“A painting licker.”
      “What do you mean?”
      “There’s a man in England who goes around lickingthe paintings he loves. Locking’s not enough for him. He wants a more intimate experience with his favorite pictures, so when he’s at a museum and guards aren’t watching, he licks ‘em. He has a postcard collection of each one he’s done.”
      “Crazy.”
      “It is, but I understand it. I think that’s what happened with your man: he couldn’t have you and it drove him crazy. So he did the only thing he coulddo to own you for a few minutes: scared you. It always works. For today, or however long you’re going to be afraid of him, he doesown you.”
      “Damn it! Damn that power men have. Whenever they don’t like something, they can always hitus. You’ll never know that feeling. Always that little bit of fear in our heart.”
      “Not all men hit women, Miranda.”
      “But you can, and that’s the difference.”
      A small white bullterrier ran into the room and over to Hugh.
      “Easy! Miranda, this is Easy. Whenever we play, she runs and hides. The only dog I’ve ever known that actively dislikes music.”
      “That breed always scares me.”
      “Bullterriers? She’s a cream puff. She only lookslike a thief.”
      She looked more like a bleached pig, but her face was sweet and her tail was wagging so furiously that I couldn’t resist reaching out to pat her. She moved over to me and leaned like a stone against my leg.
      “Why do you call her Easy?”
      “My daughter named her. No reason. I brought her home from the kennel; Brigit took one look and said her name was Easy. Simple as that.”
      “How many children do you have?”
      “A daughter and a son. Brigit and Oisin. Oy-sheen.”
      “Oisin? Is that Irish?”
      “Yes. Both kids were born in Dublin.”
      “By the way, why didn’t you goto Dublin?”
      “Because you were coming. When you said you’d be happy to see my assistant, I thought, Uh oh, when would I see her again? I knew I had to be here.”
      Once again I tried to figure out how to respond.
      “You say things that throw me off, Hugh.”
      “People say I’m too direct. I didn’t go to Dublin because I had to see you again. It’s that simple.”
      Courtney called out from down the hall, asking him to come. He stood up, put the violin on the chair, and started out of the room. “I was going to call you the other day but you called me. I didn’t want to wait any longer. Ever since we met, most of my days seem to be about you.”
      He left me sitting with Easy leaning against my leg. It took a while before my body started shaking, but when it did, it came on strong. So strong that it roused the dog from her doze. She looked up at me. I closed my eyes. My heart pounded inside its cage of bones. I couldn’t wait for him to return.
 
      HERE I AM, an old woman with a shaky hand and a cheap pen, writing about sex. Is there any greater irony? Most of the time I cannot even recall what I ate yesterday. How do I presume to remember and write honestly about that most evanescent act, fifty years after it happened?
      I will stand up and walk to the kitchen. On the way I’ll think about how to do it. There are some chocolate cookies left. I want to eat two and drink a glass of cold water. Eating is sex for old people.
      This is my home, what’s left of a life in its final few rooms. There are some photographs. My parents. Hugh and me. Zoe on the porch of this house. The only piece of furniture I have kept over the years is Hugh’s easy chair. Despite having been re-covered two times it is shabby-looking now, but I would never give it away. On the table nearby is a photograph of Frances in her New York apartment. All of her possessions surround her, the paintings and rugs, that lush abundance of color so much a part of her being. The difference is, Frances wantedto remember everything. I don’t. Better to keep my last surroundings simple. Avoid any fatal memory or malevolent connection from things best left to their uneasy sleep in my heart.
      Certain things must be here. Most importantly the pile of sticks in the fireplace. Every one of those pieces of wood is important. Written on each is a date and a reason. I have never counted, but would guess there are twenty now. Hugh’s collection was much larger, but he started his years before I did.
      It was his idea: When anything truly important happens in your life, wherever you happen to be, find a stick in the immediate vicinity and write the occasion and date on it. Keep them together, protect them. There shouldn’t be too many; sort through them every few years and separate the events that remain genuinely important from those that were but no longer are. You know the difference. Throw the rest out.
      When you are very old, very sick, or sure there’s not much time left to live, put them together and burn them. The marriage of sticks.
 
      AN HOUR AFTER I visited his office to have the painting appraised, Hugh Oakley and I were walking through Central Park. He told me about the marriage of sticks and suggested I start my collection right then. I was so nervous about what was about to happen that without thinking, I did. It was from a copper beech tree. I knew nothing about trees then. Foliage, plants, things that grew. I was a city girl who was hurrying to a hotel to have sex with a man I knew was happily married with two children.
      “What’s the matter?” He stopped and turned me so we were face to face. We were holding hands. A moment ago we’d been racing to get to a hotel. I assumed he’d been there before. How many other women had he sped along like this, rushing to get them into bed?
      “You look miserable.”
      “I’m not miserable, Hugh, I’m unstrung! Somebody hit me this morning, and now I’m here with you.” I stared at our clasped hands and kept staring while I spoke. “I don’t do things like this. It’s everything together, full volume. Dangerous, right, wrong… Everything. I thought you’d be in Ireland. I thought your assistant was going to appraise the painting and I’d go home. Not this. This is all new territory for me.”
      He looked around and, seeing a park bench, pulled me to it. “Sit down. Listen to me. What you’re doing is right. It’s your heart and the adventurous part all saying go. Our checks and balances hold us back too much from risking anything.
      “Don’t let them, Miranda. Do it. If nothing else, you’ll remember this later and say it was crazy but you’re glad you did it.”
      My eyes were closed. “Can I ask a question? Will you answer honestly?”
      “Anything.”
      I straightened my back. “Are you worth it?”
      I heard him take a sharp breath to answer but he stayed silent a long moment. “I think so. I hope so.”
      “Do you go to hotels a lot with women?”
      “No. Sometimes.”
      “That doesn’t makes me feel special.”
      “I’m not going to apologize for the person you didn’t know till today.”
      “That’s facile, Hugh. This is a big thing for me.”
      “I’ll do whatever you want, Miranda. We can stay here and talk. Go to a movie, or go somewhere and make love. It’s all the same to me. I just want to be with you.”
      Two Rollerbladers pounded by, followed by a bunch of kids in crooked caps, carrying a big boom box.
      We watched the parade pass before I spoke. “Know what I want to do? Before anything else?”
      “What?”
      “Go to the Gap and buy a pair of khakis.” It was a test, plain and simple. I said it only to see how he would react.
      His face lit up and he smiled. It was genuine. “Sure! Let’s go.”
      “What about the hotel?”
      He paused. When he spoke his voice was slow and careful. “You don’t getit, do you? I’m not twenty, Miranda. I don’t ride my cock around like a witch on a broomstick. I want to beyou. If that’s in bed, great. If not, then together is all the matters.”
      “Then why were we going to a hotel?”
      “Because I dowant to touch you. I thought you felt the same. But I was wrong. Big deal. Let’s go buy your trousers.”
      “Really?” The word came out scared.
      He put his hand on my cheek. “Really.”
 
 
      WE WALKED OUT of the park as fast as we’d walked in. I would have given a month of my life to know what he was really thinking. He took my hand again and we kept squeezing back and forth as if to say, I’m here, I’m still with you. No matter how this day ended up, I knew I’d be running the replay in my brain for a long time.
      I didn’t need new pants. The only reason I’d even said it was because a few minutes before I’d seen an ad for the Gap on the side of a crosstown bus.
      “Here we are.”
      I’d been thinking so hard about what was happening that I didn’t realize we had arrived at the door of a Gap store.
      “You get your khakis and I’ll buy a cap. It’ll remind me of today. You’ll have your first stick and I’ll have a baseball cap.”
      “Are you angry, Hugh? Tell the truth.”
      “I’m excited.” Without another word, he pushed the door open and gestured for me to go in.
      “In what way?”
      “I’ll tell you later.” We walked in. He moved away from me and picked up a green sweatshirt.
      Nothing else to do but find the damned pants. When a saleswoman came up and sweetly asked if she could help, I snarled out, “Khakis! I’m looking for khakis, okay?” As she backed off, her face was one big “Uh-oh.”
      I didn’t care. I was in a damned Gap store, shopping, instead of having devil-may-care sex with a fascinating man. Why was I a coward with him? I’d done it before in a blink. That time outside the China Moon Restaurant in San Francisco? Or with the model in Hamburg on the bed with the broken spring? I hopped into bed with other men and things had worked out fine. The memories were happy and guilt-free.
      I looked around the store and saw Hugh trying on baseball caps in front of a mirror. A nice-looking man in his forties in a dark suit, pushing boys’ hats around on his big head. Why notwith him?
      Because I could love him.
      It began in his office when he said, “It’s only because I care.” As honest and simple as a piece of white paper with those words printed large and black on it. His candor disturbed me because I loved it. It seemed everything he said was either honest or interesting, usually both. He knew so much, and even if a subject had never mattered to me before once he began speaking I was hooked. Like the words he’d learned in Khalkha when he was in Mongolia researching Genghis Khan, or James Agee versus Graham Greene as a film reviewer, or the plumbing system Thomas Jefferson invented for Monticello…
      His face was all animation, all angles and eyes. His chin was square, his teeth were smoker’s yellow. There were deep wrinkles down either side of his mouth. When he smiled they almost disappeared. His eyelashes were long and thick. I didn’t want to kiss him yet, but wouldn’t say no if he tried to kiss me. When he asked me to lunch I said yes. When we walked out of his office and his colleagues stared I didn’t care. When we stood on the street and Hugh said he wanted me, I said okay without hesitating.
      In the store I walked up behind him and talked to his reflection in the mirror. He was wearing a green baseball cap tipped slightly to the right. “Will you come with me and see how these look?” I held up the pants. I had no idea what size they were. I had picked up the first pair I’d seen on the shelf.
      “Sure. Did you know Babe Ruth had a small head for a man his size? Seven and three-eighths.” His expression didn’t change. I asked a passing saleswoman where the changing rooms were. When she pointed them out, I took his hand and pulled him behind me.
      Another saleswoman stood outside the dressing rooms, but she didn’t seem surprised when we entered together. It was very narrow inside. I whipped the curtain across, dropped the pants on the floor, and turned to him. A foot apart, I could smell him for the first time. We had never been this close. Orange-and-cinnamon cologne, tobacco, a slight sourness that was already delicious.
      Reaching up, I slid his cap off and kissed him. His lips were softer than I had imagined. They gave nothing yet because it was up to me now and we both knew that was necessary. I slid my arms up his back but didn’t pull him close.
      He reached up and stroked the back of my head. We stared.
      “Will we be friends too?” I slid a finger down one of the wrinkles alongside his mouth. It was so deep.
      “It can only work that way.” He took my finger and kissed it.
      “I want to lick your spine.”
      Nothing else happened. We made out for a steaming minute or two, then left the dressing room smiling like lottery winners. Hugh insisted on buying the cap as a souvenir. He wore it the rest of the day as we walked around the city and deeper into each other’s lives.
      Whatever bad thoughts came to my mind—his nice wife, his children—had almost no gravity. The good thoughts, the hopes, the thrilling possibilities had the weight of mountains. I knew this was the beginning of something bad for all concerned, no matter how cleverly it could be justified. I had never been with a married man although there had been ample opportunities. I believed what goes around comes around. If I did the snug dance with someone’s husband, surely the gods would find an appalling form of payback.
      We stood outside a subway entrance. Our day was over. He was going back to his other life where his family waited for him and suspected nothing. We looked at each other with the increased hunger separation always brings.
      “Are you going to get your dog?”
      “Yup. Then I’ll walk her home and think about you.”
      “I’m thinking about your family.”
      He shook his head. “That does no good.”
      “But I’m new to this. Sooner or later it’s going to come out.”
      “Miranda, sooner or later we’re going to die. I used to think a lot about sooner or later, but you know what? Sooner suddenly became later and I realized I’d wasted too much time worrying about it, rather than living it.”
      “A friend of mine asked if I would rather love or be loved. I’d rather love.”
      He nodded. “Then that’s your answer. I have to go.”
      We kissed; he touched my throat, then moved toward the subway steps. Halfway down them, he turned and his face lit up in the greatest smile. “Where have you been? Where have you been all this time?”
 
      I DIDN’T HEAR from him for two days. Imagine how loud that silence was. On the third, worried and resentful, I stopped at the mailbox on my way to the store. Inside were the usual bills and advertisements, but the last envelope in the bunch was the jackpot. My name and address were written in Hugh’s handwriting. My heart started galloping.
      There was a postcard inside.
      A Walker Evans photograph of a tired room with only a bed and a side table with a water pitcher on top of it. The wallpaper had long since died and been consumed by the water stains everywhere. Over the bed, the slanting ceiling indicated the room probably sat right under a roof. Without the bed, it was a whore’s room in Tropic of Cancer, or one from an early Hemingway short story about living poor in Paris.
      But like alchemy, the improbable whiteness of the sheets and pillow transformed it into a space of sex and infinity. A room you would go to with someone you wanted to fuck again and again. Then the two of you would fall asleep wrapped round each other. There was nothing special about the room except how carefully the bed had been made with ironed, brilliantly white sheets and cases. In those dismal surroundings, the two plumped pillows stood out like crisp clouds. The bedspread was a patchwork quilt. I could smell the staleness of the room, feel its temperature on my skin, and then the touch of whoever would take me there. Nothing was written on the postcard itself, but on a separate sheet of paper, this:
 
       This is all I want with you now: a simple room, one light in the middle of the ceiling hanging on a long line, the kind you see in cheap apartments or hotel rooms no one ever remembers staying in. At night the sad weak light never reaches the far corners. It droops over a room full of shadows. It doesn’t care.
       But for us, light doesn’t matter here. The room is clean and bright in the day. Maybe there’s a good view out the window. It is the room I want, a bed wide enough for us to lie in comfortably. Faces close enough to feel each other’s breath.
       Your skin is flushed. With my finger, I trace a line from the ledge of your chin down the neck, your shoulder, arm. It makes you smile and shiver. How can you shiver when it’s so warm in here?
       I want this room. I want this room with you in it, naked beside me. I don’t know where we are. Maybe by the sea. Or in the middle of a city where the noise through the window is as busy as we are.
       The afternoon is ours. The evening and the night too. We’ll be tired by then but we’ll still go out and eat a huge meal. Your body will be wonderfully sore and raw. It will make you smile when we walk to the restaurant. I’ll look at you and ask if anything is wrong. You’ll say no and squeeze my arm. We’ll need this time out in the world to remind ourselves there is something else besides us today, that room, our bodies.
       In a noisy restaurant we’ll talk quietly. Voices and faces smoothed by all those hours in bed. Anyone watching us will know we have been fucking. It is so obvious.
       Later again in the room when nothing is needed, I want to sleep a few hours, and then wake with you pressed against my side. Maybe I’ll reach for you. Maybe I will only touch your wrist and feel your sleeping, secret pulse. The rest can wait. There’s time now.
       Keep this picture with you. Put it on a table, a desk, wherever you are. If someone asks why you have it, say it’s a place where you’d be happy. Look at it and know I am waiting. Look at it again.
 
      I walked out of my building on legs made of wet spaghetti. Out on the street, the world was the same as yesterday but it took two or three blocks to regain my bearings and recognize I was still on planet earth. When I came to, I realized I had been walking with the letter clutched tightly in both hands behind my back. To hold the joy as long as I could, I stopped where I was, closed my eyes and said aloud, “I must remember this. I must remember it as long as I live.”
      Opening my eyes again, the first thing I saw was James Stillman.
      My heart recognized him before any other part did. And it was calm. It said, “There he is. James is across the street.” He looked the way he had when I’d known him fifteen years before. He was unmistakable, even in the rush of people surrounding him.
      He wore a suit and tie. I stood frozen in place. We stared at each other until he lifted an arm and waved to me, slowly, from side to side. The kind of exaggerated wave you give someone who is driving off in a car and you want to be sure they see you until the very last second.
      Without thinking, I started out into traffic and was met by screeching brakes and angry horns. When I was halfway across, he began to walk away. By the time I reached the other side he was already far ahead. I began running, but somehow he stayed way in front of me. He went around a corner. When I got there and made the turn, he was twice as far as before. There was no way I could catch up. When I stopped he did too. He turned and did something that was pure James Stillman: He put his open hand against his forehead, then moved it down to his mouth and blew me a big kiss. Whenever we parted he would do that. He’d seen it in an old Arabian Nights film and thought it the coolest gesture—hand to the forehead, to the lips, big kiss. My Arabian Knight, back from the dead.
 
      “I SAW A ghost and I’m in love with a married man.”
      “Welcome to the club.”
      “Zoe, I’m serious.”
      “Married men are alwaysmore delicious than single, Miranda. That’s where the challenge is. And I’ve believed in ghosts all my life. But tell me about Mr. Married first because I’m the expert on that subject.”
      We were having lunch. She had come into town for the day. Married boyfriend Hector had ended their relationship and she was at the end of her period of mourning. For weeks I’d suggested a day in the city doing girl things together to take her mind off him and finally she said yes. Now I was doubly glad to meet so I could get her input on my new twilight zones.
      “The ghost was James Stillman.”
      “Great! Where?”
      “On the street near my apartment. He waved to me in that old way, remember?” I did the gesture and she smiled.
      “A very romantic fellow, no doubt about it.”
      “But Zoe, I sawhim. He looked exactly like he did in high school.”
      She folded her napkin a few times and put it on the table. “Remember when we used to do the Ouija board and contacted all those old spirits, or whatever they were? My mother believed when some people die, their souls get tossed into a limbo between life and death. That’s why you can talk to them on a Ouija board or in a seance—they’re half here and half there.”
      “Do you believe that?”
      “Why else would you want to hang around life if it’s over for you?”
      “He was so real. Solid. No ectoplasm or Caspar the Friendly Ghost, hovering a foot above the ground in a white sheet. It was James. Completely real.”
      “Maybe it was. You’d have to ask an expert. Why would he come back now? Why not before?”
      We didn’t talk about it much beyond that. Neither of us knew what it meant, so further discussion was pointless.
      “Tell me about your new man. The alive one.”
      I told her in great detail, and along the way we kept having more drinks to help us analyze my new situation.
      “You know what just hit me? What if James came back as a sign to tell me not to do this?”
      Zoe threw up her hands in exasperation. “Oh, for God’s sake! If you’re going to feel guilty, don’t blame ghosts. I’m sure they’ve got better things to do than keep tabs on your sexual behaviour.”
      “But I haven’t slept with him yet!”
      “Miranda?”
      Hearing my name spoken in a familiar voice, I turned and saw Doug Auerbach. He was staring at Zoe.
      “Dog! What are you doing here? Why didn’t you call?”
      “I didn’t know I was coming till yesterday. I was going to call later. I’m supposed to have lunch here with a client.”
      I introduced him to Zoe and he sat down. Soon it was clear he was interested only in my oldest friend. At first she smiled and laughed politely at his jokes. When his interest hit her, she transformed into a sexy fox. I had never seen her like that. It was fascinating how deftly she handled both Doug and her new role.
      Naturally I was disconcerted. Part of me was jealous, possessive. How dare they! The rest remembered Doug’s small place in my life, and Zoe’s goodness. At the appropriate moment, I “suddenly remembered” I had another appointment—and would they mind if I left?
      Out on the street again looking for a cab, I felt like Charlotte Oakley, the unwanted third. I shuddered and started walking as fast as I could.
 
      ONE AFTERNOON WHEN his family was away for the weekend, Hugh invited me to their apartment. Easy the bullterrier followed me from room to room. I had on tennis shoes, so the only noise was the tick-tick of Easy’s long toenails on the wooden floors.
      This is where he lives. Where shelives. Each object had its own importance and memories. I kept looking at things and asking myself why the Oakleys had them or what they meant. It was a strange archaeology of the living. The man who could decipher it all for me sat in another room, reading the newspaper, but I wasn’t about to ask any questions. Pictures of his children, Charlotte, the family together. On a yellow sailboat, skiing, sitting beneath a large Christmas tree. This was his home, his family, his life. Why was I here? Why put faces to his stories, or see gifts brought back from trips for these people he loved? On the piano was a crystal box full of cigarettes. I picked it up and read the name Waterfordon the underside. A large red-and-white stone ball stood beside it. Crystal and stone. I stroked the cold ball and kept moving.
      When I’d asked to see his home, Hugh had not hesitated a moment. They owned a house in East Hampton. The family usually went there on weekends in summer. The first time they went without Hugh, he called and told me the coast was clear. And it wasa coast of sorts; they lived on the east, I lived on the west. If I had been his wife, I would have been enraged to know another woman was in my home, looking at my life, touching it.
      So why wasI here? If I was going to be with Hugh, why didn’t I work to keep his two worlds separate and be satisfied with what I had? Because I was greedy. I wanted to know as much about him as I could. That included how he lived when I wasn’t around. By seeing his apartment, I figured, I would be less afraid of what went on there.
      I was right: walking through the rooms, I felt calmer seeing that only people lived here, no master race or gods, all impossibly better, stronger, and more heroic than I could ever hope to be.
      As a girl, I read every fairy tale and folktale I could find. A story that began, “In an ancient time, when animals spoke the speech of men and even the trees talked together…” was my chocolate pudding. More than anything, I wished my own small world contained such magic. But growing up means learning the world has little magic, animals talk only to each other, and our years go over the tops of the mountains without many marvels ever happening.
      What carried over from my childhood was the secret hope that wonders lived somewhere nearby. Dragons and pixies, Difs, Cu Chulainn, Iron Henry, and Mamadreqja, grandmother of witches… I wanted them to beand was still mesmerized by TV shows about angels, yetis, and miracles. I snatched up any copy of the National Enquirerthat headlined sheep born with Elvis’s face, or sightings of the Virgin at a souvlaki stand in Oregon. On the surface I was a briefcase and a business suit, but my heart was always looking for wings.
      They were in his study waiting for me, but I wouldn’t know that until many years later. The room was large and bare except for a pine table Hugh used as a desk. It was piled with papers, books, and a computer. On the wall facing the desk were four small paintings of the same woman.
      “What do you think?”
      I was so involved in looking at them that I hadn’t heard him come in. “I don’t know. I don’t know if they’re fascinating or they scare me.”
      “Scare you? Why?” There was no amusement in his voice.
      “Who is she?”
      He put his hands on my shoulders. “I don’t know. Around the time we met, a man came into the office and asked if I wanted to buy them. He didn’t know anything about them. He’d just bought a house in Mississippi and they were in the attic with a bunch of other stuff. I didn’t even haggle about the price.”
      “Why do I feel like I know her?”
      “Me too! There’s something very familiarabout her. None of them are signed or dated. I have no idea who the artist was. I spent a good deal of time researching. It makes them even more mysterious.”
      She was young—in her twenties—and wore her hair down, but not in any special fashion that gave you an idea of the time period. She was attractive but not so much so that it would stop you for a second look.
      In one picture she sat on a couch staring straight ahead. In another she was sitting in a garden looking slightly off to the right. The painter was excellent and had genuinely caught her spirit. So often I looked at paintings, even famous ones, and felt a kind of lifelessness in the work, as if beyond a certain invisible point the subject died and became a painting. Not so here.
      “Hugh, do you realize that since we met, I got beat up, saw a ghost, made out in a Gap store, and now am looking at pictures of someone I’ve never seen but knowI know.”
      “It’s the story of Zitterbart. Do you know it?”
      “No.”
      “ Zitterbartmeans “trembling beard.” It’s a German fairy tale, but not from the Brothers Grimm. There was a king named Zitterbart who got his name from the fact that whenever he grew angry, his beard shook so much his subjects could feel its breeze in the farthest corners of his kingdom. He was ferocious and whacked off people’s heads if they so much as sneezed the wrong way. But his weak spot was his daughter Senga.
      “The princess was madly in love with a knight named Blasius. Zitterbart approved of a marriage between them, but one day Blasius went to battle and died while fighting another knight named Cornelts Brom.”
      “Blasius and Brom? Sounds like stomach medicine.”
      “Senga was shattered and swore she would kill herself at the next new moon. The king was so frightened that he had the kingdom scoured for every good-looking man and swore if any of them caught her fancy, he would permit the marriage. But no luck. All the most interesting men were brought before her, but she’d take one look and turn to the window to see if the new moon had arrived yet. Zitterbart grew more and more desperate. He sent out a decree that anyman who pleased his daughter would have her hand.
      “Cornelts Brom heard about it. He’d also heard how beautiful Senga was, and he decided to have a look. The thing about Brom was, he was the plainest-looking man in the universe. His face was so forgettable people would break off conversations with him in the middle because they forgot he was there. They thought they were talking to themselves. That was why he was such a great warrior: he was essentially invisible.