality and impossible to refuse. In return, I gave him the mango.

As we shared the fruit, they told me they were childhood friends and had fished off this reef as boys. The one who'd spotted me had gone to the north of England for work and had just returned after twenty years away. There would be a full moon that night, and they were here to fish and celebrate. They didn't have poles, they said, but they showed me the small nets, sharp sticks, and tin cans rigged with string.

Finally, John arrived. He was happy and relaxed, greeting the men and handing me a present-a colored sh.e.l.l he'd found while diving off the reef. When he smiled, saying something to the effect that he'd found a way off Paradise, I pointed to the trail the men had come from. Dismayed to find that his mango had been eaten, he stretched out on the sand and finished what was left of the joint. Then he got a lesson in tin can fishing. As they stood in the shallows of the reef casting their lines, John was especially intrigued by the youngest, who easily skewered the small reef fish with his stick.

He inquired about the goat path. Steep, they said. A thousand feet up. We would have to abandon the kayak, that was clear, and I would need to be carried. He asked for their help, offering to pay them at the hotel, but the men didn't want to leave before morning. Instead, they invited us to spend the night with them roasting fish under the stars. We stayed on the beach for hours but nixed the idea of sleeping there. As eager as we had been to arrive, we now wanted to leave.

Arguing for the devil we knew, I said we should return the way we had come, through the break in the reef.

"Not an option," John said, shaking his head.

"But we made it the first time."

"Yes, but even if we got to the end of the channel, even if we made it that far, we'd be slammed where the surf meets the reef."

I looked out. He was right. In the distance, the waves. .h.i.t the submerged coral with such force that they were tossed sky-high.

"My way," he said, "we steer clear of the reef altogether."

"How?" I asked. "It's everywhere."

"That's what I thought. But when I was diving off the side, I saw it, I was in it. In front of the other beach, no reef, no coral-it's clear."

I tried to stall. "Can we walk there, so I can at least see it?"

Again he shook his head. "Mangroves. And rock. The beach there is lower, set farther back than this one. We'd have to climb down-you wouldn't make it with your foot. I'll take you in the kayak and you can see from there. The coral makes a ledge, and if we drop down, we're home free."

I looked away from him, my eyes catching sight of the crutch by the boat.

"Just check it out," he said. "You can always say no."

After we said goodbye to the fishermen, he picked me up and set me in the front of the kayak and began to pull the boat through the shallow water. Whatever haze we may have felt from the red men's joint was gone, and we were clearheaded, invigorated by decision. The side of the reef ran perpendicular to the sh.o.r.e and, along with the mangroves, divided the two beaches and their waters. It also created, as he had described, a shelf with a drop of about six feet into the waves on the other side.

We reached the edge. He stood waist-deep in the calm reef waters, one hand steadying the stern. We were silent as we surveyed what lay before us. To the right, there was the wider beach, with jungle behind it and white surf pounding the sh.o.r.e. To the left, the Caribbean, the horizon, and a straight shot back to Treasure Beach. But below, huge swells rolled by, unbroken by reef and rock. That was where we were headed. John would drag the kayak farther out, but where he could still stand. This would place us as far past the wave break as possible once we dropped down. Then he would jump in behind me, in the steering position, and push the kayak off the reef. We'd be parallel to the swells when we landed, but he'd time it between sets and quickly steer the boat a quarter turn out to sea.

I bit my lip and watched the water rise and unfurl until it crashed on the sand of the larger beach. Then I remembered my leg.

"But what if a wave hits us? What if we capsize? I can't swim in that." My doctors had said yes to pool swimming only. And by the looks of it, I wasn't even sure John could make it in that surf.

"That's not going to happen." He sounded more confident about his plan now that we were actually here. "We're sneaking in from the side, not head-on. And look how evenly they're breaking."

It was true. The waves weren't wild; they were rolling straight. And from our perch on the reef, there was nothing sideways about them.

"It's our best shot. There's no reef below. No way we'll wreck. I know I can turn the 'yak. I can time it right. I'll get us past the break. You just paddle and I'll steer."

It was a risk, I knew-a roll of the dice. But it did look less harrowing than our arrival earlier through the channel in the reef. And we'd survived that, hadn't we? I looked at John. He was counting under his breath, as serious as I'd ever seen him, marking the time between wave sets. His brow was furrowed, his jaw set. I squeezed his hand, took the leap, and nodded yes.

He pulled the boat out a little farther and hoisted himself in back. Then, with his oar, he pushed us off the reef. Once we dropped down, the tip righted itself-just as he had said it would-and we began to make the turn out to sea before the next swell. But he had misjudged; the waves were much larger and the current stronger than they had appeared from the shelf above, and we soon realized that we were being dragged sideways to the sh.o.r.e, the prow in danger of heading toward the surf. If we were caught in the break, we'd be tumbled in white water and slammed against the sand. To avoid the danger of the reef, we had put ourselves at the mercy of the sea.

I heard his voice. He was shouting for me to keep paddling as he tried furiously to keep the tiny boat away from the sh.o.r.e.

Then, without warning, we were underwater, inside an enormous swell. Like a hurricane's eye, like its very own world, it was silent and still. Time stopped. My eyes opened to unending pale blue. I was amazed that I could see everything. I looked to what I thought was above. My eyes widened: Ten feet, fifteen feet up, I saw a trail of light filtering down. Not white water-just the smallest ridge of curl. It meant we were beneath the crest, in its thickness, but it hadn't broken. Not yet. It meant the boat was still righted and we hadn't flipped. It meant hope.

Suddenly, there was pressure on every part of my body. We were surging toward the break somewhere to our right. I didn't know if I could hold my breath much longer-the wall of water was endless. I panicked and began to push myself out of the boat, to swim toward the light, when I felt a hand on my back pulling me down. I turned; his eyes were open. He was shaking his head as forcefully as he could against the weight of the water. I had forgotten that he was there, that he was caught in the wave with me.

Air hit, and we gasped. But the next swell came, rough and hard, and we were under again. I watched as the paddle was lifted from my hand. I watched as my fingers let go of the wood. I wanted to breathe but reminded myself I couldn't. My head was light, so light. I thought, This is it. This is how it ends. We are going to die together. This is what it means to drown This is it. This is how it ends. We are going to die together. This is what it means to drown.

But the sky broke through. In the air, the sound was deafening. My lungs hurt, and as we crested a steep wave, I coughed, spat water, and clung to the edge of the boat with my head down. I waited, fully expecting to be flung backward out of the boat, but we made it over. I looked back at him, amazed, and saw that he had never stopped. He'd never given up, and he was beginning to shepherd us over the waves, not under them. He had turned us out to sea, just as he'd promised, and we were coursing past the break to safety. Then I heard him yell.

"Bail!"

"What?"

"Bail. Find the bailer. Now!" he ordered.

I looked down. Water to my waist. No spray skirts; they were somewhere in a closet in New York. I rummaged frantically around the bottom of the boat. My crutch, like the paddle, was gone, and there was nothing to bail with. I started to cry, but I was furious.

"There is no bailer, John! How could you not pack a bailer?" I shouted. "We're in the G.o.dd.a.m.n ocean!"

"f.u.c.k, use anything, use your hands! We're sinking."

"The h.e.l.l we are."

Resolute, I scooped the water overboard with both hands, until he found a cotton baseball cap wedged under his thigh. And when the danger had finally pa.s.sed, when we were far enough out so that there was barely a ripple in the surface of the sea, I remember thinking how beautiful the day was, how clear the sky. And that it was all so incongruous with what had nearly happened to us three times that day. A jeer almost.

We had gone into the open sea without consulting anyone who knew the waters, without spray skirts, life jackets, or a bailer. And here we were, surviving, on our way to Treasure Beach with a single paddle and a soggy baseball cap. Fate had smiled on us.

As we pa.s.sed the high part of the cliff, I looked up. Hawks were circling. I remembered the woman who had jumped to join her lover, the water, and death, and I thought, No, that is not me. That No, that is not me. That will not be me will not be me. I repeated it to myself like a promise I would not betray. But I knew, in some small way, it was. That April morning, whether I admitted it or not, I had followed him every step of the way.

When we pulled into Great Pedro Bay an hour later, I was still shaken. John seemed fine, oblivious. As he pulled the kayak past the fishing skiffs to a fence near some old bikes, he whistled. Unlike me, he had left it all behind and was fully in the present-although he did make me promise not to tell his mother.

"But John, we could have died."

I was angry and frightened, and I wanted him to know. I wanted him to hold me, to tell me that he was sorry, that it would never happen again, that he had been afraid, too. I wanted him to say something. Something to acknowledge that it was more than just a story or a jam we'd gotten out of. He was puttering around the boat, securing it for the night, and a group of children had gathered to watch. Setting down the rope, he glanced up at me for a moment before returning to his bowline knot.

"Yeah, Chief, but what a way to go."

He gave me a card the first year we were together, a black-and-white drawing of lovers kissing, with the words "Girl's Eye View/Boy's Eye View" etched above their heads. The girl's eyes are open, filled with doubt and excitement and the fevered antic.i.p.ation of what comes next. In the tangle of her hair are a myriad of thoughts, wishes, and fears. The boy's eyes are shut; he's smack in the present. He has only one thought: "Who the h.e.l.l knows?"

There were things he would say like mantras. They might have been pa.s.sed along by someone wiser, someone who knew, his uncle, or his mother maybe. He'd say them to remind himself of human nature and the way of the world; that struggle wasn't always the best path, but sometimes it was; and that whatever Fortune brought, it wasn't because he thought himself superior. He had faults, like anyone, but never arrogance, never meanness, never sn.o.bbery. What he aimed for, and succeeded some days in attaining, was the remarkable equipoise of humility and confidence that is grace.

It goes with the territory, he would say. This applied, I learned, to the small scrutinies he faced daily-to the press, stories true and untrue, to people's behavior at times gla.s.sy-eyed or grasping. To good tables in restaurants, exciting parties, great vacations, velvet ropes parting, and the occasional b.u.mp to first cla.s.s. It also applied, I would learn, to the attentions of other women.

Once we were alone in a room and a girl came in. It was one of the last performances of Winners Winners, and we were on the top floor of the Irish Arts Center in the room where we'd meet to run lines before the stage manager called places. That night, we stood close to the brick wall talking, the old floorboards washed in the honeyed push of light before sunset. The girl came in, beautiful in chinos and sneakers. Later, when we asked, no one seemed to know her or how she'd gotten past the lobby. The audience was invitation-only, and it seemed she had talked her way in and snuck up the stairs. With pale, thin hair, she looked like a young Jessica Lange, but there was something in her eyes, tilted and feral, that made her strange. She'd seen his picture in the paper, she said, the skin at her collarbone flushed magenta. And she just had to meet him.

He tried to be polite. When that didn't work, he kept moving his back to her. But she stood-waiting, circling, rapt-with no acknowledgment that I was there, in the room, not two feet from her. I watched, fascinated. "Excuse me," he said, with his eyes locked on me as if that would make her go. She touched his hip, and he startled. Her voice was soft. "You have a hole in your pocket. I can sew that for you." Gently at first, she began to pull at the lining until it became a mission. That's when he turned. He was angry. He told her to leave-this was a private conversation, he said, and she was being rude.

Before she reached the door, she looked back, and I saw that there was something satisfied about her. And the heat that had begun on her chest had risen like wildfire to her face.

"Can you believe that?" he said after the door closed.

"Do you know her?" I asked.

"Never seen her before in my life."

So I knew from the start that this happened, that this also went with the territory. But it hardly mattered then. It was the beginning-the time when you're sure, when you know by the way he looks at you across the room, by the way he stands or says your name, that he is yours.

More than a year later, I asked him to make me a promise. We'd been away for the weekend at a resort, and a girl had followed him around-thrown herself at him, we called it then. She wasn't a movie star or a model. She was tall and plain, someone I'd known vaguely in grade school. He showed no interest, and I don't know why it bothered me so much, but it did. There were other things: numbers pressed into his hand whether my head was turned or not, items in gossip columns. Some we'd laugh over; others I wondered about.

After that trip, I knew I didn't like what it did to me. I didn't want to be looking over my shoulder, to be always guessing what was true and what wasn't. I wanted to trust unless there was some reason not to. One afternoon in his kitchen, I asked him to tell me if he was ever unfaithful, if there was ever anyone else. He agreed. He understood, he said, but he wanted me to promise something as well: that if there was ever anyone for me, someone who meant nothing-a tryst-I not tell him. Other girlfriends had, and he didn't like it.

"You want me not not to tell you?" I almost laughed, amazed at the difference between us. to tell you?" I almost laughed, amazed at the difference between us.

"Yes," he said quietly. "I wouldn't want to know. I know you like me better than anyone, and I wouldn't want to know. If you cheated, I would take you back."

On a December night, long after that conversation in the kitchen, he asked for time.

It was after the summer we lived in LA, in the house by the beach with the shutters and the roses. When we returned to New York, John started his last year of law school, and I was cast in A Matter of Degrees A Matter of Degrees, an independent film that was being shot in Providence. I played a seductress torn between two men-one dark and brooding, the other adoring-and made a lifelong friend out of Arye Gross, the talented actor who was playing the adoring one. While I was away in Providence, there was a phone call-a slight pulling back, which I attributed to distance. I knew all would be right, as it always was, once we were back in the same city.

Now I was wedged in a corner of the couch in his living room, and he was on the floor at my feet, the glare from the table lamp on his troubled face. His back was curved, his hair shorter than usual, and when he spoke, I thought I'd never seen him look so young. He was happy with me, with us-the summer had been so happy-but he wanted to see other people. Not forever. For a time. He knew where we were headed, and that was part of it.

I couldn't look away from him, and I wanted to, and though the couch was deep and the cushions sank, I tried to sit straight, as if the effort would mean something. I tried to reason, to argue, but when he reached for me, I cried. Was it someone ...? He stopped me before I could finish. "No, it's nothing like that. I love you." He couldn't imagine spending his life with anyone else, he confessed tearfully, as though it pained him to say it. And there was a connection in his mind with this time apart-this freedom of months-and the future he said we had.

Every good man goes down fighting. It was one of the things he said, and I'd never liked it. He would toss it off, breezy and knowing, when a friend got married or a roguish compadre settled down. Or whisper it loudly, as he held me down and tickled me. But that night, he said it the way you'd admit to a secret. Once, under his breath with his head bowed, and then as he looked up at me, his ankles crossed in front of him. I told him I wasn't going to fight him or trick him or make him do anything. If we got married, it would be because we both wanted to, and he would have to ask me.

I refused to believe it then-that saying of his. And for a long time after. But he was, of course, partly right. Some men, good or otherwise, do go down fighting. They are won without knowing how they've been taken.

At this point in the story, it's best if the girl storms off in a fury or, better yet, takes a lover. I did neither. He had his sayings, and I had mine, and "Love conquers all" was hardwired in me then like catechism.

A gay friend who knew us both suggested that I try the time-honored tradition of getting pregnant. "Don't be shocked," he said, smirking. "People do it all the time. He's crazy about you. He just needs a push." The fortune-teller pored over his chart. "It's Neptune," she said. "Delusion is heavily aspected for some time."

I confided in a worldly older friend. Though married to her second husband, with a Park Avenue life, she still carried a torch for her first. Years had pa.s.sed, but she still loved him. "Give him rope," she advised. "Let him get it out of his system now." By that time, he'd met Daryl Hannah. By that time, there had been an item in the columns that he had called to refute-something he never did. When I asked him, he was evasive. "We're just friends. She doesn't even live here. And anyway, she has a boyfriend."

Whatever time we had decided on in December, it lasted six weeks. By the end of January, he said he was desperate to see me, and I realized I wasn't inclined toward sharing. That winter, there were pa.s.sionate reunions and love letters left on balconies. We fought like we never had, and in ways we were closer. But by spring, confusion returned. I had found things-a bent pair of cat-eye gla.s.ses, a Filofax, an earring-and in May, after he graduated, we said once again we would take time apart. We still saw each other, but that's what we said.

There were distractions. A dreamy actor who took me to French restaurants in the West Fifties and kept his Marlboros tucked in the sleeve of his T-shirt. A musician who saw auras and sent notes with wildflowers pressed in the pages. An older, upbeat Wall Street hotshot who kept saying, What do you see in him, anyway? He's not strong enough for you What do you see in him, anyway? He's not strong enough for you. And when I was offered a part in a new translation of The Misanthrope The Misanthrope, one that would take me out of town for four months-first to the La Jolla Playhouse in California and then to the Goodman Theatre in Chicago-I jumped at it. The production, updated to Hollywood, was to be directed by Robert Falls. The set, inspired by a Vogue Vogue photo shoot at Madonna's mansion in the Hollywood Hills, would feature gym equipment and a vast closet filled with identical black lace-up boots. Kim Cattrall was cast as the temptress Celimene, and this time I was eliante, the adoring one. photo shoot at Madonna's mansion in the Hollywood Hills, would feature gym equipment and a vast closet filled with identical black lace-up boots. Kim Cattrall was cast as the temptress Celimene, and this time I was eliante, the adoring one.

We met for dinner before I left. I chose a dress, black with small roses and a pencil skirt, that I knew he would remember, and when he whistled up at my balcony, a straw hat in his hand, I smiled. "You look like Huck Finn," I called down. We were on our way to Cafe des Artistes but ended up at the All State instead. At dinner, he ran his hand down my back, and closed his eyes. "What are you doing to me," he murmured. "You still make me melt." I had changed the outgoing message on my phone machine recently, and when he said it was needlessly provocative, I smiled like a cat. He told me about studying for the bar, "a mother beyond belief," and that his days and nights were like a monk's. He wasn't seeing anyone, he offered. Why then, were we apart? Why then, were we apart? I didn't say this. I blinked. The spell of the evening was too potent. I didn't say this. I blinked. The spell of the evening was too potent.

We walked up Broadway in the soft June rain, we kissed in doorways, and he bought me irises pressed in damp paper.

I took that night with me, one he later called pure pleasure. I took it with me that summer, through phone calls of back-and-forth and misunderstanding and possibility. Through distance, through rumor.

I took it with me, until frayed and worn, it no longer was enough.

"Are you still there?"

Before I answered, I held the phone against my chest, trying not to imagine him where he was-on the white couch in his living room in New York, with his feet braced against the coffee table and all the lights out. I was in Chicago, in a short-term rental on North LaSalle that the Goodman had leased, boxes all around and Levolor blinds open. It was early evening at the beginning of November, and there'd been a strange bout of heat. But when I think of it now, the whole fall had been like that, bright, hot days one after another. The play had just closed, but I'd stayed on. I'd been cast in an independent film that was being shot in Chicago. Arye was in it, too, along with Courtney c.o.x.

I had seen John sporadically that summer and fall-at the Four Seasons in LA after he took the bar exam, a long weekend at the La Valencia in La Jolla, a smattering of days in New York between the California and Chicago runs, and then, in October, a night at the Drake, when we'd both tried to end things for good but couldn't.

"I'm here," I said finally, playing with the phone cord.

He told me I sounded different, distant, but really I had cried all day. And if I sounded distant-if I managed any sangfroid-it was practiced. I'd talked to two friends in New York before he called, and they had coached me: black or white, yes or no, fish or cut bait. On the yellow pad near the phone were words to remind me of what I'd already resolved, what I knew. But it wasn't only his presence that had a hypnotic effect on me; it was his voice as well.