Among the dead
by
Michael Tolkin

"A harrowing novel of alienation" (Chicago Tribune), from the
acclaimed author of The Player.

Minutes nearer midnight.  On which stroke Powers at the heart of matter,
powers We shall have hacked through thorns to kiss awake, Will open
baleful, sweeping eyes, draw breath And speak new formulae of megadeath.

NO SOUlS CAME FROM HIROSHIMA U KNOW EARTH WORE A STRANGE NEW ZONE OF
ENERGY Caused by?  SMASHED ATOMS OF THE DEAD MY DEARS News that brought
into play our deepest fears.

James Merrill, The Book of Ephraim

All their plans and hopes burst like a bubble!

Infants by the score dashed on the rocks by the enraged Atlantic Ocean!
No, no!

Thoreau, Cape Cod

The night before everything changed, Gale wrote a
letter to his wife.

She was asleep in the bedroom, upstairs.

There were so many things he wanted to tell her, but in a certain way,
the right way.

Before he thought of saying it all in a letter, he had thought of taking
her to an expensive restaurant and telling her at dinner.  Was there
ever, he thought, a plan with more drama or elegance?

The attention to the details of the evening would require from him such
concentration that he would have entered a state of pure meditation,
without fear, without stage fright, in which nothing he said would be
awkward or out of place, and by the example of his grace in this
terrible situation, his wife could only forgive him.  They would hire a
baby-sitter for Madeleine, and he would reserve a quiet table, or a
booth.  They would drive to the restaurant, and he would gently ask Anna
questions about her day.  He would be nice to her.

How else but through the right performance of mundane actions could he
hide how uncomfortable the pressure of his feelings made him, when Anna,
so sensitive, would know something was wrong?

Unless he solicited her feelings, she would ask him what the trouble
was.  If he were to let Anna see his unhappiness, this would provoke
from her a flow of understanding and compassion, and then he would be
tricking her away from the right to be angry without constraint.

But there were problems with setting the confession in a restaurant.
What if his trance broke, and he hesitated in the middle of a sentence?
Anna would wake up and suddenly realize what he was saying, and what if
she screamed at him?  How much farther away from her mercy would he have
pushed her?  He wanted to be fair to Anna.  If she needed to be angry,
and he knew she would, he wanted to help her.  She needed to be
someplace where she could expel her grief and her rage without hurting
herself, or anyone else, where the humiliation would have no audience.
When he had the brilliant idea of taking her to Mexico, he had at first
pictured telling her while they were walking on the beach, where the
sand would slow her down if she wanted to rvn from him, or even on a
late alternoon swim in the ocean.  Madeleine would be with a Mexican
baby-sitter, one of the maids working for a few extra dollars, a
grandmother.  Frank would take Anna for the swim, and then, bodies
attending to the business of floating, their minds and their emotions at
a gentle null, Frank would say what was finally impossible not to say.
But the water would hardly give Anna the advantage.  Why force her to
swim and listen to him at the same time?  What if she choked on her
unhappiness, what if she drowned while he was telling her?  And what was
that advantage?  And why did Frank want to concede the advantage?
Because he wanted to be fair.  And justice demanded of him that he
concede to Anna her right to leave him, to never see him again.  And
when it came to him that he should write a letter, he had the answer to
his problems.

For a few days he composed it in his head, and it made him think of
Mozart working out a symphony before taking up a pen, and he felt great
peace, the relief of someone who has given up fighting for a bad idea.
For how long had he been so sick of himself?

When he considered how close he had come to confessing in a restaurant,
he could have fainted from the shame of what he had almost done, as if
he had done it, as if the impulse to make this piece of theater for
himself and Anna so demonstrated his basic moral weakness that acting on
it or not made no difference, since someone heroic would never have such
stupid thoughts flitting across the mind.  How can you hope for a
reconsecration of your marriage If it begins with your wife's public
humiliation?  The restaurant confession would force Anna to behave in a
well-mannered way she couldn't scream or cry if she felt the wound
deeply.  The med itative grace that he had planned for himself would
have been weapon.  And while swimming?  No, the water is another kind
manacle.  And so the letter.  And nothing could be more dignified
nothing could better protect her dignity, or his, than an elegantly
composed letter, handwritten, not typed.  Out of the decision to writi
the letter it came to him that there was only one way to deliver the
letter.  He would let Anna read the letter while he took their three
1year-old daughter for a walk on the beach, or into the town to bu' her
something.  When Anna read his letter, she would be alone ii a hotel
room, she could react however she wanted.  She could leave she could
stay, the choice was hers.  She could break every window in the room,
she could tear the sheets with her fingernails, she could throw his
clothing into the hall, she' could smash the mirrors an' she could burn
the carpet, and then, because he would make no protest, she could see
that he loved her, and she could forgive him After he knew he had to
write a letter, he knew that if the letter was ttue, they would need time
to recover from its effect, which would push her away from him.  Mexico
would heal them.  Ther would be a moment, a few days after the letter,
when she would look at him and say, "I love you," and she would mean it,
and he would say, "I love you," and it would be all over.

He had alarmed Anna with his frantic enthusiasm for this trip.

There had been vague talk about going away, and then, with three days'
warning, Frank showed Anna the tickets.

For six months Anna had told him that she felt an empty space in the
house whenever he came home, and that he was becoming mechanical in all
of his attentions and responsibilities.  She would wake him up and tell
him about her bad dreams in which she saw him with other women, or with
another family, and he would help her analyze the dreams in a carefully
thoughtful way.  For some time Frank had been unhappy at work, and with
his wife's encouragement he had pursued an early ambition, to produce
records.  He told Anna her dreams of other women showed her ambivalence
about this pursuit, since success in the music industry would probably
lead to temptations he never had to confront running the business he
shared with his brother.

"You have to tell me the truth," she would say.  "It isn't fair to me if
you don't."

Then he would lie to her.  "The dreams about other women are symbolic,"
Frank told her.  "You're worried I'll be married to the music business."

This would keep her calm for two or three days, and then she' would say
to him, "I think I'm going crazy.  I feel paranoid about everything and
everybody." He recommended therapy.  He told her that he loved her.

It hurt him every time he denied her intuition, and he wanted to throw
the whole problem at her feet and beg her to help him with this demon
that made him cheat and lie, but he didn't want to take from Anna the
right to be the one who was hurt.  He could so easily say, "Help me,
Anna, help me get over this disease which makes me do nothing but tell
lies." Against the impulse to degrade himself, he felt sucked down by a
terrifying weakness, which he took to be the first tremors of the
muscular dystrophy that waited for him if he continued to steal the
attention from his wife's right to hate him.

Unless he could tell her the truth in the right way, so Anna could hate
him, so there would be no other issue than his lies, and not his
feelings about his lies, he would rather keep on lying.  How could he
confess without pride?  How could he make amends?  Each lie gave Anna
more reasons to punish him, but what punishment could erase the memory
of the fun he and Mary Sifka had ripped from each other's bodies? Unless
she left him, he wondered what she could do to him that would finally
make him feel the pain he had caused his wife.

He sat at his desk and took out his diary.  This was not a journal of
events, but each day he tried to write down a few words that summed up
whatever the day had meant to him.  He hoped, someday, to go back
through the diary and fill in the spaces between the words, but as time
passed, he usually forgot whatever it was that had inspired him to write
down whatever words he had written down.

Yesterday he had written NOPE-BRIGHTER-LETIER.  Now it was time to write
the letter itself.  He would compose it in the notebook, and then, when
it was ready, he would copy it onto a notecard he had bought at the
County Museum's gift shop.  It was a Mexican painting, of a woman
carrying a basket of flowers.  He began: DearAnna, Thil U di I ult.

Or is that already begging for mercy?

I'm on the beach now.  I know you'll be upset when you read thu.

Still not direct.  Don't presume to know her feelings.  Maybe she'll be
relieved.  Maybe she's been having an affair and can at least leave me,
now that the masquerade is over.  Do I believe she is seeing someone
else?  She would have to be a better actor than I am, and I don't think
she is.

I love you.  You asked me why I was so berate to take this vacation angel
I said' that I needed to get away from the office for a while, and that's
true, but there's more.  For a few months No, this was a denial, a few
is not enough, he had to tell the truth.

For -a months you've noticed that I've been distant, and I have been.  I
had an affair.  It's over now.  Completely.  I wanted to take this trip
so that we could find a way to heal ourselves.  I don't know how you'll
take this, and all I can say is that I beg you to forgive me, but if you
don't want to, I will understand.

He crossed out the last sentence.  Somehow he thought the letter was
stronger if he didn't ask Anna for anything.  Saying that he didn't know
how she would take the news implied that he had already anticipated a
set of possible responses.  If she studied the sentence, and the letter
with the intensity in which it was written, how could she miss the
strategies that lay behind each measured word?  He wanted her to think
that the letter came out of his heart, quickly, a confession for his
heart alone, not for hers.  If he left off the last sentence and ended
with the two words "heal ourselves," how could she feel anything for him
but pity?  In the "heal ourselves" was a plea for his wife to join him
in work they both needed to do.  The subtle gravity of that phrase
pulled his wife, her behavior, her attitude to him, into the reasons for
the affair.  So he was that much more sure that he should drop the plea
for her understanding.  In "heal ourselves" he forced her to be his
equal.  The sacrifice of those two words granted her a position superior
to him.  Would she appreciate the gift?  Perhaps someday, he thought, I
can show her the early drafts of this letter.  No.

He knew that Anna's first question was going to be "Who was she?" or
more likely, "Who is she?" He couldn't say, "That doesn't matter, it's
over now," because of course it did matter.  Unless he gave her the
answer to the question without her provocation, how could he defend
himself against the charge that he was protecting the other woman, and
if he was protecting her, how could he say the affair was over?  He went
back to the letter and copied it over one more time, keeping the
sentence that ended with I will understand.  .  .  Now the letter read:
I love you.  You asked me a few weeks ago why I was so desperate to take
this vacation and I said that I needed to get away from the office for a
while, and that's true, but there's more.  For -a months you've noticed
that I've been distant, and I have been.  You asked me if there was
another woman, and I said no, but I was lying.  I had an affair with
Mary Sifia.  It's over now.  Completely.  I wanted to take this trip so
that we could find a way to heal ourselves.  I don't know how you'll
take this, and all I can say is that I beg you to forgive me, but if you
don't want to, I will understand.  I love you.

He reread the letter and cut out the word "Completely" because the
emphasis, the word as a sentence by itself, called attention to his
style; it was a useless rhetorical flourish.  If he'd already said that
the affair was over, how could the word "Completely" help him?

Either it was over or it wasn't, and if it was over, then it was over
completely.  Satisfied with the letter, he took the notecard out of its
envelope.  The card opened sideways, like a book.  The other card he had
considered, of a Rothko, two large fields, one black, one muddy red
above a smaller field, dark green, had opened from the bottom, to rest
like a tent on whatever mantel where it found a home, and now he wished
he had bought that card, since it would have been easier to write from
the top of the card to the bottom, instead of on the two sides of this
card.  And the choice of the Mexican art now seemed sentimental and
predictable, although at the time the Rothko, with its brooding sense of
something final, seemed to him also pretentiously serious.  Wasn't he
giving Anna flowers?  And a woman.  She would think about the woman, and
her burden.  But he didn't want to write across the two sides.  If he
wrote carefully, and slowly, and if he didn't dedicate the letter to
her, "Dear Anna," but just began at the top of the card, with small
margins, then the letter could fit on one side.

Something in the letter made him happy as he copied it.  He was pleased
with the choices he had made, and if the care he took meant that he
hoped to tilt Anna's attention away from his adultery toward something
general, something about the two of them, he was sure that she would
know that he was, finally, sincere.  It was important that Anna not
stumble over a single word trying to make sense of his writing.  Usually
he wrote in a scrawl, but now each letter was separately crafted.

When he finished copying the letter, he took the card upstairs.

He went to the bedroom and undressed.  Anna always slept deeply.  He was
not afraid of waking her up.  The luggage for tomorrows trip was open on
the floor.  He took his letter to her and slipped it into a pocket
inside his suitcase.

He was thirsty and went back down to the kitchen.  He drank from a
bottle of grape juice, leaving enough for Madeleine.  He wanted more and
drank it, with the excuse that in the morning she could have milk or
water, and her mother could buy her juice at the airport.

Then he regretted this theft, and he went upstairs, to see her sleeping.
She was on top of the sheets, and her hair was damp.

What made her sweat?  he wondered.  Dreams of exercise, or just the heat
of growth?

Perhaps he should have written "heal the family." Certainly he needed
time not just with his wife, but with his daughter.  He was afraid that
she hated him.  She was three now, but how long did they have before her
character was so formed that part of it would always be made of contempt
for her father?  If it wasn't contempt, it was something close to it,
not all the time, but when he talked too much, say, if he drove through
an area he didn't know and stopped to look at the map, and he told her
everything he was doing, she would tell him, from the baby seat in the
back, to stop talking.

Whenever she told him to stop talking, he could suddenly hear himself,
and what he heard was the tiring drone of a bore.  And if I sound like
this to a child?  he asked himself.  No wonder I have so few friends. He
talked so much to her because he thought she would like the comforting
sound of his voice, and that she would grow up to be a better person if
he paid her the respect of explaining what he was doing.  He thought he
was being helpful, a good father.

She had no interest in his explanations of things.

He would look at her in the rearview mirror, and he would see her
distance from him, and he would tell himself that the little bit of
detachment of hers in which he saw himself was a reflection of his
detachment from this marriage.  He blamed himself for what he thought
would be the foundation of his daughter's general misery when she was
older, estranged from the world, unsure of love.  She would finally
understand, probably through a long and expensive analysis, how it was
her father's example, and the forces driving that example, that molded
her character.

Now she was asleep, and smiling, her favorite white teddy bear under her
arm.  Those seeds of future misery were tucked deep inside.  What would
he change in her if he could?  A few times they had been to the
mountains, and when they walked in the forest, she screamed to be
carried.  She was happy only indoors, or on the beach.  She was afraid
of trees.  It was a small fear, and he told himself all the obvious
reasons why a child who loves to run through airports would hate the
terror of trees, shadows, trails.  She was born into a world of right
angles.

So was that all he despised in this dau I ter who despised him, her fear
of trees?  He was willing to say that he loved her hatred of him, a
feeling so precocious that she might escape a family trait to hang on to
people rather than to know when to leave, that she would become a woman
who demanded respect.  The trip to Mexico was as much to help him find a
way to win her love as it was to win his wife's.

He showered and then got into bed beside Anna.  He rolled a leg over her
hips, and when she didn't move, not that he expected her to, he rolled
away.  But it's the honorable thing, he told himself, to leave a space
between us until she allows me into her embrace.

In all the months of the affair, he had never spent the night with Mary
Sifka.  She was the assistant to the insurance agent who handled the
business that Frank shared with his younger brother, Lowell.

Together they owned twenty music and video stores in California.

Lowell was homosexual and had never been married, and because Frank had
a family, and wanted to stay in Los Angeles, Lowell was in charge of the
stores outside of the city.  Although he kept a condominium in Santa
Monica, now he was living in San Diego, where they had three stores.  It
was part of the family mythology that Lowell always went to the city
with the newest stores because he was homosexual, and could more easily
travel than Frank, but it was easier for everyone to agree on that story
than the truth, which had nothing to do with Lowell's homosexuality.
Lowell watched over the business's expansion because he was the better
businessman.

Everyone knew this, but no one ever said it, because to admit this might
allow everyone to reflect on Frank's incompetence in business.

It was possible that the family had accepted Lowell's homosexuality
because of this convenient excuse it gave for Lowell's position.  In a
bad moment one night, when Frank came home after Lowell had yelled at

him for some kind of mistake in the way he had managed an inventory,
Frank wondered if he would have been a better businessman if he had also
become homosexual, or whether Lowell would have been so good if he had
been straight.  But there are plenty of good businessmen who are
straight, Frank cried to himself that night.

And there must be incompetent homosexuals.

Lowell alwavs took care of insurance.  but on a day when Lowell could
not fly back to Los Angeles and something had to be signed by one of
them, Mary Sifka came to the office with the papers.  She was married
too.  Her husband was a lawyer.  She had no children.

She didn't want them.

Frank was in love with Mary's bitterness.  Had he ever kissed a woman
with so clear a philosophy of the world?  Anna was a casual optimist,
like everyone he knew, and if she thought the world might end in her
lifetime, she buried the idea quickly.  Mary was different.

He was ready to grant that her sense of global doom might not be the sum
of an equation whose every clause represented logic and reason, and the
world wore the colors of her own dark spirit because the world had been
brutal to her, but he didn't want to diminish the achievement of her
unhappiness by finding the location for her view of things in
psychology, because he needed her to be smart and strong.  He liked her
because she had a dull job that she took seriously.  She worked hard
because she was afraid of falling quickly into a state of decay.  She
worked harder than he did, and they both knew it, and he paid himself in
three months what she made in a year.

Now it was time to not love her.  He would miss her, but the woman
beside him was more important to him, and so was the little girl down
the hall.

He went to sleep with the feeling that he had prayed, and in that
meditation had made a true offering of his heart; there was nothing
left.  He had been generous.

The flight was at three in the afternoon.  He was going to meet Anna and
Madeleine at the airport.  Anna asked him to take the day off, but he
told her that since he was taking off a week and a half, he had to go to
the office.  He would take a limousine from the restaurant where he was
meeting Mary Sifka.

At breakfast Madeleine asked to sit in his lap while he fed her cereal
from his bowl.  He thought about the breakfast the next morning, in
Mexico, a big buffet with fruit, cheese, and pitchers with fresh juices
on a long table in the dining room of the hotel, one wall open to the
ocean beyond.  Madeleine would ask for jams and jellies, and he would
let her have them, even though he tried to keep her from eating sugar at
home.  These treats would come in little stainless-steel bowls, three or
four on a rotating trivet, with little spoons.

There would be other families at breakfast, and Madeleine would find, as
she always did, a boy or girl three or four years older, and force this
child to beher friend.  The parents would talk, the usual chat about
children's ages, schools, habits good and bad, and Anna would make a
date with them for dinner that night, both families together.  After she
read the letter, there would be no other families at the table, but he
would give her a day and a night before he gave her the surprise, before
she knew about Mary Sifka.  They would be in Mexico for a week and a
half.  He owed her one day of peace.

If she didn't leave immediately, and he expected her to forgive him,
there would still be two or three days of terrible sensitivity.

Yes, and there was something even to be happily anticipated in the
prospect of suffering, an exhaustion, a bath in strong feelings that
would leave both of them raw, open, and then, with a little help of a
few more good days, they might even be tender with each other.

If Anna demanded proof of his love, he would tell her that it was time
to have the second child he had always refused her.  What more could he
offer her?  And when she asked him, when she told him to look her in the
eye and promise fidelity, would he mean it, in his heart, what he
promised?  Or would he say, "I hope so"?  And if he equivocated, no
matter how much hope was carried on his sincerity, would that be too
clever a way out of the pledge?  If he wanted her forgiveness, if he
wanted the marriage to last, he would have to swear his faith, and he
knew that he would have to make this oath in the court of eternity.

Besides, he was tired of seeing his family through gauze.  He wanted to
be a man, and if being a man is doing more than what Is expected, he
would tell the truth.  He would tell his wife the truth all the time,
otherwise how could it be the truth?  Something in the threatening power
of this vow made him drunk; he saw himself standing on the mountain of
truth, hands joined with the righteous.

And then he felt the tug of a wonderfully happy thought, that the reward
for this perpetual exposure, this unveiling would even lead to an
increase in their passion.  Was that selfish?  No.

He said good-bye to Anna and Madeleine after breakfast.

"Where are we going today?" he asked his daughter.

"Where are we going?" she said.  They had shown her pictures of Mexico,
and she had chosen the bathing suits she wanted to take.

"We're going to Mexico," he told her.

"We're going to Mexico," she said.  Was she repeating what he said
because she was learning to talk, or was she making fun of his
condescension?  He patted her on the head and then bent down to kiss her
nose.  He kissed Anna good-bye.

"I'll see you at the airport," he said, and he was out the door.

It was such a dreadfully mechanical moment, three robots brushing their
electrodes for a data exchange.  Everything will be different in a few
days, he thought.  We will be alive.

At work in the morning he spoke to his brother about their store in La
Jolla, and whether the manager might be stealing.  He looked at the
plans for an expansion of their Palm Springs store.  He spoke to a
friend at a record company.  These are the things I do during the day,
he thought.

On the way to lunch he worried about what he would tell Mary.

The affair had a boundary: Mary knew that he wasn't going to leave his
family for her, and he knew she wasn't going to leave her husband.  Why
were they together like this?  It continued for the excitement, he
supposed.  It was fun to be naked with a new person, but he pursued this
affair with the same flat affect that he felt with his family.  He was
going through the motions of lust.  He would have to tell her the truth
just as he had to tell Anna the truth.  If he lied to Mary, then
whatever he told Anna would also be tainted by that lie.

Mary was already at the table in the restaurant.  He thought that she
looked ordinary and tired before she saw him.  She was drinking a glass
of grapefruit juice, or orange juice from yellow fruit, and he wondered
if, knowing that she was going to hear him say what was inevitable, Mary
had ordered something with vodka in it.  She was staring at the table,
and her skin looked loose on her face, but when she saw him, she smiled,
and it bothered him to know that he made her happy.  Her feelings for
him made her beautiful.  Of course, she was probably scared to be in
public with him, even though this was not a restaurant where anyone from
their lives usually went.  They had never run into friends here.  Once
they had kissed at the table, but neither was happy when the kiss ended.
Their fear of attention reminded them of their guilt.  Had she thought
of her husband at that moment?  During the kiss he imagined his wife and
daughter coming into the restaurant and seeing him with Mary Sifka.  He
probably did love her.  But what could they do with that love?  If he
left Anna for Mary, and Mary left her husband for him, would they get
married and stay together until they died?  Or would they leave each
other, and then end their lives with a third, or a fourth, marriage, or
no marriage, end their lives single, alone?  And could he leave his
daughter?

He kissed her on the cheek, and she didn't seem to expect more.

They ordered their food.

"When is your flight?" she asked.

"At three."

"You're cutting it close."

"I'll make it."

"It should be nice "Yes." It was dangerous territory under any
circumstances: They didn't talk to each other about their families;
neither complained that home was insufficient.  He didn't really know
anything about her husband.

He wanted the opening line to be right, but the impulse to say, "This is
going to be difficult," was almost impossible to resist.  Maybe it was
the right thing to say, and it was the truth.

"This is going to be difficult."

"Oh dear." She knew immediately what he wanted to tell her.

"I think.  .  ." he stopped.  Already he was proposing the breakup in
terms of a debate.  If he thought they should break up, she could say
that she thought they shouldn't, and they could argue about it, and
perhaps she could persuade him.  There was no other way to say this
quickly, and be done with it.  He checked his watch, a gesture she
observed, and now he was ruined for her, he had revealed to her his new
attitude toward her, that she was an expedient, something in the way. Of
what?  His wife, or a new mistress, the woman who could be perfect, the
woman he had not yet met.

"I'm going to Mexico so that I can connect with my family again.

I've been feeling all wrong for the last few months.  I love you, but I
didn't know how hard it is to split the heart between two women.

Three if you include my daughter, and I do." Writing the letter to Anna
had given him a new sense of the pleasure in words, and it was easy to
talk, it was a pleasure to talk.  He could have gone on, but it was only
fair to give her a chance.

"So it's over?  Is that what you're telling me?"

"Yes."

"I guess it's for the best."

"There's no good way to end something that's probably wrong to begin
with."

"I probably love you too, you know." She said this defiantly, as though
it was something he might have overlooked, her feelings, that he could
hurt them, that she would miss him, that she needed him.

"What are we supposed to do?"

She smiled.  She was letting go of him.  "We're supposed to say that it
couldn't have lasted forever, we had fun, whatever it was that we needed
we got, and now it's time to eat, and not talk about it anymore."

The food was at the table.  He asked for a sak I ; it didn't matter if
he got a little drunk, since he was taking the limousine to the airport.
It was time for the vacation to begin.

They were so comfortable with each other that he thought they might now
be able to continue as friends, but he knew that Anna would never permit
this.  Why not, though?  No, the temptation would always be there. Would
it, really?  Yes.  Was it there now?  Yes.

It was time to say good-bye.  The conversation drifted along.  The
relief he felt when she let him break it off-and what had he expected,
what scene, what tears?-had followed its own course, and now he looked
at Mary and knew that he could leave her and not miss her.  So perhaps
he had not loved her either.  The letter he had written to his wife, for
all that he meant it as he put it in his suitcase, had been composed in
a spirit of some fraudulence, since he had not yet told Mary Sifka that
he was ending the affair.  He should have broken with Mary first,
because the letter, as he wrote it, said that the affair was over.

What if he had died of a heart attack in his sleep, last night, before
he had been able to say good-bye to Mary, and Anna had found the letter?
She would have assumed that he had said his goodbyes to Mary, but Mary
would not have known about his change of heart unless Anna showed her
the letter, and would Anna think of doing that, something so cruel,
while she was grieving?  Or would she show Mary the letter so she could
understand just who it was she had married, who it was she had shared a
child with?  But when would she have discovered the letter?  It was in a
pocket in his suitcase, not hers.  If his heart had stopped that day,
she would have unpacked the case, or someone else would have done the
job, maybe his mother, and would they have found the card slipped into a
pocket with nothing else?  It might have stayed hidden for months, or
longer, or ever.  Perhaps on a vacation years later, perhaps with her
new husband.  Perhaps she would remarry, and her new husband would pack
the suitcase she had never thrown away, and at the hotel, when they got
there, she would have unpacked both her suitcase and his, and found the
letter.  This was an interesting scenario, thought Frank.  Anna reads
the letter two years after I am dead, but does not realize the note is
from me and thinks that her second husband is making this confession.
She confronts him, she screams at him, and he says he doesn't know what
she is talking about.  She shows him the letter.  But I didn't write
this.  Then who did?  she says.  Look at the handwriting.  She looks.
Frank, she says.  Frank?

he asks.

Perhaps she remembers a woman at his funeral who stood in the back, and
lingered at the grave as the family walked away.  And that was Mary
Sifka.  Does she remember when he had packed the suitcase?

Does she remember the trip to Mexico canceled by my death?

But if she found it, he' trusted Mary to behave well, not to embarrass
him, even if he was dead.  After all, this was why he had loved her. And
his wife, when she found out about the other woman after he was dead?
How could any woman, reading the letter he had written, not love him
even more?  He was happy that the letter was so careful and transparent.
In a way, he thought, I should die now, tonight.  Then I would fulfill
my obligation to her, to make things right.

He said good-bye to Mary on the sidewalk.  He wished now that he had,
not now, but earlier in the affair, bought her something precious, a
necklace or eamngs.  But a gift on parting would have been vulgar, a
kind of severance pay.  Yes, it was part of her attraction that she
wanted nothing from him-and anyway how could she explain an extravagance
to her husband-but now he regretted never having given her a relic, even
something small and insignificant, for her to treasure secretly.  So
they had their memories.

be it.

She gave him a shy, patient smile, and when he saw that the moment
saddened her, he hugged her and kissed her on the lips.

His tongue left his mouth and flicked her teeth.  50 she was opening
herself to him too.  They stopped.  He knew he was cheating a little,
already bending his resolve to be pure for Anna forever, but he decided
to forgive himself.  He would even tell Anna about this goodbye if she
asked him; it was here that his problem, his weaknesses, could be
brought into their life; after they had repaired the marriage, why
couldn't he tell her about his temptations and his struggles?

He couldn't expect himself, or he couldn't imagine Anna expecting him,
never again to look at another woman, or even meet a woman and fall a
little bit in love, and have her fall a little bit in love with him.
What was to be expected was self-discipline, and an eventual cessation
of uncontrollable desire.  Why that?  Because as the years passed, and
there would be years, the attention to only one person, the devotion to
the other, would focus the heart, and in the end, become an obsession.
This would be love, he told himself, the great project of his life.  Now
that he was rich, what other work was more important?  Charity?  Yes.  I
will give to good causes, thought Frank.

And not only the popular charities.  I will give money to the library.

I will give to the poor.

It was two o'clock when he left the restaurant, and the traffic was
slow.  He hated himself for taking so long to say good-bye to Mary.  And
he could still taste her, still smell her.  Well, if I get there just in
time, Anna will be angry with me for almost screwing up, and she won't
want to kiss me, not on the mouth.  She won't taste Mary.  She might
smell her.  He thought of asking the limousine driver to smoke, to cover
Mary Sifka's scent, but he would have had to leave the backseat and sit
next to him, and how could he ask for that?

Frank asked the driver for a cigarette.  The driver gave him one, and
Frank lit it.  He had once smoked for a few years, in college, and he
took a few puffs, and let the cigarette burn near him, for the smoke, or
the ash, to settle on his jacket and in his hair.  He didn't want the
cigarette on his breath, but Anna, in the frenzy of getting ready for
the flight, would not likely feel romantic.  He was sure she suspected
something; the rush to take the trip had betrayed a necessity greater
than the need for relaxation.

He took another puff of the cigarette, and the little charge of the
nicotine, a pleasant dizziness, brought him a moment's happiness.  This
is a drug, he thought.  No wonder people still use it.  He took a few
more drags and put the cigarette out.  Will I smoke again?

It was impossible to say.

The traffic was slow, and the plane was leaving at three o'clock.

At two-thirty he knew he would never get to the airport in time.  At
2:45 he was still a mile away.  He would never make it.  This was going
to be a mess, since Anna had his ticket and his passport.  He would have
to ask her to find someone at the airport to hold them for him, and who
knew if that kind of request could be honored?

There was a phone in the backseat of the limousine, and he called
Information for the phone number of the airline.  There was no number
for the terminal, but the reservations clerk gave him another number. He
asked to have his wife paged, and explained why, although he wasn't
asked for a reason.

Anna was on the phone quickly, in less than a minute.

"I have your ticket and passport, and you're going to miss the plane,"
she said, without any introduction.  It bothered him that she didn't
even ask how he had found her.  How had she known it was him?  Who else
could it be?  People knew they were going away, but nobody knew which
airline they were flying.

"It's the traffic."

"Where were you, why couldn't you leave earlier?" She was angry and
suspicious.

It was still time to lie.  "I tried.  I couldn't get away.  It was
important."

"Nothing you do is important, Frank."

"Anna, please, what are you saying?" Something awful was about to
happen.  She was saying something to him in a voice she had never used
with him before, but it was the voice she used with people when she has
lost all patience, when she stopped trying to see things their way.

"Oh, Frank, now what are we going to do?" Was she backing off from this
frightening rage?  And what was he scared of?  That she would drown
Frank in a flood of insights into his failings, that she would finally
tell him who he really was?

"You take this flight now, and I'll take the next flight.  Can you find
out when the next flight is leaving?"

She was gone a moment.  "There's a flight to Acapulco at six.

What if it's sold out?"

"It won't be.  If I can't fly coach, I'll fly first class.  There's
always an empty seat in first.  And if I can't come today, then I'll
come tomorrow."

"Are we going to lose money on your ticket?"

"A little, yes." He had bought the ticket at a discount, but it couldn't
be exchanged.  Though they had enough money for first class, they always
flew coach, no matter how much they spent on a room.  Although they
never said this to anyone else, there was something about this frugality
that they thought of as charity, that the money for first class was a
silly waste and better spent on other things, or given away to people
who needed it.  They would have a suite in Mexico with a private
swimming pool for six hundred dollars a day, and still they looked for
the cheapest seats.  Paying the extra money for the first-class ticket
was a tax on today's bad behavior, he knew, a tax for licking Mary
Sifka's teeth.  It was turning into an expensive lunch.

"Do I need a reservations number when I get to the hotel?"

"No."

"I'll give your passport to the gate agent."

"And the ticket," said Frank.

"And the ticket," she said, with a note of something in her voice, what
was it, impatience, annoyance.

He heard Madeleine in the background.  She wanted to speak to him.  "Is
that Madeleine?" Why did he ask if he knew?  "Put her on."

She wouldn't come to the phone.

"They're calling us to board now."

"Have a good flight."

"Fuck you."

"I told you I was sorry." Why was she swearing at him?  He could feel
something awful was about to happen.

"No you didn't."

"I'm saying it now." He said this in a way to calm her down, as though
he was rational and she were insane, and he hated his tone of voice, it
sounded rehearsed and out of scale with Anna's rising anger.

"There wasn't enough room in my suitcase for all of Madeleine's clothes,
so I had to put some in yours."

50mething in the universe was tearing.  He couldn't think quickly enough
to sew it back up.

"Oh?" he asked, but he knew what was coming.

"I read the letter."

He could only say, "So you know I love you." He was disturbed with how
quickly this came to him.  Here he was, taking from her the right to be
angry.  He wasn't being fair.

"I don't know anything anymore."

"You were supposed to read it tomorrow.  I was going to give it to you
while I took Madeleine for a walk.  The beach or something.

Maybe to town."

This is good, thought Frank, I am acting like someone bewildered by his
sins.

"Why are you late?  Were you with her?"

"If you read the letter, then you know I love you." He said this slowly,
talking her down from the window ledge.

"We'll talk about it in Mexico." There was a hopeful sound to this; she
wasn't ready to leave him.  It seemed to him that she was also puzzled
by the affair, that she wanted to understand it, clinically.

"I'll see you tonight." His relief might have been premature, but he
said this in a way that assumed the amnesty she would grant him.

"Frank, you're an asshole."

"I want to have another baby.  Let's have the baby." Why did I say this
now?  he asked himself, How much uglier can I make myself?

"You don't want another baby, Frank."

"Yes, I do." I have to say this.

"No, Frank, you don't want another baby, you just want me to think you
love me now, that's all."

"But I do love you."

"No you don't."

She hung up.  The flight was leaving in five minutes, but he was at a
red light half a mile from the airport.  He could never catch the plane.

rank was twelve minutes late when he ran to the ticket counter.  There
was a long line, but he pushed ahead to the closest ticket agent, and
told her who he was and what had happened.  "I was supposed to be on
flight two-twenty-one.

My wife and daughter made the flight, and she said she was going to
leave the ticket and passport here for me."

A couple in the line behind him complained loudly that he had run ahead
of everyone.

"I'm sorry," he said to them, "but I think I just missed my flight."

The woman at the counter was black.  Her name tag said, "DONNA" on it,
in quotes.  Did the quotes mean that Donna was her nickname?

"Two-twenty-one just left the gate."

"My wife said there was a flight at six."

He leaned against the counter, and he thought that he might be fainting.
The agent asked him if he was all right.

"To Acapulco?  Let me check."

"And my ticket and passport.  She probably left them at the gate."

"Let me check," she said.

Donna made a call and told the story, and then said, "Someone will be
right down with them."

"And is there room on the six o'clock flight?"

"Let me check."

Frank watched the agent type something on a keyboard and then wait for
an answer on the computer screen.  The agent smiled, as though she had
actually done something to be proud of.  "Yes, we have seats available."

"And can I exchange my ticket?"

"Let me check."

Some more typing.

"You had a restricted ticket, but let me check." The agent made another
call, and while she did, another woman in a blue jacket arrived with an
envelope.  While the ticket agent explained the situation to someone on
the phone, she opened the envelope and took out the passport and ticket.
She looked at the passport picture and mouthed, "It's you," while
listening to the person on the other end of the line.

"Thank you," said Frank.  The agent held on to his ticket.

She hung up the phone and told Frank that the surcharge was a hundred
dollars.  She apologized.

Frank gave her his credit card, and the new ticket was printed up.

She asked if he had any luggage.

"My wife had it."

"Have a nice flight."

"At least I won't be late for this one," said Frank, trying to make her
smile.

"Flights aren't announced, you know, so you have to be at gate
forty-seven at least half an hour prior to departure."

"I'll be there," said Frank.

He left the counter and walked up a flight of stairs to the terminal.

If he had not kissed Mary, or if he had not had the sake, Frank would
have been on the plane.  But now that Anna knew about Mary Sifla, now
that she had read the letter, wasn't it actually better that he was
coming into Mexico three hours later?  Given `the disaster of Anna's
discovery of the letter, flying separately was a blessing.  How could he
have had the talk he wanted if they were on the plane?  If she was going
to find the letter, if that's what Fate wanted for him, then Fate had
also protected them both by clogging the roads with so many cars,
slowing him down, making him late.  This way, there would be no painful
silences, no tug-of-war for Madeleine's attention.

But has Fate really made things better for us?  he wondered.  He had
planned the vacation and the timing of the letter to shrink all of the
emotional battles into one act, but the strategy had failed.

He had made a mess of things.

He passed the magazine and gift shop, walked beyond it, and then,
without thinking, drifted back into it, and studied a few of the
magazines, but decided to wait until just before the flight to buy
anything, because if he bought them now, he would read them in the three
hours he had before takeoff, and then he'd have nothing to read on the
plane.  He looked at the paperbacks, but he didn't have the energy to
read a book.

He went to the bar and ordered a beer.  He never drank during the day,
but he told himself to relax, he was on vacation now.  He had to enjoy
himself.  He thought about wanting a cigarette, not that he wanted one,
but that he understood that the taste of the cigarette in the limousine,
which was fading now, had awakened an old addiction.  That would be
something, he thought, to show up in Mexico, smoking again.  What would
that look like, to Anna?  That I smoked with Mary Sifka, that my sins
were unremitting.

The beer came, and he took a long first sip and then put it back onto
the counter.  He smiled at the bartender, a black woman, and she smiled
back.  He thought she would have liked to chat, but he lowered his eyes
and took another sip of the beer, and thought about the horrible
momentwhen Anna would open the door to the hotel room in Mexico.

I check in at the desk.  The manager knows what happened, not about the
letter, but about the missed flight.  Senor Gale, the traffic in Los
Angeles, it's worse than ever, no?  But you should see Mexico City now.
Terrible.  We're glad you could find an empty seat on the next plane,
this is a busy time for us.  You have room three-fortyfive, do you need
a bellboy to show you the way?  There's nothing for you to sign, you're
all checked in.  Three-forty-five.

What's going to happen when I get there?  First I'll shower, and then
get into fresh clothes, from my suitcase, and right away I'll have to
think about the letter, and where it was hidden.  Not hidden, tucked
way.  No, hidden.  I owe her the truth.

The wrong turn in the hall, and then doubling back, and then the room. A
deep breath outside the door, for the audience of his own attention.  He
knocks.  Madeleine, excited by the trip and missing her father, might
still be awake, and if she is, Anna tells him to get something to eat.

"I'm sure you didn't eat on the plane.  You must be hungry.  Why don't
you go to the dining room?  Or you can get something to eat in the bar."
This would be her way of asking him to leave, so she could save all of
her feelings until they were alone, so she wouldn't have to pretend to
an emotion in front of their little girl.  He wouldn't be hungry, but he
would put on a cool shirt and then wander through the resort and find a
bar with a few women who would smile once at him, see his wedding ring,
and go back to their drinks and cigarettes.

Outside the terminal there was nothing but planes and the gray sky and
the gray buildings of the airport.  Foreign planes, Alitalia, Iberia,
Korean Air, passed by, and with them he thought of changing his
resolutions and just finally walking out on his family.  I have the
money, he thought.  I could be ugly, I go to Italy for a few weeks, and
come home, and accept the divorce.  Or Korea, I could go to an
industrial city a hundred miles from Seoul, someplace where the only
Americans who visit are on business, and I could be a tourist, I could
walk in this strange city and think about my life.

He finished the beer, and he looked forward to the next drink he'd have
that day, in the bar in Acapulco.  The next drink on land.

He'd have a drink on the plane, Bloody Mary for the spices, which would
keep him focused on sensation, keep him from thinking about emotion.  In
the hotel bar he would have a margarita, on the rocks, no salt.  Or
maybe with salt, why not, and he'd finish the complimentary basket of
tortilla chips, and go through two little ceramic bowls of salsa.  The
chips in Mexico always come stuck togethersomething about the oil they
use; it's heavy.  The Mexican food in America is better, but he wouldn't
care, because alter his second margarita he'd flirt with a team of
sunburned women sitting at the bar.  There are always teams of women
from the States, and at the more expensive resorts, some of them are
even of my class, he thought, college graduates, good-looking, maybe
divorcees down from Brentwood; some of them were pretty enough to have
landed rich first husbands, who leave them with a little money, and
their jewelry.  Frank liked the type.  Mary Sifka wasn't that type, but
he liked hard women who drank too much and liked to fuck, loose enough
on vacation to fuck a stranger and not waste time feeling degraded.  He
had never done this, but he had seen these women.

He ordered another beer.  No, he couldn't drink while he was downstairs
at the bar in the resort.  A drink would violate his resolve to follow
the path of honor.  When his beer came, he paid for it and then left
without drinking it.  If he drank a second beer, he would get sloppy
inside.  Anna didn't drink, not even wine at dinner parties.

She used to, when they met, but she stopped after the baby was born, and
she was nursing.  She liked being sober, she said, and she kept to it.
He could say to her, if he met an irresistible inclination to be
pitiless, that he missed the drinker.  He could say that to her when she
asked him why he had this affair.  Maybe he would.  Maybe it would be
good for her to hear this.  And then maybe in Mexico she'd order a
mar2arita.  Or two.  Or three.  He thouaht it miaht be good for both of
them, good for their marriage, if they got sick drunk together, if they
woke up with hangovers together, if they got too drunk to screw.  Would
it be so terrible if they purged something together, if they held each
other's hands while she vomited five Bloody Marys into the toilet?  Or
did he need to see her at her worst, to make her his moral equal?

He looked around the terminal.  He could tell Anna that he'd been
punished enough, to sit around the terminal for three hours.

She would ask him, when he came to the hotel room, if he had seen his
mistress at lunch.  He would have to tell the truth.  He rehearsed his
lines.

"Yes, we had lunch." He would say this quietly, get it over with.

"Did you fuck her?"

"No." He would shake his head and try to resist turning his eyes away
from her.  Could he make her feel sorry for him if she thought that to
demand more of him after the confession was torture?

"Not today, you mean." She would continue to attack, telling him that
his attempt to play the honest little boy was transparent.

She would torture him, because she would know that he was trying to
avoid it.

"No, not today." He would show her that he was dying.  That she had
wrung from him the last piece of his affair, the part that he wanted to
hold on to in his memory, unknown to her and unjudged.

When he gave up that part, she would have, so he hoped, the feeling that
he could no longer reflect on his times with Mary and not think of the
pain he had caused his wife.  But would Anna see through this, would she
try to destroy that place in his memory where he could have Mary to
himself?  Would she try to kill the little pleasures he would always
take remembering how he had fucked her, how she had come to him, how
they had laughed together?

Or he could continue to lie, and deny that he had left Mary at a
restaurant.  I can confess the affair, and still keep the lunch secret.

Cake and eat it.  Although there was something alluring about telling
the truth, apart from morality.  The truth could lead anywhere, even if
it destroyed the marriage.

How many different truths were there?  There was the first truth, that
he had made love to a woman other than his wife.  Unless Anna pressed
him to admit more, they would stay at this level, but there were other
truths, the truths that, once announced, would not so nicely be excused
by tearful pledges of repentance.  If Anna asked him why he had
committed adultery, he could tell her one truth, that he was weak, or
lonely, or worried that he was going to get old without ever having once
done something like a bad boy.  This last truth would come out late, as
though this were the real truth, and all the other excuses were a
screen.  They could talk for a long time about trust, and she could give
him a lecture that he could just as easily write, the point of which was
the obvious truth, that as ye sow, so shall ye reap.  That old lecture:
Trust breeds trust.

But what, in any of these truths, was more hurtful than the first
confession of having fucked another woman while his wife was making
dinner for their daughter?

Following the commandments of his new god of truth, though, he could
think of a few truths that would never be forgiven.  Mary was younger,
and her skin was smooth.  Those were the truths he could tell if he was
drunk.  He could tell these truths, which made his letter to her seem
like a lie, even though it was true, but he avoided, in his letter, any
truths that, once stated, could not be recanted.  So his letter was a
lie, that restrained and strategically designed confession was a shield.
Anna could scarcely argue with a letter that seemed to invite all the
rage she might have for him, and any action, including divorce, but if
he told Anna everything, he would drive her away; she would leave him
without a lingering affection, a garden for the little flowers of doubt,
whose plaintive beauty would remind her that perhaps she should have
forgiven him, and saved the marriage.  So long as he muted himself, he
could hold Anna in thrall for as long as he needed her.  If he told her
something hateful and sincere, then she could leave him, and he didn't
want to give her that freedom.  So I am a monster, he thought.

His notebook was in his carry-on bag.  He took it out and wrote down two
words: Freedom-Monster, but now meaning that freedom was a monster.  He
wasn't sure how he would emend this thought when he came back to the
page in a few weeks or a few years, but he liked the idea.  He would
write about the connection between freedom and responsibility, and the
frightening burden that with confession came the obligation not to
commit the sin again.  If he didn't publish these thoughts, at least he
would have something to show to his daughter when she grew up.  Or not
even when she was grown, but in her teens, when she would need guidance,
his wisdom.

Or is this really wisdom?  he asked himself, turning back at looking at
all the random words he had written down.

But why tear myself apart now, for trying however clumsily to make peace
with the truth, to love the truth?  He saw truth as something to which
he could surrender, the higher power that would write a new life for
him.  He wanted the truth to save his marriage, but if the truth wrecked
it, well?  His vague fantasies of the consequence of this conversion
bounced from the happy pictures of his life becoming an adventure to
bleak pictures of himself in a boardinghouse somewhere in the Southwest,
drinking alone, muttering to a few sun-baked rummies, "I should have
gone to Korea." And none of them would care, or even ask him what he
meant.  That would be the way they would torture him at this bar near
the Yuma gravel pits, to let him rant without relieving him of an
explanation.

No, he would stay with her; as he told the truth, he would acquire
power, and this magnetism would grow as it fed on the admiration of
those who sought him out, since his advice, an emanation of the pure
light, would be flawless.  I can become perfect, thought Frank, or
almost perfect, like a Buddhist.

So many people in the airport, waiting for planes to leave or friends to
arrive.  All of them alone with their thoughts.  Are my troubles so
special?  No, and that should be a comfort.  All of us have our own
troubles.  What was the story?  A man walks into a church, or maybe
heaven, maybe the man has died?  And he meets Jesus in this huge
cathedral, and the man says, Oh, Jesus, my cross is heavy, and Jesus
shows him an immense room filled with crosses, huge crosses, and in a
corner is the man's little cross, and Jesus says, These are the crosses
other people have to bear.  This is a stupid, obvious story, thought
Frank, why am I thinking about it?

I'm not even Christian.  But it works on me, in spite of myself.  He
felt a stupid rush to ask everyone to hug, to hold hands, and to sing an
old Negro spiritual, a song of such uplifting love and hope that from
this congregation of tourists there would grow a political movement as
each of them spread the Word on their travels.

How could he ask Anna to face reality?  When he came back to the
business after he quit his attempt to produce records, after that
failure, reality made two clear statements to him.  The first piece of i
I ii reality was that he would never produce a successful record, and
that real musicians, the artists he admired and envied, had no special
interest in him.  If he told himself the truth, if he made truth the
rule, then he had to admit how ashamed of himself he was when he
realized that the only parties he ever went to with musicians were those
paid for by record companies.  Had he ever been to a party at a
musician's house in the Hollywood Hills, an old Spani

No, he would stay with her; as he told the truth, he would acquire
power, and this magnetism would grow as it fed on the admiration of
those who sought him out, since his advice, an emanation of the pure
light, would be flawless.  I can become perfect, thought Frank, or
almost perfect, like a Buddhist.

So many people in the airport, waiting for planes to leave or friends to
arrive.  All of them alone with their thoughts.  Are my troubles so
special?  No, and that should be a comfort.  All of us have our own
troubles.  What was the story?  A man walks into a church, or maybe
heaven, maybe the man has died?  And he meets Jesus in this huge
cathedral, and the man says, Oh, Jesus, my cross is heavy, and Jesus
shows him an immense room filled with crosses, huge crosses, and in a
corner is the man's little cross, and Jesus says, These are the crosses
other people have to bear.  This is a stupid, obvious story, thought
Frank, why am I thinking about it?

I'm not even Christian.  But it works on me, in spite of myself.  He
felt a stupid rush to ask everyone to hug, to hold hands, and to sing an
old Negro spiritual, a song of such uplifting love and hope that from
this congregation of tourists there would grow a political movement as
each of them spread the Word on their travels.

How could he ask Anna to face reality?  When he came back to the
business after he quit his attempt to produce records, after that
failure, reality made two clear statements to him.  The first piece of i
I ii reality was that he would never produce a successful record, and
that real musicians, the artists he admired and envied, had no special
interest in him.  If he told himself the truth, if he made truth the
rule, then he had to admit how ashamed of himself he was when he
realized that the only parties he ever went to with musicians were those
paid for by record companies.  Had he ever been to a party at a
musician's house in the Hollywood Hills, an old Spanish mansion with
high ceilings, where tall women with long hair talked to him for an
hour, and people smoked marijuana, and women danced with each other, and
everywhere you looked, there was someone of great achievement, relaxing?
And even if Frank hated their achievement, because their songs were
insipid, they had still done some- Il thing of consequence in the world.
He had never been to that party'.

After a recording session, the band never invited him out for a drink.

At first he thought this was a sign of respect, the crew's separation
from the officers, but then he saw other producers, successful
producers, getting drunk and stoned with their musicians, and his
musicians too.

The night he told himself to give up music, he had finished hearing the
song he had worked on all day.  Frank asked the singer if he wanted a
drink, and the singer begged off.  An hour later Frank passed a Thai
restaurant down the block from the studio, where musicians often went,
and the singer was there at a table with another producer and another
band.  The other producer saw Frank pass by, and nodded at him, with a
brief smile, at once sincere and defensive; there was the spontaneous
response to recognition that brought the 1, corners of his mouth up, but
it dropped as quickly as his mind could win control over his autonomic
system, and then as the momentum III from the sudden release of the
unrehearsed smile pulled his eyes down, Frank saw that the record
producer felt himself ashamed of his own dismissal of this man standing
outside the restaurant who wanted nothing more from him than to be
included at the table and numbered among his colleagues.  And for the
feeling of shame he felt, he had no one to blame except Frank, for
putting him in the position of having to see his own awful nature, and
so he now hated Frank, and made a joke to the others at the table.  One
of them looked over his shoulder and saw Frank, who turned his eyes
quickly, to avoid contact.  A series of small tics shuddered across the
record producer's face, as though his body could find no other way to
expel the bitter toxins of the shame, provoked or felt, that circulated
among all of them.

Frank stumbled into the parking lot and ran his hand against a stucco
wall, trying to make himself bleed.  He would never be friends with a
real musician.  All that Frank had was the business, and a wife for whom
he no longer felt great love, if he had ever felt it.

There was something in his character that artists avoided.  He was a
salesman.  And what was the crime in that?  That the connection to the
thing he sold was so small, because unlike a musician, whose life was
his music, his dedication, he could just as easily sell one thing in
place of another, and wasn't that why he wanted to produce records, to
have his life be about this one thing?  But then Lowell was also a
salesman, and musicians seemed to like him.  Did they like him because
Lowell didn't seem to need their company, except as he needed to bring
them to the stores, to sign autographs and sell their work?  Or did the
musicians forgive Lowell his job, selling things, because he was
homosexual?  Or did they not forgive him because there was nothing to
forgive, since in their eyes he was an ally, a friend, the owner of the
record stores, while Frank was just someone who worked there, someone
whose eyes should be avoided, because they asked for a friendship that
Lowell, not seeking, won?

Frank knew that he was uncomfortable with himself, and nervous around
musicians, the very people he wanted to share his life with.

What was wrong with him, what did they see in him?  He wanted to please
them.  He had no faith in his ideas, he talked just to hear his voice.
He wasn't flawless.  The great producers were flawless.  If he had sold
the record stores and devoted himself full time to creating music, maybe
then he would have been accepted, but he couldn't let go of the company.
He had considered giving it up, but he was scared of failing as a
producer, and then having no business to which he could return.  Lowell
made it easy for him to come back, and for the first year, when he was
miserable, Lowell did not press him for extra devotion to the stores.
What kind of man would he have to be so that drummers would ask him to
stay out late at night and visit clubs and flirt with beautiful women?
Or more than flirt.  Until Mary Sifka he had been faithful, but not
because he wanted to be.  The women he desired, the tall women with long
hair, paid him no attention.  There was something in him, some bit of
self-loathing, that repelled the beauties.  Yet Anna stayed with him,
and Anna loved him.  But had he ever appreciated her beauty?  In how
many songs had he heard about the love of a good woman, and the troubles
that beset the man who gave up that selfless love for someone new?

Now he regretted the letter.  What stupid demon had convinced him to
write it?  Already he had caused more pain than he intended.

He wanted Anna to read the letter when she had been with him for a day
at the hotel, when they had already made love, when she could see him
with their daughter, loving her, reading to her, helping her swim, a
demonstration to his wife to show her how much the family meant to him.
Anna's discovery of the letter had ruined his careful plans.  He was
back to smearing his elbows in the bourbon stains on the counter of that
shitty bar somewhere south of Yuma.

Could anything good ever happen to him now?  He tried to find something
hopeful.  If he wanted to be fair, if he had wanted to give his wife the
advantage, then the accident of her discovery, being more abrupt than
his intention, was better than his intention.  Yes, they would miss the
day of peace he had wanted before giving her the letter, but since he
wanted to allow his wife her pride, by this 1' premature discovery she
was taking from him his last portion of control.  Now she had the power.
And hadn't she gone to the airport?

That was a hopeful gesture, wasn't it?  She could have created any
little drama she wanted, but she didn't.  Anna loves me, and she wants
to make the marriage continue.  He felt terribly sad for her.

There she was on the plane, with Madeleine, thinking about him,
picturing him in bed with another woman.  He had wrecked her trust, and
there she was, devoted to repairing the damage.  He wanted to tell her
that he loved her too.  No one forced her to go to Mexico.

She could have played a terrible trick on him, she could have left his
ticket and passport for him and then returned to the house, she could
have sent him alone to Acapulco.  So she wanted to fix things too.

Frank took a seat facing gate 47, the airline's "Gateway to Mexico,"
decorated with a picture of the Mayan Sundial, and a few colorful
blankets.  It was the kind of silly but effective decorating that Frank
and Lowell appreciated.  They usually tried out new design schemes in
their Santa Monica store, where, over the jazz bins, when Lowell hung
cutout photographs of saxophones, they sold more jazz.  Frank knew it
was sometimes hard for people, especially in the family, to know exactly
what he did for the company-he was sure that a lot of people thought
that Lowell was carrying him-but he knew that he made a real
contribution to the business, and that Lowell appreciated him.  Their
parents tended to dismiss Frank's efforts, but when they did Lowell
always defended him.  And Frank thought that Lowell was careful never to
complain about him.

Do I want another beer?  he asked himself, regretting the beer he had
left untouched.  No, here he despised the drinkers, the fat people, the
cigarette smokers in the airport bar.  Soldiers and women with gray
skin.  Tomorrow he would be doing the breaststroke in the hotel's
swimming pool, with his daughter hugging his shoulders, and he could
pull' himself up to a submerged stool in the shade of a thatched roof,
and charge to his room a rum mixed with pineapple juice, served in a
coconut.  Madeleine would sit on his lap and eat the cherry.  She would
be perfectly happy.  Everyone, all of the Mexicans working at the hotel,
would be perfectly nice to her.  And the guests, those not threatened by
his fecundity, would also be sweet to the pretty little girl.

He watched the crowd gather for the arrival of a flight from Hawaii. The
plane arrived, and the gate attendants opened the door to the ramp. What
were the emotions of the people waiting?  Envy for the travelers?  When
he came back from Mexico, would he be transfigured, if only for a few
days?  What is so terrible about tourism?

he asked himself, or asked his friends who made fun of him because he
always took his family to resorts instead of taking them closer to where
the real people were.  But who were the real people except the maids who
worked at the resorts?  Frank loved resorts, he loved everything about
them.  He loved how safe they were.  He loved how they shut out the
world.  He particularly loved the resorts after the sun went down, when
the harsh lines of the hotels disappeared into the night sky, and you
could walk through the gardens and over the bridges that crossed the
huge swimming pools and think about honeymooning lawyers from provincial
capitals falling in love all over again as they stared at the gold and
blue lights surrounding the bases of palm trees.  And the bars of the
resorts.  He liked resorts with three bars, one of them wood-paneled,
with a pianist playing classical music, and the thatched bar with the
native band, and the disco that opened late, where the tennis players
went to dance, and after dancing, to fuck each other.  Frank never saw
anyone in a resort who looked like a musician, who had beautiful eyes
and long hair, men who were skinny, and wore jewelry and had tattoos,
and were straight.  Or even who were not straight.

One of the women working at gate 47 was on the phone, and she was
crying.  Another gate attendant came to her and put her arms around her,
and they hugged, and they were both crying.

The woman on the phone did not give it up; she held on even while
attendants from other gates came over to her.  The abandoned passengers
herded together, trading indignations, but the gate attendants seemed
oblivious to them.  More than oblivious: In their concern for the crying
woman, they fluttered with shock.  Had she been fired?  Was this a
strike?  Why were the men and women working all of the gates gathering
around her?  And as they ignored the passengers waiting on the lines,
where they had been servants, they were now superior, their indifference
to the passengers, and their attention to the crying woman, gave them
power, and on the fringes of this cluster there was disdain for the
passengers who pleaded with the departed agents to help get them onto
their flights.  There were now twenty gate attendants, all of them in
the airline's regulation blue jackets, hugging the woman who still held
on to the phone, and if they couldn't wrap their arms around her, they
touched her shoulders, or even hugged those who had just had the full
embrace, passing along the hug from the center of the group.  This is so
obvious, someone has died, thought Frank.  He was delighted with his
perception.  He could have strolled with a certain insolence through the
nodes of now-frustrated travelers, offering them his observation and
letting the truth sink in, so they would regret their tantrums, and
instead offer condolence to the woman just touched by death.

He kept this to himself though, and enjoyed the show.  Passengers were
yelling at the gate attendants.  Someone, hidden by a column, shouted at
an agent, "What the fuck is going on?  I have a connection in San
Francisco!" And then, with a surprising speed, the swarm of irate
travelers around the gate agents was quiet; something had been said to
them.  There was an apology.

The quiet whine of an electric cart, which was usually in service when
crippled passengers needed help getting to the plane, passed Frank.  A
black driver and his passenger, a woman in a suit.  Frank assumed that
she was a corporate officer.  Her hair was better cut than the gate
attendants', looser.  The cart stopped at gate 47.  The woman in the
suit got out and took the crying woman in her arms, but where the gate
attendants all tried to burrow into the crying woman's misery and share
it, her hug showed discipline.  She spoke quietly to these passive
mutineers, and she seemed to be giving them what Frank would have said
was the obvious talk, that they would be better people for containing
their sorrow, for remembering that they had important jobs, that an
airline depended on them, that an airport needed the planes out of the
gates at the right times, and that nothing could move without these
attendants, that they had real power.  "Guys," Frank heard the woman
say, "you have the real power here." She took the crying woman with her,
and the electric cart disappeared around a bend in the terminal.  The
hard rubber tires, on the clean pavement of the terminal floor, an
imitation marble, sounded as if they were going through a thin layer of
water.

This was supposed to be the sound of the future, thought Frank, when the
whole world was going to be electric; this was the world promised him
when he was ten.  A quiet city with no pollution, and everyone driving
little electric carts, greeting each other with good manners.

The gate attendants stood about for another minute, and then they
returned to their posts.  Frank invented this story to explain what he
had just seen: The crying woman had just heard that someone close to her
had died.  Her friends, her co-workers, out of sympathy, had rushed to
her.  Someone had called upstairs, although upstairs in this case
probably meant a room somewhere below them, and management had quickly
sent the woman in the jitney to restore peace.  He might describe the
scene to Anna, although he didn't think she would care.  She might ask
him why he wasted his time telling her about something that bored her,
and he would tell her that if something unusual happens, it's nice to
talk about it.  In the spirit of his rededicated marriage he would
rather talk about too many things than to contain himself.

There was a flight ready to leave for San Francisco from gate 51.  A
woman who had received her boarding pass before the breakdown at gate 47
was yelling at the attendant.  Everyone could hear her.

"I'm not getting on that plane.  I want my money back!  I'm not getting
on the plane."

The attendant spoke quietly to her.  Frank couldn't hear him.

He couldn't imagine her problem, unless she'd just had a psychic vision
of her plane going down in flames.

A blond guy in a T-shirt with a surfing logo sat down next to Frank.  He
was so typical that Frank could hardly see him.  How old, thirty-five?
He had a job he liked, just a job, somewhere in the city, it wasn't his
life.  He made enough money.  Was the shirt for a trip to Hawaii, or
just his shirt?

"I don't blame her," he said.

"For what?" asked Frank.

"Well, they're not saying exactly, but it seems like the plane that left
that gate at three"-and he pointed to gate 47-"just went down." He
seemed to like the way he said "just went down." It gave him a measure
of participation in the event; he said it with the sober experience of a
flight-deck commander on an aircraft carrier.

"The plane to Acapulco?" asked Frank.

"Adios, amigos." He held his hand parallel to the ground, and then,
making the sound of a falling bomb, tilted his fingers toward the floor,
over the falls, and the hand went down.

"You're sure?" asked Frank.

"That's what I hear.  Adios, amigos."

Of course he didn't know that Frank had family on the plane, so Frank
thought it would be unfair of him to strangle the man right there, to
kick him in the face, to bite off his ears.

Frank wasn't sure what to do.  He thought of Anna and Madeleine, thought
of a plane crashing, and his wife and daughter pitching forward, facing
the nose as the plane pointed to the ground three miles down.  Five
miles.  He said good-bye to the man in the Hawaiian shirt and walked to
gate 51.

The gate attendant, a thin man with the damaged eyes of someone who lost
his last two good jobs for drinking, was getting a flight ready for Salt
Lake City.  He seemed to be homosexual, and Frank wondered how he
guessed.  What was it?  So many small signs.  Frank went to the front of
the line.

"Excuse me, I have to ask you something."

The man didn't look up.

"What happened to the flight to Mexico?  The one that left at three?"

The attendant said nothing for a moment but looked at Frank, and now
Frank felt himself liking the man.  He wanted to tell him the truth,
which he already knew, but he'd been ordered not to say anything, and he
didn't want to lose this job.  "If you have any questions, sir, would
you please wait.  Someone will be here in a few minutes."

"My wife and my daughter were on the plane."

Frank could see that the attendant wondered why Frank was still there if
his family had left an hour ago.  He held a finger in the air, to hold
himself up, Frank supposed, the effort let him forget his feelings.
"Just a second." But he looked sad.  He got on the phone.

"Hi, Betsy, there's a gentleman here who says that his wife-whose wife
and child were on flight two-twenty-one." He studied Frank with
suppressed awe.  "What's your name?"

"Frank Gale.  And my wife's name is Anna Klauber, and my daughter is
Madeleine." He wanted to say "was," but something held him back.  He
knew the plane was down, there was no mistake, and he knew his family
was dead, but the moment demanded a certain form, and the time for the
past tense had not arrived.

"Frank Gale, wife Anna Klauber, daughter Madeleine." The woman working
beside the gate attendant was young, with bad skin under a thin crust of
makeup.  She had listened to the conversation, and she came around the
desk.  There was still some word necessary from the person on the other
end of the line.  Was it the woman in the suit?  The gate attendant said
a few noncommittal "okays" and then put the receiver down.  "Amy, why
don't you sit down with Mr. Gale?  Someone will be here in a few
minutes."

Amy put a hand on his shoulder.  "Come over here with me."

She might have been enjoying the moment.

Frank asked her if the plane had really gone down.  He felt something
bubbling inside his heart, something giddy within the fire.  He was
starting to make a new relationship with time, which continued at its
old beat while he was speeding up, separate from time.  He probably had
a temperature already, but there was no headache or pain.  Amy took him
to a seat and held his hand.

"I was almost on the plane," he told her.  "I was late.  That's why I'm
here.  I'm waiting for the six o'clock flight."

"I'm sorry."

"Do they know what happened?"

"Right now I can't even say for sure that there was a crash."

"You mean you can't because you've been told not to talk about it?"

"Mr.  Gale, I'm a Christian.  I don't want to lie to you and tell you
that there wasn't a crash if I knew there was, but until the official
word comes from upstairs, you know, it would be awful to tell you that
there was a crash if there wasn't." She didn't mean upstairs literally.
"The best thing to do is to pr I y.  I I "I'm not really religious."

"The Lord can be a tremendous comfort.  He has been for me."

"Maybe someday.?" "You have to be patient." He watched her, and she
seemed now to be on television; she was a projection of herself into
this space in front of him.  What woult demanded a certain form, and the time for the
past tense had not arrived.

"Frank Gale, wife Anna Klauber, daughter Madeleine." The woman working
beside the gate attendant was young, with bad skin under a thin crust of
makeup.  She had listened to the conversation, and she came around the
desk.  There was still some word necessary from the person on the other
end of the line.  Was it the woman in the suit?  The gate attendant said
a few noncommittal "okays" and then put the receiver down.  "Amy, why
don't you sit down with Mr. Gale?  Someone will be here in a few
minutes."

Amy put a hand on his shoulder.  "Come over here with me."

She might have been enjoying the moment.

Frank asked her if the plane had really gone down.  He felt something
bubbling inside his heart, something giddy within the fire.  He was
starting to make a new relationship with time, which continued at its
old beat while he was speeding up, separate from time.  He probably had
a temperature already, but there was no headache or pain.  Amy took him
to a seat and held his hand.

"I was almost on the plane," he told her.  "I was late.  That's why I'm
here.  I'm waiting for the six o'clock flight."

"I'm sorry."

"Do they know what happened?"

"Right now I can't even say for sure that there was a crash."

"You mean you can't because you've been told not to talk about it?"

"Mr.  Gale, I'm a Christian.  I don't want to lie to you and tell you
that there wasn't a crash if I knew there was, but until the official
word comes from upstairs, you know, it would be awful to tell you that
there was a crash if there wasn't." She didn't mean upstairs literally.
"The best thing to do is to pr I y.  I I "I'm not really religious."

"The Lord can be a tremendous comfort.  He has been for me."

"Maybe someday.?" "You have to be patient." He watched her, and she
seemed now to be on television; she was a projection of herself into
this space in front of him.  What would I say to her if the situation
was reversed?

From whom did I inherit the obligation to be cordial?  If this is true,
what will I say to my mother and father?  To my brother?  To everyone?

To Mary Sifka?  If this is true, does that mean I will never again swim
with my daughter in a hotel pool, never again give up the maraschino
cherry?

He could hear the electric cart's erratic whine again.  This time it was
driven by a white man in a suit.  They were coming for him; something
big was about to start.  The corporate woman sat next to him.  The gate
attendant nodded in Frank's direction.

Frank knew that by tomorrow he would be in the news, the husband who
missed the flight of death.  And they will suspect me, he thought.  He
hoped that the plane had hit another plane, anything but a bomb, or an
implosion from an indeterminate cause, so that no ones doubts about him
would linger.  I have an alibi.  I was here, waiting for the next
flight.  Or is that too perfect?  And am I capable of such a demonic
strategy?

The electric cart stopped about ten feet away.  The man got out and
walked to Frank.

"Mr.  Gale?"

"Yes."

"My name is Ed Dockery.  I'm a vice president of operations with the
airline.  This is Bettina Welch, my assistant." Now the woman in the
suit had a name.  Dockery looked like so many Americans, a persistent
dumb guy promoted to a job with a little authority.

Was he a lost man, a big baby with his big baby's beer belly, or was he
a man comfortable with his job, comfortable with his pleasures, who
liked to eat and watch his belly grow?  And Bettina Welch-there was
something slightly diminished about Bettina Welch now that she was up so
close.  She wore a thin gold chain around her left ankle, and her suit
was cheap, a light purple that matched her lipstick.  Like Dockery, she
seemed to be someone who would forever stay in the middle of the
corporate bureaucracy.  But why?  Another one of those collections of
indications, unsophisti cations, but what did that mean?  He was right,
he knew he was right, but how did he know?  Because she looked dumb?
What does that mean, dumb?  Because her fabric was stiff?  Because the
color was ugly?  But why ugly?  And how did senior management look at
her?  Frank imagined that if she ever went on weekend retreats with
management, where the president and the senior staff would present the
company's goals to the airline's regional managers, Frank was sure that
in the competition for sex, she would go to the best-looking
highest-ranking executive, unless there was a band at the Saturday night
cocktail party, in which case she would sleep with the bass player.

"What happened to the plane?"

"We don't know yet.  But the N.T.S.B.  boys are terrific, and when
they're done with the investigation, they'll know the whole story.
You'll just have to be patient."

"N.T.S.B.?" asked Frank.

"National Transportation Safety Board," said Bettina, in a way that
convinced Frank she voted Republican, something in her pride in knowing
acronyms, and her superiority over those who don't.

Frank took a seat in the cart, and Dockery drove them through the
terminal.  By now word had spread about the crash, people coming into
the terminal had heard about it on their radios, and the gate attendants
knew about Frank.  People watched him, cooking up faces that tried to
show their sympathy.

Dockery took them to an elevator for which he had the key.

Frank recognized in himself the rush of grandiose anticipation he felt
when he went backstage at concerts, when the girls who did anything to
sleep with musicians looked at him, trying to gauge, by his clothes and
his hair, what role he had in the concert.  But no one ever offered him
a blow-job to get backstage.

"Where are we I oin I ?" asked Frank.  It occurred to him that they had
no hold over him; he could leave now if he wanted.  What if he made a
joke; what would they do if he told them that he wouldn't talk without
his lawyer present, and that before he went `I anywhere else with them,
they had to advise him of his rights?  They would not laugh.  He
supposed that until the truth were known, he should conform to
ACCEPTABLE STANDARDS OF GRIEF.  The woman at the gate, the attendant,
her tears, the way she held back only her screams.  Will I cry like
that?  he wondered.  Not now.

They went up one floor and then walked down a hallway.  He was taken to
a heavy wood-paneled door, with a discreet button beside it on the wall.
There was a small brass plate with the airline's emblem on the door.

The woman who opened the door was about fifty, with carefully styled
gray hair.  Frank guessed she had been a flight attendant, because she
had dry, lined skin on a youthful expression, and she was trim; there
were so many women about her age who looked young, thought Frank.  Did
fifty-year-old women always look so young?  Diet and exercise and a
positive attitude.  She was introduced to him.  Mary Aberg.  Another
Mary.  He was going to have to remember a lot of names.

They brought him through the lounge to another door, to a conference
room with couches and telephones.  Mary Aberg offered him a drink.  He
said no.

Ed Dockery and Bettina Welch nodded to Aberg, and she retreated.  Now it
was time to make the news official.  It was Dockery's job.

"Mr.  Gale."

"Call me Frank."

"Frank, flight two-twenty-one crashed about an hour ago.  It exploded in
midair just south of San Diego, and crashed into a crowded neighborhood.
Everyone in the plane was killed, and we don't know how many people on
the ground were killed, possibly fifty or sixty more, possibly many
more.  The plane was at twentyeight-thousand feet when it went down.
I'm sure they never knew what happened." He stopped.  Frank could see
that this kind of speech had been rehearsed, and research must have
proven that the best way to handle the survivors was to tell the truth
quickly, and to let the questions come.  Frank could have asked Dockery
how he knew that no one suffered, but what would have been the point?
Unless they were killed in the explosion, if that's what it was, they
fell with the plane.  One one thousand, two one thousand, three one
thousand, four one thousand, five one thousand.  Even if the plane hit
the ground five seconds after the event, there was time to have a few
dreadful thoughts.  Five seconds is a tennis ball from an office
building.  This is twenty-eight-thousand feet.  Five miles?

Almost.  Thirty seconds?  The plane flying.  Seat belts already
unfastened.  People walking.  Madeleine standing on the seat.  The
flight attendants with the drink carts in the aisles.  Free-fall.  And
then what?  A wing tank explodes, an engine falls off.

What is the rate of a falling object?  Thirty-two feet per second per
second.

What does that mean?  Faster and faster.

"Do they know what happened?"

"Not yet."

Bettina Welch sat beside him and took his hand.  "We all lost people on
that plane, Frank.  The airline is a family too.  I knew the co-pilot,
and one of the girls, I was her bridesmaid last year." One of the
girls-that meant one of the flight attendants.  At that moment he could
have fucked Miss Welch on the carpet; he had an erection and the feeling
that at this moment, if he gave in to all of his impulses, he could
taste immortality, no one would punish him for anything, he had the
king's right to take whomever he wanted, because he was superior in ways
only dimly imaginable to someone as common as this cheap groupie in a
dead-end job.  He could have fucked her, and she would have let him.  He
forced himself to hold a steady gaze until her eyes brushed his, and she
felt it, because he'd seen that look before, it was Mary Sifka's when
they'd first met.  But Welch wasn't as smart as Mary Sifka, so she
couldn't elaborate the sexual moment, and Frank let the hurricane of
possibilities pass away.  Did Miss Welch know that this had been a
flicker of rape?  She relaxed; her shoulders had been tense, and now
they fell.  He tried once more to see himself pulling down her panty
hose and twisting her pubic hair, but there was no pressure behind the
fantasy; the image seemed borrowed.

"I want to make a phone call." He said this without knowing whose voice
he wanted to hear, but he didn't want to deal with Miss Welch anymore.
Has she felt anything of what I've been thinking?

She gave him a phone.  "Just dial nine to get an outside line."

He dialed 9, and then Lowell's number in San Diego.  The phone wouldn't
let him complete the call; a recording told him that he couldn't dial
that area code.

"I can't dial that area code," he said.

Ed Dockery took the phone.  He tried a number.  "Shit," he said.

"There's a block on this phone.  It's to keep anyone from calling long
distance without paying for it.  You're supposed to use this only for
local calls."

"This modern age," said Frank.

Dockery dialed another number.  He spoke to someone and then asked Frank
what number he was calling.  Frank told him, and then Dockery hung up.
"They'll get it for us," said Dockery.

The three of them looked at the phone for the minute it took to complete
the call.  Dockery answered and then gave the phone to Frank.

"Hello?" Frank wasn't sure who he'd be speaking to.

"Yes?" said the woman on the other end.

"Is this Lowell Gale's office?"

"You have the wrong number."

Frank hung up.  "It was a wrong number.  Let me call collect."

"Maybe that would be better," said Dockery.  "And then submit the bill
to us, we'll reimburse you."

In the other room, the main lounge, Frank could hear a woman screaming.
Welch got up to see what the problem was while Frank pushed the 9 and
then the Operator button.  I' Lowell's secretary accepted the call.

"Is Lowell there?" Frank asked.

"He's in La Jolla."

"Could you connect me?"

"I think he's in his car."

"Then you can definitely connect me."

"Just hold on.  What number are you at if there's a break?"

There was no number on the phone, just an extension number, 3.  "I don't
think you can get through to this line.  If it doesn't work, I'll have
to call you back."

She put him on hold, but it didn't take long.

"Why aren't you in Mexico?" asked Lowell.  Frank heard the sounds of
traffic in the background; his brother's voice was surrounded by a wall
of noisy air.

"I was late for the plane, Lowell.  I missed the flight.  And it
crashed, they say it crashed in San Diego."

"Wow," said Lowell.  "Talk about luck." So Lowell thought that Anna and
Madeleine missed the flight, too.

"I said that I missed the plane," said Frank.  "I was late to the
airport, I was meeting Anna and Madeleine, but they made it."

"What?" asked Lowell.  He understood.

"They were on the plane, Lowell.  They're dead."

"Anna, Madeleine?"

"They're dead, Lowell."

"It was that crash south of the city."

"How close to the border?"

"I don't know."

"I was just wondering."

"Frank.  My Cod, Frank."

"I'm at the airport now.  Maybe you could come up.  I think I'm going to
need some help."

Lowell was crying.  Frank had seen people crying in their cars, usually
women; he always imagined that they had just left their boyfriends, or
that their boyfriends had told them to leave, or that they had been
fired for incompetence from jobs that weren't so demanding.  He had
never seen a forty-year-old man in a car crying while he was talking on
the car phone.  Lowell drove a Ford Explorer.

"I'll be there in three hours.  Should I come to the airport?"

Ed Dockery and Bettina Welch had walked across the room, to the door
that was now open to the lounge.  There were three groups of people in
the lounge: airline officials, a few first-class travelers, and another
ten or so people who only an hour and a half ago had said good-bye to
their families and friends who had just died in San Diego.

He heard someone say that she had heard about the crash on the radio.
Someone else said the same thing.

His privilege as the first of the next of kin to show up would soon be
over, and he would be ushered into the crowd.  He called to Ed Dockery,
who came to him immediately.

"What do you need?" I' "How long will I have to be here?"

"You don't have to be here at all if you don't want, but the airport
chaplain is on his way over and also some grief counselors.

And personally I don't think you should leave on your own; is there
anyone who can meet you here?"

Frank nodded and returned to Lowell on the phone.  "I'm not going
anywhere for a while."

"She was so beautiful, Madeleine.  She was just so beautiful."

Frank said, "Yes," and then he put the phone down.  Bettina Welch was
standing next to him.  She had something to say, and he guessed she
wanted him to join the others in the lounge.

"Mr.  Gale, the chaplain is here now, and so is Mr.  Dahlgren, who'll be
acting as liaison with the airline.  Would you come into the lounge?"

Someone had moved the first-class passengers out of the room.

How many people were canceling their travel plans because of the crash?
Or would they say to themselves, like gamblers playing a roulette number
because it hadn't come up in a long time, that they were safe now,
because the odds were against two crashes on the same airline leaving
the same airport in one three-hour period?

A television crew was trying to get into the lounge.  The chaplain was a
Catholic priest, a Filipino with a little charisma.  As he began a
benediction, another airline official opened the door for the cameras.
Frank supposed that part of the airline's strategy now was to show the
world that THE AIRLINE'S FIRST RESPONSIBILITY IS TO THE MOURNERS.  The
language of the catastrophe would be managed by the airline.  He had
seen this before, disasters on the news, and now he was a part of it.
How many crashes are the direct fault of the airlines?  They said this
was an explosion.  Terrorism?

Arab?  Or some other group.  A plane to Mexico.  It could be anyone.

Mexican politics.  What a stupid way to die, worse than just slamming
into a mountaintop because of bad weather and bad radar.  They probably
know more than they're saying.  All that crying at the gate: Was there a
feeling of some extra shock, an added horror?  Why had the crying woman
been so fiercely miserable?  A friend of hers died, and she was feeling
her grief.  What other explanation?  Lamentations.  The keening of
women.  Not so self-conscious-they are not like me.

The priest blessed the living and the dead.  Did he believe what he was
saying, or was it only by rote?  People around him were crying.  It had
been a day of different kinds of tears.  In the morning Madeleine had
asked him to carry her from the den to the kitchen, and he told her he
would hold her hand.  He didn't like carrying her in the house, he
wanted her to walk by herself, to tolerate being alone in a room, he
wanted to build her character, make her less dependent.  He didn't know
if this was a stage from which she'd grow, in which case carrying her
would not sap her moral fiber, or if she was testing him, in which case
it was essential that she learn to walk by herself.  He offered to hold
her hand, and she had taken it, lightly, and kept crossing his path with
her arms wide, blocking and imploring him.  He had refused to carry her,
and so she had cried, but the tears were not from a deep well, and by
the time he half pulled her by the hand into the kitchen, she was
already asking him to let her feed the goldfish.  He had to lift her up
to the counter, and she got the hug she had wanted.  Later he had seen a
tear in Mary Sifka's eyes.  He had brushed it aside with his finger, a
gesture he regretted in the limousine on the way to the airport.  He
should have let her cry, alone.  Just as he should have let Madeleine
walk, alone.  But was it fair to compare those tears, since Madeleine's
were strategic, and Mary Sifka's, although they rode on the surface of a
grief that was complicated, for an impossible love that had run its
course, told him that she mourned the death of a passion, of a
friendship?  Mary was going to miss him; she was going to miss the
friendship.  Why had he given this up?  Why did I construct this stupid
drama?  If I had left things alone, I could have kept Mary Sifka, and my
family would still be alive.  Don't some people manage with a mistress
and a wife?  Lowell has his share of lovers, thought Frank.  Before the
plague, he had a boyfriend, and other friends.

And he never caught it.  Lowell had the flu once, and everyone was
scared; no one wanted to say what they were afraid of, that he was going
to get sicker and sicker, with sores, and pain, and that Frank would
have to take over the business, and would run it into the ground.  And
when Lowell had that flu, and before he recovered, Frank almost welcomed
his death, because he thought, If Lowell dies, I can show them all, I
can run the business too.  I just need to have it to myself.  And then
Lowell got better.  Frank's mother called him with the news when
Lowell's fever dropped, and he hated her at that moment, because he knew
she would never have called Lowell with such relief, such gratitude to
God, if Frank had been through the same thing.  His mother's tears that
day came from an abundance of emotion.  They were different from
Madeleine's and also from those of Mary Sifka, who cried from self-pity,
but who else was there to give her the sympathy she needed?

The gate attendant's tears were the deepest he had seen today.

Some of the tears around him in the lounge were unconvincing,
exaggerated, theatrical.  A woman in front of him, screaming out loud
and looking at the cameras, was she a bad version of herself, or was she
connected to the people who had blown the plane up, and therefore acting
the part of the mourner, or was she secretly, even from her
unsophisticated self, relieved about the death, and already counting the
money from the insurance settlement?  But I cannot cry, thought Frank.
This hurt him, that he couldn't find a grief large enough to extinguish
the world, that the mundane distractions of life were still so close, so
much a part of the moment.

How much money would this be worth?  he wondered.  Frank was insured for
$2 million, Anna for $1 million.  Because he was worth more to the
marriage.  What will the airline pay?  How quickly will the money come?
They'll want to settle, of course, avoid the lawyers, that has to happen
soon.  Someone will approach me and say something about how difficult it
is to think about insurance at a time like this, but lawsuits can take
years, and the lawyers claim a third, I' and this is what weve settled
for in the past, and this is what this I' kind of crash has
traditionally brought, and wouldn't you rather get over the tragedy and
get on with your life, knowing that you'll never have to go to court and
face the story all over again?

And it all depends on fault.

lf the wing fell apart because of bad maintenance, how much?

Ten million?  A wife and a child.  A wife and a child.  Think about
that.

And will there be a funeral?  Will I have to go to a funeral with all
these strangers?  People I don't know?

And how do I claim the bodies?  Will there be bodies?  An Ii explosion.
They could have been launched into the air as the plane broke up in the
sky, and when they hit the ground, or a roof, or a tree, what happened?
Does the body keep its shape?

And if they stayed in the plane, strapped to their seats, and there was
a fire when they hit, what would remain?  Drop a melon from a few feet,
a mess of seeds, flesh, and rind.  A body from four miles?  Does the

body maintain its integrity falling from twentyeight-thousand feet?
Thirty-two feet per second per second.  Thirtyfive pounds, and 122
pounds.  The body is made of mostly water.

Water balloons filled with blood and bone.  And the fire on the ground.
And houses.  Someone had told him, he'd forgotten who said it, that
sixty people died on the ground.  I am a part of the news.

There was a television, and people were watching it.  A squad of airline
executives was in the room now, taking down names, making phone calls to
relatives, arranging for rooms at a nearby hotel for anyone who wanted
them.

A man with a large belly came to ask him questions.  He looked like a
drinker and a fisherman, something about his confidence, he knew he
wasn't ever going to be rich, or running the company, and he knew he had
as much sense as any executive, but it didn't gall him.  Frank wondered
if he had ever been twenty-seven and unhappy.

His unhappiness would have come only from immediate dramas in the
family; he wasn't a man to change jobs or even think of anything like a
career.

"Mr.  Gale?"

"Yes."

"Bill Modeil." He said it Moh-dell, the way he would before he told
people over the phone how to spell it.  "I'm with Customer Service. I've
been asked to pitch in and help out with this, and they'd like me to ask
a few questions, if you don't mind."

He smiled at the end of each sentence.  This annoyed Frank, but he
didn't want to say anything, although he thought that the event had
given him sanction to say anything to anyone today.

How can I use it?  he wondered.  So much money.  A rich widower in Los
Angeles.

"How can I help you?" asked Frank.

Modeil sighed.  Frank thought that this was a man with genuine Ii
emotions.  "It's important, as we put this all together, to know as much
as we can about every aspect of the I I as I , I I "What do you want to
ask me?" Frank was losing patience; he had hoped that Modeil would have
presented a way to manage grief, but he was floundering.

"Do you know what your wife and daughter were wearing?"

"I came from work, from lunch, a business lunch, sort of, a friend, an
old friend, but it was business." There was no reason to say this, but
he felt a compulsion to explain why he missed the flight, why he was
something of a ghost.  "I don't know if Anna changed for the flight. She
was probably wearing something black, probably expensive exercise
clothing, you know, sweatpants and a sweatshirt-she liked to be
comfortable when she traveled.  Maybe she wore a skirt, I don't know, I
doubt it.  This was a vacation.  And Madeleine, I don't know.  I'm sure
Anna changed her outfit.  She was wearing these green overalls in the
morning, but I doubt she had it on for the flight.  I can go home and
look in her closet for what's missing, but I don't know her clothing
that well.  I'm sorry I can't be of any help."

"The reason we ask is that clothing, even pieces of it, can be A m a n 8
t h t D e i d 5 I tested for traces of chemicals, explosives, if it was
a bomb, and by tracing back to a particular seat, we can figure out what
kind of device was used, how big it was."

"Was it a bomb?"

"We don't know.  These questions have to be asked, Mr.  Gale."

"How many people were on the plane?"

"A crew of ten, and a hundred and thirty-nine passengers."

"How many children?"

"Six or seven.  There may have been an unregistered infant."

"And on the ground?  How many were killed in San Diego?

Sixty?"

"We don't know yet." He paused.  For a moment he stared at the floor,
and then his shoulders relaxed.  He looked back at Frank.

"Mr.  Gale, I want you to know how sorry I am about this." There was a
tone of personal responsibility in his voice, he emphasized the first I,
as though others might not want Frank to know about their sorrow, as
though by expressing himself, he was already violating the company's
orders.  If Modell had bitter children, and they saw him now, trying to
be honest, would they regret their contempt for him?  He asked if Frank
wanted to stay at a hotel.

"Where is it?"

"The Sheraton.  Two minutes by car.  We think it might be a good idea-it
gives all of you a chance to help each other through the first hard
days." And keep us from the press, thought Frank, but he liked the idea
of a hotel room.  He could tell the desk not to let through any phone
calls.  He could watch a movie on television.

He could order room service.  Lowell would be here soon, and they could
stay up late and talk and get drunk.  If Modell was around the hotel,
Frank supposed that he could be invited in for a drink, but he thought
that Modell would be interesting only in the loose way that all people
are sort of interesting if you ask the right questions and find out
about their obsessions, even if all that keeps their minds going are a
few old insults and family squabbles elevated to the central facts of
their lives.  But if he started to talk to Modeil about music or movies,
he knew that the fat man would disappoint him, and with his stupid
opinions try to hog the conversation at the same time.  So he wouldn't
talk to him once this little interview was over.

ModeIl asked him what kind of luggage Anna had taken, and what she had
packed.  Frank described it as best as he could.  He thought that these
interviews were a clever device; he was talking about the crash in a way
that was strictly controlled, and even if this was just the expression
of a sinister corporate protocol for `I disaster management, something
developed by psychologists as a good way to get the person with the
potential lawsuit to think of the airline as a friend, there was comfort
in the process.

No one had yet introduced any of the survivors to each other and there
were now about fifty in the room.  Frank thought that he was the only
one who was alone, since everyone else had brought someone for support.

Ed Dockery got up and called for everyone to listen to him.  For those
who wanted to go, it was time to move to the Sheraton.  They were to
board a bus and would be settled in at the hotel in twenty minutes.
Frank stopped Dockery after the announcement and told him that his
brother was coming, and Dockery told Frank not to worry, they'd tell him
where to go.

owell called from the lobby, and Frank gave him the room number.

He had a few minutes to think about things while his brother found the
elevator.  He worried about his brother, how his brother would try to
take over the situation and tell him how to suffer and tell others how
to treat him, how to give them both respect.

There was a knock.  Frank opened the door, and Lowell was there.  The
expected hug.  Frank patted Lowell's shoulder, as though Lowell needed
the comfort more than he did.

In the family's mythology Frank had one respected attribute, his role as
peacemaker.  Lowell, for all of his brilliance in business, brought his
attack to the dinner table, and what had been, in childhood, to his
mother, a lawyerlike precocity, was now sometimes exhausting.

The only time their mother was ever really impatient with Lowell was at
dinner, when Frank was the least indignant.  But Frank knew, and he told
himself, too often, as a kind of punishment, that to face the truth, any
truth, he had to first admit to himself that Lowell really was his
superior, emotionally, morally, intellectually.  Let their parents
pretend they were equal, because they owned equal shares in the
business, but Lowell had the better ideas.  Did their parents always
know that Lowell was better?  Or did they believe that the business
started as a true partnership?  He imagined better parents had the
courage to see the differences between their sons, and then act on this
knowledge, help them, help the one who needed help.  And is this why I
was so reluctant to have two children?  Fear of the pain of their
competition?  Fear of having to distinguish between them?

And did their parents ever admit to themselves what they so obviously
thought of the partnership?  Or did they pretend that it was a kind of
unspecific soup of ideas, no separate areas of expertise?

What did they tell their friends?  Lowell is the businessman, but Frank
is the one closer to the artists.  And did the friends think, How odd,
since Lowell is the homosexual, and by rights should be closer to the
artists than dull Frank?  Or did their parents avoid the topic?

It was Lowell who found the locations for the stores, and moved near
them as they opened.  He kept a condominium in Santa Monica and came to
the city for a few days every two or three weeks.

Frank worked with the record companies and distributors, keeping
up-to-date on the schedule of new releases, because he was supposed to
be the more musical of the two, but that was a convenient lie the
brothers told themselves, an accommodation to this: If Lowell died, the
business died; if Frank died, the business continued.  The business was
not about music, but about making a profit selling records.

"My Cod, Frank.  My God."

"Yes," said Frank.  He felt a wave of shame for having called his
brother to his side.  If his brother had a family, and the family had
been killed, and his brother called for his help, Frank thought that he
would have been annoyed at the interruption of his daydreams.

"Fuck God, Frank," said Lowell.

Frank wanted to leave God out of this.  Frank felt that it was important
to protect Cod right now and not blame Him for the crash.

He might need God soon and didn't want to give Him an excuse to bargain
with his prayers.

"This is a terrible question," said Lowell, "but I don't know how else
to ask this.  How do you feel?"

"I guess I'm in shock.  It's hard to feel anything."

"Of course, of course.  It's Nature's way, I guess.  It protects you."

"I'd like to feel more."

"Have you cried?"

"Not really."

"If you want to cry, go ahead."

"Thanks, Lowell.  But ifl don't cry, don't think I'm not unhappy."

"Have you called Mom and Dad?"

"Not yet.  I was hoping that you would make the call."

"I thought about it, but I decided to wait.  I wanted to see you first."

"Do you want to call them now?" Frank asked.

"You don't want to speak to them, do you?" Lowell, with this question,
had just left the deaths and entered the arena of gossip about their
parents, which was, more than business, the real event that united them,
and that had brought Lowell close to his nowdead sister-in-law.  What he
meant was: Frank would have to use whatever energy' he had to keep his
parents from falling apart and devouring him with their own drama.

"Tell them I can't.  Tell them I'm too broken up." Later he would
recognize this as the moment when he began to create his grief for
public consumption.

"They'll want to speak to you."

"Lowell, call them." He insisted, coldly, relieved for a moment of his
grief, happy for the right to tell his brother what to do, and Lowell
went to the phone.

Lowell started to dial, then stopped.  He took a breath and dialed
again.  "Mom, it's Lowell."

She was used to Lowell calling, probably more often than Frank.

Lowell said he was fine and then asked for his father.  He asked so
abruptly that when he said, "No, I'm fine," Frank could tell that his
mother was wounded, she must have had something to say, and here he was,
on the phone to talk business.  Perhaps she had called him early in the
day about something, and when she heard his voice, she thought he was
returning the call.  And where was Lowell's courtesy, to ask something
personal of her, ask after her health?

Lowell covered the receiver with his hand and said to Frank, "She has to
get him.  I want to tell him and let him tell her."

Then their father came to the phone.  Frank watched his brother give him
an inappropriate wink.  What did it mean?  That everything was in
control?  "Hi, Dad.  I'm fine.  I don't know how to say this.  .  .  ."
He started to cry.

Frank felt betrayed by his brother.  The tears were real, but his
brother was showing weakness.  Why couldn't he just say, calmly, that
Anna and Madeleine were on a plane that crashed and they were dead?  He
wanted to take the phone from Lowell, but then he would have had to
speak to his parents.  He didn't want to have to offer support to them;
he wanted their support.

Lowell tried once more to tell his father what had happened.

More tears bubbled from him, and his face broke into a dozen shaking
pieces.  Frank walked over to him and put a hand on his back, which
seemed to be what he needed, a touch.

"I'm sorry, Dad.  There was a plane crash.  Frank missed the plane, but
Madeleine and Anna were killed.  Yes, the crash in San Diego.  I'm with
Frank now, in his hotel room.  The airline is putting him up."

Frank took the phone.  He wondered if Lowell would have cried had he not
told him to tell his parents that he was too upset to talk.

He had given his brother the burden of a lie, which ignored his
brother's right to grieve.

"Hi, Dad."

"This is real?"

"Yes."

I I "I don't know how to tell your mother."

"Could you try?"

"Let me call you back.  What hotel?"

"The Sheraton.  Room ten thirty-five."

"Near the airport?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to stay here?"

"Not now.  The airline is putting me up, there's a lot of us here,
people who had family on the plane."

"She was so beautiful." Who did he mean, daughter or wife?

Daughter.

"I know." I' "I'll call you back."

Frank knew this would be hard on his father.  He wasn't sure if his
father had ever really liked Anna, but his father had loved Madeleine,
his first grandchild, and her shining armada of promises.

And his mother, what had she thought of his wife?

Did his mother love Anna for loving the son no other woman had ever
loved?  It was true, Frank had never really said "I love you" to anyone
who said "I love you" to him until Anna.  Did his mother love his wife
for being the daughter she never had, finally to have a woman in the
family who would keep her best jewelry alter she died?  And then to have
a granddaughter!  So his mother loved Anna for what she brought to the
family, although he wasn't sure if his mother loved Anna for herself.
And perhaps his mother was, at least before the wedding, suspicious of
Anna for loving this awkward, unlovable boy, although Anna's love for
Frank may have taught his mother something about him, that he was
capable of love.

Or did his mother love Anna simply because she married a
twentyeight-year-old who had never lived with a woman and whose brother
was homosexual?  Yes, it was possible that his mother would have loved
any woman he had married, because the woman who married Frank rescued
Ethel and Leon from having two homosexual sons.

So his mother could say that Lowell's homosexuality was nature, not
nurture.

Lowell asked Frank if he wanted a drink.

"I don't know," said Frank.

"Why not?"

``You can have one if you I I I , I I said Frank.

"But why don't you want one?"

"I'd like to know what my feelings are."

"There's no shame in wanting to give yourself a little warmth," said
Lowell.  "You're not some kind of Mormon.  You can have a drink."

Frank wanted to ask his brother how he could be so sure of Mormon
grieving rituals, but checked himself.

"I want to stay sharp," said Lowell, "in case you need help."

"What do you need to be sharp for?"

"If your wife and daughter had been killed in a car crash.  .  .  it
would be different, but this, this is.

"What are you trying to say?" Frank cut into Lowell's meandering
thoughts quickly, even with a suggestion of impatience and cruelry,
telling his brother that to be anything but precise and honest, right
now, was morally without defense.

"If they died with no one else, if it was their fault .

"What are you trying to say?" Frank felt himself rising toward hysteria,
and this flight into a vicious rage at his brother's pauses felt to him
like the first good thing that had happened since he heard that his
family was dead.

"The airline is keeping you here because they know that this is going to
cost them millions of dollars, if it's their fault.  And I need to be
sharp, to make sure that someone doesn't get you alone and try to put
your signature on a settlement."

"So why couldn't you just say that?" Frank heard himself scream at his
brother.

Lowell stopped crying.  "Because I'm thinking about money, and I wish I
weren't."

The phone rang again.  Frank picked it up.

"Mr.  Gale?"

"Yes."

"This is Bettina Welch.  I met you this afternoon."

"Yes."

"I'm here in the command center, in the ballroom.  It's extension
two-oh-one-five.  Or you can just ask the operator to connect you.

We're down here on the mezzanine level if you want to come-we're
available for all the survivors.  Or you can stay in the room, and you
can order room service if you're hungry, of course, or you can join us
down here.  The buffet will be open all night."

"Thank you," said Frank, aware of his automatically good manners.  Frank
thought there was something dishonest in calling him a survivor, an
inflation.  The survivors were the people who were on the plane but
didn't die.  But everyone on the plane was dead.  So the survivors were
people on the ground whose houses were destroyed, and who were in the
houses but were not killed.

"How are you feeling?"

"Not well."

"Is there anyone with you?  Do you want someone to come up to your room
and be with you?  Would you like to talk to a minister or a rabbi?"

"My brother is here."

"That's good.  Because you need to be with someone now.  Our
psychologists are telling us that it's important that all the survivors
have someone for support right now.  We have grief counselors with us
now, and we'll assign one to you as soon as we can.  We don't want you
to be alone.  And you're not alone."

"No.  I have my brother."

"You can bring your brother down, here too, of course.  Whatever he
needs, whatever you need, were here for you."

"Thank you."

Lowell looked up at Frank and made a face to say, What are they asking
you?  Why are you saying so little?  Who is it?

"And please feel free to take advantage of the hotel, use the room
service, it's available twenty-four hours, or make all the phone calls
you want."

"Thank you."

"If you need any clothing, let me know your sizes, and I can get you
what you need, underwear, a shirt, socks."

"Not now."

"And toiletries, toothbrushes, toothpaste, shampoo."

"I think there's shampoo in the bathroom."

"Well, if' you need more."

"Right."

"We all lost people we loved, Mr.  Gale.  All of us."

"Yes."

"Whole families were killed."

"Unh." It was all he could say, a grunt.

"When will you be coming down?"

"I don't know."

"The buffet.  It looks very good."

"I don't know how hungry I am."

"Of course.  Maybe you'll just have some soup."

"That sounds good."

"Soup is very comforting."

"I'll see you down there."

Lowell turned on the television.  It was a few minutes after seven
o'clock, and the crash was the hour's lead story.

A woman who lived across the street was describing what she had seen.
The plane had rolled across the street, breaking into three pieces,
tearing up the block.  She was asked if she had known people across the
street.  Of course she had.  "This is a neighborhood.  Of course I know
my neighbors."

At least fifty people were known to have died on the ground.

The count was expected to rise.  Someone expected as many as another
hundred dead from the neighborhood.

The reporter on the scene was replaced by the anchorwoman in Los
Angeles.  She then introoduced an interview with a crash expert, William
Hoyt.  The interview had probably taken twenty minutes, but only one
sentence of the interview was shown, Hoyt saying, "We don't know yet
what caused the crash."

Before the anchorwoman returned, and then introduced a cornmercial, the
last shot of the crash scene was of a dog running down the street with a
child's shoe in its mouth.  "Jesus, how can they show that?" asked
Lowell.  "That could he Madeleine's shoe." He was screaming at the
television.

"Lowell, that's not her shoe."

"How can they do that?" asked Lowell.  Frank could see he was getting
ready for a fight.

"Do what?"

"Show the dog with the shoe.  That's so exploitive.  Can't they leave
anything alone?" Lowell screamed at the television, "You sentimental
assholes!"

Frank had to put his arms around Lowell, and he turned off the set.  He
repeated, "It's okay."

Lowell guided Frank's hand away and then slumped forward, staring at the
floor for a long moment.  He was ashamed of himself.

"Come on, Lowell, let's get something to eat."

In the hall they passed a room with someone inside, another mourner,
crying, "No.  No." Unless it was someone making love, and they weren't
hearing ``No,'' they were hearing a sound, the usual pleasure of pain,
release delayed.

Lowell walked a little ahead of Frank.  It was always this way, Lowell
thinking about something and Frank thinking about Lowell's better
thoughts.

When the elevator opened to the lobby, Frank saw a crush of news people,
photographers, camera crews, reporters with microphones.  They will find
me, he thought.  It's only a matter of hours before they find the man
who missed Death Flight 221.

They walked across the lobby to an escalator that brought them back up
to the mezzanine.  Bettina Welch was at the door to the ballroom.

In what must have been the quick setup of the room, the hotel mixed the
symbols of different occasions.  The buffet, beginning in salads, with
the irrefutable peaks of a ham and a turkey in the I' center, and then
falling away again to a flat zone of cookies and cakes and packages of
yogurt, was too lavish, and the three chefs, in their toques, were more
appropriate for a brunch.  Mustard-yellow tablecloths were on the fifty
or so round tables, without the rest of the service, no napkins or
silverware, so the room looked as if it were about to be cleared.  Not
set?  No, the tables were dirty, a lot of people smoked, and there were
ashtrays everywhere.  There were a hundred or so people-as many as the
dead on the ground in San Diego?-in the room, at the tables, and airline
officials were with them.  Someone had placed a few television sets
around the room, tuned to the news.  And the crash was the news.

Frank closed his eyes.  He tried to construct from the sounds in the
room a feeling of unhappiness, but there was something else that he
couldn't yet define for himself, something that made the room
unpleasant, a feeling of privilege.  If he blocked out the occasional
sobbing he could have been in a nightclub before the headliner came
onstage.  What was it?  Cigarettes, alcohol, airconditioning, the
disinfectant that adhered to the carpet.  He opened his eyes.  There
were a few tables of Mexicans, little children tended by older children,
and Frank, who usually felt envious of these large families, now hated
them for their resignation.  They sat quietly, waiting for direction.
Two Mexicans wearing blue jackets and brassy name tags were with them.
They were reservations clerks pulled in for the assignment, to
translate.  Frank supposed they were hoping that their good work here
would lead to promotions.

"No!" a woman cried.  Frank looked for her.

She cried again, "No!"

She was a tired woman in her fifties, with copper-colored hair and skin
healed badly over acne.  She sat in the middle of the room, at a table
with (her husband?), thin, quiet, chewing gum, and a friend (her
sister?), the same generation, the same look of defeat.

There was a feeling coming from the table of people choking on their own
gall, that the deaths of whoever had brought them to this ballroom were
just more cards in the bad hand that life was always dealing.

"My baby!" she screamed.  "They killed my baby!" She stood up.  She
screamed again, without a clear word.

"Sit down," said her husband.

"My baby is dead!" she screamed again.  The shriek brought others in the
room to tears, reminded of their own dead.

Her voice rose and fell on surges of emotion and complicated streams of
memories that shified with all the feelings of a bad relationship that
will never be reconciled.  Her desperate shrieks might have been
unbearable for everyone in the room, but there crept into this extended
solo of pure feeling a cheap ornament, a self-consciousness that
announced her indignation, her lawsuit.  If she had not admitted the
deposition into her grief, then everyone in the room might have been
sanctified, if only for a few hours, by the presence of so strong and
real a thing as these cries.  Instead, she was embarrassing, and
reminded everyone of the fortunes waiting I, for them.

Bettina Welch rushed to her table.  The woman was standing and
screaming, "They killed my baby.  They killed my baby," and Bettina
forced the woman into her arms, to give her a hug.  The woman didn't
want to accept or return the embrace; she was hys- `I terical and pushed
Bettina back, but the executive held on, as though she were the one who
needed comfort, and in the effort it took the woman to give this hug to
a stranger, in the awareness of the public spectacle of her reluctance,
her misery was brought to scale.  Tamed, she sat down, and Bettina
stroked her hair.  She sat down next to her.

Now the woman broke into silent crying, and Bertina hugged her again,
pulled the woman into her chest.  The sister reached a hand across the
table, and the copper-haired woman held on to it while Bettina slowly
rocked her from side to side.  Everyone in the room was quiet, watching.
There was only the sound of the news on the television sets, which had
left the scene of the accident to return to local stories.  One of the
Mexican reservations clerks thought to turn the televisions off, and
went around the room, like a butler blowing out the candles.

Bettina guided the sister, to her side of the table, without breaking
contact with the womans hands, and then gave her control of the hug. The
husband put a hand on his wife's shoulder, and if he seemed ashamed of
her, Frank thought perhaps he was too lost in his own unhappiness and
could not find the way to ask for help.  Or else he wanted a hug.

"Jesus," said Lowell, to no particular end.  It was just a thing to say,
to finish the ceremony for himself.

Then Bettina Welch came over to Frank and gave him his own hug.

"I think you need one too," she said.

It was stronger than their brief intimacy would have deserved under
other circumstances, but the hug she had just finished now granted her
the franchise on mercy for the room.  There was something unfairly
demanding in the hug; Frank could not hate the airline as much as he
wanted to now that this woman from the airline was telling him that they
shared something so powerful each would forever recognize the wounds of
this day in the other, that they were now both initiates in the same
clan.  We are not, he wanted to tell her.  We are not the same.  We do
not suffer the same disaster.

Against his will, he returned the hug with force.  She set the rhythm,
forcing him to sway with her.  The belligerent sweetness of the hug, the
unrequested familiarity of it, gave way, and he could feel her spine,
her breasts, her belly, and he began to judge them, to think about how
firm or soft she was, whether her stomach was flat or a little round,
and what her breasts would look like.  So there was sex, finally, the
moment of awareness of difference, and the hug ended.

He introduced her to his brother.

Lowell said, "Did you lose someone on the plane?"

"I knew two of the girls real well." Bettina's friendship implied
something at least equal to the loss of Frank's wife and young daughter.

"Do they know what happened yet?" Lowell asked.

"We probably won't know for a few days," said Bettina.

Lowell persisted.  "Do they have any ideas?" Frank could see that his
brother wanted to be angry with Bettina, since she represented the
airline.  Lowell's secretary once told Frank that he wasn't an easy man
to work for.  Frank had tlien said to her, pointlessly, as though her
intimacy breached something significant.  "We're equal partners, you
know." And she looked at him, and he saw she thought he was a fool.  Did
everyone in all the stores think of him in the same way?  Yes.  And now
his boss was trying to find Bettina Welch's breaking point, so he could
make her cry.

"It's too soon to know," said Bettina, "and it's dark now, so the crews
can't search for clues."

"They have voice recorders on these planes, don't they?  And wasn't the
plane in contact with the ground?  What were the pilot's last words?"

"I don't know."

"Somebody does."

"Sir, I'm here to help the survivors, I'm not here as a spokesperson for
the airline."

"You can help the survivors by telling them what the airline knows.
Otherwise, the lawsuits are going to be even bigger."

"Mr.  Gale, I can promise you the airline is doing everything in its
power to help the survivors.

"You're a fucking corporate whore, you're a fucking corporate liar,"
said Lowell.  Lowell was used to making those who worked for him
unhappy, but Bettina Welch worked for something else, not a man but a
company with thousands of people on the payroll.  Bettina Welch was not
frightened of Lowell.

"Lowell," said Frank, "don't." Meaning: Don't be your usual posturing,
difficult self.  Meaning: You have put this woman in an impossible
position, she can't tell you what you want to know, you have to speak to
someone higher up.  Meaning: Apologize for your language.

Frank had no real power; he was everyone's buddy.  When he was angry,
when he yelled, there was a gracelessness to his rage; his energy was
not contained, and he threw his arms into the air, awkwardly, and lost
whatever little presence he had.

"Frank, she's not on your side, she's working for the airline.

You can't trust her."

"I understand how you feel, Mr.  Gale." Bettina Welch was in harmony
with the gods of public relations now, and she read her line perfectly.
The way she said I, weighted with a penny, just enough to register her
own ego but not so much to compete with the corporation.  And then
understand hew, a small break in the first word dropping as she spoke
it, to say, I can't possibly feel all of your grief, of course, but I
know that your grief is making you not responsible for your actions, and
so I cannot take your actions personally, and so I cannot take your
promised threats seriously, because no one cares to listen to a lunatic,
which is how I am treating you now, and which is how you will see
yourself when you think about the awful things you said to me.  And then
after understand hew, she said you feel, telling Lowell that the crash
was not a matter of metal, flame, and flesh, but opinions.

"No, you don't understand how I feel," he said, but he sounded nasal;
the anger had drifted out of his belly into his head.

"Mr.  Gale, both of us are under a lot of stress right now, and I have
to talk to some other families.  If you want, we have psychological
counselors here in the hallroom.  Would you like to speak to one of
them?"

"Forget it,,, said Lowell, backing away from the fight as though he
hadn't lost it.  "I guess I am getting a little out of control here."

"Let's sit down," said Frank.  Frank took Lowell by the arm and led him
to a television set.

"I feel terrible," said Frank.

"I know."

"I hope they didn't suffer too much," said Frank.

"Well, if the plane blew up in the air, if there's any consolation, they
probably passed out."

"If they weren't killed immediately," said Frank.

"It's probably a good idea to let yourself have all these feelings right
now.  Whatever images come to mind, I want you to talk about them with
me."

"I wish I didn't feel so numb."

"Would you mind if I had a drink?" asked Lowell.

"Are you giving up the lawsuit?" asked Frank.  He meant this to be taken
lightly, and his brother smiled.

"What the hell," said Lowell, but Frank didn't know what he meant by
this.  Was he throwing the lawsuit away, or was he just taking a
vacation from his anger, in which case, was he also taking a vacation
from his grief?

"Go ahead," said Frank.  "Get me one."

"What do you want?" Lowell looked relieved that Frank was joining him.
Frank began to make a silent vow not to get drunk, but checked himself.
He would try to have only one drink, without making any sacred promises.
He asked for a beer, then changed his mind and said he wanted a scotch.

"You're sure?" said Lowell.

"No, give me a beer." He was worried about the headache he might get
from scotch, since he hadn't tasted any in months.

When Lowell went to the bar, Frank regretted asking for beer; beer was
not a drink for comfort but celebration.  Nothing here had been achieved
except an accidental massacre.  And what of the beer he drank in the
airport bar, before the news broke?  He had been celebrating two things,
his thirst and the inevitable fight he would have with his wife, now
that she had read the letter.

Lowell came back with the beer in a glass in one hand and a scotch in
the other.  Lowell gave him the beer, and he took a sip.

It was all wrong, the way he had expected it to taste; it was like
having a beer in the morning when he didn't want a drink at all.

Even the pleasant kick of the alcohol annoyed him, an inspiration to
relax that made him hate himself, but he finished the glass.

"That guy over there, at the bar"-Lowell pointed to a man in a T-shirt
and running shorts-"his next-door neighbor lost her parents on the
flight.  She was screaming when he heard her, she was on the phone, and
he drove her down here."

"Her parents," said Frank, dumbly.

"He heard someone say that it was a bomb on the plane."

"Terrorists?"

"Not necessarily.  Maybe someone who worked for the"

"Does it really make any difference?" Frank snapped.  It was the beer;
he was feeling gloomy when he should have been miserable, and the gloom
led him to sulk.

"Why are we here?" asked Lowell.  Meaning: We are sitting in this awful
hotel conference room like students detained by the vice principal who
caught them running in the halls.  We don't have to be here.  And more:
We are better than these others in the room, we have more money.  Even
more: We can get better lawyers, lawyers as good as the airline will
hire.

"Where would we go?"

"Home."

"I don't want to go home.  I don't want to see the house." He thought
this was sloppy of him, cowardly not to face his daughter's dolls,
books, blocks, and his wife's French shoes, her makeup, their bed.

Ed Dockery was crossing the room, and Frank knew he was going to have to
talk some more about what couldn't be changed.

Frank Gale was Ed Dockery's assignment.  There were other men in the
room with the same sober respect, who moved among a few tables, sitting
for ten or so minutes, talking, making notes on legal pads, and Frank
guessed that each had been assigned to only a few families, not to
spread the airline's attention so thinly that in the inevitable lawsuits
the surviving relatives could add corporate indifference to the list of
complaints.  "We lost our family, but as if that weren't enough, the
airline couldn't find time to talk to us for three hours, because they
only had two people in charge." Like not enough waitresses in a crowded
coffee shop.

Dockery introduced himself to Lowell.  Of course Bettina Welch had
warned him that Lowell was difficult.

"I'm his brother," said Lowell.

"There's been a new development here, and we wanted you to know before
it goes out on the ten o'clock news."

Frank's heart began to pound, unreasonably, he thought, as if he were
guilty, and about to be caught for the thing he had done.

Or was it just the fear that he would learn something dreadful, and the
foundations of his control would erode in the space of a few seconds,
however long it took to hear Dockery's revelation?

"What happened?" said Lowell.  It was a challenge to Dockery: He should
stop playing the part of the saddened messenger; he should tell the
story and not act as if there was anything eternal in Lowell's disdain
for him.

"We think that the plane went down because one of our employees, I
should say one of our former employees, sneaked a gun onto the plane and
killed the pilot."

He told his story quickly, and directly.

"Thank you," said Lowell.

"For what?" asked Dockery.

"For telling us the truth."

Frank wanted to say, Yes, that was kind of you.  Something between the
two men went unspoken; it had to do with integrity, and Frank didn't
understand it.  Instead, he asked, "Why?" although he didn't really
care.  So they died for nothing.  If a Palestinian had blown the plane
out of the sky, Frank could always warm himself on the fires of history,
he could tell the world that his life had been touched by the terrible
events of this awful century, that he was now a part of history.  Their
deaths, however tragic, would have been given some meaning.  He would
have had an enemy too, a movement, an ideology.  He saw himself, letting
the fantasy roll ahead to its conclusion, as someone who could even
RELUCTANTLY ACCEPT a role as the public spokesman for the victims of
terrorism, as the great champion of innocence.  Of the innocent victim.
But a FORMER EMPLOYEE?  Where was the glamour in the fatal radiation
from the decaying misery of a DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEE?  Was there anything
to gain from the death of his wife and his daughter if a nut case had
killed them?  What if their murderer had been released from a mental
hospital, or had been denied entry to one because the state had no money
to take care of him?  All the boring editorials!  How they would add the
name of the nut case to the list of victims of his unhealed rage! Surely
he was as much a victim, blah blah blah.  And until we solve the
problems of the blah blah blah .  .  .  And all the predictable anger at
the government, at the social workers who will defend themselves for not
having seen the DANGER LURKING in this unhappy man!  I will be forgotten
in all of this, thought Frank.  I will be abandoned.

Emptiness surrounded him.

"We don't know why, not yet," said Dockery.

"Did you know him?" asked Lowell.  Of course it was a man.

"Just to say hello."

"What did he do?" asked Frank.  "What was his job?"

"He was in the freight office."

"Why was he fired?" asked Lowell.  Frank was glad his brother 1, was
asking all the obvious questions.  He didn't want to seem too curious;
what would they think if they saw how this interesting development
submerged his grief?  Lowell could ask any questions, because Lowell had
charm; he could make a person happy to answer a rude question.  People
liked to talk to him.  And these questions weren't rude, they were just
obvious.  Anyone would want to know.

Frank thought he should have been able to ask them.  I have a RIGHT TO
KNOW!  Now he wanted another drink.

Dockery was uncomfortable with the question.  "All of this was very
recent."

"Why did he take down the plane?" asked Lowell.  Implied in the way he
stressed the word "plane" was the thought that something was out of


scale, that the man's murderous anger and need for revenge, if
justified, should have satisfied itself with the death of whomever he
was angry at.  Because it was routine news for people to get fired and
go back to their offices and kill the person who fired them.  There was
no revelation in that kind of news.  But a whole plane?  And a
neighborhood?

"Now look, I'm not supposed to be telling you this," said Dockery, and
Frank thought that were the situation reversed, were he the one whose
brother had suffered the loss, the airline executive would not confide
in him, if Lowell was overcome by his sorrow and couldn't talk for
himself.  "The man who fired him was on the plane.

And he had seven children." Three feathers on a delicate I 4,,scale
tipped the weight on the word "he" and then again on seven.  Is this,
Frank wondered, a dig at me, a way of diminishing by comparison my grief
for my one child, Dockery's retaliation for Lowell's tirade at Bettina
Welch?

Lowell felt the same way but wouldn't keep it to himself.  "That's a
little tasteless, isn't it, Ed?" He said the name as though only dumb
people were called Ed, as though a man with the dignity of a full name,
Edward, would be higher up in the company, wouldn't have to take the
public's abuse.  They teased him as a child.  Mr. Ed!  Frank loved his
brother for defending him like this, but he also heard the insinuated
diminishment of his own loss, and had not reacted so quickly.

Dockery said, "I don't know what you mean."

"I think you do," said Lowell.

"Lowell," said Frank.  "Forget about it."

"You know what he's saying," said Lowell.

"What am I saying?" asked Dockery.

"The way you said that the man had seven children.  You were telling
Frank that the death of his wife and daughter was smaller."

"If I said anything that could cause you to feel like that's what I
said, then let me apologize now.  I had no intention of saying anything
like that," said Dockery.  He was lying, anyone could see that.

Frank put a hand on Lowell's arm.  "Forget about it.,' "You have to
understand how it sounded to me," said Lowell.

"It didn't sound right."

Dockery said nothing.  It was an odd ploy, this unassailable quiet; now
the executive was the center of their attention, he was the issue, his
feelings and not the plane crash, and what could be done about something
about which nothing could be done; the plane could not be pulled from
the sky before the crash, but maybe he had meant it as it sounded; in
his f'ustration with Lowell he tried to say the worst thing that was on
his mind.

Frank thought about the man on the plane who died leaving seven
children.  Was his wife in the room?  He looked for a table with a woman
who looked like she might have had a large brood, but he couldn't tell.
And he imazined that there were small children.

so he looked for a woman in her late thirties, but -there was no reason
that a supervisor couldn't have been with the airline for a full career,
and have seven grown children, with maybe one still in college.  So he
could be looking for a grandmother.  Anna had wanted more than one
child, but he had resisted.  She wanted three.  She wanted a son, a big
boy who would bring all of his big friends over to the house after
school, to stand in front of the refrigerator and drink milk from the
jug.  Well, not the jug anymore, although that was what she called it.
The bottle.  The container.

And what of the copper-haired woman?  She was sitting with a rabbi
(skullcap, forty, curly hair, eager and attentive posture), and she was
shaking her head from side to side, saying no to him.  If her daughter
was the salvation of her life, was that equal to losing seven children?

And what of families that had been wiped out, mother, father, son,
daughter, daughter?  Or sisters on their way to visit uncles.

Who goes to the funeral of a family killed at the same time?  Who
arranges the funeral?  Who gets the record collections, the books?

Someone would say, It's better in a way that they all died, no one had
to suffer the loss of the others, or: Now they're all together in
heaven.  But what if one of them went to hell?  Would the others in
heaven miss him?  And if they did, if they felt the pain of loss, would
that be heaven?  If he had been on the plane and had gone to hell for
the sin of his adultery, and Anna had not read the letter and had gone
to heaven and had found out, in heaven, that she was there with
Madeleine and not with her husband, because she was saved while he was
damned, what would she feel?  If she felt a sudden hatred for him, would
that slip (if it was a slip) consign her to hell?  Would she feel sad?
And for how long?

Maybe Dockery's line really was disgusting.  After all, there was a
woman with seven children mourning one husband, not one husband mourning
the extinction of his family.  The woman had seven anchors, at
least!-and all I have, thought Frank, is my brother and my parents, and
he wanted to say, they will need me, I will have to be their anchor, and
I will have to beg for comfort.

Then he thought of Mary Sifka.  He had never called her to cry about the
things that wounded him, because he felt-what?-that if he told her he
was upset about his failed music career, or that he knew that his
brother was more capable than he, she might see him in a new light, in
his light, and come to share his bad feelings of himself.  She sometimes
talked about her childhood and alluded to things she wanted to keep
hidden, hut when he pressed, she always said she didn't like to talk
about those things.  Something bad had happened to her, beatings or
worse.  He had believed, listening to her when she said anything about
her bad childhood, that abuse was the beginning of her intelligence, and
having been set apart from her family by its cruelty, she was able to
see into the nature of Nature, which was cruel.  This had been his
theory of Mary Sifka's special attraction, her bleak youth and the
intelligence that had come out of it.

But what if she wasn't intelligent, the proof of which was her
acceptance of Frank?  What if she was a lonely woman, dulled by this
soul-destroying childhood, whose affair with Frank fit a pattern set
long ago, something she needed to maintain her had opinion of the world,
by breaking the trust her husband gave her?  What if she chose Frank not
for his sensitivity, his humor, his sincerity?  What if she liked him
for qualities he despised in himself?  In this case, abuse had not
yielded to her any special insights; it had made her, not sardonic or
cynical, but only distrustful, and what she might have liked in Frank
was his lack of power, and his acceptance of the limits of his ambition,
that he had made peace with himself.

But if she couldn't see his frustration, then she was lying to herself,
or else she saw it but didn't care, and her adultery with him fit into
the plan of her reprisal against her husband for things she never talked
about with Frank.  Frank knew almost nothing about her husband.

He thought of his own childhood, and the thing he wanted to name as his
own intelligence might not be so grand.  He envied Mary Sifka for the
clarity of her father's crimes, since his parents had muddied it all up,
never beating, but almost, never raping, but invading in other ways that
had left him so confused.  Lowell had escaped with a little more
confidence, but then, thought Frank, don't they work together because
they both feel too weird for the rest of the world, and doesn't that
strained and peculiar character they both share leave them incapable of
feeling right with anyone except each other?  In that case, aren't we
really a team?  Doesn't Lowell really need me?  Don't I make a real
contribution to the business?  If Lowell, to escape the family's
pressures, had launched himself beyond their gravity with his
homosexuality, was he too, in his own way, a kind of failure by still
having to work with his brother?

Frank had never considered this before, that if Lowell were free, he
would be free of Frank.  Unless Lowell didn't share Frank's hatred of
his parents, who, after all, had long ago accepted his homosexuality.
It was something that they had understood about him, from high school.
Unless they accepted his homosexuality as something that was just his
NATURE, to protect themselves against the inescapable judgment on their
failings as mother and father, if they looked for an interpretation for
his NATURE in psychoanalysis.

It was too late to call Mary Sifka now.  She was home, and he only
called her at the office, where no one would suspect them.  She would
hear the news of the crash, probably not pay it any special attention,
until she heard the destination and matched it with the time he had
left.  And even then, would she immediately think of him?  She hadn't
known his airline or flight number, but she could have called the office
to find out if he had been on that plane, and the office would have told
her yes.  So she would think he was dead.

A lot of people would think he was dead.  Unless she called after he had
talked to Lowell.

"Lowell?" asked Frank.

"What?"

"Did you tell the office that I missed the plane?"

"Not yet.  It's too late now."

"So they must think I'm dead."

"I'll call tomorrow."

Or not even something so defined as abuse, only a dulled tantrum for the
sufferings of childhood injustices, smaller pieces of birthday cake,
someone else's better bicycle.  Or he didn't tell Mary his deeoest
troubles out of resDect for Anna.  that there was a limit to his
infidelity.  He thought that if Anna slept with someone else, she would
not set up a boundary that would allow her the sin of adultery and then
the sin of pride, for keeping her heart a little bit faithful.

He thought Anna, if she had ever fucked someone else, would have given
her lover everything, would have forgotten her husband.

Dockery apologized.  "Whatever I said, however I said it, if it made you
feel bad, I'm sorry." He said this in a tone that declared he would not
back down from them again.  If Lowell pressed Dockery again, he would
say what he wanted to say, and there was much to say to a man who took
advantage of his brother's anguish and found a way to bully people who
were just doing a job that could only be difficult.

"Okay," said Lowell, not meaning to tell Dockery the event would be
forever buried but to tell him that as long as Dockery was direct with
Lowell, and did not embellish with his own foul thoughts what his job
demanded he say, there would be no more little storms of rage.  So there
was a truce between them.

"What's next?" asked Frank.  He was tired of Lowell's condescension.  He
wanted to take charge.

"Well, you're welcome to stay here at the hotel for as long as you need.
There's a few psychologists here, and we'd like you to talk to one of
them.  They're experts at grief counseling.  They do a real good job.
Very compassionate people.  Or if you'd prefer, a clergyman or rabbi is
available too."

"And then?"

"Well, it's too dark in San Diego to really see what's on the ground.
They have lights up, but the area of devastation is pretty big.  Three
blocks were pretty well taken out.  Right now they've got the National
Guard out to keep the looters away, and the sightseers.

In the morning they'll go in and start cleaning it all up.  I have to
warn you, a lot of people think that in a crash, the bodies just
disintegrate, but they don't.  In all likelihood, every body will be
accounted for."

"I thought there were fires," said Frank.  He was surprised with
himself; he was leading Dockery into an area of gruesome detail, ashes,
pieces of charred bone.

"Well, the fires don't concentrate their heat in any one spot for a long
enough time.  What I'm trying to say is, even after a fire, there's a
body.  Those bodies will have to be identified.  We do our best using
dental charts and fingerprints, when we can get them, but sometimes we
have to rely on visual identification.  There's no other way.  We've
also found that photographs don't work; people get more upset sometimes
looking at pictures of a body than at the body itself."

"I can do it," said Lowell.  "Anyway, I live in San Diego." As though
proximity made the gruesome job easier?  Or would it be harder to look
at his sister-in-law's body if he had to drive a long way to see it?

"They'll probably return the bodies to Los Angeles.  That's the
practice, going back to the point of origin."

"Whatever," said Lowell.

"I'm sorry to have to speak about these things so directly, but I figure
you don't want me to pull the punches, and frankly, I appreciate that. A
lot of people, and this isn't to say that they're not entitled to their
feelings, but a lot of people in this room don't want you to say what
has to be said.  They want you to almost say it, they want you to give
them a taste of what you really mean, and then they want you to back
down and apologize for going even that far.  But I say, if it happened
in a certain way, you're obliged to say that's the way it happened."
Frank saw Dockery win respect from Lowell for this, for separating Frank
and Lowell from the others.

And was this something he did with everyone, take them all into his
confidence, show them all how much he trusted them?

While Dockery was talking, one of the men cruising the tables came to
his side and put a hand on his shoulder.  Dockery introduced him.  "Mr.
Gale, I'd like you to meet Dale Beltran.  Dale is one of our grief
counselors.  If you don't mind, I think it would be good to talk to
him."

"Frank Gale," said Frank.  "And this is my brother, Lowell."

"Dale Beltran," he said.

"Are you a psychologist?" asked Lowell.

"Yes," said Beltran.  Frank hated the way he looked.  His hair was too
long for his curls, and the effect of suspended youth with his soft face
and body bothered Frank terribly.  Why am I threatened by this guy?
Frank asked himself, but he had no answer.  "Do you mind if I chat a
bit?"

"It'd be a good idea," said Dockery.

"Sure," said Frank.

Beltran sat down.  "How do you feel?" he asked.

"Not great."

"Like you can't believe it's really happened."

"I believe it."

"Intellectually, yes, but emotionally?"

"I don't know."

"Well, Mr.  Gale.  .  ." He paused, and Frank knew why; he wanted
Frank's permission to use his first name.

"Frank."

"Frank.  There are a few stages of grief, and I wanted to share them
with you, to help you get through them, so you won't feel so alone.  The
first is denial, which is what you're going through now.

And with that, you'll feel alone.  That's the isolation stage.  Then
comes anger.  And that's a hard one.  After that, well, you'll feel
pretty low.  The experts like to call that the depression phase; I'd
prefer to call it the period of sadness.  And then, finally, after the
storm, you'll make peace with it.  And that's acceptance."

"And then what?" asked Frank.

"Hope."

"That's the one that seems so far away," said Ed Dockery.  "And that's
the one we have to live for."

"Good luck," said Dale Beltran.  "I'll talk to you again." He left them
with a round of handshakes, and then walked away and introduced himself
to the copper-haired woman.

It was only eight-thirty, but Frank felt as tired and alive as he had
the night he worked in the recording studio until five in the morning,
all those hours working on one song.  The singer wasn't sure if the song
was best done slowly or quickly, and what kind of beat he needed.  Frank
began by suggesting variations that were too different, which confused
everyone and wasted their time as they Hi: hit I Talkin tried to please
him, since he was paying them, since he was their boss.  There were four
musicians in the studio, the singer, the guitarist, a drummer, and a
pianist with a keyboard connected to a computer.  The pianist was a
friend of the singer, and he was used to playing with stars.  He was
there as a favor.  Frank had at first resented the deference paid to
him, but around one in the morning, after they had started at seven, he
realized that yielding to the pianist would be the first creative thing
he had done in the control booth.

He would let the artists create, and if the song came out well, Frank
would get the credit.  He felt, with that decision, a glimmer of what it
might mean to be a professional, and with that, this node of
understanding, this seepage from the great occult mysteries that only
the boldest seekers could penetrate, he saw, clearly, the possibility
that he could leave the record stores, leave his brother.  What were the
lessons of the great mysteries, really, but instruction on how to live?
The pianist inspired the singer, and Frank found it easy to find the
right levels for the balance of tone among the instruments and voices.

That morning he knew the sensual weariness of exhausting himself at work
that was play.  If they failed at creating a song that would live
forever, at least they knew what it meant to give all of their effort
together in the service of something like beauty.  And of course they
would fail, the song was awful, but it didn't matter.

They were trying to find in something bad, this stupid song, the bit of
divinity that hides in all things.

Frank thought about the pianist's confidence.  Failure was never part of
the pianist's view of things.  He knew his worth.  He had depended on
certain processes, he had faith in practice leading to perfection.  He
was an adept, and his musicianship was just the manifestation of the
progress of his soul.  And my failure?  thought Frank.  Was I aware of
failure because it lay before me, so obviously, because I was not a
musician?  Everything about the pianist's maddening hostile sweetness
proclaimed his membership in an elite to which Frank had only a ten-hour
pass.

Frank's attitude, his bearing, the way his private turmoil reg14t I r I
ri its battles in his sullen expression, the way he made small talk when
he knew better and should have kept his mouth shut, would never improve.
He would never, even with the death of his family, be anyone other than
who he already was.  If there had ever been the chance to break free of
himself, to rename himself and become a new person, the time for that
was ten years past.  The whole point of the pianist's life, Frank knew,
was to live correctly in the light of a truth that he found in his
music, and in the whole world of music.  The whole point of the
pianist's life was to live correctly so that he would never make the
kind of false step with his life that would, if seen in another form,
mean death, like the false step on a mountain.  To see his life as an
allegory.  The real mountain is a test for the metaphysical mountain.
The pianist took his life seriously, thought Frank, and was appreciated
by other serious people.  I am not serious, thought Frank.  I am a
dabbler.

The whole point was to be conscious of his actions, so that he could die
in peace, without despair.  The pianist would never regret a marriage.

Frank started to cry.  He was crying also for his daughter, but until he
remembered that long night in the recording studio, sitting behind the
console, in a comfortable chair, reading the dials and fiddling with
knobs, like an airplane pilot!-like the airplane pilot who had died with
Anna and Madeleine-he had been far from tears.  He knew no one would
fault him for his misery so long as he didn't tell them that he cried
now because he would never produce a record, never write a song that the
world would sing, that he would always and only be a salesman.  He
brought a hanhand up to cover his eyes, and before he closed them, he could
see that the people in the room were watching him, just as he had
watched the other mourners in the room whose sadness had already
erupted.

Lowell massaged his shoulders, and Dockery patted him, awkwardly, yes,
but also, Frank thought, for a little luck.  Now Dockery could
anticipate courage in a bad situation.  He would always know that he
could touch someone who had been electrified by (tragedy?) this force,
this angel of death in whose wake everyone close was given a measure of
charisma.  At last, thought Frank, I am fascinating.

hen the baby was born," said Frank, not looking at his brother, looking
at the freeway, and the big Jewish cemetery against the hill that faced
to the west and a little south, "everything felt different.  I drove
through the city, and everything felt charged up.  The colors were alive
everywhere, the city looked beautiful."

"This city can never look beautiful," said Lowell.

"But it can, it did that day.  I don't think I've stopped seeing the
beauty in Los Angeles since the day the baby was born."

Sepulveda Boulevard went under the freeway, and Frank followed the line
of the bluff to the ocean.  Bluffs, ravines, canyons, hills, gullies,
mesas, rivers.  The planet on which the city has been imposed.  Why did
it matter to him at all?

When the brothers moved out of the house and went to college, their
parents sold the large house in Bel Air in which they had grown up and
bought a condominium on Wilshire Boulevard, looking out over a
neighborhood of small apartments in Westwood.  The house had been
expensive when they bought it, in 1 I , for $500,000, and when they sold
it, in 1982, they made $8 million.

For a million and a half dollars they bought half of the twenty-third
floor, nine rooms, three baths, everything new.

It was an apartment in which Frank never felt comfortable.  Frank missed
the big house, the suite he shared with his brother, their bedrooms, a
large playroom, their bathroom, down a hall their parents almost never
came.  What did he really miss?  The pool, the guesthouse, the garden
that they pretended was a jungle.  The old house looked like a small
hotel, in the style of a mission.  When his parents took the apartment,
it was as though.  .  .  yes, he knew what he resented about the new
place, that by leaving the elaborate setting of the house, they had
brought themselves closer to the light, and in the apartment they could
be easily examined, and appraised, and finding them wanting, as he did,
he found himself wanting; in seeing his parents diminished in their new
setting, he was forced to see just what it was that he came from.  In
the house there was something, if not baronial about his father or
aristocratic about his mother, something serious about both of them,
something admirable.  His family, in that great house, and within the
circuitry of all the relatives, all the other Gales and Abarbanels and
Siegeis, was held to be the most important.  When they lived in the
large house, his father was head of the family.  When they moved, he
lost his crown.

Everyone could see him for what he was, and whatever that thing was, and
it was a quality of character that even now Frank could not name, he had
lost his place.  And Frank knew that this was something his father knew,
that his house, this large, gracious, quiet, dark, noble, old, sober,
rich, well-built, heavy-walled stoneand-wood house was his great
achievement, and selling it, he had given away everyone's dream,
everyone in the family touched the house and felt the house as part of
their blood, as part of their lives, as a center, even though the Gales
had owned it for barely one generation.  The sale of the house was a
betrayal of the clan.  They owned no other house so grand.  In the ten
years since his parents moved, when the family gathered for holidays,
once a year when everyone came from Toledo, Minneapolis, and New York,
they came to Wilshire Boulevard, and there was nothing about this
apartment that could buttress the lie of the family's superiority, that
could make of the family something better than a family, a clan, even a
tribe.  Even the jealous cousins, who resented the Gales, felt lucky to
be at the table in a mansion.

Worse, there was a secret kept from the rest of the family, that Leon
Gale's only great investment had been the big house, that he was not the
brilliant developer his family believed him to be.  He worked alone,
without partners, building apartment houses, and he bought land for too
much money, and sold finished buildings for too little, and he took bank
loans at high rates, and spent too much money on construction.  His
workers stole tools and lumber.  When he built small office buildings,
he chose bad tenants, who went out of business.  They would owe him
money, they would leave their offices or their storefronts filthy, and
he would have to wait in line with other creditors when they flIed for
bankruptcy.  He was a man of mild temper, and to the family this
confirmed, before he sold the house, their sense of him as someone
satisfied, rich, and wise, a man outside the battles of life.  With the
sale of the house what had looked like calm was now just meek, and
without the big dining room and the ballroom and the long swimming pool
he was not the king in exile; he was a small man.  His cousins, the men
and women who had known him from childhood, would tease him in ways the
brothers had never seen.  They brought lesser wines to dinner, smaller
bouquets of flowers.  The cousins of his father's generation wouldn't
even bother asking for permission to smoke.  They guessed, correctly,
that Leon's profits from his house went to pay off his debts.

He still had a million dollars in the bank, but his income was no
greater than any of theirs.  He had been humiliated.

Lowell once told Frank that their father's problem was that he expected
things to turn out well, that he went through life as though something
would rescue him in the end.  Lowell's contempt for their father was
greater than Frank's, and Frank knew that this contempt extended to
Frank for still thinking so highiy of their father.

Lowell once told Frank that when he needed to make a difficult decision,
he would think about their father, and then do what he wouldn't do.

"That's not fair to him," Frank had said.

"Fine.  I'll do what you want to do."

There was no contest.  Both of them knew that Frank would let Lowell
make the hardest decisions, because, after all, Frank was his father's
son.

But was Lowell like their mother?

Frank's mother met them at the elevator.  She was crying, and when she
hugged Frank, Lowell patted her shoulder.  Frank was not as good a son
to her as Lowell.  He didn't think that she loved Lowell more, but
Lowell was easier.  Had Lowell discovered earlier than Frank that their
father was a hollow man, and with their mother's coaching did he beat
the disappointment and keep the clarity?  Lowell understood something in
their mother that Frank resisted, Lowell had compassion for her, and
pity.  For too long Frank saw his mother as an embarrassment to his
father.  For a time he hated his father for marrying such a weak woman.
There had been a moment at his wedding when he hated himself for
marrying Anna, when he knew that he was marrying her for bad reasons,
and then hated his mother for loving Anna, and then hated his father for
loving his mother, for loving a woman who did not have the courage to
tell her son that he was making a bad choice, that if he wanted to be
brave, to be the hero of his own life, to succeed beyond Lowell, he
would have to be alone, longer, and without the warmth and kindness of a
woman, without someone to soften the blows of the world, so that he
would be forced to fight back, to be stronger than the blows.  He wanted
his mother to tell him that he didn't need a woman.  He wanted his
mother to tell him that he didn't need the kind of woman his father had
needed, to tell him that he didn't have to be like his father, all talk.
Frank thought his mother had said these things to Lowell, so Lowell was
free not to marry, free to start a business and make it succeed, and
make himself rich.  Or had Lowell known this without their mother's
help?  Now Frank was without a woman.  Would his mother expect greater
success from him?  Would she expect him to give up the business and go
back into a recording studio, without the excuse that he had to be home
to be a good husband and father?

What would she hope for him now that he was finally free of the woman he
had wanted her not to love?

"Your father is taking this very hard."

"And you?" Frank asked.

"What can anyone say?"

His father was on the phone in the living room.  In the old house they
didn't have a phone in the living room, or a television either, but in
the apartment there was a telephone on the table next to the couch,
which faced a tall black cabinet that held the television.

Frank was sure that his parents watched during the day.  Not a lot, but
they never watched television in the old house, when the television was
in the bar, a room that was almost the size of this living room.  And
this living room wasn't even a separate room; the kitchen was open to
the dining room over a counter, and then the room turned at the corner
of the building and became the living room.

L-shaped.  His father was talking to one of his brothers, telling him
what had happened.  He reached out a hand, and Frank touched it.

"Lonnie Walter," said Frank's father.

"Who?" asked Frank.

"Lonnie Walter, he's the one who blew up the plane.  That's what they
think."

No one from the airline had ever officially announced what Frank had
been told privately.

"Did the airline call to tell you this?" asked Frank.

"It was on the radio," said his mother.

"Let me tell you about the airline," said his father.  "We called them
last night because I wanted them to let us know of any latebreaking
developments."

"Leon, " said Frank's mother, "this can wait." She was like Frank with
Lowell, cautioning, trying to keep him from making a scene.

"I had to call the regular reservations number.  Nobody there was
allowed to say even if there had been a crash.  They would not give me
the number of the airline's business office.  I called the airport, not
the airline, and they gave me a general office number, which was closed,
of course, it was after nine.  Finally, on the ten o'clock news, they
gave out a number to call."

"For families and friends," said Frank's mother.  She was with him in
the story now.

"And I called it, and the thing was busy for an hour.  I got through at
eleven o'clock, and the woman on the phone told me she couldn't give out
anyone s names, nothing had been released yet, but she took my number,
and that was last night, and no one has called me yet.  And I think
that's a disgrace." I "But you know they're dead," said Frank, so why do
you need the airline to tell you?  They were on the plane, and it
crashed.  No one survived.  I think they need to keep that line open for
the people whose families were on the ground in San Diego, in the houses
that the plane crashed into.  That's where the doubt is."

"Fine, be on the airline's side," said his father.  This came out in a
little gust of petulance.  "Identification with the aggressor." He said
this with a blend of pity for Frank's muddied view of things; were he
not so grief-stricken, he would not be identifying with the aggressor,
and also hatred for Frank's refusal to share his anger, because Frank
was always quietly telling Leon that he was too angry.  Ii If Leon said
something bitter about a politician, or a bad movie, or a wealthy
builder he had known when both were starting out, Frank would tell his
father that he was too angry.  His mother told Frank that it was unfair
of him to stop his father like this, that he had a right to his anger.
Frank had told her that what annoyed him wasn't his father's anger, but
the free-floating rage that came into view every time he talked about
any human being with more power or money.

Lowell screamed at their father, "What?  What are you saying?  `,I
Identification with the aggressor?  What does that mean?  I don't
believe you," said Lowell.  "You just lost Anna and Madeleine, and
you're arguing about things that you don't know about.  This is some
psychological term.  Identification with the aggressor.  You're showing
off something that you know?  How can you show off at a time like this?
Identification with the aggressor?  What does that mean?"

"It means that Frank is already defending the airline: They've had him
in their hands for the first fifteen hours, and they fed him (I and gave
him a bed, and he's grateful to them, and it's clouding his perception
of who they are, and what they really want out of all of this."

"I think they just want good publicity," said Ethel.

"Wrong," said Lowell.  "I mean, maybe that's part of it, but the issue
is publicity and cost, and also the industry.  They have to obscure the
event, they have to confuse everyone so that the event is never In
focus, and then in a few weeks the only ones who will remember it will
be the next of kin, that's what they have to do."

"And why can't they return your father's phone calls?" she asked.

"Because then they would be taking responsibility.  And the idea is to
avoid responsibility at every level."

Frank didn't know if his brother was right, but as usual, after his
father attacked Frank and his mother tried to stop him, Lowell pushed
Leon into his corner.  Frank wondered if the brothers' early success
with the stores had not challenged his father into a competition he
never announced but to which he devoted himself and through which he
lost his house?

"Does anyone want anything to eat?" said Frank's mother.

"I'd like an apple," said Frank.  Anna hated apples and never bought
them.  It was a funny thing to hate, but she had grown up in
Philadelphia, where the first apples of the year announced the end of
summer, and the beginning of cold weather.  She hated the cold.  How
cold was it outside when the plane opened up?  Almost thirty thousand
feet.  Higher than Everest.  Thin, cold air.  Does the shock take the
breath away so quickly that you pass out before you know that you're
falling to your death?  And all the debris, something could knock you in
the head, knock you out, or kill you right there, cut off an arm.
Falling dead.  Or dying in the air, alter a fifteenthousand-foot fall,
with fifteen thousand feet to go.  A heart attack, a seizure.  Asthma.
Falling through a cloud of pollen.  Hitting a bird.

Being followed by a bird.  Eyes to eyes.  I had a dream last night that
a large bird told me how to take care of him.  Or answered my questions.

"We should go to the house," said Leon.

"No," said Frank.  "I don't want to, not today.  I'm going to San Diego
this afternoon; I'll go to the house when I come back.  I'm taking the
train."

"I'll drive you down," said Lowell.

"No," said Frank.  For a moment he regretted the decision, he thought he
might need the company, but he didn't want to give in to their concerns.

"He's taking the train," said Lowell, as Ethel came back into the room.

"You should go with him," she said.  "You can leave the car here."

"No," said Frank.  "I'd like to be alone for a few hours."

"Are you sure?" his mother asked him.

He was.

The apple was on a blue plate.  She put it down on the glass coffee
table and set beside it three green cloth napkins.  Frank studied the
colors.  The luxury of vision astonished him.  He saw the dark green,
the color of his father's Jaguar, but the green was made of the cloth,
and the napkins were made of long strings tied together so ingeniously
that they could lie flat, or be folded, or be soiled and then washed and
then folded and ironed again.  He saw the tight weave, and the fuzz of
the ciliated cotton threads.  It had been shiny, when it was new; now
the cloth was slowly disintegrating, and he saw that decay in the color.
The color of the cloth was changing as he watched it.  It was so
different from the blue on the plate, which was buried under the glaze.
The cotton napkin was old; he could vaguely remember a dinner at the
house when his mother set the table with the napkins, and he had found a
price sticker, a white dot with a handwritten I I .  The memory was not
vague, it was as clear to him as the shining plate, which was new to
him.  A gift?

Or had she seen it and bought it?  Did Ethel hate Leon?  Was it
beautiful or was it ugly?  He voted for beauty, because it existed,
because he could see it, because he could imagine a device fine enough
to measure the depth of the moist crescents left by the slices of apple
as his mother and his father and his brother took their snack from the
plate.

Frank watched his parents and his brother eat their apples.  Was it a
miracle, or was it repulsive?

"Life's a bitch," said Lowell.

"Where do you get your philosophy, from reading T-shirts?" said Leon.

"Fuck you," said Lowell.

"Leon, Lowell," said Ethel, flatly.

"My family is dead," said Frank.  "They were killed in a plane crash. If
anyone in this room raises his or her voice, I am going to leave, and I
will never come back, and you will never see me again.

"Frank," said his father.

"I'm going to San Diego," said Frank.  "And I want to go alone.

I want to be alone.  I'm going to the train station.  I'm going to take
the train."

He ran out the door, and in the building's lobby he called for a cab. He
bought a first-class ticket at the station, and he was in his seat with
a few minutes to spare.

As the train passed slowly through the rail yards, Frank concentrated on
the sounds of the wheels, the orchestra of couplers and springs pushing
and pulling without rhythm, and trying to make sense of the industrial
concerto, he found a simple pattern, a few clicks within the heaving
frame of the car, but another set of noises intruded on the music, and
in desperation, to have something of his own, something private that
belonged to no one else, he tried again to separate the sounds.  Easier
to put smoke in a cage than recreate the shattered harmonies, but he let
his mind absorb every vibration, ,and then, with relief, inside the roar
he found something that was constant, determined, and promised at any
moment that the train would surprise him, make him suddenly happy as it
went at full speed, in a rush that would be the train's pleasure in
itself.

They were beside a freeway, and the slowest lane of traffic was still
faster, though only by a little, than the train.  So he was going, how
fast?  Thirty miles an hour?  It was a doubling that he wanted, and he
felt himself urging the train ahead.  He thought he could hear a change
in the ratchet, a promise that the sounds that Frank could separate into
units would soon blur into an indistinct hum that would disappear as the
comforting blend of all the little movements of the railroad car
gathered together in the one great movement of going forward to San
Diego, but nothing changed.  However fast it would go, he knew it could
never go as fast as he wanted, as fast as a jet plane.

Now it was almost six.  The day had been filled with people.

The airline had discouraged the next of kin from coming to San Diego,
the bodies were going to be returned to Los Angeles as they were found,
but a few wanted to go.  The flight was short, thirty minutes, but Frank
pleaded fear of flying.

"We've got a bus," said Bettina Welch.  "You don't have to take the
tratrain.  The bus is comfortable, and we'll be taking it straight to the
hotel."

"Thank you," said Frank, "but I just don't want to .  .  .,` He let the
sentence trail off.  He meant her to understand that he could not
imagine himself on the same kind of plane as his wife had flown, with
engines and flaps and retracting wheels making the same kinds of noises
she had heard, looking wistfully as she must have out the window at the
same coastline.  He wanted Bettina to think he was too uncerta,in now,
not just grieving, but also unhappy, and if he could surround himself
with the grace of unconditional mourning, he would be safe, protected by
the purity of the emotion.  Unhappiness was an older feeling, his humor
before the plane had crashed, and this feeling was not being eclipsed by
the mourning, and so' because there was something of himself lost in
space between these two galaxies, he was alone, and he was scared.  If
pure grief was selfless, his unhappiness was too clearly to him a kind
of petulance.

In grief he would be with his family, in spirit, in feeling.  In grief
he would be tender.  In grief he would be holding his daughter's hand.
In grief he would be begging forgiveness from his wife, and she would
forgive him.  In grief he would love his brother like a brother.  In
grief he would be a good son.  In unhappiness he thought of himself.  In
unhappiness he thought of his mistress.  In unhappiness he thought about
money.  In unhappiness he tasted the food he was eating.  In unhappiness
he looked at women.  In the gap between unhappiness and grief, the space
in which there was only his consciousness of the difference between the
grief and the unhappiness, he was chilled by his solitude in the
freezing universe, and it was this enormous fear that kept him from
flying on a plane.

"We'll reimburse you, of course," she said.

"Thank you.  It's not very expensive."

"We'll buy your brother's ticket too," she said.

He could have said that Lowell was driving, but he didn't want her to
give him any more advice.  She would tell Frank to stay with his
brother.

"Thank you," he said, and that was all she seemed to want from him, a
formal closing.

The freeway passed over the train, and as the train came to the concrete
pylons of the road, the bridge rose and curved up and over the rails,
and there was a feeling of disaster averted to triumph in the sudden
uplift of the bridge, a heavy ribbon in the wind, as though it were not
set in steel and hardened sand, but that the bridge had made a decision,
was in fact a monument to pure decision, a monument commemorating that
moment, the act and its monument, to save the train.

Frank recoiled from this, this thinking of crashes.

Through his reflection in the window, he saw the conductor come into the
car.  When Frank turned to hand him his ticket, he saw a strip of black
cloth pinned to the conductor's arm.  Another conductor came into the
train, and he wore the same band.  Neither of them smiled.  Now he felt
an urge to tell them that they wore the black for his wife and daughter,
and that it mattered to him, that it pulled him closer to that grief for
which he felt such longing, and that seemed to him to stand like his
wife, forever unattainable to him on the better side of a nver.

No, he would say nothing to them.  If the conductors had been asked to
wear black, he didn't want to know that they felt no solidarity with his
loss, and if they had asked to wear the black, because.  .  .  why?  he
wondered now.  They must be wearing black because the crash was, what,
part of the transportation system?  It made no sense.  This is not a
nation of such deeply linked sympathies.  Planes crash often.  The
country never cries.  Perhaps a train official had been killed on the
plane, or else one of them had lost someone.  Or had Frank missed some
news, and was the president dead?  If there had been an assassination,
the news of the plane crash would recede to the back pages.  Frank felt,
in his unhappiness again, something like annoyance, that the world would
turn its eye from his misery.  No, the president was not dead.  Everyone
in the train would have a loud opinion if the president were dead.
Someone always plays a radio when a president is dead.  It must be the
crash, Frank decided, someone here is connected to the plane in some
way, maybe not one of the conductors, maybe an engineer, or the
bartender, but someone wanted to share someone else's loss.  He gave
himself over to the possibility of tears.  Nothing.  He shook his head
in dismay with himself because he could not cry.  Now he was feeling
sorry for his inability to feel sorry, and he blew a rush of air through
his nose, it was the start of a laugh.  He had not yet buried his wife
and daughter, and already he was coming back to himself.  This would be
how he passed from mourning to amnesia; the sound of his laughter would
cover the pain.  He thought, So this is how we come to accept.  We
forget.  He would acquit himself of all charges against his hateful
self, he would absolve Frank Gale of the crime of a cold heart.  He
would plead to the jury of the peers of his inner realm that Frank Gale
was only being Frank Gale, a crime for which they, as Frank's peers,
should have no trouble understanding, and if they looked into their own
hearts, moderated by the juries of their own selves, they would know
that Frank really did feel the loss of his family, really did miss them.

The conductor came through the car, calling out, "Fullerton, next stop
Fullerton." Frank had lived in Los Angeles his whole life, but how much
of the city did he really know?  Was Fullerton named ,J' for Fuller, or
was it named for Fullerton, or was it named by some Iowan who bought the
land, and built the town, and named it for his home in Iowa?  At least
he knew Culver City, a little.  He'd once fucked a woman in Culver City.
Why was he thinking of her?  Culver City, the drive through in the
morning.  And the woman, yes, of course.  He had met her on an airplane.
He smiled, the circuits of his associations!  Silly how they do that,
charming.

The train stopped at Fullerton.  It was an insipid thought, something to
say to his brother, a way to keep Lowell's sympathy high.

It's an ugly city, he thought, a stain, an ashtray.  Well, that's a
tired idea too.

What was Fullerton?  Frank wanted to know.  He thought of getting off
the train, finding a taxi, and asking for a tour of Fullerton.

Their father could have been wealthy.  Lowell would make them wealthy
because he did not hate the world.  Their father used to tell them that
a good developer was an explorer, and his car was his ship, and the
roads were oceans and rivers, and he sailed around this world looking
for rich harbors, those fabulous intersections where people would want
to shop and eat and set up their businesses, places where people would
want to live.  But it was as though someone had told him this once, when
he was young, and it was a lesson he repeated but never seemed to have
learned, or if he learned it, there was another lesson that he must have
ignored, the lesson of exploitation, of enrichment, the lesson of
conquest.  While Frank imitated his father, and his fears, his hollow
pretensions to an aristocratic equilibrium borrowed probably from
magazine advertisements for scotch whisky, Lowell was his mother's son,
and from her he inherited an impatience with his father, and her
clarity.

The train left Fullerton, and the track went through a neighborhood of
small houses before finding its way past factories.

Behind him Frank heard an accordion playing Chopin's Funeral March.  He
turned around.  The conductor with the black armband walked down the
aisle in front of four men and one woman, dressed in black, with black
armbands, holding a four-foot-long pine coffin over their heads.  One of
the men was tall-Frank thought he might have been six-and-a-half
feet-and he had to bend to keep the coffin level.  There was something
in the coffin'.  but not a hoc]v: th I v could never have held a body
overhead so easily.  At the end of the parade was the second conductor,
playing a small electric keyboard on a guitar strap around his neck.

Across the aisle from Frank a man shouted, "No, no!" It was a cry of
joyful disbelief.  He stood up and shook a finger at the conductor, and
said, "Dave, Dave, you didn't.  Don't tell me.  Dave, do not tell me."

The funeral procession stopped beside Frank.  The woman rested the
coffin on the edge of Frank's seat.  She winked at him.  "This'll just
take a minute."

"What's in the coffin?" asked the man.

"Dearly beloved," began the conductor.

"That's for weddings, you dork," said the woman.

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," said the conductor.

"What's in the casket?" asked the man.

"Just open it, you dingleberry," said the woman.  She turned to Frank.
"Right?  Doesn't everybody want to know what's in the coffin?"

Frank nodded.

The excited man across the aisle said, "You guys.  You guys.

The pallbearers settled the casket onto the floor and lifted the top.
Inside was a birthday cake in the form of a grave, with flowers and a
headstone, and the inscription, in red jelly: HERE LIES THE YOUTH OF
CHEIS BENTINE 1953-1993 Set around the cake on a bed of napkins; paper
plates, and stacks of plastic cups, were a hundred miniature I I bottles
of vodka.

"Christopher Bentine," said the conductor, on this, the occasion of your
fortieth birthday, your friends and fellow passengers would like to
extend our deepest heartfelt sympathies on the loss of your beloved
Youth." The conductor with the electric keyboard held one note, and the
pallbearers hummed together, found a note, and then sang "Happy
Birthday" in a minor key.

Frank felt that everyone in the car had been embarrassed by the
procession, but at the same time were thrilled to have seen it, to have
had something in their day that would make a story, something to tell
when they got to wherever they were going, and spent the night with
whomever they were seeing, and that the spectacle of the party did not
throw them back into the role of audience, that somehow they were also
in the party too, that they were lucky, that they were I' privileged.
And Frank saw that no one was singing along with the group, because the
singers were good, they had the authority that comes from practice and
devotion and the love of making music together.  They had rehearsed the
song, and the melody they had chosen, or that had been chosen by the
conductor with the keyboard, was close enough to the tune everyone knew
that to sing the variation, in a difficult five-part harmony, without
being dragged back to dullness by the familiarity of the major key, was
something to respect.

The mood in the car changed, and as the singers finished the ditty,
everyone could hear the sound of the train, which reminded them, even in
a way that the more cynical among them (Frank) would call sentimental
and common, of the things that trains in the night are supposed to mean,
of all the romances, of leavings and arrivings, of moments that are
important.  Now even silly Chris Bentine was quiet, staring at the
sugar-frosted gravestone, at 1953-1993, at the awful brevity of a life
cut off at forty.  His face lost all of its stupid vigor, and the
pallbearers and conductors stopped smiling at him.

Frank saw in Chris Bentine the reflection of a man haunting his own
life, suddenly aware that his youth really was over, that if he lived
another forty years, he would be an old man, and that if he died even in
thirty years, no one would say he had died young.  He had become his own
ghost.

Something had been violated.  Chris Bentine's friends should never have
played with him like this.  For that moment, before Chris Bentine sliced
the gravestone in half and licked the knife and had his picture taken by
the woman, and everyone in the railroad car applauded, and the
pallbearers handed out the miniature bottles of vodka to all the
passengers, Frank was not alone in his complicated stew of feelings, he
was not so alone in an icy universe in which everyone is born alone and
dies alone.  He had company.

The woman handed him the vodka and the plastic cup and a piece of the
cake on a paper plate.  He got the edge of 9 and allof3.

He thought of what his mother had asked him: "What can anyone say?" They
could say that chocolate and vodka were a good combination.  The cake
was heavy, and he needed to drink something to clear his mouth, and all
he had was the vodka.  He could have told his mother that anyone could
say, "I want to tear my hair out" or "Now I know there is no God" or "I
want revenge, I want blood for blood."

Blood for blood.  Even when they say it, they don't mean it, thought
Frank.  He rested his head against the window; the glass was cold, and
the vibration was unpleasant, not like on a plane, where all the pieces
fit together and the window's hum is synchronous with the floor, until
the floor drops away and the window shatters and you're strapped to a
seat that's sucked backward past the tail and pieces of the plane are
burning and falling around you and the air is cold and thin and you have
enough clarity to know that in a few seconds, thirty-two feet per second
per second, silence.  And if a baby was sleeping in your lap, and you
lost it in the explosion?

What happens in a train wreck?  Frank thought of the awful job of
lifting the trains from the side of the tracks, setting the tracks
right; the work seems endless and impossible, railroad cars on their
sides, sliding down a wet hill, maybe into a swollen river.  And the
trains don't have to move fast to fall off the bed, just a little too
fast, or else for no reason over the rusted legs of a badly aged bridge.

No warning.  But the impact?  So many shredding metal panels, so many
windows out of which a person could fall, and then the train could roll
over you while you're half out a window, that would hurt, squeeze you
like a heel on a worm.  There would be no time to say ouch.  The slow
rolling, not like a plane, how many seconds and you're dead?  Thirty-two
feet per second per second.  What is the law of motion that applies to a
Pullman car rolling down the embankment?  And the way all trains smell
vaguely of cigarettes and farts, and the toilet tanks, burst, that
smell, and wet sand, and oil.

To be in charge of the rescue, what a job, thought Frank.  So many facts
and so many decisions, but one clear law: Clean it up, get the trains
running again.  That man does not have to think.  Everything he has to
do is obvious.

The pallbearers carried the open casket down the aisle, collecting the
plastic cups, the vodka bottles, and the paper plates and plastic forks.
Chris Bentine sat on the armrest and braced himself with one foot on the
seat across the aisle.  People had to step over his leg to get down the
car, but he didn't move.  Il' Chris Bentine had no face.  Almost no one
in the car had a face.

What kind of name was Bentine, and when did the first Bentine come to
America, and was that progenitor of the American Bentines so
aggressively without distinction?  Chris Bentine was forty, but he must
have been without a face for fifteen years; Frank recognized in him a
beer drinker from college, someone neither handsome enough, nor athletic
nor rich enough, to get into a fraternity, but someone who still was
friendly enough to run with a crowd of other noisy boys.  And what was
this facelessness?  There was nothing to read in his eyes.  But a lot of
them were married.  Somewhere along the way they had met a woman who was
not repulsed into sickness, into seizures, weeks of crippling dry
heaves, by the idea of committing what remained of their only chance at
life to these men with no faces.  And they don't live long.  They die at
sixty.  You don't see a lot of old men with no faces in California.

"Rack race!" yelled Chris Bentine.

"Rack race!" yelled the pallbearers, together.

"Not a rack race," said the conductor.

The woman pallbearer unpinned a brooch from her shirt and took off her
pearl necklace.  "Would you hold this?" she asked Frank.

"Where are you going?" asked Frank.

"I guess you've never taken this train," she said.

"Once."

"But you've never taken the Friday afternoon five-fifty."

"No."

"This is the best party in California."

"Is it like this every Friday?"

"We don't always have a funeral."

She ran to the back of the car and joined everyone else from the
birthday party.  Chris Bentine climbed on a seat and pulled himself into
the luggage rack.  The woman did the same on the other side of the
aisle.  The conductor raised his hand.

Frank looked back and tried to read the faces of the passengers.

They were all regulars, he was sure of that.  Some hid from the
embarrassment of this display of the small scale of the human
imagination by burying themselves in newspapers and horror novels.  A
few stared at their reflections in the window, wearing earphones,
listening to music.  Others looked back to the start of the race, and
many of them, thought Frank, were jealous of the racers, they regretted
their own poor social skills, their inability to carouse with a happy
group.

The conductor dropped his arm, and the race began.  Not too many people
were traveling with suitcases; the biggest obstacles were cardboard
boxes sealed with tape, but the racers had to pull themselves over small
dividers every five feet.  Frank was surprised that Chris Bentine was
keeping up with the woman, since her small size should have favored her.
She had a better reach than Bentine, and she took advantage of the edge
of the rail, so that she pushed off against her outside arm, her left,
when it was by her waist, and then with her right hand she grabbed the
next divider.  Bentine had a less developed system, but a stronger grip
with his feet.  He pressed his inside knee, his left, into the junction
of the wall and the rack, then brought his other foot over the next
divider.  His hands were bent under his chest, the effect was of a
salamander crawling around the roots of a tree.  By the middle of the
car the passengers over whose heads the racers had not yet passed
reached up and took down their bags and coats, and the rest of the way
was clear.  The woman was ahead.  The pallbearers were keeping pace with
the racers and urged them on, clapping their hands and pounding the
luggage rack before them.  There were still some passengers who refused
to follow the race.  Frank, holding the brooch and the pearl necklace,
stood up as the woman came closer.  He took down his soft suitcase and
put it on the seat.  There was nothing in front of her now except for
one flat cardboard box, which probably held a framed poster.

Frank looked for the owner, but no one seemed worried about it, and he
decided not to move it, since the woman, who was now gaining, with a
half-length on Chris Bentine, would, at worst, put a hand on a corner of
the box, but did not let all of her weight attack the middle.

Bentine called out to her, "Let me win, it's my birthday!"

"No discounts for senior citizens, Chris Bentine!" she cried in return.
She was over the flat box, and Frank surprised himself with a little
smile when she avoided any contact with it.  She was good.

She deserved to win.  She won.

Bentine stopped when she touched the far end.  He was two lengths
behind.

"Vodka!  I need vodka!" he said, pretending to be a thirsty man in a
pitiless desert.

The train stopped in Del Mar for a minute, and then left the ocean.
There were lights on the right side; San Diegoego was near.  He put the
notebook away.  Around him, everyone was getting ready for the end of
the line.  The party was over now, and people were nodding their
good-byes to Chris Bentine as they closed their briefcases or folded up
their newspapers.  The conductors went down the car, but they were
already thinking about their drinks or their dinners, or the next trip,
and by their abstract concentration on a duty too involved for the
passengers to understand, they were like dead men, and no one talked to
them, or even smiled.

Now the train descended from the canyon south of La Jolla, and there was
Mission Bay.  It was almost pretty.  It had the elements of romance;
lights reflected in water, water, the silhouettes of masts and riggings,
but Frank was overcome with his feeling of hatred for San Diego, which
always seemed to him a stupid city.  Lowell liked it because it was an
easy place to sell records; the navy was here and the sailors bought
music, compact discs and lots of recorded tapes.  And there were other
homosexuals in San Diego, and in Del Mar, and up the coast in La Jolla.
What did Lowell do at night?

He never talked about sex with Lowell.  His brother used to have
boyfriends, but in the last few years, though he gave money and some
time to heln n I nnlp with 41flc 1:.  -I-rarely talked of the men in his
life.  Frank felt sad for him now, and realized that Lowell was
surrounded by death these days, and with so much misery, so many
funerals, so many eulogies, so much rage, he still had the grace to shed
tears for his sister-in-law, and his niece, and not just for himself. My
brother is a better man than I am, thought Frank.

The train passed the airport.  If there were signs of special activity
because of the crash, he could not read them.

And then downtown, and then the station.  Chris Bentine and the marines
were already at the door.

veryone followed an indistinct line, trusting those among them who knew
where they were going.  It was typical of San Diego not to have arrows
or signs pointing the way to the station, or even to name the station,
not to have a sign above the station that said, simply, "San Diego."

I am in a foul mood, thought Frank, and I should be careful now.

And then there were no signs in the station, and no one to answer
questions at the information booth.  He was tired of his dull angers.

He went out the wrong door looking for a cab and then had to pass
through the station again and out another door.  On this second time
through he wanted to stay inside, to hide in public, as he had hidden in
full view at the airport, before he had been told of his wife's and
daughter's deaths.  He would stay here with the obese and the ancient
and never leave the station, and cause no trouble, and become a witness.
He would ask no questions, beg for no money.  He would start no
conversation.  He would make no friends of the men and women who
cleaned.  He would spend only as much money as he needed to eat small
meals.  He would sleep on the benches, until rousted by policemen with
shiny hair, and when they threw him out at night, to share the misery of
the insane and the out-of-work, he would rent a small room in a motel
that he would walk to, where he could always have a change of clothing.
He would stay here forever, until he died.  How long would it take to
die this way, if he gave himself over to a destiny of stubborn silence,
day after day after day after day after day alter day after day after
day after day after day, asking only for a cup of coflee and a tuna
sandwich, grilled, with a slice of cheese?  No one would find him.  He
could tell his lawyer to send him money.  If his lawyer said no, he
would find someone who would indulge him this, in conspiracy.  He could
set up some kind of complicated system of bank accounts, through which
he could draw funds without anyone knowing where he was living.  Money
from Los Angeles would be wired to an account in .  .  .  where?  .  . .
somewhere, even Switzerland, and then wired back to.  .  .  to.  .  . to
a bank in Tijuana, and he could cross the border once a month to get
enough cash.  If he had an account in Tijuana, he would not have to give
his Social Security number.  That was the way to stay hidden in America,
never to give his Social Security number to anyone.  And what would this
scheme give him?

He would be able to live in suspension in the San Diego train station,
and there, perhaps, learn something about something.  He didn't know
what, but whatever it was, he felt that the reason for this impulse to
make such an arbitrary hermitage would be, over time, revealed to him.
He felt this as a calling, almost as something filled with light, to
stay inside the San Diego train station until he died, or until he knew
for certain that he had learned something important.

He would pay attention to the life of the station.  If he concentrated
on the station's life, he would be closer to God, he thought.

Outside, three black cabdrivers asked for his business.  Again, this was
so typical of San Diego; there was no organization to the line.  The
drivers were Africans or Jamaicans, he couldn't tell.  What difference
did it make?  None.

One of them touched his arm, having won Frank in some kind of
competition that was over quickly.  Frank went with him to a car without
official emblems, and for a second worried that he was going to be
murdered, but he got into the car anyway, thinking to himself, Maybe
he'll kill me.

He was asked where he was going.

"I want to go to where the plane crashed," he said.  He wasn't sure
until he said it that this was what would come out', but it was the
truth.

"Cohassett Street," said the cabdriver.  "But they got that closed off.
They won't let anyone near for a mile."

"My wife and my daughter were on the plane."

The driver looked at him in the rearview mirror; Frank supposed he was
looking in his eyes to see if this was true.  Frank turned his eyes
away, in case the driver would see something else in him, but that was
also, he knew, some fear of what he imagined was a black man's superior
wisdom, that the man would see the grief, and also all the other things,
the weakness, all the bad reasons for doing everything he did, and then
the fear of losing his privileges.

"There's nothing that you'll be able to see over there now-why don't you
go to where all the people in the neighborhood who had their houses
burned are?  There's a school near the crash, and they have it set up
for helping the people." So the man believed him.

"I want to go to the crash.  I want to see it for myself."

The driver nodded, and then they were on the freeway, following the
signs to the Mexican border.

A few minutes of silence.  There was the harbor, and battleships and an
aircraft carrier.  He wondered what it was about the species that needed
grief.  There was something so useless and old-fashioned about the grief
he felt now, if this was grief at all, a thin layer of resentment and
then another one of tenderness, and then longing, and then old pictures
that came up to him from childhood, of losing something to a bully, or
picking a fight for no reason with his mother, and slamming the door,
that kind of violent, self-pitying love of loneliness, making a religion
of his loneliness, biting into the windowsill and tasting the dust and
dry paint, and the surprising freshness of the pine underneath, after
all these years, after all these years, and hiding under a desk and
hugging the reluctant dog.

They left the freeway near Coronado and turned east.  He knew the exit,
one of Lowell's new stores was near, in a mall on a parallel road.  It
was a small store, Lowell supplied it with only the most popular disks,
no more than a hundred titles, for impulse buyers with pocket money.
Frank liked the idea and wanted to design the racks that would hold the
titles.  Lowell wanted to buy a modular system from a catalog, but Frank
had insisted on his right to supervise the design.  If the store did
well, Lowell wanted to open more in every mall in Southern California,
and then sell the idea to people who would buy distribution rights for
different territories in the country.  Their mother told them that one
of their cousins, Julia Abarbanel (mother's sister's daughter, middle of
three, about thirty, attractive in that side of the family's sullen
way), had complained about this, that Lowell and Frank were doing
something evil by selling only those records that were popular, by not
supporting more obscure music, that they were fouling the whole idea of
freedom of choice, if the choice offered was only the choice made by
millions of others whose choices were established by a music industry
that wanted to limit the choices to only a few, not to invest in so many
unpopular records, so many dry holes.  Frank and Julia had been best
friends, as cousins, for a long time, since they were children, but then
he and Lowell started making money, and something happened.  The
friendship ended.  Julia became angry about things that shouldn't have
mattered to her.  The color scheme of the stores, gray and blue.  She
was angry with Lowell for not telling the record companies that the
oversized packages in which the compact discs were sold wasted paper.
Lowell had always hated Julia, and it was obvious to Frank why, because
Julia had always favored Frank.  And then Julia turned on Frank. Because
he had come under his brother's shadow.

He could have slept with Julia; one Thanksgiving in Yosemite, the two
families stayed at the park's grand rock-and-timber lodge.

Frank and Julia watched the moonlight on the rocks after dinner.

The pines made their whispering sounds, and the river made its own
noises, and the two cousins were drunk.  It would have been easy.  And
she was pretty then.  He had a fabulous erection; it was maybe the last
great erection of his youth.  It would have been interesting to kiss his
cousin, someone he had known for so long.

She would have been the only woman he kissed whom he had liked as a
friend first, whom he had thought of as a friend for a long time, and
not as someone to get naked with.  There was something disgusting, he
thought, some sign of weakness, when all the women he had slept with had
been women he had wanted to sleep with from the beginning.  But he had
done nothing that night.  Lowell would have done everything.  They would
have laughed about it.  But she didn't like Lowell.  Well, she would
have if they had been under the Yosemite moonlight.  She would have
liked him more than Frank, if she had seen how really wonderful he was,
how brilliant.  She hated him for his faith in reality, in the basic
truths of the marketplace, the laws of supply and demand.  Lowell loved
demand.

He loved how people spent their money on things other than food and
clothing and shelter.  People made a necessity out of music.

They could not live without the music they had heard on the radio.

Now someone was inventing a store where a kid could grab a tape, could
walk in blind from the street, could reach into a bin filled with tapes,
and pull out music that lots of other people already liked.

How could anyone not want to try this kind of business?  It could make
them wealthy, millions and millions.

But now he was going to be wealthy from the plane crash.  Ladies and
Gentlemen of the Jury, the airline's security was so remiss that a fired
worker with a gun .  .  .  et cetera, et cetera.  It would be worth a
few million dollars to him.  Three or four.

"There," said the cabdriver.  There were flre trucks beyond a barricade,
and two policemen waved traffic awav.  A crowd stood at the barricade,
watching the street.  The cabdriver brought the car to one of the
policemen.

"You have to move the car," he said.

"His wife and daughter were on the plane," said the driver.  The
policemen gave Frank a close look.

"My name is Frank Gale," said Frank, in the voice he used to announce
himself to the maitre d', going up at the end just a little, as though
reminding the policeman of his lapse in forgetting the name of someone
he should have recognized.  "I just drove down from Los Angeles," said
Frank.  He wasn't sure why he didn't mention the train.

"I'm sorry."

"Can we go through?" asked Frank.

"We've evacuated half the neighborhood," said the policeman, "and
there's no traffic."

"I'll walk."

"Your wife and daughter."

"Yes."

"We don't know how many people have died," said the policeman.  "The
plane tore into the middle of a block, and took about fifty, maybe
sixty, houses with it, and an apartment house, fifteen units.  There
might be three hundred dead."

These were the bleak facts, the facts that Frank had avoided all day,
the facts that he had turned away from when he was in a room with a
television, the facts that he had not wanted to know.

The policeman continued, "Go to the Red Cross command center at the high
school.  There's people there to take care of you, Frank."

It touched Frank that the policeman had remembered his name.

"That's the best thing for now," said the driver.  "You should be with
other people who have the same suffering now, to comfort your heart."

"I wanted to see the plane," said Frank.

"You can't get into the neighborhood.  And there's really nothing to
see.  Go to the high school." He asked the driver if he knew where it
was.  The driver said that he did.

"I'm really sorry," said the policeman.  The driver turned the car
around.

On the other side of the line, beyond the fire trucks, Frank watched
people walking in the middle of the street, and he thought of block
parties or street fairs, with everyone given freedom to walk wherever
they wanted, on the sidewalk or in the middle of the street, and how
much fun it is just to do that, just to step off the sidewalk as though
the sidewalk is nothing very special, how walking in the middle of a
street, with a crowd, is a way of feeling rich.  Wasn't the entrance to
Disneyland nothing more than a street?  So you could step off the curb
in the middle of the block and no one would punish you.  The city as
playground.  Join the parade!

There was a crowd on his side of the line, and he was aware of them
looking at him, something in the policeman's posture told them that
Frank was in some way important.  Before he was turned back, they would
have wanted him to be someone whose house had been destroyed, someone
whose family had been killed.  And were they disappointed when the car
left?  The people who live in the houses on the border of the crisis
must be jealous of the people who live inside.

"We'll go to the high school now," said the driver.

"No," said Frank.  "Take me around the comer." His flowing tenderness
was dissolved in the heat of a plan.

"Mister Gale," said the driver, "let me take you to the high school."

"No," said Frank.  "Just drive me to the middle of the next block." They
were around the corner from the barricades now, and there was another
barricade at the next intersection.

"Stop," said Frank.

The driver turned around to look at him.  "What are you going to do?"

The meter was now at forty dollars.  Frank took out his wallet,
wondering if the driver would reject the money.  Frank had a fifty and
four twenties.  He gave the driver seventy, and said, "Keep the change."
The driver kept the money.

"I have to see the plane," said Frank.  "I just have to see it, I have
to know."

"Good luck," said the driver, and then he gave the money back to Frank.
"I can't," he said.

The cab went away, leaving him on the sidewalk, and Frank walked up the
path to the nearest house.  He rang the bell and heard a two-bell chime,
high-low, and then he heard someone walking.

A man inside the house said, "Who is it?"

"My name is Frank Gale," said Frank.  "And my family was killed in the
plane crash.  The police have the neighborhood blocked off, but I have
to get through, and I was wondering if I could climb over your back
fence, so I can get to the next street, so I can be inside the police
line."

"And the police won't let you through?"

"No," said Frank, "they want me to go to the high school."

"Dear God.  Haven't they let you through to your house yet?"

It took Frank a second to understand the question.  The man thought that
Frank lived in a house that had been hit.  If Frank went along with
this, it would be easy to make up a story about the confusion of the
police, but he wanted to tell the truth.  "I'm sorry," he said, "but I
don't live in the neighborhood.  My family was on the plane." He felt
odd calling Anna and Madeleine his family; two seemed a small number for
family.  He would have needed two children to have a full family, or
better, three.  More connections.

The door opened.  The man was younger than Frank expected, thirty,
probably, and slim.  A five-year-old boy was at his side, holding on to
the mans belt, and swinging his weight from it.

"You really should go to the high school," said the man, and he studied
Frank before telling him to come into the house.  He introduced himself.
"Dan Burack.  And this is Dennis."

"I know this is crazy," said Frank, "but I don't know what else to do. I
just want to see where they crashed, it makes a difference to me, I need
to see it, to know that it's real."

"It's real.  Dennis was home when it happened."

There was no mention of Burack's wife; Frank supposed she was at the
market.  Maybe with their other child, if they had one.

"He lost a friend.  We lost a few friends.  But friends aren't the same
thing as family."

"If you love people, what's the difference?" asked Frank, but he was
sure there was a difference.

"Come on through," said Burack.  It was a comfortable and
undistinguished house.  Frank would not have noticed it, but Anna always
made fun of wall-to-wall carpets in a living room; she thought that
there was something too suburban about them, that a wood floor with even
a mediocre rug, something with an uncomplicated design, was better than
carpet.  Frank thought that above all reasons, it was for just this kind
of distinction that he needed her, because her eyes were set on the
world, and his were so clouded with his own shit.  Or did he hate her
because this kind of distinction left him with a catalog of sins against
which he measured everyone, and without the guidance of his now-dead
wife, would he have halted his affection for Dan Burack because he had a
carpet?

Burack took him to the backyard.  "Can you smell it?" asked Burack.

"Yes," said Frank.  It was there, clearly, the smell of a fire, of
gasoline and wood.

"It's about five blocks to where the plane hit."

"Why do you believe me?" asked Frank.  "How do you know I'm not going to
break into an empty house?"

"Are you?"

"No."

"There you have it."

The back wall was only five feet tall, and the lights were off in the
house beyond it.

"Thank you," said Frank.  He pulled himself over the wall and dropped to
the other side.  There was only a patch of lawn at this far end of the
yard, and then a long swimming pool surrounded by a fence.  Frank
trotted beside the pool, and when he came to the driveway found a lock
inside the gate.  The gate was wood, and about six feet tall.  He
hoisted himself once again, this time bracing himself against the house.
He stood up on the gate.  There was a window just beyond it.  He bent
over to reach the sill, and with a flrm grip on the window he jumped to
the ground, with only a light insult to his ankles.  Now, on the other
side of the police line, all he had to do was follow his nose.

There was a pale half-moon.  .  Cypress trees with dry needles moved in a
light wind, which came with the rumble of the heavy engines of fire
trucks on the next block.  The sound of the trucks passed away, but the
light wind continued.  No matter what the weather, he thought, it would
feel appropriate.  Full moon, no moon, crescent on the wax or wane,
light wind or typhoon, he could have read into any of them a fitting
judgment on his grief, on the universe, on his silly goal to see the
plane.  What did the light wind mean, was it indifference or comfort?
Did the passing fire trucks play a threnody just for him, or even not
just for him, but for everyone?

The sound reminded everyone of what had happened.

When Frank passed the corner of the front of the house, he saw the
barrier from which he had been turned.  He was in the middle of the
block, and he walked to the next corner and then made a right turn up
the empty street.  Ahead to the next block, some fifteen or so houses
away, he saw a knot of people in the light of something large that was
hidden around the corner.  The light shifted, and then he heard the
sound of a crane or bulldozer.  He walked, but then he found it easier
to run.

Men shouted directions and responses, and gears were shifted, and
engines changed pitch, and as he came to the corner, he could smell a
dead fire, water on charcoal making the air damp.  Around the corner he
saw that two houses had burned almost to the ground.

The nearest house was half-destroyed; the wall closest to him was fine,
but the roof was off, and a section of the second story was still
complete.  The fire had been at the next house, and there was nothing
left of it.  The bulldozer was prodding at the rubble while a crew of
workers took it apart more gently with shovels.  Each wore a white mask
that covered his mouth and nose.  There was an ambulance parked across
the street, and a table with a tall steel coffee jug.

Frank walked to the edge of the circle of light.  The ambulance driver
watched, coffee in one hand, a cigarette in the other.  He was about
fifty, with deep creases and dry, freckled skin.  Frank hated him.

He had the look of those Californians, those San Diegans, for whom
boredom and hostility blend together into smug silence.  He flicked his
cigarette with such practiced attention to the ash that it was not
beyond the possibility that this tic was a large piece of the man's
character.

"One of the engines went down here," said the driver.  "The first house
burned and set the second on fire.  And this is three blocks from the
worst of it.  There's bodies in some trees out of the evacuation zone,
but the real bad part is up ahead."

"The plane exploded in the air?" asked Frank.

"Not completely, the engine may have ripped off as it was coming down,
but more than likely it flew off the wing when the plane hit Cohassett.
Have you been over there yet?"

"No," said Frank.

"What a mess."

"Why are they digging here now?" asked Frank.  "Can't this wait until
morning?"

"There's three bodies left in the house.  The guys with the masks got
the masks on because of the smell."

The men with the masks sifted through a layer of drywall, smashed
furniture, and what remained of a second-floor bathroom.

Satisfied that nothing, or rather no one, was in there, they let the
bulldozer pick it up.  When the bulldozer moved the pile to the lawn,
they went at the rubble again.

"Does anything survive the fire?" asked Frank.

"Oh yeah," said the driver.  "The fire doesn't last that long or burn
that hot.  It's not like a car crash.  A car crash is rough.  If the gas
tank is full when it explodes, you can get a concentrated fire, and they
have to go back to dental records to make the I.D.  But with this kind
of fire, usually what kills is the smoke.  The bodies from the plane,
some of them are all fucked up, the ones that fell from high up, people
out of their seats, but the ones that were in seats, or were in the
sections that hit intact, they're broken, but they're not cut up.  The
people on the ground look worse than the ]` people from the plane.  I
just finished a run from Nimitz Street, and that was bad.  There was
this family 2ettine out of a car iu I t wfrpry the plane hit.  The joke
is, they'd just come from the airport.  The tail section skidded down
the street right into the garage as they were getting out of the car."

"How do they know?" asked Frank.

"The little girl across the street saw it happen.  The whole house came
down, there was nothing lefi of it, but it didn't burn.  What a mess.
Pieces of bodies.  " The driver flicked his ash and then repeated his
last words.  "Pieces of bodies." This time he lowered his voice,
because, Frank thought, he was suddenly aware that Frank was probably
not on official business, and that if he was on this side of the
barrier, he was from the neighborhood, and for him this was not an
opportunity to test the strength of his professional detachment.

Frank realized that there was no law compelling him to stay.

He wanted to see if they would uncover the three bodies, but he knew
that there would be others, and better.  He said good-bye to the
ambulance driver.

"Have a good one," said the driver.

He wanted to see the plane.  He wanted to see the dead.  But which dead?
A flight attendant stuck in a tree, or a postman crushed by the tip of a
wing?  As he thought of the dead, he discovered himself grading the
dead, giving them more points if they were passengers, giving them no
credit if they were on the ground.  The passengers were the ones to
blame, of course, but if there was something noble in their deaths,
there was also something stupid and annoying about the deaths of the
people on the ground.  What was noble?  The sudden catastrophe
immediately recognized by everyone on the plane.  But did he mean noble,
why noble?  Because of a better vantage point, higher station.
Elevation.  In the air.  And what was seen from the vantage point?  Why,
life, of course.  And what about life?  Its brevity.  And from this
knowledge of life's brevity, what lesson are we then free to take to
heart?  Why, to act on impulse, to act without fear, the freedom of the
nobility, the freedom of power, of seeing through the collective
futility of the masses.

And what was so insipid about the deaths on the ground?  To be on the
plane was to be part of a bomb, to be the bomb, to be the killer.  And
to be on the ground?  Was to be another stupid innocent victim.  Another
victim of massacre.

And if someone on the plane was sleeping when the plane exploded?  Or is
nobility reserved only for those who see their deaths coming to them?

Yes, only that.

Frank walked back to the street he had come down on, the name stenciled
on the curb, Dana Street.  So he continued along on Dana, parallel to
the main road, the next block.  There were big dump trucks rumbling
along in formation, and overhead there were helicopters searching the
ground with strong lights.  It was impossible not to feel excited by all
of this, and in the excitement, which was the sheer thrill of being a
part of something large, something military, something that was better
than entertainment.  The little run he had given himself had awakened
something in his body, and the numbness of his sorrow, and the boredom
of the train trip, were small now, disappearing.  There was smoke in the
air, and the sounds of a hundred different engines.  People shouted to
each other.  There was purpose to everything around him.  No further
danger could touch anyone inside this zone now, no other planes would
crash, and so everyone was like a surgeon, brilliant with determination
in this operating room that was also a neighborhood.  And if it was like
his neighborhood, it had never really been that, either, it had just
been a place with a lot of houses next to each other, but it hadn't been
a community.  That would change.  Everyone who came back to their houses
would be friendly with their neighbors now, they would treat them with
respect, and if they saw each other in distant parts of the city, they
would wave, stop, chat.  There would be a community here after the
crash.  Frank was happy with his thoughts; they were clear and moved
forward with an agility he had forgotten.

He was having a good time.

He heard himself say, "Madeleine.  Anna," to bring them back.

Dana Street led him to Cohassett, two blocks away.  He thought of the
house destroyed by the engine as a small junior college compared to this
great university, this Harvard of lights and noise ahead of him.  Dana
had been spared, and there were families at home, some of them eating
dinner, others watching television.  The older children were out with
their fathers, and the fathers were talking to each other in their
driveways.

Frank fell in beside a few men and women.  One of the men looked at him
with doubt.  "Are you from here?" he asked.  Frank understood.  The man
didn't recognize him, and knew, didn't guess, that Frank had jumped a
wail somewhere to get past the police, that he was here, to see the
gore.  But Frank held the better card than this mans pseudo-cop pose, no
one could trump him tonight.

"My name is Frank Gale.  My wife and daughter were on the plane."

Behind him he heard a woman say to someone else, "His wife and daughter
were on the plane."

"Dear God," said the block's protector.  He said it with force, and
Frank thought that the man must be a Christian, a true believer.

Frank wanted them to introduce themselves, but no one did.

Maybe they think I'm lying, he thought.  It was odd, all that
sinspicion, the preparation for a fight, or a lynching-This man is not
from here!-or would they have just denounced him to the police: Officer,
arrest this man, we don't know him!  The officer says, Who are you?
Frank says, Frank Gale.  The officer says, So what is that to me?  And
Frank repeats the story of the day, but already the story sounds old to
him, and the policeman, hearing Frank's stale delivery, seeing Frank's
annoyance at being trapped in this story, doubts it, and doubts Frank.
The policeman screams at him, You prey on our sympathy!  And Frank says,
Pray?  And the policeman hits him.  No, says the policeman, you come
here to see what you have no right to see.  And what is that?  asks
Frank.  That is all this death, says the policeman.  This death is our
privilege!  It belongs to the people who live inside the police
barricades.  But those lines were drawn arbitrarily, says Frank.  They
could have been a block farther or closer in each direction, and the
plane hit the neighborhood randomly, did not choose to fall here.  The
policeman hits Frank again.

The neighbors put away their video recorders.  A group of children
chants: It is our luck to have been spared, and if it is our luck, then
we must be deserving!  And Frank asks them, And did my wife and daughter
deserve to die?  And the children chant, It is our luck to have been
spared, and if it is our luck, then we must be deserving!

In this mild reverie the street disappeared for a moment, but the trance
passed, and Frank settled again into his body.

They walked together, like a crowd on its way into a stadium, with the
occasional strangers trading speculations.  Someone, anyone, could have
lost friends in the crash, all those families wiped out, and told Frank
that he had no special claims on anyone's sympathy tonight, but no one
did.  Well, it's a neighborhood, thought Frank, and who really knows
anyone in their neighborhood, except the kids?  And these days, aren't
the kids told not to ride their bikes too far?

They wore T-shirts with the pictures of the famous, or dirty jokes.  A
man wearing a SHff HAPPENS T-shirt carried a small videotape camera.
Frank wanted to ask him if this was the Hi-8 kind, with the improved
resolution that made the tapes almost broadcast quality.  Frank had been
thinking of getting a new camera, but he supposed there was no need for
it now.  There would be no more birthday parties filled with screaming
little girls.

They came to the barrier, and the man who believed in God showed his
driver's license to the policeman standing guard.  Frank saw the
license: The man's name was Tim Westerberg, and his address was 2851
Cohassett.  They were on the 2700 block, and there were no houses
standing from the middle of the block on for the next two blocks, on the
other side of the street, which was oddnumbered.  The policeman stepped
aside.  Frank passed him.  Now he was in the zone of,devastation.  They
turned at the corner, one house away, and saw it all.

There was an engine in the middle of the street, the blades of the fan
six feet long.  Pieces of a wing were on the sidewalk.  There were
suitcases everywhere, spilled from the burst containers.  And the shells
of the houses.  The friendly smell of wet charcoal.  Bad smells, carpets
made of nylon, and pressboard kitchen cabinets cured in formaldehyde had
burned.  Cars had burned, and there was that gasoline smell, and the
paint in garages too, and the stacks of `i bundled newspapers, most of
which had not burned, and were now soaked from the spray of flre trucks.
And the smell of the airplane's burned fuel, heavier than gasoline
smells, or was it broader?  All those smells, layered like a rotting
club sandwich (or pastry?  a pastry).  It was an exciting smell.  Yes,
and wasn't part of the thrill the knowledge that each breath carried
with it a little lung damage?

Frank had heard of the sweet smell of decaying bodies, or worse, a
disgusting smell, from the exploding intestines, the rot of meat eaters.
He looked for that smell here, but the bodies were only thirty hours
old, and the weather had been cool.

The circling helicopters threw their searchlights on the ground.

Two trucks from the county animal shelter, and men and women, Mexicans
and blacks.  They carried baited traps, cages with doors that dropped
down.  A few cats had already been picked up.  A woman from the
neighborhood quarreled with one of the women from the shelter.  Frank
heard her wail, "Every day is Auschwitz for the animals."

They came to the end of the block, and another police barricade, yellow
tape strung between Stop signs on opposite corners, with a warning not
to cross the line.  There was a water-filled crater in the middle of the
street.  One of the neighborhood experts explained.

"He must have been alive, because you can see that he was trying to set
the plane down in the middle of the street, but his wing hit the ground,
and the plane spun over to the left, here, and then cartwheeled along
the block."

Someone else said, "He could have already been dead."

"No," said the first man, "because he was lined up with the street."

"That's just chance," said someone else.

"Well, I would prefer to see some heroics in this," said the first man.
"It gives me comfort.  Is that all right?  Does anybody object to my
wanting something positive in all of this?  One thing?  Is that too much
to ask for?"

"But why?" asked a woman.  "What difference does it make?

They're all dead."

Steam rose from the burned houses, where the helicopters had dumped
water the night before.  Large lights on tall cranes were set around the
block.  There were few shadows inside the light.

Two blocks is really a small area, thought Frank.  When you take the
houses away, what do you have?  The area of a football field.  You can
build thirty houses on a football field.  We live in such small rooms.
Fifty feet from the front of the house to the back door is generous.  He
thought of his parents' house in Bel Air.  But that was twenty thousand
square feet.  These houses were probably two thousand square feet.  Yes,
his parents had a large house.  Even Julia Abarbanel liked it.  The
Abarbanels were just far enough outside the Gale orbit not to feel so
threatened by the move to the condominium on Wilshire.  Julia's father
owned a printing business.

They made most of their money printing annual reports for big companies.
How large was their house?  Frank wondered.  Eight thousand square feet?
It was something like that.  And they were temple Jews.  He was the
president of his synagogue.  Her father was an angry man with a good
sense of humor, and because he dressed neatly and walked quickly, with
the happy look of a man delighted by the attention paid him in the
performance of his responsibilities, he was often mistaken, by Jews,
when on vacation, as a doctor.

Julia's sour contentiousness, her tendency to quarrel, was a misreading
of her father's wit.  He was a bore about Israel, and naturally she took
the Palestinian side, but without any effort.  What she knew of their
issues she had learned from newspapers and television; she was not full
of facts.  And for this her father seemed to hate her a little, that she
could not muster an argument worthy of his intelligence.  The Abarbanels
and the Gales shared Passover seders a few times, and at the last one
they had held in Bel Air, as conversation wafted into the usual mess of
gossip and movie reviews, Julia's father banged his spoon on the table,
to remind everyone that this was not a family reunion but a religious
service.  Maybe I am praising him too much, thought Frank.  Was he
really so spiritual, or did he just like to drag everyone into a wallow
of tribal self-congratulation?

Maybe Julia was sour because she had seen through her father's
pretensions, including his charade as cardiologist, and hated him, and
her mother, his aunt, for denying her, as a child, even the strength to
make a strong enough character so that her parents' flaws would not
remind her so terribly of her own failings, so that she could make of
herself something in the world, which she had not yet done, and knew
that she would never.  Aaaah, I should have just fucked her, thought
Frank.

A large van drove past them and stopped before the crater, where the
pavement was shredded by the plane's impact.  The driver got out of the
van and opened the back, and then he leaned against the truck, to smoke
a cigar.

Men in orange jumpsuits, from the Coroner's Office, came across a
backyard and around the rubble of a demolished house.  There were five
teams of them carrying black zippered sacks with bodies inside.  From
where he stood, Frank could not see them load the bodies into the truck.

Someone behind him said, "Yesterday I saw them plucking a
fewoutofatree."

Someone else said, "They say a lot of them aren't in one piece.

A lot of people in the plane got shredded up, and a lot of people on the
ground too, and were burned up."

Someone else said, "A lot of times people just die from smoke
inhalation, but the bodies aren't really all that damaged.  On the
ground.  In the fires in the houses, when the houses, when the plane hit
the houses, and the flres, what caused the fires in some of the houses
wasn't getting hit, it was the fires from the house next door, and that
caught, and then on, to the next house, the whole block, like that.  And
that fire was hot."

Frank wanted to get beyond this final barricade.  He left the group and
walked back up the block into a shadow.  A coroners truck came by,
slowly, and Frank ran beside it, and then behind it, across the street
and into the debris of the first burned house on the block.  The damp
charcoal squeaked under his feet, like new snow.

He was able to walk through five houses, or what had been five houses.
Nobody stopped him, nobody saw him.  I'm invisible, he thought.  He
kicked a pile of bricks, and saw a metal bed frame.

He walked on, and passed a vinyl cylinder, someones record collection,
fused by thethe heat.  Rooms are so small, he thought, houses are really so
small, compared to the size of the world.  He picked up a soup ladle and
then put it down, having learned nothing from it.

I miss them.  Right now I miss them.  I have no one to share this with.
He watched himself have this feeling, and wanted to banish the watcher,
just to be unhappy about it all, without knowing that he was unhappy.

A luggage container, resting on its top, was just behind the base of a
fireplace.  This was what was left of the wall of a house; the chimney
was gone, the wall was gone, the second floor was gone, but here was the
fireplace, in all its annoying resilience.  A thinwalled metal luggage
container lay next to it, upside down, the cargo spilled out in a
horrifying parody of cornucopia.  And here was another pile of suitcases
in front of him.  Nothing had shaken the luggage tags off.  Someone
would pick them up soon, and then one day, in a week, two weeks, the
airline would call the relatives of the dead, and the suitcases would be
returned to them.  Someone would have to unpack each bag, each bathing
suit, each pair of sandals, each silly T-shirt, each tube of suntan
lotion.  Maybe I'll just give them to the Salvation Army without opening
anything up.

Closer to the container, he saw his black suitcase on top of Anna's.

He stepped on a sports bag made of rip-resistant nylon, bending a tennis
racket.  He threw aside a makeup case in the way, and tugged at the
handle to his bag.  There was his name!  And below his bag, there was
Anna's, with a piece of red yarn she tied to the handle, to make it
easier to find.  It was like seeing someone famous; he was almost
dissolved by the excitement, the shock.

He pulled the suitcases out of the container and threw them on the
ground.  They were in perfect shape, there was no sign of damage.

He smelled them.  They didn't even have the aroma of smoke and kerosene.

He opened Anna's bag, and when he did, he was caught in the light from a
helicopter a few hundred feet above him.  At the same time, a National
Guardsman called out to him, and Frank turned I "`l I I ' and saw that
he was in the man's gun sights.  He was told to put his hands up, and he
did.

"My name is Frank Gale," he said.  "My wife and daughter were on the
plane.  I just found her suitcase.  Isn't that incredible?  I can't
believe it." He raised his hands slowly.  He was told to walk forward.

Two police cars came down the block.

"Really," said Frank.  "They were on the plane.  I came down to.  .  .`,
But Frank couldn't finish his sentence.  Why did he come down here?  he
wondered.  To find their bodies.  Could he say that?

Or just to see.  Wasn't that enough-could he be arrested for wanting to
see?  He was told to put his hands on the police car, and when he did,
they were pulled behind his back, and then a hard plastic band was
pulled tight around his wrists.  He was pushed against the warm hood of
the police car.  The engine was running.  He had never listened to a car
so closely.

e was handcuffed by a black policeman who shoved him into the back of a
police car.  He knew there would be no trouble once he got to the
station; his first call would be to Lowell, who would call the airline,
and Frank would be released before the morning.

He was afraid of having his picture taken with a number across his
chest.  Now he would have an arrest record.  What would be the charge?
They would accuse him of looting, even though his hands were clean of
any of the soot that covered anything that might have been worth taking,
if anything worth taking had not been burned, or soaked with water and
ashes.

He did not want to tell the cop that his wife and daughter had been on
the plane.  He felt bad that already he had won so much sympathy for
this, that he had earned interest on the deposit of their lives.  In the
burned-over houses he thought of the pain of everyone who had died,
everyone who had heard the engines falling so quickly and so closely,
who thought, This is for me, and then thought, No.

When you see it coming, is there any time to say to yourself, calmly,
"So this is it"?  And then the plane hit, broke up, all those pieces,
this enormous pomegranate bursting with human seeds and suitcases and
first-class seats with their reclining backs and the videotape machines
for the in-flight movie and hundreds of miniature vodka bottles and
fiery jet fuel and wall modules and bulkheads, and killed them.  How odd
for a ball of fire to suck all the air from where you live, and then
burn it all.  He asked the cop, "What's the worst way to die?"

The cop looked at him in the rearview mirror.  "Burning to death."

"I used to be afraid of drowning.  But I guess ,,that's kind of a
psychological thing, the great mother, the ocean.  As usual, his voice
rose almost to form a question, to invite the cop to join the party of
his view of things.

"I wouldn't know.  I don't cover the harbor."

"But people drown in swimming pools."

"Very few.  Hot tubs sometimes, but usually they pass out from drugs and
alcohol, and have a heart attack after soaking in the hot water for
hours."

"You've seen that?"

"It happens.  Not so much anymore.  People know the dangers."

This was another cheap discussion, and Frank stopped it.  What had he
meant to say?  What did he want to know from this policeman, the second
black man to drive him tonight?

At the police station he was taken to a room where he was fingerprinted,
and then his picture was taken, full face, and profile.

Then he called Lowell, who came to the station and posted his bail.

Lowell tried to get them to drop the charges, but now that Frank had
been arrested, only a judge could do that.

"My brother just went through the worst experience of his life," said
Lowell.  And the dead?  Lowell posted the ,bail, ten thousand dollars,
and Frank was free.

Outside the police station, Lowell smacked Frank on the arm, an old
gesture.  "Let's go home."

"No," said Frank.  "I want to go to the hotel."

"Which hotel?"

"Whichever hotel the airline has, the hotel they're putting the
survivors in.

"Why?"

"Because I want to be with all the other families.  I need to be."

"No, you need to be in my house, in your bedroom in my house.

I'm your family.  Not the others."

"But I need to know what's going on."

"Frank, please.  Come home with me."

"No, Lowell.  I want to go to the hotel.  I have to find Bettina Welch.
She may have more information."

"Listen to me.  I don't know if you can hear me, but listen to me.
You've gone through a terrible trauma.  You can't be left alone.

I have to be with you.  No one expects you to behave in any way other
than the way you're behaving now."

"Which is what?"

"I don't want to get into this."

"Into what?"

"You shouldn't have taken the train.  You should have driven down with
me.  You shouldn't have gone to the crash site.  You should have been
with me, or with Mom and Dad."

"But I had to see the crash site.  And I had to take the train alone.  I
had to be alone for a little while.  And now I want you to take me to
the hotel."

"Okay," said Lowell, without enthusiasm.  Frank felt the pointlessness
of checking into a hotel at one in the morning; no one would be awake to
take care of him, but at breakfast he could find Bettina.  What would he
ask her?  Anything.

In the car Lowell called a number that the airline had given him.  The
Flight 221 Hot Line.  A man answered.  Lowell told him who he was, who
he was related to, and the man told them to go to a Marriott, near the
airport.

When they got there, Bettina Welch was in a small conference room with a
hand-lettered posterboard sign on the door that said OPERATIONS CENTER.

"Frank, oh Frank," she said.  "What were you thinking?" Of all the
things she might have said, this seemed to be the most perfect, the best
expression of the corporation's union with her.  What else could she
have said?  It was reprimand but not condemnation.  To assume friendship
and still be impersonal!

"I just wanted to .  .  .`, His voice trailed off.

"Of course, who wouldn't?"

Lowell put a hand on Frank's shoulder.  "Okay, Frank, I'm going home.
I'll be back in the morning."

"Sure," said Frank.  But he didn't care about Lowell coming back.  What
difference would it make?  He was tired of everyone's compassion.

Two women were at a table with phones.  Did they work for the airline,
or for the hotel?

Lowell walked away.  Bettina Welch called the hotel's front desk.

She identified herself, and then explained that she had another guest
with her.  Then she thanked someone and put the phone down.  "I've got a
nice room for you upstairs.  It has a view of the bay."

"That would be nice," said Frank.

"And anything else you want, remember that the airline is here to help
you.  I'm here to help you.  And if I'm not here, you can speak to Kelly
or Chris." And then she introduced him to the two women at the desk.

"But you won't need them," said Bettina, "because I'm always available."

How many times today had she said all of this?  Two days ago, in Los
Angeles, there had been something fresh about her little speeches; even
though they were written, she had not yet wrapped her mouth around each
word a hundred times.  But now the show had been on the road for too
long.

Someone led Frank to a room on the ninth floor.  He opened the curtain
and turned off the lights, and looked at the bayside traffic in this
city he hated.  How many places in the world are as pointless as this?
How many people are this pointless?  Do I have a point?

he asked himself.  What was lost in the crash?  Who was lost?  What was
lost beside the predictability of a set of lives?  Someone assuring
someone else of a certain amount of time spent in some semblance of
dedication to the other.  We know each other, and we will probably
continue to know each other.  And money, that too, always.  I make
money, and we share it, and so we will have money together.  And now
death, and the threat of no money.  And what else?  Love?  Well, who
wouldn't be thrilled, after such a spectacular, divinely decreed
divorce, by all the possibilities?  I am thrilled, thought Frank, with
what I can now do with my life.  He looked at boats in the harbor, the
lights on top of the masts of the sailboats at the marina next to the
hotel.  I can go to islands now, with women who are betterlooking than
my wife.

It was a bad hotel room.  He wanted to check his answering machine at
home, and when he tried to carry the phone from the side table to the
bed, the cord's short line caught him by surprise, and the phone crashed
to the floor.  When he took a shower, the steam rose to the bathroom's
low ceiling, and after a few minutes the condensation fell back on his
head in large, cold drops.  And the water temperature was hard to
adjust.  He used a hand towel on the floor instead of the shower mat.
The hand towel had no grip, did not absorb, was too thin, too light, and
when he stepped out of the shower, he slipped and had to catch the
toilet for balance.  Then he saw the bath mat, folded on the towel rack.
He dropped the mat on the floor, but it fell on the other towel, and he
had to bend down to move them both, and he didn't like getting his hands
wet with the water on the floor, because it brought up old piss that had
settled into the grout.  He washed his hands again in the sink and then
dried them on the remaining bath towel.  Next to the sink was a little
tray stocked with soap, a shower cap, a small sewing kit (needle,
thread, a few buttons), and a small toothbrush and toothpaste.  The
I'sink, too shallow for the strong water pressure, became a fountain,
splashing onto the counter, staining these little, what, not gifts,
they're paid for, these little .  .  .  things.  But they're nice to
have, the conditioner, the lotion.  The things of the hotel.  He brushed
his teeth and wished he had some floss.  He would have made his gums
bleed tonight, he would have liked that, the pain, and the next day, his
gums tender, and swollen, not so much that anyone but a dentist would
notice, and yet enough for him to feel them, enough to warrant an
aspirin he would not take.

When he called home for his messages, the machine picked up on the first
ring, which meant that there had been calls, but when the cycle shifted
to rewind, he heard a few clicks, but no messages in reverse.

The outgoing message on the tape, Anna.  "Hi, this is the Gale home.
We're not in now.  Leave a message at the sound of the tone, and we'll
get back to you when we can.  We.  Madeleine, in the background,
singing.  And anyone calling would think about that word, that "We."
Maybe I will leave the tape unchanged, thought Frank, just to bother
whoever calls me.

When the machine started from the beginning of the tape, there were
blank spaces, and then the long tone meaning that the messages were
finished.  A few people had called, but left no messages.

The living checking the dead, of course.  To hear the voice, knowing
that Anna, and the little girl trilling away behind her, were dead.

He went to bed and turned off the lights.  Amazing, to feel so unglued
just by sleeping in a hotel room alone.  In the dark he stroked his
penis a few times, but let it go.  He wondered if Bettina Welch would
understand the freedom his grief gave him.  Why jack off, when he could
fuck a whore, or rape someone?  Not rape, not really, he thought, but
then, yes, he supposed so, the fantasy was there.  Bettina Welch in a
stairwell.  Fuck her bloody and leave her in the basement.  But not to
die, only to forgive him, to understand, because she would understand.
No, she would never forgive him.

And she wouldn't like it.  It might wake her up, though.  No, she would
cry.  She would PRESS CHARGES.  She would FEEL VIOLATED.  She would
learn that it was NOT A SEXUAL CRIME, but I I a CRIME OF VIOLENCE.  But
then she might forgive him if she considered that to beso violent, HE
MUST HAVE BEEN TREATED VIOLENTLY AS A CHILD.  HE MUST HAVE BEEN BEATEN
AND RAPED HIMSELF.  And the man who blew up the plane?  HE MUST HAVE
BEEN BLOWN UP AS A CHILD.  His father must have put a hose up his ass
and pumped air into him until his intestines ruptured.  And so he must
have pursued a crisis in his life that would JUSTIFY ACTING OUT his
scenarios of distension.

Or could he pump air into Bettina's ass with his own lungs?  Was that
the sort of thing homosexuals do with each other?  Rimming.  A tongue in
the middle of that face that can't talk back.  Someone wears the right
color handkerchief in the pocket of -choice, and someone else knows that
he likes his ass sucked in a certain way.

He played with his penis as he thought about Bettina's ass.  Was Bettina
wearing something that told people who knew how' to read such things
that she liked to have a man play with her nipples while lightly
circling her asshole with his pinkie?  Was there something in the way
that Frank dressed, or in the way he spoke, or held his shoulders, or
his arms, or in the way he polished or did not polish his shoes, or
arranged his clothes in his closet, that signaled to the attentive world
that he had a specific fantasy?  Or did he signal to the attentive world
that he did not, in fact, have any particular fantasy at all?  That he
was dull, or dull to those whose fantasies were involved, specific,
bold.  Did hard muscles, tight clothes, and an obsession with fashion
bring someone closer to ecstasy?  The gold chain on Bettina's ankle:
There was someone in the world who saw her when the bracelet was all she
wore.  He felt the shadow of a tall man, with a big American face,
someone with ambition but little discipline, and the voice of someone on
the radio, late-night disk jockey on an oldies station, someone who
lived in utopia.  He lives with Bettina, and they talk sometimes of
marriage.  What if the three of them went to bed together?  Would that
bring back his wife and daughter?  If he fucked Bettina's boyfriend
while he fucked Bettina, on the grave of his family, would that help
turn back the clock?

But there never was a saint who altered time.  A demonic ritual, all of
the impulses, larger impulses than mass, murder and terronsm.

Fuck them all!  That's what they say.  Fuck em all!  And to do that?

To really fuck them all?  Every one of them, in every hole, happy,
angry.

And Mary Sifka, well, yes, with Mary he was almost a good fuck.  She
liked him.  She wanted him.  But that had taken a little time, for both
of them.  And if Mary loved him, and also loved her husband, did she
ever want to fuck them both, fuck them all?  Which one of them would get
her ass first?  Or her mouth while the other one fucked her?  Would she
suck Frank while her husband fucked her ass?  Or would the husband claim
seignorial rights, and dictate to Frank what he could and could not do?
You can drink her piss, but she won't drink yours.  Yes, the yellow
handkerchiefs that homosexuals used to wear, golden showers, actually to
sit on a toilet in a bar, an open stall in a bathroom with five seats in
a row, your pants around your ankles, your dick in hand, trying to come,
while strangers line up to piss their beery piss into your mouth.  Frank
had never been to that kind of party.  But once he knew about these
bars, he couldn't look at a crowded room without wondering, Would you?
Do you?  And Lowell, how far down was that creature of abandon, how
close were the memories, or the anticipations, of licking someone's butt
in a men's room?  Was the pressure of such impulses the force that
stopped the talk at dinner tables?  Look at the not-too-crowded party,
everyone posed about the room, and the boredom over it all, the
exhaustion that makes each word a screaming effort.  All that food,
something to keep the teeth busy, away from skin.

Or murders too.  Let's fuck each other and bring down an airplane!  Come
on, guys, let's pee!  Could he fuck Mary Sifka and then have her husband
lick her juices off his stick?  Frank wondered if people thought like
this a thousand years ago, or fifty years ago, or twenty years ago, or
was it new?

His brain spinning away, Frank fell asleep.  His dreams were a
continuation of his last conscious thoughts.  He had never known this
before, that he could watch himself dreaming.  How could he call himself
asleep, if he knew that he was dreaming?  On any other night these
dreadful images would have catapulted him awake, and he would have
grabbed his wife, and told her about the nightmare.  But this was not a
nightmare, this was meditation.

Bodies falling around him, a dark street with the houses burned, a ride
in a police car, the conductor on the train.  There was nothing hidden
behind a screen, nothing repressed.  And there was no fear.

He lay in this hypnagogia for a few hours, until the sun came up.  At
seven in the morning, he called Mary Sifka at home.  He needed to talk
to her, to tell her that he was alive.

Her husband answered, as Frank thought he might, but they had never
spoken, and what was so odd about early calls to a woman who worked?

"Is Mrs.  Sifka there?" Frank asked.

"She's in the shower," said her husband, which seemed like a piggish
thing to say, giving a stranger permission to think about water running
down his wife's naked body.

"I'll call her at work.  This is the New York office calling, Ed Welch,
I'm about to tell the printers to go ahead on the spring proposal, and I
need to check some last-minute figures with her."

He hoped this sounded reasonable, and dull.  Doesn't everyone have to
deal with ah a spring proposal?

Mary's husband turned away from the phone, and Frank heard him call to
his wife, that there was a phone call for her, from the New York office.
"One second," he said.  Frank supposed she was getting the phone in
another room.

She picked it up, and said "Hello?" and then the husband put the
receiver down.  They were alone.

"I know I shouldn't call you at home."

As soon as he said this, she screamed.  "Oh, God, I thought you were
dead."

"I missed the plane."

"Your name was listed in the paper this morning.  You're listed among
the dead."

"Well, here I am."

She started to cry, and then her husband came into the room.

Frank heard him.  Muffled, "Honey, what's wrong?"

Is that all to say?  What else?

She hung up.  What was she telling him right now?  Why did I call?  I
should have had someone else call.  My voice, I was a ghost to her.

He felt a smile growing.  This is fun, he thought.  This is actually
quite amazing.  This will be legend.  Who else can I scare?  He got out
of bed and went to the door, to see if' the hotel had left a courtesy
copy of the newspaper outside.  They had, hut not the Los Angeles Times,
only the stupid local paper.  The crash was the only news on the front
page, with four pictures; the largest was an aerial view of the
burned-out blocks, and the other twos were of children crying at the
neighborhood's high school, because a favorite teacher had been killed.
The third was titled CRASH INVESTiGATORS SEARCHING THROUGH THE RUBBLE.
The fourth picture was of Lonnie Walter, the former airline employee
suspected of causing the crash.  The photograph had been taken when he
had been given his job for the airline.  Frank could tell nothing from
his expression.  He wore a white shirt and a tie, but no jacket.  He was
forty-five.  The article said that little was known about his
background, beyond a few dates.

He had been born in Texas, and the family had moved to Los Angeles when
he was seven.  He was divorced.  He had a son.  And he had been fired by
the airline a few days before the crash, by Nick Burdett, an operations
supervisor who was on his way to Acapulco to a meeting there at the
airline's aircraft-maintenance center.  Walter had left a note at home,
for his ex-wife, telling her that he was never coming back.  Well, that
was true.  Frank could not connect the man's face, or his story, to the
death of his family.  He closed the door and looked for the list of the
dead.

The airline, or the newspaper, divided the dead into categories under
three headings.  The first heading was PASSENGERS.  The second heading
was FLIGHT CREW.  The third heading was ON THE I l[ GROUND.  The paper
cautioned readers that the lists were incomplete.

The Flight Crew list separated the Cockpit Crew, the pilot and first and
second officers, from the Cabin Crew.  Frank could further break the
passenger list down by nationality, since a third of the names were
Mexican.  The rest were tourists or people going to Mexico for business,
but that distinction was harder to read.  He could separate all single
men from the list and assume they were on business, perhaps all single
men over forty.  How many fifty-year-old men would go to Mexico for a
vacation by themselves?  But then, how many of them were attached to
women whose last names they did not share?  For example, Anna, who had
kept her maiden name, was separated from Frank on the list.

Between Fogel, Mark, and Gallegos, Luisa B., were: Gale, Frank Gale,
Madeleine Then, down the list, between Levy, Lawrence, and Keith,
Darnelle, was Klauber, Anna.  Someone reading the list with an eye
toward solving the puzzle of the relationships, would assume that Gale,
Frank, and Klauber, Anna, were strangers to each other.  If that
breakfast-table detective tried to dissect the list for all the single
men and women, to stack them together again in couples, he might put
Levy, Lawrence, with Klauber, Anna, but it was also possible that he
would create for himself an Anna Klauber heading for Mexico to drink
margaritas at lunch and fuck the cabana boys.  He would follow this Anna
down in flames to the ground, thinking of her underpants, her bathing
suit, her vagina.

The list of the dead on the ground was short, only twenty, but the
police had not yet notified all the next of kin, which might take days.
The police expected the list to grow to at least a hundred.

He picked up the phone.  Who to call?  He could call Lowell, but if his
brother was annoyed with him for last night's stunt, then why call him
unless he meant to apologize?  And if he apologized, would that give
Lowell the power to BRING FRANK TO HIS SENSES?

Now with an apology, Frank would have to ADMIT THAT HE'D BEEN OUT OF
CONTROL.

And with that, Lowell would trundle him out of the hotel, bring him to
his house, and help Frank TO PUT THE TRAGEDY BEHIND HIM.

It was too soon for that.  He called his mother instead.

Lowell had already told her about the arrest, which meant that he was
awake and had called them early, or had called them last night, when
Frank was roaming the zone of death.

So why didn't I tell her the truth?  he asked himself.  Why not just
come out and admit that I wanted to see their bodies on the ground?
Because I did not want to shock her.  But she knew any"Your father and I
couldn't sleep last night."

"Is he okay?"

"We'll never be okay."

"I'm sorry."

"You're not supposed to bury your children or grandchildren, that's not
the way God wants things."

"He wanted it this time."

"Don't be bitter."

"Mom." He said this quickly.

"What am I saying?" she asked.  "Be bitter.  Be as bitter as you want.
It might be good for you.  You could stand to cry.  Have you cried yet?"

"Last night.  I cried when I got home."

"What were you doing out there?  They could have shot you, for looting."

"I wasn't looting.  I was looking."

"And what did you hope to see?"

"I don't know."

"I do.  And I shouldn't say this, because I know what kind of pain
you're in, but you were hoping,, to see their bodies, Frank.

That's what you wanted to see.  The way she had said this, the words she
had chosen, the comma after bodies and then his name, and the quick,
short sentence after that, told him that she had gone too far, and knew
it, and wanted to negate the first intention, which was to brutalize him
with the strength of her insight, her honesty, to show off that she knew
things about him to which he was blind.

She was punishing him with his own motives.

way.

How much had she known about me when I was growing up?

How much had she withheld from me, how many of her insights did she keep
to herself?  And do I wish she had been truthful, or am I glad that she
let me be?  Or was she afraid of telling me the truth, for fear that I
would turn around and make her suffer the indictment her son had crafted
for a lifetime?

"Yes, you're right," said Frank.  "I wanted to see the bodies.  I needed
to know for myself that they really are dead."

"THE GUILT OF THE SURVIVORS," she said.

There was a knock on the door.  "Frank?" It was Lowell.  "Frank, it's
me."

Frank called out to him, to wait a second, and then his mother said,
"What?"

"Lowell is here."

"Let me talk to him."

So she wanted to talk to Lowell about the problems baby brother was
having, how to take care of him, how to help him GET OVER THIS.

Lowell was there with a brown paper shopping bag.  Frank saw a few
bagels, and a plastic container with cream cheese, and a plastic bottle
of fresh orange juice.  He told Lowell that their mother was on the
phone, and that she wanted to speak to him.

"I didn't want you to have that shitty hotel food.  Let's eat this."

He handed Frank the bag, in a gesture that meant, Accomplish this small
task, the setting of a table, and reenter the world of the living.

Your therapy begins now.  But the effort to so quickly help him DEAL
WITH THE PAIN only pushed him further away from Lowell, since he was
expected to start his recovery.  He opened the bag and put the bagels on
the round table near the balcony.  There was nothing to cut the bagels
with, only plastic knives for spreading the cream cheese.  He tore an
onion bagel in half and daubed the cut ends with the cheese.

While Lowell talked to their mother, Frank went to the bathroom for the
drinking glasses, and poured the orange juice.

On the phone Lowell assured their mother that Frank looked fine, Frank
was going to be fine, and that he, Lowell, was fine.

Then his mother said something to Lowell, and to respond he grunted a
few times.  She was telling him something, and she didn't want an
articulate response.  What was she saying, that she was worried?

Maybe she was talking about their father.  No.  She's telling him
something about me, thought Frank.

Lowell offered the phone to Frank.  "Dad wants to say something."

Frank took the phone.  His father's voice was heavy, wet.  "I'm going to
temple, Frank.  I'm going to say kaddish today."

"Thanks, Dad."

"You should too."

"I'll think about it." He didn't want to pray, or he did, but he didn't
want to go to temple, he didn't want to have to park his car, think
about finding a space, or reach for his keys when the service was over.

"Your mother wants to go to San Diego.  The airline says there's going
to be a memorial service, and they think it's going to be in San Diego,
because of the people on the ground.  There may be a service in L.  A.,
though.  We'll go to them all.  These things, these prayers, these
services, that's why we have them, to help us through the hardest
times." Frank could detect, in his father's gush of sodden theology, the
notes of capitulation to reality that, transposed to the sphere of
business, became the shudders of doubt that made him pull short of what
he was afraid to do and brought his business down.

The phone call ended.  "Do you know anything about this memorial
service?" he asked Lowell.

"There may be something in a few days.  The airline is setting it up.  I
hate to say this," said Lowell, and then stopped.

"What?"

"Well, it's a publicity stunt, it's the airline managing the news.

They'll come across as the chief mourner, they'll set up something in
the public's mind, so that juries will feel sympathy for the airline, so
it'll be harder to get a big judgment against them.  For the money.

We have to find a good lawyer.  I don't know whether we join a
classaction suit, or if we do this alone.  Maybe we find a few other
people and sue with them."

"I could sue my limo driver for getting me to the airport late."

Lowell used a laugh at this to pull up a chair and tear apart a bagel
and drag the cut end through the cream cheese, piling it against the
leading edge.  "Let's go back to my place."

"No," said Frank.  "I want to see Bettina Welch.  I want to find out
what else they know."

"I'm not going to say that I know how much pain you're in.

But I am going to say that you're only going to make that pain worse."

"If what?"

"By hanging around here waiting for whatever it is you're waiting for."

"Where should I go?  What should I do?"

"We should go home."

"But what about the bodies?  I don't want to go home without the
bodies."

"We'll stay here until we can bring Anna and the baby home.

I promise." He always called Madeleine "the baby." Frank thought it was
because he wasn't quite sure of her name.

For the second time in two and a half days, they left a hotel room to
see Bettina Welch.

She was in the conference room, on the phones.  The airline
representatives all wore identification tags, with their pictures.  The
photographs were of the same dull style as the picture of Lonnie Walter,
a head shot in front of a cream background.  A few of the other
survivors who had been in the hotel in Los Angeles were there, getting
breakfast from a buffet table.  The spread was not so lavish as in Los
Angeles, three steam trays, one chef, a few busboys.  There were eggs,
sausages, and pancakes.  Beside them, on large plates, were cereals and
breads, and then a few pitchers with orange and tomato juice, and milk.
The coffee cups were small.

The woman with the copper-colored hair sat at a table, reading the
paper, while her husband brought her a plate of scrambled eggs.

A Mexican family ate sausages and drank orange juice.

Bettina Welch left her table.  She approached Lowell with her hand out,
because he had been so difficult in Los Angeles, and she had to win him
over.  He took her hand as she said, "Hello again, Mr.  Gale."

"Lowell," he said.

She gave Frank another official hug.  "How are you feeling today?"

"I don't know yet."

"We ,have to talk.  Can I get you something to eat?"

Frank wanted a pancake with syrup, but said nothing.  She took him by
the arm and they sat at a table away from others.

"Frank," she said, and he knew there was trouble.  "The press found out
about you."

"What did I do?"

"Two things.  You weren't on the plane.  And then the arrest last night.
They want to talk to you."

"Why?"

"Because you weren't on the plane.  They say it's everyone's nightmare."

"Not dying on a plane?"

"Missing a plane that crashes.  I don't know why.  People have such
horrible things, sometimes." Have things.  What things?

Lowell put himself between Frank and Bettina.  "Listen to me.

I don't want the press bothering my brother, do you understand that?"

"You know, Mr.  Gale, you're also suffering through this."

"Is that supposed to make me happy, your concern for me, Miss `I Welch?"
Nothing had changed.  Lowell would never try to be nice to her.  Lowell
blamed her for the crash.

Frank put a hand on Lowell, the familiar way to bring him back from his
rage.  "We just won't talk to them.  That's all.  I just won't talk to
them."

"We need a lawyer," said Lowell.  "We need a lawyer today."

"Let's wait," said Frank.

"No," said Lowell.  "And we're not going to join anybody else's suit.  I
want to make a separate case out of this."

"Do we have to talk about this now?" asked Frank.  "Can't we wait until
after the funeral?"

Bettina Welch interrupted.  "There's going to be a memorial service for
everyone in two days, here in San Diego.  We'll have limos to take you."

"Limousines.  As if that helps," said Lowell.

"We're trying."

"Bettina," said Frank, "my brother is very upset."

"I know that.  And thank you.  And now I have to get back to work."

"What's next?" asked Frank.

"In what way?" she said.

"Where do we go next?  What are we supposed to do now?"

"I've given your name to the County Coroner's Office.  They'll be
calling you as soon as they can.  I'm sorry, Frank, but you'll have to
identify the body.  I'm sorry, I mean the bodies."

"Is there anything left of them?" asked Frank.

"Don't think about that," she said.

"I can't help it.  It's a natural thing to think about.  Do you know?"

"I don't, no."

"She won't answer the question," said Lowell.  "She doesn't want to say
anything that would cause you more distress, so you could sue.

"As a matter of fact, Mr.  Gale, that's exactly right." And then she
turned and went back to her desk.

"You dick," said Frank.

"Fuck her," said Lowell, in a way that sounded more like a command than
a curse.

The copper-haired woman looked up from her sausages and waved to Frank
and Lowell.  Lowell led Frank to her table.

"I'm Brenda Cohn," she said, "and this is Geoffrey.  We lost our Danny,
and his new bride, Angela.  They were married last Sunday.  I guess
we're still in the anger stage of all of this.  We weren't in denial
very long."

"I lost my wife and daughter," said Frank.

"We heard.  We're terribly sorry.  You're the fellow who missed the
plane."

"Does everyone know?" asked Lowell, but his belligerence was under
control.  Frank thought that only he knew the meanness inside the
question.

"I think so," said Geoffrey.  He seemed less a ruined man than on the
night of the crash, when defeat was so much a part of him that the crash
loomed over him as only the most recent attack on his life, or the
necessary conclusion to a series of disasters.  "It's going to be hard
for you."

"It's hard for all of us," said Frank.

"But for you," said Geoffrey.  "We'll have a little privacy.  But for
you, no.  You'll never have privacy.  This is going to stick with you,
forever."

"I hope not," said Frank.

"Yes," said Brenda.  "For the rest of your life you'll be the man who
missed two-twenty-one.  You'll be marked by this.  It won't be easy for
you to remarry."

Frank expected Lowell to jump in, but he stayed silent.  Frank looked to
him for support.

"That makes sense," said Lowell.

"Why?" asked Frank, knowing this was the wrong question, because it
brought him into their game.

"Because you'll be cursed," said Geoffrey.  "Every time a woman who
loves you leaves for anything, any trip, she'll worry about her safety.
She'll worry that she'll be the second wife to die.  Your wife, she was
your first wife?"

"Yes," said Frank.

"And if she gets on a plane without you," said Brenda, not finishing the
sentence.  The implication was there: If she gets on a plane without
you, she'll be sure to remember how you were widowed.

"But only if she gets on a plane without me when I was supposed to be on
the plane," said Frank.  "Don't forget, I didn't not take the plane, I
missed the plane.  A million people don't take a flight that their wives
or husbands are on.  That happens every day.  But this was different.  I
didn't not take the flight.  That's normal.  I missed the plane.  I was
late to the airport.  How many people miss a flight their families are
on, and then the plane crashes?  How many people?

You can't say that happens all the time."

"I don't know," said Brenda.  "You might be right.  That's an
interesting opinion."

"Why were you late?" asked Geoffrey.

"Traffic," said Frank.

"We dropped them off at the airport," said Brenda, "and the traffic
wasn't that bad.  Which way were you coming from?"

"I don't know."

"Of course you know," said Geoffrey.  "Everyone knows the direction
they're coming from."

"Hollywood," said Frank.  "I had lunch with a friend, and then I was
running a little late."

"Your friend saved your life," said Brenda.

"Who was it?" asked Lowell.

"Actually my insurance agent."

"What insurance agent?" asked Lowell.  "Jack Ney?" Jack Ney was Mary's
boss.

"No," said Frank.  This was going to be a bad lie, but it was too late
to stop.  A name spilled out of his mouth.  "Mark Sifka."

"Is he with Jack Hey?" He meant: Does he handle the company's insurance?
"Is he ours?"

"No, mine.

"What.  Car, life?"

"Not car.  House and stuff.  Life."

"I thought you used Jack's office for that.  Why'd you stop?"

"I don't know.  This guy kept calling.  I don't know.  I met him at a
party."

"Whose party?" asked Lowell.  Frank thought Brenda Cohn suspected
something in his reluctance to answer.

"You don't know them, friends of Anna's." Now I am using Anna as an
alibi for my mistress.  This is out of control.

"Whatever," said Lowell.  Frank thought that he had threatened Lowell
with the possibility of independence by finding his own insurance agent,
without asking for permission or advice.  It had never occurred to Frank
before that Lowell needed him too.

"Did you buy life insurance from him at lunch?" asked Geoffrey.

"Not then.  A while ago."

"Wouldn't that have been something?" said Geoffrey.  "Although it
wouldn't have been in effect when the plane crashed."

Throughout this, Brenda watched Frank, butbut he couldn't tell what she was
thinking.  He thought a stranger might have thought she hated him, the
way she looked at him so impatiently.  The stranger would have thought
that Brenda was keeping a running tab of his errors, and everything he
said was wrong.

"Mark Sifka," said Lowell.  "And you had lunch with him."

Meaning: It's not like you, Frank, to have lunch with an insurance
agent, since you are a snob and can't see past someone's job as easily
as I can, you can't appreciate a good salesman as well as I can.  And
since insurance salesmen are so reviled in the culture, it is not likely
that you, Frank Gale, would talk to one for any time longer than it took
to buy the minimum amount of insurance he was selling, suspicious of his
rates, and merciless in not wanting to give the salesman any moment of
joy, thinking that his happiness, his satisfaction with the sale, would
only mean that he had triumphed over another sucker.  "So this Sifka, he
knew you were going to Mexico.  He knew what time you were leaving."

"I guess so," said Frank.

"If he reads the papers," said Brenda, "he thinks you're dead."

"I should call him," said Frank.  This was perfect, the excuse he needed
to leave the table.

"Did he insure your wife and daughter?" asked Geoffrey.

"Yes," said Frank.  He didn't know what else to say, and the stupidity
of the lie crashed around him, like an airplane on fire.

Geoffrey matched his wife's hard, unpleasant study of him.  "You better
call him.  He's preparing the settlement on the claim.  He's probably
waiting for someone in the family to call him.  He insured you too."

"Yes, we had a lot of insurance with him.  I did."

"You better call him," said Brenda.  "Maybe your brother should call
him."

"That's a good idea," said Lowell.

"Why?" asked Frank.

Brenda kept her stare.  "Because if you call him, he'll think it's a
ghost."

"Even if he doesn't believe in ghosts," said Geoffrey.

"People get heart attacks that way," said Brenda.

"What's his number?" asked Lowell.  He took a pen from his jacket, and
then a little notebook he always carried.

"I don't know," said Frank.  "I'll call him, I think I should."

"You don't need to," said Lowell.

"Let your brother call," said Brenda.  "It would be a blessing, for your
friend to hear about this from your brother.  Then you could call him.
You could even be in the room with him."

"That's a great idea," said Lowell.  The issue of Mark Sifka was clearly
his first relief from the catastrophe in three days; he had a focus for
his anger that did not call out for more anger, but compassion, and at
the same time gave him the privilege of belonging to the heart of the
story, to be a part of the disaster.  "Let's go upstairs."

"Can I ask one question?" said Brenda.

Frank said yes.

"How much were they insured for?"

"That's kind of a personal I 4,question," said Frank.

"Listen," said Lowell, were all going through this together, it may help
them to know."

"My wife was insured for one million dollars.  I was insured for two
million.  The baby wasn't insured at all."

"Of course not," said Brenda.

"Well," said Frank, trying to stop all of this.

Geoffrey offered his hand.  Frank took it, and held on.  "You know,"
said Geoffrey, "I have to say you seem a little ahead of yourself."

"How so?" asked Frank.

"I think you've raced a little too quickly from anger into depression.
Maybe you need to go back to denial for a bit.  Alter the period where
you tell yourself it isn't true, you get really mad.  I think you need
to be really mad at the airline, at God, at everything."

"Maybe," said Frank.  He thought this might be true and, thinking back,
could not recall any real anger yet.  So perhaps he was still denying.

"Let's go," said Lowell.

In the elevator Frank had a clear vision of what to do.  When they got
to the room, he called information in Los Angeles, and asked for, and
spelled, Mark Sifka.  There was only one Sifka, an M.  Sifka.  That was
Mary, of course.  He then made up a number and wrote it down on the
hotel's memo pad.  He gave it to Lowell.

Lowell dialed the number.

Someone answered, and Lowell asked for Mark Sifka.  Lowell then said,
"Are you sure?" And then he read the number that he had dialed.  He had
dialed correctly.  He thanked the person and hung up.  "I got a wrong
number."

"I don't know," said Frank.  "We'll call him later."

"No," said Lowell, dialing again.  Then he said, "Yes, I'd like the
number for Mark Sifka, please.  In Los Angeles, or West Los Angeles."
After a moment he was told, as Frank knew, that there was only one M.
Sifka.  "That's it."

This time he dialed again, and this time when the phone was answered he
said, "Is Mark Sifka there?" There was a pause.  Frank couldn't hear the
other's voice.  "I'm sorry," said Lowell, "I called Information for Mark
Sifka, and they gave me this number.  I'm sorry to bother you." He hung
up.  Then he dialed again.  He looked at Frank while he waited for
someone to answer.

"What happened?" asked Frank.

"The wrong Sifka.  I'm calling Karen." Karen was Frank's secretary.
"She'll have the number in your address book."

"I don't think so," said Frank.  "I just met him, I mean we just started
doing business together.  I don't think I ever gave her the number."

"Jesus, Frank." Meaning: What kind of a businessman are you?

Meaning: Is this chaos, this disorganization, typical of how you run
things when I am not around?  Can I trust you?

"Sifla's not going to do anything with his company's money until someone
files a" Lowell moved away from the phone.  Frank was safe.  Then the
phone rang.  Frank rushed for it, in case Mary Sifka had found him.

He didn't want Lowell to ask who was calling, and hear her last name.

"Hello," said Frank.

"May I speak to Frank Gale?"

"Who's calling?"

"This is Ron Godfrey."

"What is this about?" asked Frank.

"Is this Mr.  Gale?" Neither would give anything away.

"I need to know what this is about?"

"I was calling to tell him how terribly sorry I am for him."

"Are you with the airline or the Coroner's Office?"

"I'm with the Los Ang'eles Times, the San Diego bureau.  I wanted to
talk to Frank Gale."

"Yes."

"Is this Mr.  Gale?"

"Yes."

"I just wanted to tell you how terribly sorry I am for your great loss."
It was interesting to Frank, this new perspective, to be in the center
of things, and see how human everyone was, how much trouble they had
saying what they meant, how they lied to protect themselves from the
shame they felt at the things they did in order to survive.  Here was a
reporter, a man doing his job, and his job called for him to speak to
the victims of cruel fate.  And he was repeating himself, because it
hurt him to violate the victim's privacy, but he persisted, because that
was the nature of his job.  Frank thought of sad-eyed Republicans, and
how they live in Olympian distance from the mob, which gives them
greater knowledge of the mob.  And if knowledge is power, to know the
mob is to control the mob, and so Frank would be able to control this
reporter.  Frank would become a Republican.

"Yes," said Frank, again.  Lowell asked him who it was.  Frank covered
the mouthpiece and whispered, "Newspaper."

"You know that you were listed as having been on the plane."

He waited five seconds, which is a long time to be silent on the phone.
"Yes." Leave him hanging.

"We understand that you just missed the plane.  That they took your
ticket downstairs, but they made a mistake, and you were at the gate as
the plane was pulling away."

Another five seconds.  He counted to himself, and then just made a
sound.  "Mmm-hmmm." Frank didn't even have to say anything now.

"I should call back," said Ron Godfrey.  Whatever he had expected, this
wasn't it.  He was probably used to hysteria, someone to whom he could
offer comfort.  But Frank would accept none from him.

Another long wait.  "Yes," said Frank.

"Maybe there's someone in the family I can talk to," said Godfrey.

"No, my family is dead." He said this quickly, without hesitation.  Then
he held his hand over the phone, because he wanted to let out the laugh
that was building inside of him.  He wanted to cackle into the phone.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have called."

Frank said nothing, but breathed into the phone.  What did Ron Godfrey
think of this?

"Mr.  Gale, are you all right?"

"What do you think?" and then he hung up.

"What did he say?" asked Lowell.

"He wants to know how I feel about missing the plane.  Maybe I should
have told him the truth."

"Did he know about,, the arrest?"

"I don't think so.

"You should probably talk to them, just say something short and don't
think about it." "But why?"

"Because you got arrested.  If you just go along with them, you'll
disappear in all of this, but if you cause them trouble, they'll come
after you, they'll think you have something to hide, they'll make a
freak out of you."

"How did you get to be such an expert in this?"

"I read the papers."

"Does it have an effect on a lawsuit?"

"Why?"

"Because that's why you want me to play along.  Not to hurt a lawsuit."

"Maybe a little."

There was another phone call, from Dale Beltran, the grief counselor.

"Mr.  Gale, I've just been contacted by the County Coroner's Office.
They're ready to begin the identification of the bodies."

"I'm ready," said Frank.

"But I have to warn you," he said, "not all of the bodies are ready now.
You may have to go back a second time."

"That's okay," said Frank.  "It's something I need to do."

"Yes," said Beltran.  "The denial of the reality of the situation only
prolongs the healing process.  At the same time, some of the more
gruesome aspects of the results of a crash can be so horrifying that
they linger in the mind, and we develop a morbid obsession with what
we've seen.  Then we exhibit the symptoms of POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS
SYNDROME.  And that requires an even longer time to heal."

"So I shouldn't go."

"It's your choice, Frank."

"I'm coming.  And I'll bring my brother."

"That's a good idea, Frank."

Everyone gathered in the command center, where the chefs stood behind a
display of salads, fruits, and cheeses.  Bettina and her deputies, Chris
and Kelly, handed red passes to the mourners, tickets for the
transportation.

Frank and Lowell joined the crowd.  People talked quietly, Lowell joined
in a few little chats, but Frank said nothing.  The names of a few
lawyers were mentioned.

Downstairs at the hotel entrance, the group was led to a tour bus.

"Where's the limousine?" asked Lowell.

"What limousine?" asked Bettina.

"You promised us a limousine would take us to the coroner."

"I said there'd be limos to the memorial service, not the coroner."

Frank touched Lowell's shoulder.  "That's what she said."

They got on the bus.  Frank recognized in Lowell's hesitation upon
entering the bus, and seeing the relatives of the dead in their printed
T-shirts, a little fear of contamination from the mob.  The bus could
have been carrying tourists, nothing about the way they looked as a
group, except for their eyes, most of them red, tired, swollen,
suggested the terrible landscapes waiting for them.  Lowell's pause at
the top of the stair, which could have been read by some on the bus as
the normal surveillance for a good seat, was a second too long, and his
dismay was obvious.  Frank whispered to him, "We don't need the limo.
Let's sit down."

There was another bus behind them, and the mournful caravan left the
hotel, the grieving survivors shielding their eyes from the press.  The
papers would report on the GRIM TASK.

The bus drove through the entrance to the naval yards, and the mood of
the passengers changed as they came to the docks.  None of them could
continue to play with their reflections in the windows, as the road took
them through the shadow of an aircraft carrier.  The driver reached for
his microphone and announced, over a publicaddress system that was
surprisingly clear and free of static, "That's the Kennedy.
Thirty-five-hundred sailors call the Kennedy home for voyages that take
them out to sea for as long as a year.  The refrigerators in the Kennedy
are ten times the size of this bus." Then he pointed out a destroyer,
and a small house on a hill where Douglas MacArthur had been billeted.
Across the bay was the Coronado Island, "and that grand old lady, the
Hotel Del Coronado, where Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon made Some Like
It Hot." Lowell rolled his eyes, but Frank was grateful for the
information.

At the end of a long pier was a refrigerated warehouse that the Navy had
given to the Coroner's Office.  Bettina Welch made a little speech about
following the coroners, and staying together as a group.

Frank wanted to say, "Doesn't this feel like a high school field trip?"

But he thought no one would appreciate the humor.

A delegation of coroners met the buses, and the mourners gathered in
smaller clusters around their assigned guides.  They were given heavy
white jackets and taken inside.

The warehouse was cold, like a day early in the winter, before the snow,
after the first real freeze, and the jackets were welcome.

Frank played with his buttons but saw that the workers in the room kept
theirs open.  So he kept his jacket open too, and came to appreciate the
chill.

His guide, Dr.  Kashiwa, told them that the GRIM BUSINESS of identifying
the dead took place around the clock.  For some of the dead
identification would be impossible.  Kashiwa described the condition of
the bodies in the cockpit as being "the consistency of strawberry jam."
Some of the dead on the ground may have been incinerated when the fuel
tanks of the left wing exploded in a MASSIVE FIREBALL.  Several large
sections of the fuselage remained intact, including the rear of the
plane.  The pilot had turned off the Fasten Seat Belt signs, and though
it is unlikely that many passengers were in the single aisle of the 737,
most of the passengers had unbuckled themselves.  As the plane crashed,
they were tossed , out of their seats.

The coroner told them, "Even with their seat belts on, the bodies were
not protected from violent distress.  Some seat belts held firm while
the passengers they embraced were torn in half by the force of the
crash.  Unfortunately, some of you will have to come back here again,
but our systems are not yet so refined that we can tell you in advance
who isready for identification and who is not."

The group came to a table of small arms and legs.  How could he choose
among them, which were his daughter's?

A few sharp chemical smells rose from the tables of body parts in the
large, cold room, partly of chiorine, from the bleach with which the
floor was washed, and partly from whatever soup they sprayed over the
tables.  A row of a dozen left arms was being matched with right arms.
Many of the dead lost their feet as the metal sheared their legs.  Right
feet and left feet, on separate tables.  Frank learned that most
clothing was burned off, or blown off, as the bodies tumbled.

Though the attendants washed and drained the blood from the arms and
feet, pieces of legs, the torsos in shallow plastic caskets, they could
not erase the burns, the deep gashes, and the disgusting mutilations
within mutilations, the fingerless hands without arms, like chicken
breasts ready for the frying pan, which Frank could identify only
because someone had collected these puffy shards on one long tray,
unmistakable with their stumps of wrist or thumb.

And on every piece of flesh someone had taped a strip of paper with
computer bar coding, so that as each piece was identified, the system
would eventually reconstruct as much of the body as possible.  The
computers knew where each piece of a body had been found, and then to
which bin it had been remanded.

"The reconstruction will be simple," said Dr.  Kashiwa.  "After II the
crash we laid a detailed grid over the entire crash zone.  Each body, or
each body part, was then labeled according to the grid, so I' that we
will be able to simulate, precisely, the dissemination of the bodies
across the crash zone, and since we know the seat assigned to each
passenger, eventually the computers will be able to replay the entire
crash, in any speed we want, and we will know exactly I' how each person
was affected by the destruction of the plane."

They all died, thought Frank.  That's how they were affected.

And those on the ground too.  And I was affected, but if I say that,
they'll make fun of me.

"It's amazing, isn't it?" said someone else.  "What they can do.

The crash won't have been in vain."

"Yes," said a man, "they'll have the whole crash on computer, and
they'll know how the plane broke apart, which will tell them what they
have to do to strengthen the NEXT GENERATION OF AIRCRA I ."

"That's her," someone cried, and everyone watched a darkhaired woman in
her twenties as a coroner covered a body on a steel table.  Frank
wondered who she had seen, a sister or a mother.  The woman seemed too
young to have lost a daughter on the flight, since Acapulco was not a
destination for teenagers traveling alone, or even in groups with other
teenagers.  Unless of course the woman had found her own three-year-old,
who had been on the plane with the woman's ex-husband, who had
visitation rights this week, and he was taking his kid on a trip where
he could let her hang out by the pool during the day, and then at night
he could get her a babysitter while he went out looking for action.  So
it could be a little girl, thought Frank.  But I doubt it.  The story
would have been in the news, and so far nothing has taken the spotlight
from me.  So I'm still the most famous person in the disaster.

Everyone handling the bodies wore long rubber aprons and heavy rubber
gloves, to protect themselves, the coroner said, from the threat of
contamination with plague-infested blood.  Was there a bucket with
penises?  Frank wondered.  Or were there two trays, hidden even from
this room of total exposure, marked PELVIS: MEN and PELVIS: WOMEN?

In another room, jewelry.  Plastic envelopes, each with a barcode tag.
Every fingerprint had been taken from every hand or finger recovered.
Teeth were being photographed, and jaws were being Xrayed.  The names of
doctors and dentists had been taken from next of kin.  Frank was asked
and gave the names.  And there were rows of computers linked to each
other, sharing all of this information.  "I'[ I What might have taken a
month only a few years ago could be accomplished in twenty-four hours
now, said Kashiwa.

The teams of coroners assigned reconciled all the pieces with each
other, to be separated later into their own bins and stacked on shelves.
Then three special machines, robots, now sitting idle in a corner of the
huge room, would be programmed by the computers to roam the aisles,
collecting the separate pieces from the shelves on one side of the room
to stack them, body by individual body, on the other side of the room,
leaving the job to a few workers of putting all the mangled pieces into
their final containers, into their coffins.

Imagine the destruction to a body, to a face, exploded out of an
airplane, and bounced against the roof of a house, or slammed into a
chimney.  What happens to a ten-year-old when he's blasted through a
hole in the wall, and then a thin sheet of metal from the plane's tail
catches him across the shoulders?  How many pieces are left?  What
remains?

They told Frank that his wife and daughter's seats were in the tail
section. .  When the plane broke up, the roof peeled away.  At the same
time the tail flipped upside down, crushing the fin, nothing to brace
the inverted fuselage, and the passengers, unbuckled, fell.

Here comes the plane, scraping the passengers along the road and into
first one house and then out the backyard and across the next backyard
into another house.  These bits and pieces of people, squeezed into
nothing by the weight of the plane, masticated by metal bed frames and
stucco walls, and nails, and chimneys, and the jumble of stuff that a
second before had been a car filled with children and groceries, now
packed tall metal drums lined with plastic.  There were probably things
other than ruined human body parts in the drums.  Anything fleshy had
been collected for examination, classification, and that would include
what was left of dogs and cats, the meat from freezers, and pieces of
the dinners from the airline's kitchen, choices of fish, chicken, beef,
or cheese, now fused by the heat with the skin of burn-ravaged flight
attendants.

Let the coroner's sophisticated laboratories divide the blended proteins
from each other and say with great assurance that this was passenger and
this was enchilada.

Frank heard a worker joke with another worker as he pushed one of those
barrels in front of him, "Come on, honey, let's eat out tonight, I'm
tired of leftovers."

Frank went back to the hotel.  He knew he was in that state of grief
that was denial.  Knowing this, could he still deny?

rank watched himself become faon the news that night.  The story was the
same on every channel: Man misses plane, evades police barriers at crash
site, is arrested for looting on Cohassett Street.  As he listened to
them talking about this man who had been arrested, as he felt the thrill
of fame, a disturbing high-pitched tone vibrated through their reports,
linking the basic elements of the story, implying a relationship, an
intention, some subtle marriage between the crashed plane and his walk
through the ravaged houses, his arrest.  He wanted to know what they
really meant by the implicit connections-PLANE CRASHES; MAN WHO MISSED
PLANE SEARCHES THROUGH RUBBLE; ARRESTED-and why they were frightening
him.  He wanted to call up the radio and television stations, and the
newspapers that would print the story in the morning, but he couldn't
think of anything to say that would help his cause.  Don't they care how
it makes me feel?  What do they mean when they say I was searching
through the rubble?  Searching?  As though I had a goal.

He wanted to tell the reporters covering the story that in his distress
he had visited Cohassett Street to see for himself where the plane had
crashed, and that of course he had not been looting.  He could tell them
what he told the police, that he had found his wife's suitcases.  He
hoped that anyone hearing about this would put themselves in his place.
He hoped they would understand that there was nothing to loot.  But who
would believe that?  Too many people crowding the police barricades that
night wanted grim souvenirs.

But who would blame me for wanting something that might have been
touched by my daughter?  What if I said I was looking through the awful
zone hoping to find her favorite doll?  Yes, if it comes to trial, he
thought, and my lawyer sees the jury running against me, he will claim
that my search through the wreckage could hardly be called looting,
since by definition looting is theft, and by definition I was looking
for what I had lost.  And I found it.

No jury will go against me, he thought.  But there won't be a jury.  And
how important is my story in the larger story?  I will be lost in all
the other news.  There were so many pieces of the event now.  The flight
attendant whose dogs were waiting for her.  The pilot who was going to
retire in six months.  The three couples killed on their honeymoons. The
destroyed families.  The reports of eyewitnesses.

In the Flight 221 Crisis Center at the Marriott, Frank waited with the
families of the dead, while Lowell was at the airport, meeting their
parents.  The airline was flying them down, for free.

Minutes would pass while he watched Bettina Welch on the phones, or Ed
Dockery talking to the press who tried to get through the cordon into
the room with all of the families, and Frank would have no thoughts.  He
was aware of nothing, really.  Occasionally some consciousness would
surface, like a fish stirring itself to a bit of food, alert only to the
moment of hunger and the moment of placation, and then he would settle
down at the bottom of this ocean of no feeling, and he would stare into
nowhere, thinking no thing.

Something within him, or something that he was within, marked the remote
distance of his large emotions, saw them, absorbed them, and forgot
them.  Whether everyone in the room felt this way, or only those called
survivors, or just Frank, well, who could say?  Not Frank.  This was not
a feeling of peace, because there was still the electricity of grief, of
regret, of mistake.  No, he rode on the' inev- I, itability of the
crash's effect on the rest of his life.  As soon as he said to himself,
"Everything will be different," something like darkness came up around
him, and he had only to give himself a push into this, and he would
collapse.  Frank saw his fate and was stunned by it.

After however long he sat there-three hours like this?-he found himself
standing, but he didn't know why, or for how long he had been up from
his chair.  In his daze he had been blind, without knowing it, but now
he could see again.  Something had impelled him to stand, but the reason
behind the move was gone.  A few people watched him.  Are they watching
me because I have been standing here for twenty minutes, asleep, or
because I am the man who missed the plane, or because I am just one more
place in the room, not even a person anymore, and as good as anything
else for them to look at?  Look at a curtain, look at Bettina Welch,
look at me.  When he sat down again, he tried to find the sensation that
would bring him again to the pleasant isolation of the last three hours.
But then he heard his brother's voice, and knew that Lowell must have
called his name a second before, and that out of habit, because he
always wanted to stand when Lowell found him at his desk, in the office,
thinking about what he would rather be doing, he had jumped at the
familiar, truly familiar, sound.  Even when Lowell called on the phone,
Frank would put his feet on the floor, if they had been on the desk. And
yet sometimes he saw Lowell behind his own desk, with his feet up, while
he argued with the presidents of record companies trying to get them to
see things his way, trying to wrestle a little more money from them
without making them an enemy.  Often he even won those battles.  To win,
and stay friends!  And still with your feet up!  To be casual about the
battles!

And when Frank, in a negotiation, never as important as his brother's
since Frank had no authority to feud over something that the stores
could not do without,, tried to relax like Lowell, and put his feet on
the desk, he lost the line of his thoughts, and panicked, thinking that
he would soon lose the deal.  So when he kept his feet on the floor, he
felt safer but, too aware of his safety, congratulated himself for
learning to concentrate.  How to measure successful concentration except
by waking up to a mountain of unconsciously completed brilliant work,
and time passed?  To fly through the business day, making money the way
a bird finds columns of warm air rising.  But some birds must be better
at flight than others?  In all their Darwinage.  This one flies higher.
Stupid songs about soaring hearts.

Some soar higher.  Another kind of flying.  And what goes up must come
down.  Like a plane.

Here came his family.  Each of them took one of his hands, and his
father gathered him into a hug with them.  They had never done this
before, the four of them, close like this.  Lowell with his hand on
Frank's shoulder, something shy in the touch, afraid to admit he needed
to join in.  Ethel, crying, and Leon asking Frank, not in words, but
with the pressure of a hand, to give something to her to help her, and
that helping her would be good for him, would take him out of himself,
that anyone could see that Frank was too inside himself, that he would
ruin himself by staying so close to his grief.

So many hugs in the last two days, and bodies, and hair, and skin,
Leon's smooth wrists, and his mother's perfume.  Even today, she put it
on.  It was a heavy perfume, something he had once given Anna, who
refused to wear it because she said it made her smell like Ethel.  The
comfort of the closet in his mother's bedroom.  In the mansion.  What
adheres to clothes over time.  The memory of a social life.

But I should love them now, he thought.  I should finally forgive them.
I should see their humanity now.  I should see that they love me with
all the complicated feelings that I love-loved-my own child.  They may
have hurt me at times, yes, yes, but I was no better with my own.  Or I
thought I was better, but what challenges had I faced with her?  So my
parents shamed me when I was young, or even later, just by being
themselves, but what have I done to bring honor to them?

Or is this crap, these feelings, should I not see that the events of the
week, events that, in the future, I will see with dispassion, have
clouded my resolve, and that the dangerous, heroic gesture now is to not
let go of what I think about them.  Just because they need me now, or
think they need me, does that create a special indebtedness?  I will not
cave in, thought Frank.  Not collapse like the ceiling of a plane when
the walls are crushed, and hundreds die screaming.

``How were you treated by the poli I I I I I Leon asked.  ``If they hurt
you.  .  .`, If they hurt me, what?  Frank wanted to say.  What are you
going to do?  Shoot a cop?

"We've got a lawyer now," said Lowell.  "Aaron Waramus, he's very good."

"Is he the best?" asked Ethel.  Frank hated this in his mother, because
he hated it in himself, always to think about the best, not to buy
unless he could afford the best, or to know what the best was, and then,
when buying something that was not the best, thinking of it only as a
temporary substitution until he had the money to buy the best.  And did
he really need the best lawyer for this case?

Wasn't the case so obvious?

"As good as they come," said his father.

"But the arrest, is he a criminal lawyer?  I thought he was for the
lawsuit." So there had been discussions between Lowell and Leon from
which Ethel had been left out.  She was used to playing catch-up with
their conversations.

"They'll let me off," said Frank.  "I wasn't looting.  There was nothing
to loot."

"Don't be so sure," said Leon.  "There's a lot of money at stake here."

"What difference does that make?" ask I ri Frflnk H,, didn't understand
what his father was saying.  That because the airline might have to pay
out millions of dollars, or an insurance company would have to,
therefore the police, in collusion with the forces of authority and
capital, would put Frank on trial, and that this trial, successfully
pursued; would somehow diminish the obligations of the immense financial
combines that own airplanes and insurance companies?

"We'll probably need a psychiatrist's report to clear you," said Leon.
"I don't see how we can get around that."

"But what did I do?" asked Frank.

"You were caught where you shouldn't have been.  I don't blame you,
Frank, don't get me wrong." Everything sounded stupid now, everything
his father said.  "But these things get tried out of court, in the
press.  And the press needs to think of you as crazed with "As though
I'm not."

"You have certain tendencies," said Leon.

"What tendencies?" asked Frank.

"This isn't the time," said Ethel.

"Great," said Frank, "so you'll provoke me the way you usually do.  You
start to say something to me about how you really see me, and then just
as I want to know what you're thinking, you pull back, so I don't get to
hear what you had to say, and I have to make it up myself, something
that's usually worse than what you were about to tell me."

"You know what I mean, said his father, "and it isn't a terrible thing
about you, but you do wander a little.  You have a tendency," and he
underlined the word, "to kind of go off by yourself, and you did it
yesterday when you took the train here."

This was Leon's attempt to prove that the family still had a commander.
Since he had no direction over his sons business, and little over his
own, he had nothing left to play with but their emotions.

Lowell was immune to him, even liked him, but Frank hated Leon in these
moments.

"I don't want to go to a psychiatrist," said Frank.

"You don't have to," said Lowell, trying to finish this.

"I'm not crazy, said Frank, and tears came to his eyes, and he felt
pathetic.  "Everyone is dead."

Ethel hugged him, rocked him.  She loves me, he thought, she knows who I
am, and she still loves me.  She loves me because I gave them their only
grandchild.  And now that grandchild is dead.

And she doesn't really know who I am.  She doesn't know about Mary
Sifka.  So he broke the hug, he broke another hug.

Ed Dockery walked toward them, and it made Frank happy to see him.  What
he had hated in the man two days before, his class ring, his shuffle,
now seemed to Frank emblems of a deep sincerity, an empathy, even a real
compassion so rare that no one he had met since shaking hands with Ed
had made any similar claim on Frank's respect.  Behind Ed was another
man.  Ed shook Frank's hand, and then introduced him to Piet Bernays.
Frank then introduced them both to his parents.  Ed regarded Lowell with
a bit of suspicion.

"Are you with the airline?" asked Lowell.

Bernays said that he was not from the airline, that he was with a
public-relations firm hired by the airline.  Frank thought that he might
be homosexual.  A Republican homosexual.  Why?  He was fastidious beyond
the culture of this airline.  He liked his clothes too much, he liked
his hair.  He was trim.  He had a thin gold watch on a lizard band, with
the watch on the wrong side of his wrist.  He was beautiful, in a way.
Was this what Lowell felt with men, to see their beauty and not run from
it?  But I hate this man, thought Frank.

Bernays explained that the airline was aware of pending lawsuits and
wanted to do nothing to stand in anyone's way of them.  That there was a
procedure for the lawyers to follow, and that everyone knew the
protocols.  Rather, he said, it was his job to make the survivors
available to the press.  He wanted Frank to speak to them.

"No," said Lowell.  "And I want you to get out of here, now.

Just get the fuck away from us."

Ed Dockery shook his head, and in his look to Piet Bernays Frank saw the
confirmation of an earlier warning.  Bernays tried to say something to
Lowell, but Lowell would have none of it.

"You're trying to take control,, of the propaganda here," said Lowell,
"that's what's going on.

Bernays said that he only wanted to help Frank.

"How does Frank's going to the press help him, if you do the handling?"
asked Lowell.

"That's a good question," said their father.  Ethel put a hand on
Frank's shoulder, and the four Gales stood in a line, this bulwark.

Bernays said that he had hoped only to stop the kind of mad speculations
that drive the press into frerzies and make everyone's lives difficult.
Better, he said, for everyone to be as direct as possible than to hide
something.

"But we have nothing to hide," said Frank.

"That's right," said Leon.  "Nothing to hide."

Bernays said that he knew of the arrest, and that the press knew of it
too.

"Maybe we should get our own press agent," said Lowell.  This seemed to
Frank to be a good idea, and immediately he saw the advantages to this,
how their press agent would speak for him, and arrange interviews, if
everyone agreed that they were useful, with only those reporters who
would be sympathetic to Frank, and would not press him to talk more
about his trespass on Cohassett.

Piet Bernays said that hiring their own press person was a good idea,
and that he could find one in San Diego if they wanted.  This man will
run the airline someday, thought Frank, and if not this airline, then
another one.  I am looking at a man who is brilliant at what he does.
Any other functionary, even while encouraging the Gales to hire a press
agent, would have conveyed some tremors from the corporation's anxiety.
When Bettina Welch and Ed Dockery stood for the airline, one could still
see pieces of their flesh behind the masks.  Bernays, practiced in the
art of transparency, wasted no time putting on a cover.

"Look," said Lowell, " I `m a businessman in San Diego.  I deal with the
public all the time.  Don't you think I have my own resources here?
Don't you think I'm capable of finding my own press agent if I want one?
Are you suggesting that I don't even have my own publicist already?"

Bernays apologized if anything he said had implied that he did not
respect Lowell's place in the community.  He even smiled as he admitted
that he often bought records in Lowell's store.

Bernays gave Lowell a boyish, shy smile, and Lowell patted him on the
back.

"What a fucker," said Lowell, with respect, with envy.  "You've really
done your homework, haven't you?"

Bernays said that the airline was just doing what it had to do, and as a
businessman, Lowell would appreciate that they should be expected to do
no less.  Frank saw that with this Bernays had brilliantly and deftly
raised Lowell's business to the stature of any important business, to a
level equal to the airline.

And their father relaxed his posture, and even their mother, she
relaxed, and sat on the back of a chair.  When she did this, Bernays
pulled a chair from a table and sat down.  He was so finely tuned, and
he used himself brilliantly, his breeding; quietly appealing to Frank's
mother and father that they compare their sons to him, with his posture,
how wonderfully relaxed he was with himself, so unlike at least one of
their sons.  And then they all sat down.

It was maddening to Frank!  They liked him, this dry Republican
homosexual, this catamite to industrialists, this pet of bisexual
investment bankers.  He could imagine Bernays dressed in nothing but
suspenders clipped to ajock strap, with his fucking horn-rimmed glasses
on, pouring gin martinis for a senator whose campaign he had just
successfully managed, in some CIA condominium in Santa Barbara.  And the
senator, in a pink alpaca sweater, smoking menthols and nattering on
about how we did it, we did it, I'm a senator!

I'm in the club!  I made it, we made it, you helped me make it!  And
then what would they do?

Frank asked himself what it was about Piet Bernays that made him so
unhappy, so jealous.  He was tired of putting these questions to
himself, tired of comparisons, tired of jealousy, tired of the way his
family made him feel.

"Fuck you," he said to Bernays.  He had meant to keep this under his
breath, but it came out.

Bernays gave him a quizzical look, hurt puppy, hurt angel, more
fraudulent compassion.

"Frank," said his mother.

"It's over, Frank," said Lowell.  "This is one of the good guys."

Bernays raised a hand in peace and told Frank that he understood
anything Frank said or felt now.

"We know you do,?" said Ethel.

Frank got up and walked out of the room.  Lowell ran after him, but
Frank pushed him m away.  He didn't want to say anything, and he left
Lowell behind, calling his name in frustration.  Some rage surged in
Frank, something new, something that felt like the energy he had always
missed in his life, the thing he never had when he played games in
school, the thing that makes the basket, or kicks the ball or strikes
out the batter, this focus of all emotion into a single beam.  He was
ready to talk to a stadium filled with losers and tell them how to win.
Who was this Piet Bernays, this negligible faggot with queer suspenders?
Who was this Dockery, this Ed?  Who was this Bettina Welch, this
weak-chinned nothing, this wage earner, this uneducated processed-cheese
eater, this fool who thinks that in exchange for her dedication, the
airline actually gives two shits for her?  Losers, losers, losers.  All
of them.  And his brother too, and his father.  And Ethel?  Beside the
point.  No, a loser too.

She married Leon, and the bet was wrong.  Apartment dwellers, mansion
sellers.

Here in this hotel corridor, past meeting rooms with names evocative of
San Diego history, the Nimitz Room, the Dana Room, the Seira Room, the
Coronado Room, the Drake Room, Frank, running better than he had ever
run in his life, wove in and out of the knots of men and women in suits
who were going and coming from different conferences in all these rooms,
regional sales managers, local medical societies, the boards of trade
associations, men and women with jobs in a world so far from his, and
Frank looked at them, and thought, losers also, all of you, losers.  At
the end of the hall, where it joined the next wing of the hotel, was a
small sitting area with a couch and a table, and he jumped over the
couch and landed, he felt, with the grace of an African, a runner from
Kenya.  When the hall turned, he ran down the corridor and then into a
fire escape and down the stairs to the lobby, and then out the lobby to
the street.  Sudden change of light.  Late afternoon.  The sea air.  The
sound of cars on the freeway nearby, a kind of heavy, tired breathing.

Was anyone watching him?  Did he care?  Fuck them all, he thought; again
he had that thought, and this time the thought, his disdain, his perfect
scorn, rose inside him the way great waves build off the north shore of
Hawaii, scooping up the old shattered waves returning in defeat from the
beach and then piling them into another massive wall to roll across the
reefs and try again to tear down the island.  All these puny beings who
tormented him today, the police, his brother, his parents, Bernays, the
airline reps, none of them could ride for long on the massive waves of
energy that collected inside this thing that used to be Frank Gale. None
of these fuckers can surf on me!  I am tsunami, the hundred-year wave,
killer of sharks, destroyer of whales, widow-maker, orphan-maker!  I eat
villages whole!

And so he ran on, in this convention zone in San Diego, past the
Marriott, the Holiday Inn, the Ramada, the Sheraton, the Embassy Suites,
the Days Inn, the Hilton Inn.  How many executives unpacked their bags
behind him, in front of him, beside him, and, bored, turned the pages of
the Guide to San Diego with the picture of the trained dolphins at Sea
World, and played with themselves, or poured a drink from the minibar,
or made a call to their families, or looked up old college chums in this
big navy town, and did all of this without knowing that outside their
rooms Frank Gale ran like a hero?

He ran along the curving drive that linked the hotels, and as the road
turned back toward the Marriott, something in him sagged, and then his
ankles hurt, and he stopped running beside a long planting bed of ground
cover, in purple bloom.

The hotel looked so far away, and he was so tired.  He lay down on the
ground cover and looked up at the setting sun.  If the family had not
died, he would be in Mexico now.  If Anna had not found the letter as
she packed, she would have read it as he had intended.

He wondered if he really would have given it to her, or if, at the last
moment, or not even the last moment but any moment, he would have
decided that taking her to Mexico with contrition in his heart made
sufficient amends.  Hadn't he broken up with Mary Sifka?

Would he have needed to give Anna the letter?  By the second full day of
the trip, today, she would have known that something was different with
him.  She would have seen his love for her.  And it would have been
love.  And he would have proved it by making love to her, slowly,
wonderfully, letting her come first.  Oh, how he would have set a slow
pace, starting with a back rub, massaging her feet, taking time.  And
then, when she would have expected him to pull out, or to reach for a
condom, he would have stayed inside her, he would have risked-no, not
risked-he would have thrown himself into pregnancy.  No blow-jobs, no
coming anywhere but inside, toward the womb!  That would have been the
seal of the new contract, that would have been the rededication, the
proof, better than any declaration of love or any confession of his
crime.  A new baby, a child, more to love.

He wondered where she was in that cold warehouse on the docks, and in
how many pieces she had finally come to rest, and whether something of
her had mingled with something of their child.  I should have been on
the plane, he thought.  I should have crashed with them, I should have
died with them.  And as he thought this, the phrase GUILT OF THE
SURVIVOR poked into view, and his mind went blank, and he got up and
walked back to the hotel.

The sun was almost gone as he reached the lobby, where his brother
waited for him.

"Let's talk," said Lowell.

"There's nothing to say."

"No, no, there is, there is.  We've been expecting you to behave in a
certain way, and we've been wrong."

"What was the certain way?" asked Frank.  Someone took his picture from
across the room, a woman.  She wore a vest with a lot of pockets, and a
name tag on a leather loop around her neck.  So she was a press
photographer, thought Frank.  She looked around the room for someone,
and found him, the reporter she'd been sent out with.

"Reasonable," said Lowell.  "We thought you'd be reasonable, but you're
not, and you don't have to be.  This is not a criticism.

Behave the way you want."

"So I'm being unreasonable.  That's not a good thing." Frank watched the
reporter and photographer approach them.

"Don't take it that way."

"But what other way is there to take it?"

"And this is why I'm here.  I'm here so we don't fight.  There's nothing
to fight about."

"So now you're humoring me." Frank knew that he really was being
unreasonable now, and worse, cruel to his brother, who meant him no
harm.  The photographer took another picture.

"Don't put it that way, that isn't fair."

Frank wanted to tell his brother that he was right, to say, Yes, I'm
being unfair.  Instead, he asked about Piet Bernays.  "Where did he go?"

"He had things to take care of."

"I shouldn't have yelled at him."

"Maybe you were right."

"What did Mom and Dad say?"

"They're in their room."

"Drinking?"

"He is, she's trying not to."

"But she will," said Frank.

The photographer took more pictures.  Frank pointed her out to Lowell.

"We really should get a publicist," said Lowell.  "We can't keep getting
mad at everyone.  We have to be cool.  Elaine Swofford handles stuff for
the stores here.  She's okay.  I'll call her."

"What will she do?" asked Frank.

"She'll talk to the press first for us.  She'll set up the interviews,
or tell them why we can't be interviewed.  She'll keep them away from us
if that's what we want."

"That's what I want," said Frank.

"And will you come back to my place tonight?" asked Lowell.

"No," said Frank.  "But I'll behave myself." They crossed the lobby to
the reception desk, and Frank asked for his messages.  The desk clerk
gave him another pile of message slips.  The first was from Mary Sifka.
Frank quickly moved it to the bottom of the pile, but Lowell didn't seem
to notice his nervous speed.  Five were from different reporters, asking
for interviews.

"Let me handle these," said Lowell.

The reporter and photographer were next to them now.  The reporter
introduced himself, "Mitchell Hefter," he said, holding out his hand.
"I'm a reporter." He named a press syndicate, and showed his
identification.

Frank took a quick look at the other message slips, to see who had
called, and also to avoid eye contact with Hefter.  A few cousins had
called, also his secretary.

"What do you want to know?" asked Lowell.

"We just wanted to ask about the night your brother was arrested."

"It was a mistake," said Lowell.

"Yes," said Frank.  "I saw my wife's suitcase."

"Was there anything you were trying to get from it?" asked the reporter.

"Not really," said Frank.

"Were you aware that it was against the law for you to have opened it
up?"

"I wasn't thinking about that," said Frank.

"What were you thinking about?" asked the reporter.

"He was thinking about his family," said Lowell.

Frank wanted to disagree, but held himself back.  Besides, he couldn't
remember.  The reporter thanked them and walked away.

Frank told Lowell to go home, and Lowell said good-bye.  Frank read the
message from Mary.  She gave him a few specific times to call, ten in
the morning, which had passed, and then again at one, and then seven.
The message said for him to call only at those times.

So she was hiding this from her husband and from her work.  He had an
hour before he could call her.  If it was time to connect again with the
world, he would begin by returning the other calls, to tell the people
who cared enough to call, whatever their motives, morbid curiosity or
true concern, that he missed his wife and daughter, that he needed and
welcomed the support of his friends.  He would say that he was fine.

The first call he made was to his parents.  They were on the same floor,
and his mother told Frank he should come to their room.

He said he wanted to take a shower first and return a few calls.  His
mother said they should go out to eat, just the three of them.  "I think
we should go to a good restaurant," she said.  He knew that she meant
something expensive, the kind of rich mans restaurant they used to go to
when he was a child, and he wanted that too, a martini, and carrots and
green olives in a little tray filled with ice, and cheese toast, and the
salad made at the table by an old waiter.

They would have two rounds of drinks, and then they would order a bottle
of good wine, and talk about the past.  They would not ask Lowell to
join them.  The club of three.  At the end of the meal, on the way out,
Frank would filch a handful of mints from the large glass snifter at the
maitre d's station, and eat them all in a few minutes.  He would be a
little boy again, when his father was wealthy, the year he bought the
house in Bel Air.  The kind of meal that lasted as long as a summer.  He
would order a steak for dinner, or else a rack of lamb and split it with
his mother.  There would be mint jelly, and he would dab the meat into
the green sauce, and then scoop some of it against the creamed spinach.
He would eat a few of those olives during the meal too, for the lost
pleasure of ruining, with that overlay of vinegar and salt, the taste of
the wine and the meat.  And he would butter his bread.  How long has it
been since I have buttered my bread?  Frank asked himself.  Tonight I
will not abstain.  I will not worry about calories.  Tonight I will
order what I want.  I will have the shrimp cocktail if I want it!  And
the chocolate mousse!  If he couldn't bring himself to hug his parents
and feel their love, at least he could fall into the embrace of what was
left of their money.  He called the front desk and asked the
receptionist if there were any old, expensive restaurants in San Diego
that had strolling violinists.

"We have an excellent dining room right here," said the receptionist.

"I want to leave the hotel," said Frank.

"You're looking for French food?"

"What I'm looking for is probably called Continental."

"Let me ask someone who might know, and I'll call you back."

Frank thanked him.  He started to undress for the shower, but stopped. A
shower would only delay his next responsibility, which was to return
phone calls.

Mary Sifka still needed another forty minutes before he could call her.
He would talk to Julia Abarbanel first.  I can probably fuck her now, he
thought.  She's probably thinking that too.

He didn't recognize the area code of the phone number.  It might have
been Massachusetts, or Chicago, he wasn't sure.  He dialed.

Someone answered, a man.  Frank asked for Julia.  The man asked him who
was calling.  Frank told him.  The man mumbled something, Frank thought
it was "I'll get her," but he wasn't sure.  So the man knew who he was,
and why he was calling.

Julia was there.  "Frank, it's Julia." This was good, she didn't start
by wailing at the injustice of it all.

"Where are you?"

"I'm in Colorado."

"Where?"

"I'm staying with a friend in Denver."

"What are you doing there?"

"She's my roommate from college.  She had a baby." Julia said this
trying not to sound excited or happy for her friend, not to hurt Frank
again with his own loss.

"So that was her husband."

"Yes, Howard."

"Where are you living now?"

"I'm still in Minneapolis."

"And what are you doing these days?"

"I went back to school.  I'm getting my law degree."

"No kidding.  That's great."

"It was time to grow up."

"Oh, don't do that," said Frank.  He wondered how to take advantage of
this situation.  Maybe he could turn her toward a rude conversation, so
they could masturbate while creating a scene.

"Frank, I'm so sorry."

"Thank you."

"If there's anything I can do." What could she do?  She could tell him
if she would have fucked him in Yosemite.  Why can't I ask?

"Nothing now, really."

"I want to be direct with you." Another one testing herself.

"Yes."

"You're going to need help at home, aren't you?"

"I don't know."

"Yes.  Cleaning the house.  Packing all of their clothing.  The baby's
toys." The way Julia said "baby" made Frank think that she wasn't sure
of Madeleine's name.  And Madeleine wasn't a baby anymore; she was a
dead three-year-old.

"I haven't thought, about that yet."

"I think we re all coming out for the funeral."

"I don't even know when it is." I don't even know if there's anything to
bury.  But he couldn't say that.

"You know that you have all of our love," she said.

"It helps a lot." No, it doesn't.  When will you fuck me?

"Thanks," said Frank.  He could say anything, and the best thing to say
now was, "I have to say good-bye now."

"Good-bye Frank."

He hung up and dialed the number Mary Sifka had left.  It was a number
he wasn't used to, neither home nor office.

There was a high whine when the connection was made, and then Mary said,
"Hello?"

"It's me."

"Oh, Frank."

"Where are you?" he asked.

"I'm at home."

"I didn't recognize the number."

"It's my fax machine in my office.  I told Stewart I had to work."

Had he ever heard his name before?  Stewart.

"So that was the sound I heard."

"They're dead?"

"Yes."

"And you missed the plane because you were with me."

"No, the traffic was heavy."

"No, you didn't leave enough time.  If you hadn't had lunch with me, you
would have gone to the airport with them.  Right?"

"Unless I had business.  I was busy all morning."

"Frank, no.  You were seeing me.  That's why you didn't go to the
airport with Anna and Madeleine."

"I guess."

"It's true."

"Then it's true," he said, not knowing what to do with this.  If she was
guilty for the affair, then she was guilty for the long lunch, the last
kiss that delayed him, and then she was guilty for saving his life.  Or
was she guilty for the affair, because the trip to Mexico was his bid to
save the marriage from the affair, and without the affair there would
have been no trip?  He wanted to ask her what kind of fax machine she
had; he had been thinking about getting one for his house.

"I don't know who to talk to about this," she said.  "I'm afraid of
telling my friends."

"Didn't anyone ever know about us?"

"Sort of, at the beginning, but once we started, I kept it a secret.

How many people did you tell?"

"No one.  That was one of the things I liked about it.  That it was a
real secret."

"I told one girlfriend that we'd had lunch, and kissed, the first time.
She'd broken up with a married man.  She told me not to go ahead with
this, so I told her I didn't."

"Maybe you should see a therapist."

"I've thought about that.  I don't know how I'd justify it to Stewart."

"Tell him you're unhappy."

"Then he'll want to know what he can do to help me.  He loves me."

"You could talk to a priest.  I mean a minister." She was a Methodist,
although he didn't know what that really meant.

"This is too complicated for that.  And it's over."

"So see a therapist."

"I suppose."

Mary's reluctance annoyed Frank.  She had taken his grief, equated it
with her guilt, and forced him to goad her into seeking help, when it
was his loss, and not the inconvenience of the longheld secret of her
affair, and the intrusion of the disaster, that demanded the greater
attention.  Maybe this was why they had broken up.  Maybe he had stopped
liking her.  And if he had not stopped liking her?  Then they would not
have broken up, and they would have continued seeing each other,
secretly, happily, and he would have never taken his family to Mexico to
make things better.  There would have been no plane to miss.  He would
have been in Los Angeles now, fucking Mary Sifka in a motel.

"I don't know what to say to you," she said.  "Anything I say will sound
stupid."

"Maybe that's all you need to say."

"I wish I could make this all better for you."

"I know."

"When my brother died, well, you know." She had a brother, two years
older, who had died when she was twenty, killed in a car crash.  He had
been drunk.  She told Frank about it one afternoon, in bed.  The usual
stuff: a year to get over it, always a little pain in the heart.  Hard
to look at any BMW 32Oi, the same kind of car he was in.  Frank tried to
comfort her when he said that the 32Oi was an old model, and
disappearing from the roads.

"I've been drinking a little," she said.  "I had a vodka an hour ago,
and then another one just before you called.  Stewart saw the first one.
He thinks I'm relaxing, that I want to make love tonight.

I guess I'll have to."

"I don't think it's a good idea to drink, I mean for me to drink.

I want to stay on top of things."

"I can't even come to the funeral."

"Well, we know each other from business.  So you can come for that, you
know, as business."

"I have to tell her I'm sor'rv.  I'll eo to the erave alone.  after."

When she said "grave," she added, so softly that Frank wasn't sure if
he'd heard it, a slight z, the afterthought, to make the singular
plural.  Graves.  Mother and daughter.

"You didn't do anything."

"Maybe not, but I can tell her I'm sorry she died.  Did she know about
us?"

"No," said Frank.

"You're lying.  I can hear it in your voice."

"Maybe she did."

"She did, didn't she?"

"She knew.  I told her."

"What did she say?  About me."

"Nothing, really."

"Yes, she did."

"Mary, why do we have to do this?"

"I need to know."

"Think about how I feel for a minute."

"Think about how I feel for an hour."

"She knew it was s you.  We were going on vacation to pull things
together.  She knew that was what the trip was for.  And I really was
trying to pull everything together."

"And she didn't say anything bad about me?"

"No.  She had no reason to.  It wasn't about you, anyway, her anger.  It
was about me."

"So she was angry."

"Yes."

"She was angry at you."

"Yes."

"And did she forgive you before she died?"

"I hope so."

"She didn't say it.,' "That was what the trip was for."

"Oh, my God.  I'm sick.  I feel sick."

"Maybe you should lie down."

"Maybe I should die."

"I'm sorry," said Frank.  "I don't know what else to "When's the
funeral?" she asked.

"I don't know.  There's this memorial thing here tomorrow.  For
everyone, for all the people, the families and friends.  From the plane
and the ground."

"Will there be something in L.  A.?"

"I don't know."

"I'll ask the airline.  They'll know.  And I'll be there, Frank.  I'll
come to that."

"Thank you, Mary." But it was just something to say.

They hung up.  He supposed he did love her, there was something that
they knew about each other, something in each that was unsettled, that
wanted to travel but was afraid to go.  It was the thing in her that had
glowed for him, and the thing in him that she had liked, or needed.  So
it was with Julia too, and it was really nothing more than the
predictably feverish anticipation of sex with a new woman.  And even as
he told himself that this need for something wild was nothing more than
a frenzy of despair, he asked himself why Lowell was permitted to heed
the call of the orgy, and he was not.  If homosexuals see something in
each other, recognize the signs, then why couldn't he, as this unsettled
thing, recognize the signs of the same condition in unsettled women?  It
was the call of the orgy.  Harder to just duck into an alley and grope,
but not that much harder.  How difficult had it been with Mary Sifka?
They met twice for business, in his office, and then, at the end of the
second meeting, they talked about marriage, and then sex.  He had said
something like, I'm horny all the time, something that bold, and she had
said, Your wife is lucky, and he said, What about you?  and she said,
All the time, and then they were both dizzy and quiet for a moment as he
watched her knees; she was sitting in her chair and she opened them and
squeezed them, so she suffered the same tension as he, and then he got
out of his chair and kissed her, and then he had his hand under her
skirt, and he knelt on the floor, and she spread her legs, and he never
saw her underpants, he just gave her a handjob while she unbuttoned his
shirt and kissed his chest.  Then she unzipped his pants and gave him a
blow-job, and then they kissed, and that's how it began.  The unsettled.
Men and wrtm I ry with nographic imaginations.  She forced the kiss on
him, his semen on her tongue, so he had to taste himself.  And she
smiled at the end of this kiss and looked him in the eye, and he could
tell she was surprised that he accepted the dare, and that this amused
her in no small way, because she gave her husband this test, to accept a
swallow of his own sperm, and he always refused.  Frank kissed her
again.

When he was off the phone with Mary, the front desk called to give him
the name of a restaurant, L'Epicurean.  He was encouraged by its
pretension, but the number yielded a phone-company message that the
phone had been disconnected.  He tried Information to see if he had the
right number, and there was no listing.  So L'Epicurean was out of
business, and the hotel had it still listed on its register.

And had no one been referred to this expensive place since it had
closed, and had no one complained?  He supposed they had, but then did
the hotel erase L'Epicurean from whatever lists it kept for guests? This
was another sign of San Diego's stupidity, and he thought of calling the
front desk and ranting about the place, but he hadn't the energy.  He
took his shower, where, again, he dodged the cold condensation from the
ceiling, and considered that since he wasn't calling the desk to tell
them L'Epicurean is dead, then in similar moments perhaps dozens of
other hotel guests had not bothered to bring the bad news to the
concierge of the hotel, and perhaps for years to come guests would call
to make reservations, find out the place was closed, and then, exhausted
from a day spent convincing themselves that this stupid city was
actually interesting, they'd call for room service.  Where would he go
with his parents?

He would let them decide.  He put on the shirt and jacket that Lowell
had given him and went to his parents' room.

In the hall he wondered to what restaurant had the headwaiter of
L'Epicurean gone, or was it an ancient restaurant that closed because
its habitual patrons, the retired admirals and emphysemic politicians,
had died?

He knocked on his parents' door; they let him in.  His father was
reading the afternoon paper.  His father said, "Here, you should see
this."

There it was, on the second of three pages devoted to the crash: LOS
ANGELES MAN, LISTED AMONG THE DEAD, MISSED FLIGHT, ARRESTED FOR LOOTING.
And the article, brief.  No interview.  No picture.  There would be more
tomorrow.  A few of the articles on the page had jumped from the first.
There was one, just two paragraphs, the ending of a story headlined
LETTER (continued from page 1).  The story referred to a letter found in
the wreckage.  An airline official was complaining that the letter was
released without authorization, and the paper was defending its right to
publish it.

Frank turned the paper to page one.  Under the headline LOVE LETTER
FOUND IN WRECKAGE, and then a short introduction, saying that a name had
been mentioned in the letter, but was being deleted for reasons of
privacy, there it was, the entire letter set in type, to be more easily
read.

I love you.  You asked me afew weeks ago why I was so desperate to take
this vacation and I said that I needed to get away from the offcefor a
while, and that's true, but there's more.  For s I months you've noticed
that I've been distant, and I have been.  You asked me if there was
another woman, and I said no, but I was lying.  I had an affair with
[name deleted].  It's over now.  I wanted to take this trip so that we
could find a way to heal ourselves.  I don't know how you'll take this,
and all I can say is that I beg you to forgive me, but if you don't want
to, I will understand.  I love you.

"That's so sad," said his mother.  "I hope she read it before she died."

"They're holding the name of the woman he was fucking."

"Leo," said Frank's mother.  "That's not fair."

"They shouldn't have printed it at all," he said.  "It's an invasion of
privacy."

"It's on all the news now.  It was on the national news already."

His father pointed to the picture of a black man on the front page.
"There's your Lonnie Walter.  The cocksucker who killed your family.
They found his note too, but they're not releasing it.  They say he
carried a gun onto the plane, he used his airline security pass to sneak
a gun through."

"Did he sneak onto the plane?" asked Frank.

"No, he had a ticket.  The gate attendant knew him, and he told her he
was taking a vacation.  And she knew that the guy who had fired him was
on the plane, and she mentioned that to a friend."

"She was worried that Walter was going to kill him?"

"No, just that it was going to be embarrassing for the supervisor, to
see this guy he'd fired on the plane with him.  They think he shot the
supervisor, grabbed a stewardess, and then he got into the cockpit and
shot the crew."

Lonnie Walter was forty-five, light-colored, bald.  He had little dots
around his eyes that were like raised freckles, or beauty marks.

The picture was from an airline file.  So he was dead too.  Frank
wondered if he had been listed among the dead in the long lists, if he
had paid for his ticket.  Of course he had, thought Frank.  He had
sneaked the gun past Security at the employee entrance to the airport,
and then again at the terminal.  He had entered the main terminal from
backstage, but they wouldn't have let him on the plane without a ticket.
Now all airports were sure to change their security systems.  Everyone
working at the airports would have to pass through those metal
detectors.  It would cost a lot of money.  The price of travel would go
up.

How long will it take them to find me?  he wondered.  Of course they'll
find me.  And they'll find Mary Sifka.  The paper assumed the letter
writer was dead.  "I guess he's dead," said Frank.

"Lonnie Walter, he's in Hell as we speak," said Leon.

"Not Walter," said Frank.  "The one who wrote the letter."

"Oh, God, of course," said his father.  There was no reason to believe
the letter writer had not died on the plane.  And there was no clue yet
to let them connect this thing to Frank.  That six months' distance was
something only Anna complained about.  To his mother and father he had
always been distant.  The attachment to Mary, which for so long gave him
comfort, finally corroded all of his connections, even to Madeleine.
This distance became a punishment.  What else could he have done but
confessed?  But now everything was fucked up.  How soon would everyone
know everything?

Why did Anna keep the note after reading it?  If she had put the note in
her handbag, which surely exploded with the crash, the paper would
either have burned with the passengers or else would have been lost in
the wet muck after the fire trucks had finished spraying the area down.
But the existence of the note meant they would easily trace it back to
Frank, because the police, or the crash investigators, or the County
Coroner had found it in his suitcase.

And then Frank felt a terrible sadness for Mary Sifka, because even if
the letter had been separated from the luggage, there was Mary's name.
It didn't matter that the letter was so coyly unaddressed and unsigned;
unless a little piece of hot shrapnel grazed the note card, scorching,
beyond recognition, only her name, they were looking for her.

"It was on the national news?" asked Frank.

"The crash?  Of course," said his father.

"The letter."

"That's going to be the big thing from all of this," said his father.

"You'll see.  We'll know the girlfriend's name by tomorrow.  They can't
keep that stuff out of the news for long.  It's the papers that are
holding back the names, I guess until they notify the next of kin."

Frank thought of telling his mother and father that the letter was his.
What would it cost him?  He had an answer: He wanted more than anything
to keep their sympathy, for however many hours he had until someone
restored the deleted name, because they would hate him once the world
could say "Mary Sifka." For the rest of their lives shame would dog
their mourning.  The mother and father of that man who wrote the letter.
The adulterer.  Mary Sifka's real in-laws.

"Let's go somewhere," said his mother.  "I'm hungry."

Frank said he didn't know where to go.  His father said that Lowell had
made reservations for them at an Italian place he liked.

Awful San Diego Italian food, with rancid oil, and badly chopped stalks
of parsley drowning in the salty tomato sauce.

"Is he coming?" asked Frank.  Frank didn't want Lowell there, since his
brother was sure to be obsessed with the letter and would want to talk
about it.

His mother said that he wasn't.  I should tell them the letter is mine,
thought Frank.  His feet were cold.  COLD FEET.  It was true, the blood
was somewhere else.  Where?  What was the evolutionary function of cold
feet?  Where did the genius of adaptation decree that some protection
from predation derives from cold feet?  How could he run from danger
with cold feet?  And what was the danger in the truth, if he told the
truth now?

His HEAD WAS SPINNING.  And just as something in him shrieked when he
made the leap into the first pornographic tableau with Mary Sifka, now
the ice floe moved from his feet up his legs, and then, without warning,
he was SCARED SHITLESS.  So even that exhausted phrase came from
experience: Before he could look down, he knew that he was standing in a
puddle of his own shit.

His guts had opened.  Everything inside of him was sliding into his
underpants, his boxer shorts, not even jockey shorts with an elastic at
the thigh to hold the crap in, like a diaper.  So the shit dribbled down
his legs, and out his cuffs, over his shoes.

He cried, "Mom!" and his mother looked down at his feet, trying to
understand.

"Frank?" she said.

"I know happening to I I , I ) he said, lurching into the bathroom a few
steps away.  His parents rushed toward him, but he shut the door.

"Frank, what happened?" asked his mother.

His father said, "Jesus."

"I'm sick," said Frank.  He wondered if they were standing in his shitty
trail.  Someone would have to clean it up tonight, it would smell, or
else they would have to change rooms.  He could go to a market and buy
rug cleaner, the spray kind, and a sponge or paper towels, whatever the
directions on the rug-cleaner package said was best for cleaning it up.
Maybe there was something in a pet store for cleaning up cat and dog
shit, deodorizing a carpet.  He would let his parents sleep in his room
tonight, he would stay here.  The shitty imprints of his shoes, like the
shoe shapes used to diagram dance steps.  And what step had he
described?  A straight line.  A cha-cha without the return.  A cha!

He stepped into the bathtub and turned on the shower.  It was hard to
adjust the temperature, and he settled for too cold, something to wake
himself up.  He had to untie his shoelaces, smearing his fingers, but he
washed them off.  His mother or father had taken a shower already,
because the little bar of soap had been unwrapped.

He took off his pants and tried to wash the legs out by putting the
shower head through the top, but the pressure wasn't strong enough.

SAN DIEGO CONSERVES WATER.  So he changed the stream from shower to
faucet, and pulled the pant legs inside out.  He opened the
COMPLIMENTARY SHAMPOO, and worked up a lather.  Glops of loose shit
collected in the tub's narrow drain.  He used a washcloth to scrape the
pants clean, and the job was done.  He washed his shoes out, cleaned the
soles, and put them on the rim of the tub.

Then he turned the handle to change the stream from faucet back to
shower, and, taking off his shirt, he washed himself.  He made the water
warmer, and when the temperature drifted to cold, he turned it up,
letting the water burn him, so he could sterilize his skin, so he could
soap, and soap again, and rinse off, and soap again, using the hotel's
inexhaustible supply of hot water, to make himself clean.

One of them knocked on the bathroom door.  His mother.

He told her he was feeling better.

She asked for his room key, so she could get clean clothes for him.  Did
he want a doctor?

"No."

Was it something he ate?

"Maybe, yes.  But it's over."

He apologized.

She asked him why.

"Because you wanted a nice dinner tonight."

She said it had been selfish of her to think of going out.

He said they could still go out.  Whatever it was, was over.

No, she said, she had already ordered from room service.  And she had
spoken to Anna's parents, who were coming in to Los Angeles tomorrow,
from Philadelphia.  Her two sisters were already there.  Somehow they
had missed the news that Frank was alive.  `I' When he could, they
wanted to talk with him.  They sent their love.

They were so sorry for him.

"Take my room tonight," said Frank.

His mother asked him why.

"Do I have to explain?"

"But you were sick, Frank.  Everyone gets sick."

His mother was silent, and he could hear her mumble or whisper something
to his father.  His father probably wanted to accept the offer of the
clean room.

"We'll get you a doctor," said his mother.  So Leo was thinking of
Frank's health, not his own comfort?  So they were being parents now?

His father came to the door.  "Frank?"

"Yes, Dad."

"Don't be embarrassed about this."

"Thanks for saying that."

"It's not food poisoning, is it?"

I can say it now, thought Frank.  Easily.  I can say, No, Dad, I'm
scared shitless by what's going to happen when you know that I wrote the
letter.  But he said, "No."

"It's everything."

Frank said it was.

"We'll stay in this room.  It's really not bad.  Did you clean up in
there?"

"I tried to.  I think you need fresh towels, though."

"I'll call."

"What will you say?"

"Nothing, I don't have to explain myself to these assholes." This was
Lowell's voice too.  So his father wasn't a complete loser.  Why didn't
I learn those lessons?  Frank asked himself.  What did Lowell see that I
didn't, why does Lowell love them more than I do?  Look at what they're
doing for me now, the love, the care.

"I'm sorry," said Frank.

"I told you not to be," said his father.

"I'm sorry for everything," said Frank, and he meant: everything that's
going to happen.

"We love you," said his mother.

"For now," he said.

"The key," said his mother.  It was in his wet pants.  He gave it to
her, opening the door just wide enough for his hand, and then closed it.
He sat on the edge of the tub and waited for his mother to bring him
clean underpants.

When he was dressed, he went back to his room.  A man and woman were in
the hall, next to the elevators, arguing.  They were both dressed
expensively; his suit was dark gray, and she wore blue, and a white
shirt with ruffles at the neck.  They were probably in their late
twenties, and they were angry with each other.  ` "This is my floor,"
said the man.  "I got here first."

"You can't claim it, you don't own it," said the woman.

"I hate to cite precedence, because ii I'm sure you don't understand the
concept, but there's a long-established principle of finders, keepers
here."

"It isn't finders, keepers, that's not it at all.  It's more like the
claims of imperialism."

Then they saw Frank, and they stopped talking.

"Is there something wrong?" Frank asked.

"No," said the woman.

"Have you made a choice yet?" said the man.

"What do you mean?" asked Frank.

The elevator came.  The woman said, "We have an agreement, you know, not
to fight for the same one.  You can check it."

The man seemed to know what she was talking about, and they both got
into the elevator.

Frank wasn't sure if he understood what he had seen, but it would have
been something to discuss with his wife.  She liked to hear abstract
anecdotes from the world, and try to complete someone's story with only
a fragment, a glimpse.

Back in his room the message light on the phone was blinking.

There were two messages from his brother, one from Bettina Welch, and
another dozen left by reporters, including two from Ron Godfrey.

While he looked at the messages, the phone rang.  It was Lowell.

"Mom and Dad said you were sick.  They asked me to find you a doctor."

"I'm okay now."

"Are you sure?"

"All systems g I I I I "Yeah, all systems go over the rug," said Lowell,
and he laughed.  "What happened?"

"I think everything just got to me."

"Everything's just getting to you." Lowell sounded a little bit drunk.
This astonished Frank and then left him feeling lonelier than ever.  His
brother, after all, had not lost his own family, and with a few days
passed already, Lowell was slipping back into the general drift of life.
Lowell could afford to take an evening off from managing Frank, and like
the camp counselor who makes fufun of the weakest boys in the bunkhouse
alter they've gone to bed, Lowell needed the release.

"That's right," said Frank, hoping that his brother would hear something
sullen in his voice.  "Everything just gets to me."

``You know what I I I I , I I said Lowell, not coddling him anymore.  He
meant: not just now, but always.  What was he drinking?

Beer or champagne.  Lowell likes champagne.  "So should I get the doctor
for you?"

"You don't have to."

"You're sure."

Frank said he was sure.

"Fine then," said Lowell.  "Tomorrow they've got that memorial thing,
and then we'll go back to L.A."

So they said good night to each other, and then Frank called Ron
Godfrey, who thanked him for returning the call.  He asked Frank if he
was ready to say anything.

"About what?" asked Frank.

"About surviving the crash."

"But I didn't survive the crash," said Frank.  "Nobody did."

"Yes, sir, said Godfrey.  "I was just wondering how you felt when you
first saw your name on the list of the dead."

"I couldn't believe it," said Frank.  In print, how would that look?  "I
still can't."

"Are you suing the airline?"

"I suppose," said Frank.

"Do you know which suit you're joining?"

"I didn't know I had a choice."

"There's a few different lawyers, or law firms, trying to pull together
as many people as possible for suits." ii "I didn't know that," said
Frank.

"Well, it's early still," said Godfrey.  He didn't seem to have many
more questions.  "You were at the airport?"

"Yes, I was waiting for the next flight."

"What time was the next flight leaving?"

"Six."

"And I understand you were held up in traffic."

"That's right."

"You took a cab?"

"Yes." He lied, but why let the world know he was in a limousine, why
stimulate envy from strangers?

"On your way from work?"

"From lunch, from a business lunch."

"And you called from the restaurant to say you'd be late?"

"No, from the car."

"There was a phone in the cab?"

"I meant we had to pull into a gas station.  I called from the gas
station.

"How far from the airport was that?" asked Godfrey.

"A few miles."

"Do you remember the name of the street?"

"Mr.  Godfrey, don't you think you have enough information?"

They will uncover all of my lies, thought Frank.

"Thank you, Mr.  Gale."

"That's it?"

"For now, yes.  Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"And you have my sympathy.  I-my-my mother was killed in a car crash
when I was in high school.  I was supposed to be in the car with her,
she'd picked me up from school after we'd finished putting the high
school newspaper to bed, but I had a fight with her, and I swore at her,
and she told me to walk home."

"So you know how I feel."

"A little."

Frank wanted to ask him if he knew so much, why was he bothering him
with these questions, but he didn't.

Godfrey was gone, and then Frank called Bettina Welch.  And then.  And
then.  And then.  Ever since the crash, nothing but loose moments tied
together by time.  He had no family anymore, the thing that kept time
away from him, love, even the faltering love of his three-year-old
daughter.  Now he had nothing but time, since all of his
responsibilities had died.

"Bettina, it's Frank Gale."

"Yes, Frank, how are you?"

"I'm hanging in there."

"I'm sure, I'm sure.  Frank, I was just calling to remind you of the
memorial service tomorrow morning.  The buses will be here, or you can
take a cab, or your brother can drive you, or you can rent a car from
one of the local rental agencies, and I have lists down here in the
crisis center."

"Thank you, Bettina.  Will there be coffins there?"

"Oh, Frank.  No.  No, this is not a funeral.  This is a memorial
service.  So we can begin the healing.  But there will be a funeral.

By the way, most of the bodies have been identified."

"That seems pretty quick."

"Those guys are working around the clock.  And the robots, of course."

"And then I go down to the morgue?"

"Or you can send your brother."

"And then we can go back to Los Angeles."

"You can go back to Los Angeles anytime.  You didn't have to come here."

So quickly, life boiled away everyone's intense compassion, their
respect for him.

He said good-bye to her.  How many people had he said goodbye to since
the plane crashed?

He called his parents' room and asked his mother if she had a number for
Anna's sisters.

"You don't have to call them now," she said.

"Why not?"

"Because they'll be here in the morning.  They're coming down.

No one expects you to be a good host now, Frank."

This was odd from her, he thought she would have liked him to call them,
but she was thinking, he was sure, of the crap on her rug, and she
wanted him to rest, to protect himself, and probably her, as well, from
the possibility that he would erupt in other ways, again.

"They want to stay at the house," said his mother.

"Why?"

"They want to help you get everything together." This was such a bland
thought.  What did that mean, get everything together?

Everyone would have their own cycle that began with grief and awe and
ended in irritation.  He would have to deal with the two sisters' need
to start at the beginning.  And then Anna's parents.  He needed "i a
publicist, not for the press, but for all these relations, someone paid
to talk to them, to explain his behavior.

Was he still related to Anna's family?  If Anna had died, but Madeleine
survived, there would still have been some kind of genetic connection,
through the little girl, but now?  What held them together but an
obligation to remember?  And if I want to forget?

Anna's sisters were Barbara and Andrea.  Barbara was three years older,
Andrea, five years younger.  Their parents, Peter and Margot Klauber,
lived in Philadelphia, where Peter was a real estate attorney.  Barbara
was a lawyer in Boston; Andrea managed a bookstore in Seattle.  It was
not a close family.  There were cousins, mostly centered around
Philadelphia, and most of them on Peter's side of the family.  Margot's
family, the Van Raaltes, were Dutch Jews, and only Margot's parents had
escaped Amsterdam before the war.

Everyone else was dead.  The Klaubers were a more refined family than
the Gales, and this was something that had attracted Frank to Anna,
something he thought of as European, cultured, complicated.

Anna, for her part, was at first delighted by the mercantile Gales.

There was a kind of vulgar Jew that Anna always pointed out to Frank,
someone in his late forties, or older, even into his seventies, with a
creased, pendulous face, and long earlobes, and an open shirt, and gold
chains.  She would find them in crowds, in other cars at stoplights, and
on beach vacations.  Frank asked her once if she wanted him to wear a
gold chain, and she said he needed to put on weight to look right.  She
had meant, he knew, the kind of weight that came from a Bacchic,
orgiastic need for more.  She didn't want a fat man who was stuffing the
lonely child within.  A concept taken from psychology.  And she wanted
him to be fat only if he was rich, and rich in the right way.  Money he
had stolen himself, not money his father or brother had stolen.  And she
might have been disappointed that the Gales were finally not vulgar
enough, not Oriental enough.  So her marriage to Frank did not insult
her mother and father and provoke their contempt for her, for her
conscious degradation of their bloodline, a hatred for her that might
have challenged Anna to complete the break with them and choose a path
for her own life that needed neither their approval nor disapproval.

This was a subject to which she returned often, her family's sense of
its own importance, the family curse.  In the first years of their
marriage, Frank listened sympathetically to Anna's minute dissections of
her family's morbidity.  Was it the discovery of Mary Sifka that
poisoned his interest in his wife's family?  He came to hate the calls
from Anna's parents, because after she talked to them, chatting
pleasantly, she would hang up the phone and swear she would never talk
to them again.  He told himself that Mary Sifka would never make such a
promise unless she meant to keep it, but that she would never, at this
age, give her parents, or give anyone but especially her parents, the
authority Anna had given hers.  And since meeting Mary, he had stopped
complaining about his own parents to Anna, although his feelings for
them hardly changed.  He just didn't want to do anything that would make
him sound like Anna, so full of blame.

Still, though neither of them really loved their own families, or each
other's, they could not afford, emotionally, to tell the other that they
were bored with each other's tired feelings.  Mexico might have changed
this.  Since the crash he had not allowed himself, or had the time, to
think beyond the first fantasy of Anna's discovery of the letter.  Even
while writing the letter, he imagined nothing beyond the first
conversation with her in the room when he returned from his walk on the
beach with Madeleine.  But if the letter worked, I' if Anna had forgiven
him and fucked him deeply-to make another baby!-then for the next week
they would have felt a closeness that perhaps they had never felt with
each other, for each other.  Anything would have been possible after a
few days.  They could have said, Now let us tell each other every
thought we have ever had.  All the worst thoughts.  About ourselves,
about each other.  What we want in life.  What we want in bed, now.

What a way to seduce.  What a name for a perfume, the Truth.

What are you wearing?  The Truth.

And then, where else could this orgy of truth have led them?

To freedom, to holy edification.  This might have been the great project
for both of them, a new mission for their lives, launched by ten loving
days in Mexico.  Let go of the past.  Burn the past.  Bum all the
baggage.  The purge of the mother and father.  Finally to let go of all
that.  And if this sounded like something that a celebrity couple would
confess to in a magazine, well, so what?  Wouldn't you like to be so
free?  He could have told her everything about his feelings at work,
about Lowell, about his disappointments, the failure of his career as a
record producer, but to really tell her how heI' felt about it, how
awful it was.  Or would she be reminded by this that there was something
in life for which he wasn't quite good enough?  Successes she could have
shared.  Parties to which she would never be invited.  Would she prefer
not to think about this?

Well, but isn't that what they were testing?  That they could trust each
other not to use these secrets as weapons.  To let go of it all, let go
of failure and frustration.  Let go of ambition and expectation.

And what would she have said to him?  What if they fell in love with
each other for a few days, and continued to confess, and explore, but
reached a moment in which one of them said something harsh, or more
painful than even the rules of trust and honesty could contain?  For
example: I don't really love you.  Or: I always wanted to be with
someone more beautiful.  What if one of them said something that had
been hidden for a long time, and that the relief of this revelation was
short-circuited by the truth's imperative to act on this feeling, and
that the only action capable of sustaining that relief was divorce?  For
example: I want a husband who works for himself, not his brother.  Or: I
want a man who knows languages, and can explain the world to me.  Or:
Life is too short, and all of this honesty is a device to leave us in a
deep embrace with our fates, and I want another fate.

What if he had not missed the plane, and the plane had not crashed? When
he talked to her on the car phone, she was mad at him, but she was still
getting on the plane.  He had consoled himself with this, because she
could have canceled the trip, but then Madeleine would have been
confused and disappointed.  So was she continuing ahead only for their
daughter?  As the plane went down, was she thinking with bitterness that
if she had acted for herself, and not for the daughter she had with this
worm, then she would be alive, and on her way to a lawyer, to settle the
case and be free, finally?

And if the plane had not crashed, and Frank had gone to Mexico and met
them, what would that have been like?  Gone to Mexico knowing that Anna
had read the letter.  He would have called from the lobby when he
checked in.  They would have been expecting him.  Yes, Serior Gale,
we're sorry you missed your flight.  We've taken very good care of your
wife and daughter.  The little girl, she's so bright.  Would you like
your complimentary margarita?  He would.

And always the same routine: without salt, no ice.  Or ice, yes, but no
salt.  No, make that with salt too, and lots of ice.  Thank you.

Then to the house phone.  Hello, Anna.  Or, not even that.  I'm here.

Well, I made it.  Hi.  Anna.

Then with the bellboy to the room.  Or would he have needed a bellboy,
since all the luggage had gone with Anna?  No bags, just a toy bought
for Madeleine at the airport store.  Under his arm.  The bellboy doesn't
need to show him the way to the room.  Yes, he does.

I'm too tired, too scared.  I need the company.  So the bellboy walks
with me.  He speaks a little English.  He knows I missed my flight.

He shows me the door.  Who knocks?  I do.  I give him a few dollars, too
much, but I need someone to like me now.

So I knock.  Madeleine, in the background, shrieks out "Daddy!"

Anna opens the door.  I stand there, don't cross the threshold until
invited.  Don't meet her eyes, look down, think of contrition.  I say
I,, I'm sorry.  That's all.  I don't come in.  She has to invite me in.
I say I' nothing.  I wait for her to talk.  This is a strategy that will
either work or end the marriage now.  Either she will let me in, and
with that invitation forgive me, or she will see through the device, and
make me go back to Los Angeles, now.  A minute while she studies me.

I do not look her in the eyes.  She can see me clearly now.

Come on in.

So I do.  The baby jumps up, and I pull her into my arms.  I give her
the doll, which she takes shyly and then hugs.  I tell her that I missed
her.  I ask her about the flight.  Questions that Madeleine cannot
answer.  She shows the doll to her mommy.  Her mommy says hello to the
doll.  The human drama is so obvious to me now, how to direct it.

We have a suite.  We put Madeleine to bed.  I tell her a story.

Once upon a time there was a frog and a centipede.  And the frog fell
asleep, and the centipede crawled into the frog's mouth looking for a
warm place to rest.  And the frog closed his mouth and swallowed the
centipede, and the centipede tickled the frog from the inside and said,
Let me out, and the frog opened his mouth, and the centipede came out,
and then they were friends.

And Madeleine is just barely satisfied with the story, but she lets me
kiss her on both cheeks, and she holds the new doll-a penguin?  a teddy
bear?  a bunny?-and lets me leave her in the strange new room with the
door open just a bit.  And then her mommy goes into the room and stays
for a long time, half an hour, until Madeleine is really asleep, and
then she comes out of the room, with a smile back at her daughter, and
then she slaps me across the face, one hand, then the other hand, and
tells me she wants a divorce, that I'll never change, that I'm a loser.

And I tell her what does she know about losers?  She hasn't crossed the
fucking police barricades, she hasn't walked through the devastated
houses.

I'm fine the way I am, and I like myself, I yell at her.  And I could
hit her, I could slap her face too if I want, but I don't.  So she slaps
me again, and she tells me she never really loved me, that from the day
we met she wondered who I really was, and that a week doesn't go by when
she doesn't ask herself why she stays with me, sometimes that is the
only thought in her head, for days, maybe she never has another thought
in her head except that one, not since the wedding.  Well, you're dead
now, I say, so I don't have to listen to this.  And she says, Yes, you
do.

I go back to the knock on the door.  Put the baby to bed.  Finish with
the frog.  Anna follows.  She comes out of the room and looks at me.
Again, I keep my eyes away from hers.  She says nothing for five
minutes.  A long time.  I say, I can't stand this.  I need to know.

I need for her to tell me what she's thinking.  She could say, The
letter must have been hard to write.  So I can shrug.  I don't know if I
could have written that, she says, if I had fucked around.  The word
hurts.  Is she building up to something, the attack again, the slapping?
I shrug again.  The little boy.  Is it really over?  she asks.

Yes.  And were you having lunch with her?  Yes.  Did you kiss her
good-bye?  Yes.  On the tongue?  Please.  But would Anna have asked
that?  No.  Because she wouldn't want to know?  Or because her
imagination did not search for humiliation?  How well did he know her?
How long were you seeing her?  A while.  Six months.  Why did it end?

He liked these questions, they were honest and begged for honesty.  All
he had to do was keep his bargain with the truth.  It ended because I
wanted to have a real marriage.  Because I wanted to be a father again.
How do I know I can trust you?  You can't.  What an answer!  How do I
know you won't fuck another woman again?  You can't.  So why should I
stay with you?  I don't know.  Did you mean it about having another
child?  I think so.  Not a definite yes?  I can't be definite about
anything right now.  Then why are you here?  I want to try.  So you're
trying something with me?  Yes.  But then you're really just
experimenting with yourself.  I hope not.  But you might be.  Yes.  Then
I'm just an experiment, and if the experiment fails, you'll have me
pregnant again, or with a second child, before you realize that this was
all a mistake.  I don't know.  But you do know.

I don't think so.  Then if you don't know, you're asking me to take all
of the risks, because if you back out, I'm the one who loses.  I suppose
so.  That's right, you see it, I'm right.  Yes.  So there's no reason to
stay together, because I can never trust you.  I'm sorry.

I'm sure you really are sorry, I'm sure this tears you apart, I'm sure
you feel miserable.  I do.  I know you, of course you do, but look at
this, here I am, feeling sorry for you, and you're the one who broke his
vows.  I am admitting the affair; are you telling me that you haven't
slept with anyone else?  Never.  Is there any hope for us?

Probably not.

Frank is silent again, but this time without any kind of plan.

They sleep in the same bed but do not touch.  He is carefUl not to try.

In the morning they have breakfast in the dining room that looks out
over the beach.  Madeleine brings her doll but spills marmalade on it
and cries.  The pineapple is dry.  He drinks three cups of
cinnamon-flavored coffee, and his stomach burns.  Anna arranges herself
prettily, in profile to Frank, knowing that he hates the affectation of
the pose, and she watches the sea.  Frank eats too much from the buffet,
three servings of a spicy omelet with peppers and chorizo.  This hurts
his stomach too.  Madeleine drinks her juice and flirts with a
six-year-old at another table.

Everyone goes to the beach in the morning.  Frank rents an umbrella and
chairs.  He orders drinks from a cabana boy.  Anna has a margarita and
reads magazines, Vanity Fair and Architectural Digest, which she boughtht
at the airport in Los Angeles.

Madeleine plays with a few little girls.  Frank drinks too much and
falls asleep.  Anna drinks and sleeps.  Someone wakes them up, the
cabana boy.

There has been an accident.

Please come.

Frank sees a crowd at the water's edge, in a circle.  The crowd shifts,
and Anna cries out.  Madeleine is dead.  She had been playing in the
water, no one was watching her when the wave knocked her down, it
happened so quickly.

No one was watching her.

There is nothing to be done.

The parents STAND BY HELPLESSLY as the police take the body away, and
then the hotel's manager helps make the arrangements to return home.
They fly home with the body in a tiny coffin.

Lowell meets them at the airport in Los Angeles.  Everyone asks them how
it happened.  They tell the same story, that Madeleine was with a
baby-sitter, and the sitter couldn't swim, and when Madeleine was caught
by a wave, she was gone before help could save her.

Everyone tells them to sue.  Frank's mother forces them to see an
attorney.  The attorney advises them of the difficulty in a lawsuit.
Who will they sue?  The hotel?  Or the Mexican baby-sitter?

Some camoesino's daughter who lives in a house with dirt floors?

This is one of those things, says the lawyer.  If this had happened in
America, and they had contracted for the sitter through an American
hotel, then they might have had a case.  He is sorry.  So are they.

They go back to the house, put the baby's things away, and then Frank
moves `out, to a motel.  In three months they are divorced.

Or he did not miss the plane.  And Lonnie Walter forgot his rage, in the
parking lot, he put his gun away and thought of his family, thought of
his sister, and could not bring himself to so dishonor them, and
returned home, and found a kind psychologist, and rebuilt his life, and
trained for a new job, and made peace with himself.  And Frank buys
Madeleine a toy in the airport gift shop, a key chain with a plastic
surfboard ridden by Mickey Mouse.  He helps her with a coloring book on
the flight.  He gives her gum to chew for the descent into Acapulco.
There is time for a swim in the afternoon.  While Anna is in the shower,
Frank tucks the letter behind the extra pillows on the shelf in the
closet.  Everything is just as it should be.  That night they have a
pleasant dinner looking out at the sea.  He makes love to Anna, starting
with a slow massage of her feet and ankles.  They exhaust themselves. He
makes a lot of noise when he comes, like a buffalo, a heavy grunt, and
then a series of strangled cries.  When he's finished, he laughs.  In
the morning he takes Madeleine for a walk, leaving the letter behind.

When they return, the room is empty.  On the back of the letter he had
left for her, Anna has left her own note.  It reads: Dear Frank, I have
gone home to Los Angeles.  We took a vow of)idelity when we married.

You broke that vow.  I have decided not to forgive you.

Anna's flight back to Los Angeles crashes.  Wind shear, whatever that
means, though the weathermen on television try to explain.

Some freak of nature, a sudden shift in the air, and the plane loses its
lift.  And Frank is now a single father.  He sues the airline.  He makes
a lot of money, enough to build a recording studio in his house. Through
a friend at a record label, he is introduced to a singer, and helps the
singer make a demonstration tape of one song.

The label likes it and hires Frank to produce the singer's album.

The record sells well.  Frank meets many beautiful women and is happy.
Or he would be happy, but he learns how weak he is at being a father,
how inadequate.  Madeleine will not let him forget that she misses Anna.
Nothing helps her, because she knows that her father doesn't really love
her.  That her father would always rather be someplace else, doing
something for himself, not for her, not with her.

He tries to find someone to marry, but no one ever really loves him.  He
calls Mary SiIka a few years Anna's death, to say hello, to tell her he
has survived, and she is pregnant and happy.  There is nothing between
them anymore, or rather, he tests her and finds that she has no feeling
for him, other than a genial good cheer, which Frank believes is proof
that she once loved him, and that he should have lefi Anna for her.
After the call he can never quite stop bothering himself with the
scenario of a life that turned on a passion.  He asks himself, What if I
had told Anna that I loved another woman, that whether or not I married
this other woman, the love itself, a real love, proved to me the death
of my marriage, that I could not be a model to my own daughter if I
stayed married against the instinct of every cell in my body?  He
thinks, Well I wouldn't have said that part, about the cells in the
body, but what if I had said the rest?

He starts to drink.  Madeleine becomes a withdrawn and confused child,
and even with the help of psychologists her somber and arid character
cannot be changed.  Frank sends her to a private school that specializes
in offering paid sympathy to the damaged children of the rich.  Her
grades are only average, and the friends she makes are colorless, bored
with each other.  They protect themselves by mocking each other's
enthusiasms.  After three years at an expensive but mediocre college,
she gets a job, with the help of a friend's father, working as an
assistant to a casting director in Los Angeles, who encourages her to
see all the movies and plays she can.  Madeleine buys the tickets, or
accepts free tickets from the theaters, but never sees the plays.  The
casting director gently talks to Madeleine about ambition, and finally
Madeleine tells her that she prefers the routine of the job.  She
explains to the casting director that she has no interest in running a
business.  At some point in her thirties she goes into analysis, at her
father's suggestion.  In therapy she discovers that she has blocked
herself at work because her father provided so few lessons in life for
her.  With deeper examination she analyzes the complex structure of her
family and discovers that Frank, as the always self-deprecating brother
to the tycoon, never trusted his own abilities.  Far from hating Frank
for his weakness, after a few years on the couch, Madeleine defends her
father's contribution to the business, in ways that would make Frank cry
if he could hear, since her compassion for his loss, the death of her
mother, his struggle with a domineering and difficult brother, reveals
something like love for him.  Finally she tells her father that she
knows how hard it must have been to raise her without a wife, and that
she knows that he did the best he could.  He wants to tell her that he
could have done better, that every time he left her for something else,
every time he could have read three stories to her instead of the one he
did, every time he could have spent another half hour with her on the
floor, coloring, instead of letting her watch cartoons, he knew what he
was doing, that he was sinning against her.  But he does not say this.

Following the paths along this circuitry of possibilities made Frank
happy, but then he heard the analyst ask Madeleine, How did your mother
die?  Madeleine tells her, In a plane crash.  And where was she going?
She was going back to Los Angeles, from Acapulco.  And why did she leave
before you and your father?

Yes, this is the issue in his daughter's life, the great unanswered
recurring question.  The analyst comes back to the same questions: How
did your mother die?  She was killed in a plane crash.  Where was she
going?  She was going to Los Angeles.  We were in Mexico, and she had to
go home eariy.

Frank watched sadly as Madeleine learned the truth.

For the second year of her analysis this comes up often, her mother's
death, around which grows an aura of rage, which the analyst understands
as the natural surfacing of long-repressed feelings, blah blab blab.
But the analyst herself has a dream of the mother's death, and then she
asks Madeleine why the mother was alone on a plane from Mexico to Los
Angeles.  Madeleine cries, and for three sessions she refuses to talk.
When she does, she says, One of my cousins, on my father's side, my
cousin Julia, told me that my parents were having a fight, that my
father wrote a letter to my mother telling her about an affair he'd been
having, and that my mother left without saying good-bye.

Frank could never have kept that story a secret; he would have shared it
with someone.

So the story ends not with the daughter forgiving the father for his
sins, but, through the analysis he has paid for, perhaps paid for out of
the trust fund established with the insurance settlement from her
mother's death, his daughter finds the courage to reject him totally,
without apology.

Clear of the foggy past, Madeleine can advance at work, find a man to
love, without using him to play out scenarios of revenge against her
father.  The analysis ends with Madeleine asking the therapist if she is
obligated by some standards of psychological health to reconcile with
the father, and the analyst assures her that she is not, unless she
wants to.

Perhaps some years later she comes to Frank to apologize, but perhaps
not.

In this projection into the future, Frank assumes that Los Angeles
muddles along without the big earthquake, that America muddles along
without a military coup, that life goes on as it usually does.

Frank dies, and the nurse in the next room hears his last word: "Mary."

The phone rang.  Frank said hello to Julia Abarbanel.

"Frank, it's Julia."

"Why did you have to tell her?"

She asked him, "What do you mean?"

"The letter."

"What letter?"

Frank wondered how Julia had even known about the letter, since he had
torn it up and flushed it down the toilet.  Anna had written her note to
him on the back of the letter.  But of course, she had seen the letter
in the newspaper, when the plane crashed.  But which plane had crashed?
The one going or the one coming home?

Why had he bothered telling his wife the truth?  The truth had destroyed
his life.

"Nothing," said Frank.  "I was having a dream."

"A nightmare."

"I guess."

"At Auschwitz the prisoners in the cell blocks wouldn't wake someone up
if he was having a nightmare, because reality was always worse."

"I didn't know that." What else was there to say?

"I'm sick over this," she,, said.

"It's hard on all of us.

"I'm glad you said that.  Nobody in the family really knows how to talk
about this." At family dinners, at Passover or Thanksgiving, when there
were fifteen people at a long table, he could talk to Julia, even with
Anna there, and a bubble would form around them, and inside this bubble
they could say anything about anyone at the table, and they couldn't be
heard.  Now he was free.  He thought they would be fucking soon.  How
was her body?  She was what, thirty-five?  Did she exercise?  Was she
firm?

"Are you coming in?" he asked.  He wanted to see her.

"Tomorrow.  Your mother said there's this thing in San Diego, but I
can't get in to L.A.  until the afternoon."

"You don't need to be here.  The airline is throwing it.  It's not a
funeral.  It's for the cameras."

"What do they know about the guy with the gun?" Her questions were
getting almost too casual, and Frank, as much as he wanted to scrape the
crust from every facet of the event, wanted to set the limits, to
maintain the family's respect for his sorrow.

"I haven't actually followed that."

"Every airport in the country is putting security checks at all the
employee entrances now."

"It's a little late."

Julia was quiet.  So she was embarrassed, he thought.  She returned to
Lonnie Walter.  "They recovered the flight recorder," she said.

"I hadn't heard that."

"They haven't played it yet, but they have it.  There's a report that
the control tower has it all on tape.  I heard on the news that he came
into the cockpit.  `` "Was it a bomb?"

"A gun, that's what they think.  And he knew where to fire it, where the
fuel lines run through the walls, where to blow out the windows, so he
turned the plane into a bomb."

"Everyone must have seen it." If he had said this to his mother, she
would have told him not to think about it, because she didn't want to
have the picture of a terrified Anna and an ignorant-ofthe-crisis
Madeleine watch the crazed black gunman forcing his way to the cockpit
with a flight attendant.  But it was something he could say to Julia,
and a way of exciting her, getting her ready for bed.

"What a shitty way to die," she said.

"At least it's fast," said Frank.  "That's the only blessing I can find.
You can't even imagine how scared they must have been, but then it's
over.  It's not like starving to death in a lifeboat."

"Did you see the letter?" she asked, skipping to another subject.

"Which letter?"

"There you go about letters again," she said, lightly.  "The letter this
husband wrote to his wife?"

"Oh, yeah, Mom and Dad said something about that."

"This guy took his wife to Mexico so that he could try to get the
marriage kick-started after he'd had an affair."

"What was in the letter?" This was a stupid question to ask, and he knew
it would come back to him.

"I don't have it in front of me, but it was, like, darling, I love you,
I'm sorry I hurt you, and I fucked this other woman and it's over and if
you don't want me, fine, I understand."

"Did they say anything about names?"

"No.  Can you imagine?  If he hadn't had the affair, maybe he wouldn't
have taken his wife on the trip, and then they'd both be alive."

"And their daughter?"

"There was nothing in the letter about any children.  Did you hear
something?"

"I don't know.  I'm confusing this with something else.  I know, the
people who were killed on the ground."

"A lot of people were killed on the ground." But she didn't say this to
force him to clarify his meaning, only to show her awe.

With the letter's resurgence into the conversation, Frank thought he
would stop breathing.  He tried to swallow, but panic choked him.  "I
have to go," he squeaked.

"Where?" Why did she have to ask that?  What business was it of hers?

"Some kind of prememorial service downstairs."

"Good luck," said his cousin.

"Thanks."

"We all love you, Frank.  All of us."

Yes, but do you?  He didn't ask.  He hung up.

There were voices in the hall.  He opened the door, and the woman he had
seen earlier, arguing by the elevator, was talking to one of the other
mourners.

"I'll get to you later," she said.  And she smiled.  He didn't
understand.  She gave him a business card for Dave Dessick, Attorney at
Law.

Frank knew that the reporters did not know, did not know that the letter
writer was alive, had not heard Mary Sifka's name.  It must be the
airline, he thought, controlling the story.  They'll let Mary's name
out, or let out my name, when they want to destroy the lawsuits.  "I He
was thinking this, and chewing on a gummy room-service croissant, when
the phone rang.  It was Mary Sifka.

n the morning the letter was everywhere.  Frank woke up early, and the
paper was outside his door with the Continental breakfast he had ordered
the night before.  The letter he had written `for his wife to read was
on the front page.

It was also the lead item on the morning television news.

THE GENERAL THEORY OF THE LETTER: The author, as well as his wife, have
died in the crash.  Reporters are trying to find out who they were.
There is a debate about the public's curiosity, and the rights of the
couple's mourning relatives to keep this private.  Women newscasters are
asked by the men beside them if they would forgive an unfaithful husband
if he wrote them in this way.  Frank is grateful that they all say yes.
A few of them add, winking at the camera, that they would easily kill
their men, though, if they catted around again.

"It's you, isn't it?  That's your letter, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Frank.

"So the name, the one that they're keeping out, it's mine, right?" II
"Yes." There was silence.  He was trying to be kind, but nothing he
intended mattered anymore.

"You stupid asshole, did you say `Mary,' or did you say `Mary Sifka'?"

"Mary Sifka."

She screamed out, "No!" And then, through terrible sobs, she said,
"They're going to find out, you know that, don't you?"

"Yes.  They'll call you," said Frank.  He could try to be as direct with
his mistress as he had failed at being direct with his wife.

"I know that.  I think they already did.  The phone rang last night, and
my husband answered, but they hung up.  They must know who I am, that
I'm married.  It's not hard to find that kind of thing out.

So they're probably waiting until I answer the phone myself."

"What are you going to do?"

"What can I do?  I can't deny it.  I can't say that's not my name.

It's my name.  It's not a common name."

"I'm sorry."

"This is going to ruin my life." `I "I know that."

"Yours too."

"Probably." I could have said, Mine is already ruined.

"No, definitely.  I'm going to see to that.  Your life is going to be
destroyed in some way that you can't even imagine.  I want to see you
die without dying."

"I don't think we should talk now."

"I'm telling my husband."

"Maybe you should."

"He hates attention.  He's a quiet man."

"Will he leave you?"

"You think that's what I want?  If I had wanted him to leave me, I could
have arranged for that the first time we fooled around in your office.
Do you think that's what I want?"

"I don't know," he said.

"If' that's all I wanted, to be without him, if I'd wanted to leave him,
I would have already.  Do you think I couldn't leave him if I wanted
to?"

"Yes, I think you could."

"I can do what I want."

He wondered if this repetitive belligerence of hers came from vodka.
"Well, since you love him, maybe you should go somewhere with him.  To
help him see that it was over with us, that you were back with him. Take
him someplace."

"Mexico?" she said, with great bitterness, implying, and Frank thought
this cruel of her, that if they got on the plane to Mexico, they would
die in a crash.

What if I volunteer to pay for the tickets?  thought Frank.  Would she
try to kill me?  "The name might not come out," he said.  He was trying
to convince himself of this, so he could go to the memorial service and
not faint, or start barking.  There was the picture in his head, he saw
himself growling and yelping, rolling around on the floor, shitting his
pants again, because everyone in the world knows his worst secrets.

"You think so?" She also wanted to believe this.

"You might be able to deflect this.  You may need a lawyer."

"A lawyer, yes." Frank understood that Mary was desperate, and she was
hanging for her life on this raft of hope.

"A lawyer could, you know.  .  .`, He didn't finish the sentence,
because then she could say, "A lawyer could threaten to sue if they
print my name without permission.  But you'd have to claim the letter
from them, wouldn't you?"

"Maybe I could do that." It was a possibility.  What had started as
something to keep Mary Sifka from going out of her mind had come back to
him as a way through this mess.  If' he asked for the letter back.  .  .
but what would that do?  They'd know who he was, they'd know Mary.  And
the letter had been in his wife's possession, and she was dead.  The
letter had been discovered in a public place.

"No," he said, "that won't work.  We can't do anything about this."

"This is my fault," she said.  "If I hadn't sucked d your dick, you
wouldn't have made this trip.  If I hadn't let you give me a handjob in
your"

"Don't say that." Actually he wanted her to say that; it was giving him
an erection.

"We're the most miserable animal in the world," she said.  Philosophy.
He hated this.  "Whatever we touch, it turns to shit.  There's really no
such thing as love, is there?  Deep down?"

"Probably not," said Frank.

"Because if there was, then we really would hold on to each other."

"I held on to you.  We held on to each other."

"But we weren't supposed to.  We're supposed to hold on to the people we
married.  There's a Commandment about it.,' "I guess we're going to be
punished," said Frank.

"Don't you think that this is the punishment?"

"I suppose," said Frank.  He wished that he had thought of that line, it
would have impressed her.

"I wonder if we'll have any friends left."

"Don't worry, Mary." He said her name, trying to find a way out of the
conversation.  "The roof will fall harder on me than on you."

"They'll see me as the whore who stole the husband."

"They'll see you as the woman who was seduced."

"Or the businesswoman who sold her pussy to get a deal."

"I don't think so."

"No, you just hope they won't tear us apart like that."

"Just think about other scandals.  How long do they last when nobody
famous is involved?  A few days?  We're not the news, we're just a
human-interest story.  And when the whole story comes out, what really
looks that bad?  We had an affair.  We broke it off.  I went back to my
wife, you went back to your husband.  I think it makes us look sort of
good.  Maybe even noble.  We could be heroes."

"Frank, no, the only way you could have come out of this a hero would
have been if you had died with them.  And the letter was found.  And
with my name in it, I'd have to be the Jezebel.  You know that."

"I guess so."

They were both calm now.  Frank knew they needed this moment of peace,
because when it ended, they would say good-bye, and it wasn't likely
that they would talk to each other soon, or even again, ever.

It was time to say good-bye.

"Don't forget," he said, "that we had some nice times together."

She snapped back at him, "They weren't nice, Frank.  What we did was
cheap.  It was dirty.  Death in liie for you, Frank, death in life." And
then she hung up.

And then the phone rang again.  It was Lowell, calling from the lobby.

"How are you feeling today?" asked his brother.

"Much better."

"We have to decide on a lawyer now.  Everyone involved is choosing now,
and there are two guys people are gravitating to.  I have to check them
out.  They both sound good.  But there happen to be differences of
opinions.  Has anyone talked to you about Dessick or Berberian?"

"Who?" asked Frank.  He didn't want to say anything about the lawyer's
card.

"The two' lawyers.  Different styles, but similar results.  And they're
experts at this sort of thing."

"No one has talked to me, but I thought you wanted to hire an
independent lawyer.  I thought you were going to hire Aaron Waramus."

Lowell made a sound of discouragement.  "These guys are good.

I think it's better to join the fold."

"But I want to make the final decision."

"Of course, of course," said Lowell.  "And maybe also a publicist."

"Good," said Frank.

"I thought you said it was a bad idea."

"It might be good for the family." Meaning: Once the world knows the
letter is mine, we'll need a press officer to keep the reporters and the
cameras away from us.  Could anyone buy this as a movie?  Or is it too
internal?

"She'll call you later.  Anyway, I'm coming up.  I brought you a jacket
and tie."

He put the receiver down, and the phone rang again.  This time it was
Bettina Welch.  She told him that the buses would be leaving in half an
hour.

"Buses?" Frank said.  "I thought you said we were going to get
limousines."

"I'm sorry, Frank," said Bettina.  "I tried."

Frank made a face, but he didn't know what it looked like.  He supposed
the airline knew that anyone's protest over the switch from limousines
to buses would look awfully bratty, and this was a day for everyone to
appear so occupied with grief that the material world was momentarily
dissolved.

"We'd really appreciate it if no one talks to the press today," she
said.

inWhy is that?"

"We just think that with everything that's going on, people are losing
sight of the tragedy, of the lives that were lost, of the respect that
we should be paying to the victims of this terrible tragedy."

He knew that she was really saying that the airline was trying to keep
the families of the dead from taking center stage.

Lowell was at the door.  Frank let him in while he was on the phone.

"What's going to happen at the memorial?"

"The governor will be there, and the mayor of San Diego."

"Why isn't this happening in Los Angeles?" he asked.

"We'll have a memorial in Los Angeles too, maybe even a funeral if I can
say that, but this is where the tragedy occurred.  And if we have a
memorial service in Los Angeles, we'll be missing the opportunity to
complete our bereavement for the innocent victims who died on the
ground."

Lowell made a face: Who are you talking to?  And Frank said, "Good-bye,"
and hung up.

"Who was that?" asked Lowell.

"The front desk." Frank didn't want to talk about anything.

"What did they want?"

"Do I have everything I need?  Is there anything they can get for me?"

Lowell handed Frank a garment bag.  Frank took it to the bathroom and
put on the shirt and tie and the jacket.  While he was in the bathroom,
the phone rang, and he let Lowell answer.  Frank heard him say, "Hello,
Mother," in a loud voice meant for Frank, and then his voice dropped.

Lowell knocked on the bathroom door to tell him that it was time to go.

They met their parents in the hallway, by the elevators.  There were
others there, new faces, and some Frank recognized from Los Angeles,
late arrivals who had missed the morgue.

Someone said that they really shouldn't be going to this without first
checking with a lawyer, someone else said, with tears, that this was no
time to worry about the suit, that the suit would follow its own course
whether or not the airline was managing this memorial.

Someone added that there were already a few groups of lawyers circling
the event.  Yes, someone said, there's Dessick and Berberian.  The
Barbarian, someone else said, that's his nickname.  And who was going
with them?  The people in the elevator called out their choices: Dessick
Berberian Berberian Dessick Dessick Berberian.  Frank had not made his
choice yet.  Someone told him that he should.  Then another person said
that he knew that the airline had been warned about this nigger, and
someone said that wasn't nice, and the person who said "nigger" then
said he didn't have to protect the niggers when a nigger killed his
daughter and son-inlaw on their honeymoon.  Someone else said there were
black people on the plane too, and the man who said "nigger" said, So
what?

They took the elevator to the mezzanine floor, where they met Bettina
Welch and Ed Dockery, and others, and were introduced to the president
of the airline, Dennis Donoghue.  Frank had seen the mans picture in the
paper a few times.  He lived somewhere else, maybe Texas-Frank vaguely
remembered that he had worked at a few other airlines and had rescued
this one during difficult times.  His confidence was so practiced that
he wasn't really there in the room, he projected an image of himself;
this was a hologram Dennis, not the real thing.  When Bettina introduced
him to Frank, Donoghue's smile changed.  Something that looked like
satisfaction replaced his relaxed concern.

"Yes, Mr.  Gale.  You've been through a lot, haven't you?"

"I guess."

"No false humility here, Mr.  Gale." And then he said, quietly, with a
threat, "We know what happened."

"I just meant that I'm still alive."

"You don't really wish you had died, do you?"

"It's very difficult."

"But you're not going to kill yourself over this, are you?" Where were
these questions coming from?

"It doesn't seem fair, does it?" asked Frank, drawn into Donoghue's
orbit.

"If you don't believe in God, these things have no meaning."

"Do you believe in God?" asked Frank.

"Of course," said Donoghue.  "And I know that He's not fair."

Frank turned to Lowell, panicked by this conversation.  Why were they
talking this way?  Donoghue had dropped all pretense of `I' grief, or
interest, and the impatience with which he talked to Frank was personal,
was directed at Frank as though he knew who he really was, as though
Frank deserved a harsh judgment.

Lowell wasn't listening to him, any more than in the big room when that
unhappy couple pressed Frank on his relationship with the insurance
agent, and Frank had added to his lies.

"What about you, Frank," said Donoghue, "do you believe in God?"

"I guess if you really believe in God, then you have to pray."

"And you don't pray?"

"I don't think so."

"Not even when you're alone?  You don't hear yourself begging the
Creator of the universe for mercy?"

"I don't have an answer for that," said Frank.  Again the picture came
to him, of getting sick like a dog.  What did this mean, this urge to
roll around the floor, shitting and pissing?

"Start thinking of one," said Donoghue, leaving Frank for someone else
as Bettina came over and took his arm.  She looked back at Frank, and
Frank knew, without doubt, that she knew the letter was his.

What grace this knowledge gave her!  And Donoghue, nothing else could
explain how miserably he treated Frank than the power he obtained from
knowing Mary Sifka's name.  He will turn this against me, thought Frank.
Somehow this will be used to help the airline.  He gave the letter to
the press.  He will give away Mary's name when he needs to.  Ii Donoghue
shook hands with Frank's parents.  His mother showed him a picture of
Madeleine, at a year old, lying on a Mexican blanket on the beach.
Anna's foot was in the comer of the picture.  He thought of her foot
severed from her leg, sitting in a bin of feet in that cold warehouse by
the bay.

Bettina asked everyone to start on their way down to the buses.

Donoghue shook hands with Frank's father.  Whatever secret feelings he
held for Frank, they were not extended to his parents.  Frank thought
this was odd, but could not explain it to himseu How did Frank feel?
This is how he felt: Tie a man's wrists to two posts.  Nail his feet to
the floor.  Take a razor blade or a scalpel, and cut the skin in a
circle around his neck.  Then, from his neck down to his waist, cut a
series of strips, an inch apart.  Then pull each strip away from the
body, and let them fall, making a loose skirt of flesh.  Then throw
boiling ammonia on this swamp of blood.

Wait three minutes for the blisters to rise.  Rub them with hard salt.

This should overload the myelin sheaths that protect the nerves from iI
agony.  Better yet, don't find a surrogate, do this to yourself, or ask
a friend to help.

Bettina Welch and Dennis Donoghue led the mourners out a back door of
the hotel to three buses parked by the kitchen loading dock.  Piet
Bernays was there to hand out black armbands, each with a strip of
elastic sewed inside, and Frank welcomed the slight pressure of this
mild tourniquet.

"Buses," said Lowell.  "They promised us limousines." But he was too
tired to complain anymore, or Dennis Donoghue had worked his corporate
magic on him and taken out the fight.

When Bernays held Frank's hand to slip the band up his arm, he winked at
him.  "Have a nice day," he said, in the manner of someone whose mastery
of sarcasm was complete.

On the bus Frank sat next to Lowell, across the aisle from their
parents.  Had the family ever been on a bus together except when the
brothers were young, and they were in Europe, taking guided trips
through famous cities?  Their father leaned across the aisle.

"How do you get the seat to go back?" Their mother found the button on
her armrest, and the back went back, just far enough to fulfill the
promise of whatever advertisement promised reclining seats, so no one
could sue, even though the reclination was insufficiently advanced to
offer compensation for the uncomfortably short seat.

She tried the button on their father's seat, but it was broken.  He
looked around the bus for someone from the airline.  "Do you think
anyone can help me with this?" he asked Lowell.  Lowell tried the
button, and this time the seat went back.

"I guess I'm not very strong," said their mother.

The bus left the hotel and followed the road along Mission Bay for a
while before turning toward the city and Balboa Park.

There were two conversations on the bus.  One was about the lawsuits,
and the other was about Lonnie Walter.

Someone knew someone who knew someone.  The last someone worked for the
airline, and was best friends with one of the girls who died.  That
phrase again.  And this person, a woman-What division of the airline?
Ground crew-knew Lonnie Walter.  And Lonnie Walter had been fired.
Someone asked why.  Because he drank.  No, someone else knew part of the
story.  Because of layoffs.

Or did he think it was because he was black?  That may have been a part
of the problem.  But did you know his supervisor, the one he went on the
plane to kill, was also black?  I heard a Mexican.  No, a black.  There
were some blacks on the bus.  Frank watched them, nervous and
embarrassed for them.  A stupid resurgence of pity for the race whose
collective failure to help themselves had driven their cousin, this one
indignant lush, to murder hundreds.  Fuck them all, thought Frank,
another group to see fucked.  Fuck them all for killing my family.

Someone asked if they had identified the letter writer.  Someone else
said no, someone else said yes.  Someone said what difference did it
make, and someone said, Well, the letter gave me comfort, and then
others agreed, even Lowell and Frank's father.  Someone asked if the
women on the bus would have forgiven their husbands, and then the women
were polled.  One woman said she didn't want to talk about it, and then
she cried, and Lowell whispered to Frank, "I think her husband was on
the plane with his mistress."

Frank said, "Really?"

Lowell said, "No, but that would be great, wouldn't it?"

Frank wanted to ask Lowell how he could make jokes at a time like this,
he wanted to take the black armband and strangle Lowell with the
elastic, but he knew that he would have made the same joke, that
something like it had occurred to him at the same time.

The process by which the gruesome, through time, becomes a joke.

Piet Bernays left his seat in the front of the bus to hold the crying
woman's hands.  He stood in the aisle and then bent one knee to the
floor.  The woman rested her head against his chest, and he stroked the
back of her neck.  It seemed to Frank that the others on the bus tried
not to watch, but Frank couldn't help himself.  He wanted to look into
Bernays's eyes, to see what else Bernays knew about him.  Bernays looked
everywhere, with his placid eyes, except at Frank.  Frank studied him:
Was he homosexual or not?

After a few minutes, while everyone on the bus was quiet, the woman
looked around and, without words, begged to be loved.  More of the same:
sad I clown I eyes I tear I filled I streaking I mascara I griefa5 I I
xcu5et0 I ju5tify I indulgence I for I all I the I other5hi I I I I I I
I I I I f I , A wave of repulsion washed over Frank, with such force
that he almost screamed out to the woman, "You're ugly!  We hate you!
All of us hate you!  We know what you were like in high school!  You
were unloved then!  Why should we love you now?  So what if your
alcoholic mother vomited on the rug every night, and you had to clean it
up!

So what if you had three younger brothers to feed and dress and send off
to school while your alcoholic mother exposed herself to the mailman! So
your father died of pancreatic cancer when you were ten!  So what!
You're alive!"

Someone said that the governor was going to read the letter at the
ceremony, and someone asked, What letter?  Frank's father said, The
letter, the husband's letter.  Someone wondered if they'd found the name
of the lover yet.  Lowell said, I bet she knows about it already, and
his mother said, She must want to kill herself.  Someone else wondered
if she had a husband.  Piet Bernays finally looked toward Frank, and a
little energy ran across his lips, bringing them together, in the
tiniest piece of a gesture that would, if completed, be named a kiss. Or
else it wasn't a kiss, and Bernays was just breathing with his mouth
closed.

Someone else said that security would be tighter than ever at airports
now, and Lowell said, You can always get through if you want.  Everyone
agreed with him; there was a quiet lowing of assent to this.

The bus moved up the hill to Balboa Park, where an escort of police on
motorcycles pulled in front of them and then behind them.

Frank wondered why they had not started with the buses at the hotel.

Of course, there was a simple answer.  There were no cameras there, no
need to attract attention, but now the show begins.  As the motorcycles
rode in file with the two buses, the mourners stopped talking.  Piet
Bernays walked to the front of the bus and took `the microphone from the
hook beside the driver.  "We're at Balboa Park "he said.  "The service
will last about an hour.  The governor is here; so is the mayor of San
Diego, of course, and the city council.

We've reserved the first three rows in front of the podium.  The
cardinal of San Diego, a Protestant minister, and a Conservative.

rabbi will be giving benedictions.  They drew lots, to choose the order
of the prayers.  This way there's no implied opinion expressed, on
behalf of the airline, either respecting or disrespecting the superior
or inferior importance of any one of the religions by the order of the
appearance of their ordained representative."

The bus drove up to the back of the band shell.  Frank's father cut in
front of a woman who was in the row before them, and she looked at him
with some disgust and said something to him, but quietly, so Frank
couldn't hear her.  He tapped her on the arm.

"What did you say?" he said.

"Nothing." Frank saw that for a moment she forgot where she was and why,
because this stranger had just discovered her muttering, and she was too
embarrassed, even though she was right to be angry.

"I thought you said something to my father."

The woman shook her head no.

"It's not important," said Frank,- and then they were off the bus.

Lowell asked him, "What did you say to her?"

"I think she swore at Dad."

"Why?"

"He cut ahead of her in line."

Lowell didn't know what to say, he just shrugged, but it was more in
surprise that Frank would bother himself with this, and at the same time
accepting that Frank had every reason to be sensitive to everything
around him.

Bernays and then Bettina Welch, who was on the other bus, led the
mourners around the band shell to their seats, in rows that had been
saved for them.

The sun was high and strong, and the air smelled of eucalyptus and
freshly watered lawns.  There was something else in the air too, the
smell of hay and animals, from the zoo, which was just beyond a stand of
eucalyptus trees.  And then there was a bit of the ocean on the breeze
too.  So there was something to San Diego after all, thought Frank, to
make people want to live here, something pleasant and forgiving.

Untitil he saw the two or three hundred strangers waiting in the I, sun
for the ceremony to begin, Frank didn't know he had expected a large
crowd, thousands and thousands.  He thought of the crowds that used to
gather for public funerals, in black and white, before television, when
all the men wore hats.  Now everyone waited to see these things on
television.  Not even wait, not expect anything, just see it when it
comes.  He supposed these people, Mexicans and `I blacks, in T-shirts,
carrying paper bags with beer, smoking, had not even come to the park
for whatever was going to happen, but had been there already, had slept
there during the night, as they must have now for as long as they had
been able to stay away from the police.  Most of them sat beside
bedrolls, a few had backpacks, and parked along the fringes of the scene
there were shopping carts filled with plastic garbage bags stuffed with
old crap.  Then in the rows just behind him, Frank recognized a few
people from Dana Street.  There was the man whose house he had passed
through to get beyond the police line, and a few others too, the
neighbors of the dead.  And in the front row men and women in suits,
officials.

The man who let him through nodded his head with tight lips, his face a
quick mask of compassion, eyebrows drawn together, eyes to the side and
down, but then everything emptied, and Frank saw the man's shame for his
inability to offer more than a nod.

Frank wanted to say, But what can you give me?  And then Frank felt
shame and turned away.

His mother nudged him.  "There's the governor, and the mayor.

His father said, about the governor, "I met him at a fund-raiser years
ago, when he was running for the state assembly."

"He looks well," said his mother.

The rabbi made an invocation.

The governor, who was sitting next to Dennis Donoghue, walked to the
podium.  He took a piece of paper from his jacket pocket.  He scanned
the crowd, and his eyes met Frank's.  They held them as he began to
talk.  He knows, thought Frank.  Donoghue told him that the letter is
mine.  And he's going to read the letter now.

"There are times when it is impossible to say anything," he began.  "And
those are the times when we have to speak."

"Very good," said Frank's father.  "That's very true."

Lowell touched his father's hands, to be quiet.

The governor had not stopped talking.  "What do we gain from this?  We
know what we lose.  We lose a bit of our heart when God throws us this
kind of test.  So we have to face the test.  We have to draw strength
from wherever we find it.  And in the middle of this catastrophe, we
find a miracle.  We find the miracle of love.  I'd like to read
something to y I I I I I He picked up the piece of paper.  "I suppose by
now most of you have read the letter that was found in the wreckage.  We
don't know who wrote it, or to whom it was sent, but the letter asks for
something that all of us need to give, and that's forgiveness.  I'd like
to read it to you.  It begins, `I love you." And it continues, `You
asked me a few weeks ago why I was so desperate to take this vacation
and I said that I needed to get away from the office for a while, and
that's true, but there's more.  For six months you've noticed that I've
been distant, and I have been.  You asked me if there was another woman,
and I said no, but I was lying.  I had an affair." "Frank saw the
governor skip past the line that named Mary Sifka, but he hesitated, and
looked at Frank again.  "`It's over now.

I wanted to take this trip so that we could find a way to heal
ourselves.

I don't know how you'll take this, and all I can say is that I beg you
to forgive me, but if you don't want to, I will understand.  I love
you." "He stopped.  He began again.  "I think that's one of the most
beautiful letters ever written, because it tells the truth and asks for
nothing in return except the truth.  And forgiveness.  And so we have to
begin now.  To forgive."

Reading the letter in the newspaper, Frank only saw the viciously clever
adjustments he had made toward bludgeoning Anna with the example of his
self-sacrifice.

"What about the fucking lawsuit?" Lowell asked under his breath.  "It's
a little too soon to forgive.  No mercy without justice.

And look who he's sitting next to, the president of the fucking
airline."

This time it was Frank who touched Lowell's hands, and Lowell shut up.
Frank needed to think; he was filled with a big idea, an inspiration
bright enough to illuminate the meaning and consequence of his life.
Listening to the governor, Frank heard something new in the letter,
something pure, and he liked it.  Look at how I have touched so many
people.  Something in this letter means something to them, something I
wrote comforts them.  Do all writers struggle with their lies when they
tell the truth, and regret the failure to tell the complete truth, which
sits there, just beyond the reach of language, and mocks them as they
smudge the truth, as they favor themselves?  Of course they do!  The
balance that I wanted, between begging for Anna's mercy by telling the
truth and not giving her too much ammunition to use against me, didn't
that emotional design also give to the letter the grace of something
that, if pursued further, might lead to art?  What I did, in my own way
(and I could have said "little" way, but why qualify?) is what all
creative people do.  I wrestled my demons to the mat.  If I didn't win,
it was at least a draw.  Maybe that old dream of music is a mistake,
maybe I should become a writer.  I could take a course!  I could write a
novel composed of letters.  I could write one letter a day, and in a
year I'd have a book!  If the letters are long enough!  Or plays!  The
way the governor read the letter, there was so much emotion in the
language, and everyone listened.  I could write a series of dramatic
monologues, they could be autobiographical.  I could write a series of
confessions, just like the letter, a confession cycle!  And then
someone, a composer, a real artist, might set them to music!  And opera!
In New York City!  And I would have everything.

Lowell whispered in Frank's ear.  "The governor is working for the
airline.  Watch the news tonight, you'll see, it'll look like a
commerical for the airline.  Airline spokesmen everywhere."

Someone behind them said, "There's Dessick." A few turned.

There he was, the man who would represent the families.  He stood to the
side.  He was just a white man, late forties, normal height, a suit of
no distinction or flair, and a neat haircut.  Someone else muttered,
"Ambulance chaser," and someone else said, "So who are you with,
Berberian?" And someone else said, "And it's not an ambulance, it's a
hearse."

The Dessickite persisted.  "He happens to be one of the greatest lawyers
in the country."

"What difference does it make?" asked the Barbarian.

"Because we all have to have the same lawyer represent us."

"Why?"

"Because divide and conquer!"

"So join our suit, then."

"I don't trust Berberian."

"What is that supposed to mean?  How do you know him?"

"I know."

"He has an incredible reputation."

"He's overrated."

"According to whose standards?  You've been talking to the Dessick
people, that's all, you're using their standards."

"I trust them.  They feel right.  Berberian's people feel wrong."

"I'm one of Berberian's people.  Are you saying I feel wrong?  In my
hour of grief are you saying there's something wrong with me?"

"I don't want to say that."

"But you mean it.,' "Most of us are going with Dessick.  I'm sorry
you're not with us, but this isn't the place to fight."

"I'm not fighting.  I mean, the only fight I have is with the airline,
and I've got the best man working for me.  Berberian."

"Fine.  You go with Berberian, I'll go with Dessick.  Don't get in our
way."

"You'll back down.  You'll be afraid to let a jury decide the case,
because you'll be hearing a little voice in your head that says your
lawyer didn't do a good enough job.  You'll settle out of court before
we do."

The governor introduced the mayor.  The hissing of accusation and
counteraccusation, this gauntlet of rage in which Frank felt beaten and
trapped, continued anyway.

"If we do settle out of court, it'll only be because the airline knew it
would cost too much to go all the way."

"So if Dessick is so sure of winning, why not go all the way to a jury?
Or is he scared that a jury might go against him?"

"He's not scared of anything or anyone."

"Then he doesn't have to settle out of court."

"Berberian will settle before Dessick does, I promise you."

"You don't have to promise me anything."

"Berberian will have to settle because he knows that juries think he's
sleazy.  Do you know his percentage of wins before juries after
settlements have been rejected?  I have those figures!"

"Yeah yeah yeah.  You know what they say: `There's lies, there's damned
lies, and there's statistics.""

"That's one of the stupidest quotes in the history of the English
language.  Berberian likes to come on like the full-court-press kind of
guy he wants you to think he is, but in the last three years he's lost
forty percent of those cases that could have been settled out of court.
He's an egomaniac."

"And Dessick was threatened with a jury-tampering indictment last year,
did you know that?"

"So?  Was he ever charged?  No.  And tell me you don't know who
engineered that threat.  The lawyers working for the company he was
suing.  And do you know who the chief lawyer was?"

"You can't scare me or surprise me.  I know who it was.  It was "And
you'll still stay with him?"

"These guys all playhardball, and I like Berberian's style.  And this
case is open-and-shut.  It's not that complicated."

The mayor of San Diego stood at the lectern, but Frank couldn't hear
him.  He couldn't hear anybody now, not the mourners debating their
lawyers, not the plane flying overhead, not the helicopter circling the
park, not birds in the nearby trees, not police motorcycles cruising the
roads near the band shell.  Nothing.  Mouths moved, and Frank saw how
fiercely rigid we keep our faces, except for our lips.  Frank's mother
whispered something to the man she had married so many years before, but
what she said Frank thought he would never know.  His father patted her
hand, in silence.

After the mayor spoke, the marine band lifted their instruments.

The moment of expectation.  The inhalation.  Lips to horns.  Their
conductor brought his baton down, to start the music.  Frank strained to
hear the brass.  Nothing.  And yet .  .  .  his frustration, his panic,
were released, as though the music had actually touched him.  It seemed
to him as though this was what they had come to do, that their memorial
to the dead would be just this, a respectful silence played on loud
instruments.  To be moved by silence, reminded of the silence of death
by the silent breath of twenty men with horns.  What better way to
compel true grief than a pantomime of music?  Reserve sound for joy! For
the battle cry on the way to the fight.  And nothing for the field when
the combat has been settled.

Then the cardinal, and with a gesture that was understood to mean
"Rise," everyone stood.  People lowered their heads as he spoke.  There
were tears.  A baby in a mother's arms opened his or her mouth.  .  .
blue blanket.  .  .  his.  .  .  the baby opened his mouth, the agony
was understood even without the sound.

I could say something to my brother, thought Frank, or my mother.  I
could say I can't hear.  But would I hear myself saying this?  What if I
can't hear myself speaking?

He was afraid even to clear his throat.  He swallowed hard.  There was
no sound, no liquid in his mouth trickling down.  How did it normally
sound?  Did it make a sound?  Maybe the body is silent to itself?  No.

He wanted to hum, but what if the sound was loud, what if he screamed
just to hear a sound pierce the silence, and heard nothing himself, but
was heard by everyone else?  He would make a small sound first.  He
coughed.

Nothing.

He hummed, and felt the vibration between his lips and his teeth.  `I
The hell with it, with everything he could, he forced the air from his
chest and his gut through a constricted throat, epiglottis engaged, and
tried to make, without hearing it, the loudest scream he could.

Before they were on him, holding him, trying to shut him up but at the
same time trying not to strangle him, or rather, to strangle but not to
hurt, only to silence, because the cardinal was praying, Frank saw
Lowell's expression, the look to his mother that said this is hopeless,
this is worse than we thought (which meant they talked about his
condition, and the shitting in his pants had not been moderately excused
or forgotten by them, as if it could!), and then Lowell took him by the
hand and hugged him, but the hug was without love, without equality,
there was a sense of family in it, but only as a collection of memories,
not as something still alive.  Frank knew that he was dead to his
family.

10.  O I I I I hey had taken him to the hospital, he was quickly tested.
Bettina Welch came by his bed in the emer- 1, gency room, and Dennis
Donoghue sent him flowers, with a card.  His mother read, the note aloud
to everyone in the room, and then, since Frank could hear nothing, she
gave it to him.  The note was simple: We're thinking ofyou.  Frank
couldn't imagine the mayor of any city, even the mayor of the smallest,
stupidest town, reading this aloud to anyone.  But his father seemed to
be impressed with this, and took the card and studied it.

Lowell didn't seem to care about it one II way or another.  Frank hated
the note, I I because it wasn't the right thing to say to a person in
the hospital, even if everyone thinks he's a psychotic.  The note should
have said, "Get well soon," or something like that, to encourage his
recovery, without, at the same time, and this makes the job tricky,
losing the need to show respect tb the necessity for condolence.  But
what did "We're thinking of you" really mean, except to tell him that
his existence entered into their strategies?  Instead of comforting
Frank, they were threatening him.

And then the doctor handed him another note, on a prescription pad.  The
note read, How are you doing?

Frank took the doctor's pencil and wrote below the question, Not very
well.  This is all so embarrassing.

The doctor wrote, I suppose it is.  His name tag: Ben Nelson, M.D.  He
was young, perhaps thirty.  He looked as though he enjoyed San Diego, he
had a suntanned face and the sort of happy age lines a man might get
squinting at the luff in a spinnaker.

How long will this last?  wrote Frank.

I think you just need some sleep.  You're going back to the hotel.

That's my recommendation.

I want to stay here, wrote Frank.

His mother and father and brother crowded behind the doctor to look over
his shoulder.  At this last note they shook their heads, almost in
unison.

The doctor wrote, No.

Why not?  wrote Frank.

Because there's nothing wrong with you.  Frank wanted to cry, but he
couldn't force any tears, and without hearing his voice, he worried that
any sound he made would drive everyone away from him.  He thought there
was something monumentally cruel about the doctor, for releasing him
without at least one night in the hospital, but perhaps the doctor,
having consulted the hospital's chief of staff, regarded this expulsion
as the most efficient means to a cure.  And Frank knew, regretfully,
that the doctor was right, that there really wasn't anything wrong with
him.  Still, it seemed shocking that everyone would cooperate in this
refusal to care for him.  What kind of Jewish family would let a
thirty-year-old Christian doctor release their son from the emergency
room without a second opinion?  He suspected a conspiracy.  Where were
the teams of psychiatrists in all of this?  Or even one chubby social
worker?

The doctor took the pad away and walked out of the room.  Lowell showed
Frank his clothes and indicated that Frank should get dressed.  Everyone
left the room.

They all must know, he thought, and if they don't know for sure, they
can guess.  He put on the clothing, and went with them back to the
hotel.

By ten o'clock he was back in his room.  Lowell wrote him a note.  We'll
be down the hall.  Dial Mom and Dad's room if you need us.  Let it ring
twice and hang up.  We'll be here.

What's next?  wrote Frank.  He wanted to write a long essay, complaining
about the danger in this plan.  What if he fell and hurt himself, and
couldn't dial the phone?  What if there was a fire in his room, and he
couldn't scream for help?

We're going back to Los Angeles in the morning.

Frank wrote, How?

Lowell wrote back, Driving.

Frank wrote, Thanx.  He wanted Lowell to smile, and Lowell did, but the
little grin betrayed the weight of the days since the crash.  And Frank
was sure that Lowell didn't like him anymore.

Frank grabbed the paper and wrote this: Publicist?  Lawyer?

Lowell drew a circle around each word, and a line from the circle to a
dependent note.  For Publicist he wrote Handle this in LA.  Attached to
Lawyer was this: Berberian, probably.

Lowell turned, and again Frank needed to say something.  He wrote, I
think I should have stayed at the hospital.

Don't be silly, his brother wrote.  Then he took the pen and paper, and
he too left the room.

Frank had a dream.  In the dream he could hear things.  The dream, the
images, were unimportant, and even in the dream he could feel their
insignificance; the dreaming part of his brain threw them up only for
show.  Trees, sky, faces, rain, a factory, dogs, scary monsters.  And
for each image, a different sound.  The wind in the trees.  A jet across
the sky, distant, trailing a sound that summons regret for all the lost
opportunities for something real to regret, for loves that were never
there to be lost.  The rain on a tin roof.  A bottling plant, something
like a factory he had visited on a school trip, glass bottles rattling
down an assembly line.  Three black dogs fighting with each other.  He
woke up from the scary monsters, shrimp-eared Africans begging on the
sidewalks of London, and he heard himself shout.

He rubbed his head against the pillow and wanted to write a poem about
the sound of skin on cotton-or was the pillowcase a blend of cotton and
polyester?  Well, that should be in the poem too.  What a miracle he
would make of the absolutely ordinary.  Now that I'm a writer, he
thought, I can exploit all of my perceptions.

This is so liberating.  A poem about the sound of the sheet against the
ear, and not some fruity ode to cotton, no!  Fuck the natural, I'll
include the synthetic in the experience, I won't revile the polyester!
I'll be a poet of sounds!  And so my interest in music will not be
wasted.

He got out of the bed and looked through his bag for the brown notebook.
He reached into the place where he kept his pen, but it wasn't there. He
searched the room, but there was nothing to write with.  He could call
Lowell, or his mother, but they were asleep.

He would speak to them in the morning, to tell them he was fine.

Of course, they think I'm already fine, that nothing is wrong with me.
If they thought something was wrong with me, they would have left me in
a hospital, or my mother would have stayed in the room with me, or
Lowell would have.  If they loved me, I would be in the hospital.  But
I'm not sick.  So he was angry with them, even while he knew they were
right.

A pen.  To find one.

He ggot dressed and went into the hall, and to the elevator, and took it
downstairs.

In the lobby he asked the clerk at the front desk for a pen.  He thought
she might have been a man whose sex had been changed.

There was something about the size of her hands, a little too large for
a woman, too wide, and there was an added pleasure she took in the
humiliation of the job, a delight in how busy it kept her, that
suggested to Frank that she might have, once been a man whose fantasy
was just this, to wear a womans uniform, and serve.  Or not, and she was
just a woman with large hands, and Frank was a ridiculous man.

She gave him a cheap ballpoint imprinted with the hotel's name, the kind
of pen that drags on paper, that forces the writer to use a strong hand,
leaving a deep groove, a trace of the hand more definite than the faint
color of the ink.  He asked if the bar was still open, and it was.  He
wanted a beer.  Then he thought that if he drank, he would forget his
poem, and then he thought about all the poets who drank and for a moment
considered something to loosen himself up, but he decided not to drink,
that he had to follow his own muse, this proudly sober muse.  After all,
he had been sober when he wrote the letter to Anna, the letter, that
first entry in his collected works.

Bettina Welch was in the far corner of the dining room, her back to the
door.  She was standing at a table, and the others with her, Piet
Bernays and the two women who were always in the crisis center, were
laughing.  He had already forgotten their names.  Frank saw that he
could sneak close to their table without being recognized if he stayed
on the other side of a divider between the dining room and the bar.

He felt silly crouching low to avoid being seen, but it worked.

When he was about ten feet from them, he could hear them clearly.

They were making fun of the families.  Why am I here?  he asked himself.
I should be in my room, writing a poem about a pillow.

They were making fun of red-haired Brenda.  "My baby, you killed my
baby!"

And then Piet Bernays said, "Frank, let me take care of this."

And then he did the next voice, "Whatever you say, Lowell, whatever you
say!"

"Whatever you say, Lowell, whatever you say!" said Bettina, imitating
the imitation.

"Who's this?" said one of the women, and she closed her mouth and made
the sounds of someone without a tongue trying to speak through liDs sewn
together.  "Nnnneeee.  Mnnnn I I e."

"Frank Gale this afternoon," said Piet.  "Give me someone harder to do.
Give me someone else."

``Give me anyone else,'' said Bettina.

"And his brother," said one of the women.

"At least you can talk to him," said Bernays.

"There's this guy on the phone, yesterday, and today," said one of the
women, finding a new target.  "It's like, `I want to speak to the man in
the charge, I want to speak to the man in the charge." And I'm like,
`Sir, we understand how you must feel now, and we'll do everything we
can to help you, in any way that we can.

"So what did you do?" asked Bernays.

"I gave him to Dockery."

"And Dockery pretended to be Donoghue?"

"Dockery tried to let him think that he was the man in charge, and the
guy spilled out his whole story, and then he found out that Dockery
didn't have the power to hear his story and do anything about it, that
he'd have to get to Donoghue and tell the story all over again, so he
said he'd sue Dockery for something or other."

Bettina said she'd heard that the survivors were split pretty evenly
between Berberian and Dessick.

Bernays lit a cigarette and said, "This is a real mess.  It's going to
take a long time.  If I were one of the survivors, I don't know who I'd
go with.  They're both good."

One of the women said she favored Berberian; the other said she trusted
Dessick.  Bettina said she was glad she didn't have to have an opinion.
She asked Berriays whom he would go with if he had to make a choice.

He thought for a moment.  "I don't know." He said this with deep awe for
his confusion, and his ignorance gained such a degree of power that the
choices the women at the table made seemed immediately stupid, that
having made a choice, having seen a distinction, far from granting the
choosers a degree of authority, made them look immeasurably dumb.

The table was quiet.  Frank hoped that some backwash of guilt had swept
over them, that the sewers of their emotions could not contain all of
their cruelty.  They sat in silence and sipped their drinks in reveries
of a nostalgia stolen from a cultural idea of boozy meditation.

1This is how the silence was broken: "Nnnngggg.  Mnnnnggg." It was
Bettina Welch this time, and her version of Frank's paralysis was better
than the other woman's.  They all laughed, each in turn, and made the
sound, cracking each other up.

"What can you do?" she said.  "You have to laugh."

Frank thought, Why won't they let me hate them?  Why am I so weak that I
can't hate them?

He crawled back along the wall, in the shadows of the room.

He stood up and turned around, and when Piet Bernays saw him, Frank was
sure that it looked as though he had just come into the room.  He stood
there, watching the table.  No one said anything.

Bettina and Bernays looked at each other, that secret exchange, but this
time Frank would not let their knowledge of what he had done get in the
way.  He would confound them now.

"Hello," said Frank.

Of course they couldn't talk; he was the ghost, he was Christ nsen.

I"Yes, my voice.  It came back to me.  The doctor said I just needed
some rest.  He was right."

"Well, that's wonderful," said Bernays.  "We were all thinking about
you."

"Thinking what?" asked Frank.

"Hoping that you would get better, of course."

"Thinking or hoping?"

"Thinking hoping," said Bernays.  He wouldn't be trapped, even with a
few drinks inside him.

"May I join you?" asked Frank.

"Of course," said Bettina.  Her training battled whatever she'd been
drinking, but she betrayed impatience with him, and she knew it and
tried to fight it, she tried to be nicer to him, which only made her
that much more false.

"We were just .  .  ." said Bernays, unable to complete the sentence,
lost, guilty, because he suspected that Frank had listened to all their
impersonations.

"We were just having a drink," said Bettina.  "But if you need anything,
anything at all, I'm here for you." She was back on track.

"Do you want a drink?" asked one of the women.  What were their names?
It was making him desperate, that he had forgotten their names.  Well,
they had only been introduced once.  Why weren't they wearing name tags?
But Frank had to answer her, name or not.

Frank, very quietly, to sound ruminative and deferential, said,
"Nnnngggg.  Mnnnnggg.  He hoped it was the kind of "no" that comes under
the breath, full of exhaustion and shame.

"Are you sure?" asked one of the women.

No one acknowledged his parody of their parody.  But if they had, what
would have been the appropriate reaction?  A sudden shower of blood from
every pore?  Or a ghastly release of crap in their pants?  Frank
imagined the four of them sitting there, and then, in shame and fear,
discovering how little control they really have over their intestines
clogged with rotten meat, their fetid colons.

"I think so," he said.  "It's been a hard day."

"A drink might be good for you," said Bernays, and Frank was sure he
wanted to slit his own throat for having given him the chance to accept,
that his good breeding, his manners, had for a second overcome his
cunning.  Frank considered accepting the drink, just to sit at the table
with them.  If he did, he would say nothing, he would answer their
questions as briefly as possible, or not answer at all, no, answer
briefly, and let them try to talk to each other without including him in
the conversation.  If Bernays had any hope of fucking any one of them
tonight, or all three, Frank's ghoulish silence at the table would have
dampened the possibility of an orgasm for any of them.

"Don't you drink beer?" asked Bettina, surprising Frank with her memory.
Yes, he'd had a beer in Los Angeles.  So she'd been watching him.  He
fought against feeling a little respect for her.

"Why don't we see what's on tap?" said Bernays.

"Oh, that's okay," said Frank, which didn't really mean anything.  It
could go on like this forever he thought, I can stand here, and we can
talk like this, about nothing, yet aware of everything, not just for
another three minutes, but until time is finished, until everyone knows
everything about everything.  I can keep us alive for eternity if I
stand here, all of us forever afloat on frustration.

Death from boredom?  Never.

This is how to torture them, thought Frank, and then he wanted to say to
them, You see, after all, I can hate!  I am capable of reflecting back
all the hate that is beamed to me.  I can stand here, ten feet away from
you, so that you have to raise your voices just a little, which must
irritate you, and I like that, I like to see the strain of forcing this
geniality when the last thing you want to do is work, since being nice
to me is what you've been paid to do.  And yet you do not fully
comprehend the source of this irritation.  You think you are
uncomfortable because the social traffic among people always hurts.  You
do not know that were I standing next to you, the power you have as a
group would override my weak force, so I stand here, just this far away,
and it gives me great pleasure.  You may think that I am some pathetic
loser of a brother, some kid brother to my younger brother, some kind of
desperate loser-loser at work, loser at ai'plane lottery-but I am the
king of these few seconds of your lives, the moment belongs to me, I am
the master, I am in control.

He came close to saying to Bernays, God, I can't believe it, I thought
you were gay.  And what would Bernays say: Maybe I am, maybe I'm not,
what's it to you?  And Frank would say, Well, what are you doing with
these women?  And Bernays would say, Whatever they'll let me get away
with.  And Frank would say, So you're gay or you're not?  And Bernays
would say, Would you pursue this if your brother were here?  And Frank
would collapse with shame.

Frank felt himself wavering, and he needed to regain his balance.

"Are you going back to Los Angeles tomorrow?" asked Bettina.

"I don't know," said Frank.

One of the women said there was going to be another memorial in Los
Angeles, and the other woman said it would also be a funeral.

"A funeral," said Frank, knowing that if he said nothing else, the four
of them would imagine that he was imagining the GRIM SCENE of all those
caskets, some of them flag-draped, baking in the sun, dry-roasting the
body parts inside.

"We'll be there." said Bettina.  ShP fllflvPri with hor ,lri',L secret
she carried, the truth about Frank Gale, was not, at this moment, the
most important thing in her.  She wanted to fuck Bernays, it was
obvious, and she didn't want to be reminded of her duties.  Frank nodded
to the bartender, and made a circle with his finger, toward the table,
meaning: another round.  Everyone at the table protested.

"No," said Frank.  "Please, you've all been so good to me.  He reached
into his wallet and took out a twenty-dollar bill.  Would it be enough?
He added another ten and walked to the table, knowing that if he stayed,
he would lose the game he had invented.

"That's too much," said Bettina.

"We'll give you the change when we see you," said Bernays.

This was such a ridiculous self-imposed mission that for a quick moment
Frank wanted to say, Fine, I'll see you at the funeral, just to put
Bernays through the trouble of holding on to the change, of keeping it
in a separate envelope, but he had a better idea.  "Don't give it back
to me," said Frank.  "I don't need it.  But if there's a charity, you
know, for any of the children on the ground, or if the pilot had kids
and someone sets up a trust fund for them, give them the money." And
then the most diabolical sentence bubbled up, and he heard himself say,
"Unless you want another round."

Frank thought the last suggestion was so hilarious, such an insult, that
he had to turn quickly and run from the room.  Let them think he wanted
to cry, but when he got to the elevator, and the door closed, he leaned
against the wall and shrieked with laughter, cackling like the madman he
had become.  But it isn't just insanity, he told himself.  This is
really very funny.  What can they do now?

They'll buy themselves another round, with the change that remains, and
if there's not enough left over, they'll add to the money with a little
extra from their own pockets, and they will, each of them, have to
forgive themselves for stealing a few dollars from charity, while
they'll promise themselves, each of them, privately, to give, what, five
dollars to the next bum they pass in a doorway, or maybe stuff five
dollars into one of those collection cans with the coin slot, next to
the cash register and the red strips of licorice.  And maybe a little
extra to a collection plate the next time one is passed, if they ever go
to church, but they'll also know that when they next see that plate,
they won't put in any special supplement while thinking of Frank.
Perfect, perfect, perfect.

Back in his room the message light flashed on his phone.  He called the
hotel operator, who told him that his brother had called, also someone
from the National Transportation Safety Board, Guy Ingle.  He left a
number, but added that he would call in the morning.

Frank supposed this was about the identification of the bodies, although
the name was new, and wouldn't that call come from the coroner?  There
was nothing he could do now except to worry about it, and he would try
not to.  And his brother: Did Lowell think that he was asleep, or still
deaf?  What had he wanted?  Don't call him now, thought Frank.  Write
that poem about the pillow.

He picked up the notebook, to write the truth, and with the bad pen
scraped into the page, I woke up and I was happy to hear the pillow.
This was true, but he hated the way it looked on the page.

He crossed it out and held the pen over the paper for a long time, and
then closed the book.  He opened it again and wrote, I do not have to do
this.  He liked that sentence more than the first one, and thought it
might be a good first line for something, but he had nothing that wanted
to follow.

He turned the television on, to the news channel, and a picture of
Lonnie Walter.  This is the man who murdered my family, thought Frank. A
letter had been discovered in the wreckage of the plane, the reporter
said.  Walter had written a message on an air-sickness bag to the boss
who had fired him.  It said, simply, "Hi Nick.  I think it's sort of
ironical that we end up like this.  I asked for some leniency, remember?
Well, I got none, and you'll get none."

Frank turned the television off, and reconstructed the story.

Walter must have passed the note to the boss just as he was getting his
gun out.  He shot the boss, shot a flight attendant, and then went to
the cockpit and shot the pilots, and shot out the controls.  How long
had it taken from the time he pulled the gun out of, what, a briefcase?
.  .  .  until the plane started to go down.  Had he shot himself, or
did he stand in the cockpit, over the bodies of the crew, to watch the
fund come up?  It was davli I ht.  He had time to think about things. He
would have heard the passengers screaming.  And how did he feel as the
plane went down?  Had a bullet exploded the windows of the cockpit?  He
would have been sucked out of the plane and killed in the air.  But if
the windows had held, and the pilots were dead, and the flight
attendants were crying, and the passengers were wailing, might Lonnie
Walter, for an instant, in his exhaustion, regret what he had done?
Might he have turned to the passengers and said he was sorry?  The last
time Frank had fucked Mary Sifka, how much had he hated her after he had
come?

Frank had an idea.  The day's papers were on an end table.  He looked
for the article about Lonnie Walter.

Lonnie Walter was a forty-five-year-old native of Los Angeles.

His parents had come to the city from Louisiana.  His father, a plumber,
died when Lonnie was fifteen.  Lonnie had joined the marines and had
served in Vietnam.  He was divorced, with a son and a daughter who lived
with their mother in Phoenix.  He had two sisters.  His older sister
(forty-seven), Teresa, lived in Los Angeles.

His younger sister (thirty-one), Lovie, lived in Seattle.  Frank thought
of black children on a hike in the Cascade Mountains, their freedom,
black faces, red parkas, green trees.  And their uncle, who had
destroyed an airplane, a Boeing, made in Seattle.

After leaving the marines, Lonnie Walter's first job was with the
airline, and he'd stayed with them until he was fired two weeks ago.

Frank picked up the phone and called Information in Los Angeles, and
asked for Lonnie Walter's phone number.  It was listed!

There he was!  He could call and see if anyone was there.

He dialed.  Someone answered!  A woman!

"Hello," said Frank.

"Yes?" asked the woman.

"Is Lonnie there?" asked Frank.

"Who is this?"

"It's Larry Levy," said Frank, taking the name of one of the dead from
the list in the paper.

"Do you know what time it is?"

"I'm calling from New York, it's six in the morning here.  Lonnie and I
used to talk at this time, all the time."

"And you're,,,in New York, and you haven't read the news."

"No, ma am, said Frank.  "And you must be .  .  ." Frank wanted her to
complete the sentence.

"If you know Lonnie so well, you should know who I am.

"You must be his sister, Terry."

"Yes.  Terry." Could she imagine that out in the world someone so
diabolical would take her name from the Los Angeles Times and use it so
coldly?

"Where's Lonnie?"

"Lonnie's dead."

"What?" asked Frank, sounding bewildered.  "No."

"You don't know?" she asked.

Frank pretended to not understand that she was asking him if he knew
about everything, and limited himself to acting as though she just meant
that his not knowing about the death surprised her not because the whole
world knew, but because no one had called him yet to tell him of the
passing of a friend in such an awful way.

He could let her think that he thought the death was ordinary, something
at work, or a car crash.  "Oh, my God," said Frank.  "I can't believe
it.  That's awful, what happened?"

"I can't talk about it," she said, and she hung up the phone.

Frank waited a second and called her back.

"It's me again, it's Larry."

"I can't talk now."

"Wait!" he shouted.  There was all the command he had ever had in his
life in that one shout.  No one could have refused him.

Finally he was stronger than his brother.  "I have a terrible feeling
about this right now.  After he was fired, he was really upset."

"Yes," said his sister.

"Oh, my dear sweet Lord," said Frank.  "He used to joke about it, but
did he kill himself?"

"Yes," said the sister.  She was crying again.

"Oh God, oh God, oh God," said Frank.  He was smiling now.

Fuck the writing, thought Frank, I should be an actor!

"I don't know who to talk to," said Walter's sister.  The part of her
accent that was black.  or the South.  also had a brittle aualitv.

and if she weren't tired, and her brother hadn't done what he had done,
and she were just talking to Frank under whatever circumstances were
normal in her life, she would have sounded arrogant.

"You can taalk to me.  I spoke to him last week.  I was away on vacation
until last night.  We'd talked about him coming with me.

I went to Jamaica."

"He said something about that," said the sister.  "About a vacation with
a friend."

"That was me," said Frank.  And `if it was someone else, let them call
her.  He was sure no one else in the entire world had his wacko courage.

"So you haven't read the papers, or seen the news."

"The news is not my strong suit," said Frank.  "I used to have Lonnie
tell me who to vote for, even in New York elections, you know, the mayor
and stuff.  He was always up on that." This was such a specific lie that
if she had never seen her brother read the paper, now she would add this
to the collection of THINGS SHE NEVER KNEW ABOUT HIM, that he had a
friend in New York, that they talked politics, that Lonnie had someone
in the world who looked up to him, a white man, a Jew.

"Did you hear about the plane crash?"

"The one in Argentina?" He didn't know if there really had been a crash
in Argentina, but it seemed like the thing to say, to keep the flow of
credibility going.  And don't the planes in Argentina always crash?

"The one in San Diego."

"What are you saying?" asked Frank.

"They say Lonnie shot up the plane."

"With the Colt?"

"You knew about the gun?"

"Goddamn it.  I told him not to get that gun."

"He got it."

"My God."

"The plane was full.  A 737."

"A 737, standard configuration, eight rows first class, thirty-two `I in
coach?" He made a crazy face, this was the most fun he had ever had in
his life.

"A 737, a lot of people.  And it went into a crowded neighborhood."

"Oh my God.  And they think Lonnie shot down a plane from the ground,
with his gun?"

"They say he got on the plane and shot the pilot."

"No!  Lonnie?  No!  But you don't believe that.  I don't believe that.
Lonnie?  No!  Not Lonnie."

He let her stop his rant.  "That's what they say."

"No."

"Mr.  Levy, I think it's true."

"But you can't get a gun past security.  The girls who run those
machines may not look it, but they're awfully sharp.  And call me
Larry."

"They say he did.  They say he used his old pass to get into the
airport, where they didn't have a metal detector."

"And you believe this."

"I'm afraid it's impossible not to.  How long did you know him?"

"I've known him," said Frank, not wanting to speak of Lonnie in the past
tense, "for about five years.  I lived in L.A.  for a while.

I worked with him."

"How well did you know him?"

"Well, he did have his demons," Frank said, shaking his head and
remembering, as did his sister, the man described in the papers, a man
who could drink all night, a man who started fights for no reason, a man
whose wile left him because of his pathological jealousy.

"That's no comfort to the families of all the dead."

"Terry, I can't know how you feel, but I'm not talking to the families
of the dead.  I'm talking to you.  And you need to remember the man we
both knew as someone who was troubled, but also capable of love.  You
need to remember the love he had for you.  I know I will.  And you
didn't pull the trigger, he wasn't you, he was your brother.  Someone
has to remember him, you know, as he was, most of the time, when he
wasn't, you know .  .  .  I mean, he never killed anyone before."

"It's a terrible burden."

"He was a good friend, that's what I want to say."

"No one else has called."

"Bastards."

"You can't blame them," said Terry.

"But he was a friend.  I haven't read anything, so I don't know.

And maybe he did this just as they say he did, maybe it was even worse,
but he was a friend.  And whatever happened to him, whatever happened to
his mind, he was in a lot of pain.  Maybe we could have given him more
help, more love, maybe he wouldn't have done this.  So he was lonely. He
needed me and damn it, I failed him.  I don't know about his other
friends, but I know about me, and I can blame myself."

"No," said Walter's sister.

"Yes.  I knew how upset he was.  He told me about the gun.  He had
fantasies.  I heard him, but I didn't listen.  I didn't listen with my
third eye." What?  thought Frank.  Hear with my eye?  Is his sister
listening to me?  He went on, "I just don't know if I ever told him.
Told him that I really liked him.  Damn it."

She started to cry again.  The sobs built to something too painful for
Frank to hear, and he was ashamed of his joke.

"Maybe you could call another time.  I need someone to talk to.

I need a friend."

"Good-bye," he said.  He didn't know if she could hear him, but he hung
up.

What wrong did I do?  he asked himself.  I gave her comfort just now.
Has anyone else been nice to her in the last week?  Maybe she can sleep
now.  Maybe I can finally sleep.

He turned off the light.  It was quiet in the hotel room.  It wouldn't
have been quiet like this in Mexico.  If there really is a heaven, he
thought, and if my wife and daughter are angels now, and belong to God,
can they see me?  Did they watch me call Terry Walter?

Are they watching her now?  Do they forgive me?

It was three in the morning, and he wanted to let his family know that
his voice was back.  He called his mother's room.  The phone rang five
times, and then she answered, with sleep in her voice.

"Hi," said Frank.

"Lowell?" she asked.

"No, Frank."

"Frank," she said.  He thought she was trying to remember if she knew
any Franks.  "Frank," she said again, after a frightening pause, and
then again, "Frank," and this time her voice indicated the surprise he
expected.

"Yep, it's back," he said, pleased with the creepiness of his "Yep,"
which was too full of excitement, as though his voice were a puppy
returned from a day's exploration.  If his family was turning on him, he
would make them pay for it, with an unpleasant friendliness that would
make them worry that this ugly, forward part of his character was
something so deeply a part of his structure that he was revealing to
them something they all shared, something fundamental in the Gale
genetic design; the thing that marked them, and now was revealed by
their son, would be the thing they would all, against their will,
express to the world, this oily, insistent blindness to the privacy of
others, to their hatred of the Gales and their Gale-ness.  He was sure
that his mother was scared that in the morning she would call Bettina
Welch and ask her what she really thought of her.

"Well, I just wanted to say that I was okay."

"The doctor said you were."

"Yes, but doctors are wrong sometimes.  I mean, I could have really been
deaf."

"But they said there was no physical reason for that, nothing caused
it."

"But maybe it could have been something unrelated to everything that's
happened this week.  Maybe it could have been some kind of virus, or
microbe, that had been growing for a long time, and had cut the optic
nerve."

"That's to the eyes."

"Maybe that could have been next.  To the ear canal, you know.

Something inside the ear.  It could have been that."

"But it wasn't.  Because you're fine now."

"For now, yes.  But how much longer?  Maybe it'll come back."

"The doctor was"

"Are you taking his side or mine?"

"Frank, he's a doctor, he ran the tests."

"Oh, and was he the world's expert on S-H-I-S?"

"What?"

"Sudden hearing-loss syndrome?  S-H-L-S?" He spelled it out for her
again.

"S-H-L-S?  Is that something real?"

"I don't know," said Frank, "but maybe I have it."

"I don't think so."

"Just admit that it's possible."

"Of course it's possible," she said.

"Good night, Mom," said Frank, as though nothing had happened, not the
hearing loss, not the plane crash, not his marriage, not this ridiculous
phone call, nothing.

He hung up the phone and turned off the light.  He studied the darkness,
the pulses of light inside of it, and he thought that it was getting
dark; he was sure it was getting darker.

He turned on the light to make sure he still had his vision.

Everything was there, in color.  He let his eyes take in the details of
the room, and for the second time in a week, since looking at the blue
plate in his parents' condominium, he felt the pure gift of sight.
Everything had the aura of the greatest luxury.  The brown
imitation-wood-grain veneer on the television cabinet had never been so
nch, and not only that, but the right angle around the doorjamb had a
precision that made his teeth ache, it was so beautiful, so appropriate,
and it was white!  He studied the far corner of the bed, with the rotten
avocado-green blanket hovering above a canyon of shadows at the bottom
of which lay the carpet, its brown nubs alive with vibrations that were
as pure as any in the universe.  Nothing is ugly if you really get to
know it, thought Frank.  He needed to call Lowell and tell him this
thing he had finally learned.  That might be the title for the poem
about the pillow: "Nothing Is Ugly If You Really Get to Know It."

He picked up the phone, and alter four rings the machine answered.  He
heard the message, but after the tone he hung up.  Would he really tell
his brother something he no longer believed?

n the morning Frank found two letters on the carpet next to the door.
One was from Berberian, the other was from Dessick.  Each letter urged
Frank to make a decision.  The letters were personally addressed to him,
and at first he assumed that they had been composed on a computer,
merging his name from a list of addressees.  The text of each letter was
directed at no one but Frank.  Both identified him as the only holdout
among all of the relatives of those who'd died in the crash, and while
those who had survived the destruction on Cohassett I' I Street had not
yet signed up, most had, and anyway, as both letters averred, the `I
lawsuit for those who lived on the ground would be filed separately, in
a different jurisdiction, and would be more complicated.  Berberian
said, and Dessick echoed this, that associated attorneys in San Diego
would handle the Cohassett Street suits.

Berberian's letter, in its first paragraph, urged Frank to sign.

We do not need to remind you ofthe importance of a fiilly pressed
lawsuit.  Worse than a lawsuit split between two firms is a lawsuit
notfiilly pressed by all of those eligible to sue.

Dessick said: Of course I want you to join our lawsuit, but I understand
that each ofus has to make a choice.  Not making a choice, in this case,
would be a terrible mistake, one that would reflect badly, I think, on
everyone else who has already decided which of the two teams to join. It
is simply unfair to the rest of us, for you to hold out like this.

Frank heard himself talking to the room: "But I need more information."
No, he thought, not quite sure of the idea, I need less.  Berberian
added a postscript to his letter.

I have to inform you, Mr.  Gale, that your reluctance to press the suit
against those individuals or institutions responsible for the deaths of
so many people may put you in the position of impeding an effort to
which everyone else has committed.  If you are used by the airline or
its representatives as a figure of compromise, if you make a separate
settlement with the airline that forces all of those grief-stricken
survivors into settling the case themselves prematurely, then in our
considered opinion this coull be cause for action and we might be forced
to find a remedy for our complaint against you.  While it may have been
sentimentally appropriate for the airline's president to read, at a
memorial service, that letter from the husband to his wife, I warn you
not to succumb to those impulses to forgive and reconcile which everyone
else connected to this incident, all of those who have so far joined one
of the lawsuits, have admirably and with great di,fiie'ulty, resisted.

Dessick's letter, in its second paragraph, had a similar thought: We
have heard and read a lot in the last two days about forgiveness.  Now
this is certainly a genuinely admirable goal for all of us, and perhaps
someday, when this is all over, we will, each ofus, according to our
consciences, which must always be private, forgive.  But, Mr.  Gale,
don't be swayed by appeals to merry until we know who it is we ought
toforgive.  In other words, we need to know just who is guilty before we
can forgive them, and the guilty will still have to accept their
expensive punishment, not because we want to get rich, but because ifwe
can scare the airline industry into cleaning up its shamefilly lax
practices, then the next time this huppens, it won't happen.  Your
current re'fusal to participate in this process will be held against you
by the ,fiiture.  Do not give us cause for action.

Frank held the letters next to each other.  A pleasant smell came from
them, and he sniffed Berberian's.  The letter smelled nicely of horses,
blended with pine, or incense, or smoke, something of a forest above a
desert.  The smell was exciting, comforting, American, a pungent cowboy
smell, the wide and wild West.  He brought Dessick's letter to his nose.
There it was, that same remarkable spice!

Someday I will have to ask these lawyers if any of their workers stuff
envelopes next to a fire made from the logs of pinon trees.  The smell
was too strong on both letters to have transferred osmotically from one
to the other while he had been holding them.  No, he was sure, each
letter's smell was independent.  And the same!  And these were delivered
by hand, presumably by two different hands.  Again he missed his wife,
who might have shown the two letters to their daughter and asked her to
smell them.

If I had not written the letter, thought Frank, but I had still missed
the airplane, what would have happened?  I would have called Anna at the
airport, she would have wished me a good flight, she would have let me
talk to Madeleine, and then she would have died.

Then I would have probably done everything as I did, except I wouldn't
have crapped in my pants, and I wouldn't have collapsed at the memorial
service, and there would have been no letter to publish.  Or was I going
crazy from the beginning because the existence of the thing weighed on
me, because I felt the pressure of the letter, even before its discovery
in print?  No .  .  .  as soon as Anna discovered the letter, I was in
trouble.  And if I had never written the letter at all, and they had not
died, what would Mexico have been like?

We're in Mexico.  I get to the room, she's happy to see me.  Well, if
not thrilled to see me, because there has been a strain in the marriage
lately, at least she's trying to be polite, because she wants a pleasant
vacation, but she has not accused me of bad behavior.

She believes that I was late to the airport because business held me
back, because I was working.  She suspects something, but, for the good
of the marriage, and for her daughter, asleep in the next room, she
waits for me to confess, and she knows I will, because she knows I love
her, or want to love her.  She understands the reason for the trip.

And then on the beach the next day, while I'm walking with Madeleine.
No.  .  .  there is no walk with Madeleine designed to give Anna the
time to read the letter and decide if the marriage will continue or
stop.  No .  .  .  I give her the time just to be by herself, so she can
read, or shop.  I tell her to go to town and buy something for a lot of
money.  She tells me nothing in Mexico is worth a lot of money.  I tell
her to buy a silver necklace, and she does, and she spends two hundred
dollars.  The necklace, a yoke of sterling, has an Aztec motif, a spiral
made of right angles with a turquoise chip in the center.  It is
something she would never wear at home, and she tells me not to think of
the necklace as something she'll never wear again, something she'll come
to regret, something that will embarrass her when she sees it in her
jewelry box.  No, she says, think of it as something I bought only to
wear here, as a kind of costume.  She tells me we would not begrudge
each other a dinner that cost two hundred dollars if we had a bottle of
expensive wine or champagne, and that the necklace, by virtue of the way
it screams RICH TOURIST IN A RESORT, celebrates our vacation, that it is
true costume jewelry, because in the costume she can just be the woman
who came to Acapulco to be different from the woman she is at home.  In
the necklace she is no longer Anna Klauber from Los Angeles, but someone
from another city, someone who would actually wear the necklace at home.

And I will find this powerfully seductive, my wife's tactics, because
the new character arrives with the promise of a sexual challenge to me.
She is telling me to be scared of the necklace.  I will learn from this
woman how to make love to my wife.  She will teach me that the best
technique is surrender, that I should let my weakness provoke her
strength.  Somehow it will all work out, the necklace says, there is no
need to confess, if you let me punish you, and if you accept your
punishment, you will see, so clearly, that after all, I truly really
love you.

But I wrote that letter, thought Frank.  And she read it.  And she died.
My wife is dead.  My daughter is dead.

What if she had never read the letter, but it had still been discovered
in the wreckage?  Did I go to Cohassett Street looking for the letter?
Would I have gone there if Anna had not found the letter?  Yes, no, yes,
no.  I can't say.  I would have forgotten it, probably.  But then if it
had been discovered?  That is, if the letter had been discovered, though
Anna had never read it.  I would not have been quite so crazy, my grief
would not have this current of panic running through it.  I would have
chosen a lawyer by now.  I would have just been one of them, one of the
indignant survivors.

And if I had not written the letter and I had not missed the plane, and
the plane had not crashed?

Everything has happened as it has happened, thought Frank, and there is
nothing to be done except to continue as I have, out of control,
shredded by fear.

He called his parents' room.

Lowell answered the phone.

"We were going to call you," said Lowell.  "It's time to go."

"I can talk," said Frank.

"Mom told me."

"It's all better now."

"We figured it would be okay."

"Now what?"

"We go back to Los Angeles today."

"What about identifying the bodies?"

"Why don't you let the coroners do that?"

"I want to know."

"Frank, please, not now, I don't have time for this now."

"Time for what?"

"Time for you to be crazy all the time."

"But I need to know."

"And we need to have some peace.  You're not the only one in this family
who was related to Anna and Madeleine."

"I'm the only one who seems to be upset about it at all.  I'm the only
one really grieving."

"You can't say that."

"I just did."

"Frank, what do you want me to do?"

"I want you to call the coroner and find out if we can identify the
bodies.  I want to get it over with.  This really means a lot to me."

"Let's have breakfast," said Lowell.

"I can order room service," said Frank.  "We can meet in my room."

"Downstairs in the coffee shop in twenty minutes," said Lowell.

"I have to help them pack."

Frank showered quickly, and as he dressed, he turned on the television.
The crash was still in the news, because another thirty bodies had been
found.  Police dogs searching through the wasted zone had found them in
burned cars and flattened houses.  The work crews now wore gas masks to
protect themselves from the smell of death.  A few neighborhood dogs and
cats that had wanderedd into the zone had been shot by police, and their
owners had filed complaints.  The mayor, who Frank, with an annoying
shiver of unnecessary excitement, recognized from the memorial, defended
the police, saying they were protecting the bodies of the dead, and
protecting the city from the spread of disease by contaminated animals.
The owner of one of the dead cats was interviewed.  He said that cats
were free animals, that it was hard to keep them inside if they wanted
to go out.

He heard something drop outside his door.  He opened it.  The San Diego
paper was on the carpet.  Frank opened it.  The headline was simple: HER
NAME JS MARY SIFHA.

Someone had given Mary's name to the local television station that had
first revealed the letter.  Once the station broadcast her name, the
night before, the paper felt that it no longer needed to keep the name
hidden.  No one had answered at Mary Sifka's phone number in Los
Angeles.  She was missing from work.  The identities of the letter
writer and his wife were a secret.

At the same time, on television, Frank heard the newswoman say, "Mary
Sifka." And a shot of her house, which Frank had once driven past, just
to see it, a blandly modern wall in the Hollywood Hills.

He called Mary Sifka.  The line was busy.  He called the front desk, to
see if she had called him, but there were no messages from her.  Another
five reporters had called, also Julia Abarbanel, to say she was in Los
Angeles, and Frank's secretary had called.  Karen would know everything,
wouldn't she?  She knew who Mary Sifka was, and wouldn't she make the
connection between Mary and the plane crash, and the letter?

He called her at the office.

"I've been thinking about you," said Karen.  Had she been talking to
someone from the airline, or was that the appropriate thing to say?

"We're coming back up today.  I just have to identify the bodies."

He said those last words quickly.

"Have you seen the paper today?" she asked, without acknowledging the
grotesque formality he had just described to her.

"What?"

"Mary Sifka, that's who the letter is about."

"Really." So Karen didn't think it was Frank.  Because she accepted what
the papers all said, that the writer of the letter was "That's what they
say."

"Poor Mary."

"She's married.  So her husband knows all about it now."

"He must feel awful."

"I hope he doesn't have any guns around the house."

"Maybe he already knew about it." "It doesn't matter, that marriage is
finished."

"Do they know who wrote the letter yet?"

"That'll come out.  What's really sick is that the guy who wrote the
letter gets made into a saint, and poor Mary Sifka gets the shaft for
all of this.  This is so sexist."

They'll know my name by the evening news, thought Frank.  My life is
finished.

"What did you need?" asked Karen.

"Nothing," said Frank.

"You were just checking in?"

"Something like that," said Frank.  There was a knock on the door.  He
excused himself to Karen.  "Someone's at the door.  I have to go."

"Check in any time, Frank.  You need the continuity with your work, I
understand that.  It helps you get over the pain."

"That's right," said Frank.  "What are you telling people who call?"

"I'm telling them that you'll be out for at least a month.  Is that
okay?"

"That's fine.  Thank you."The conversation was over.  He opened the
door.  It was his family, with their bags.

"Lowell called," said his father.  "The Coroner's Office says they think
they have the bodies ready for identification."

"What does that mean?"

"It means they have bodies which they think are Anna and the baby.  And
they're ready for you to come down.  Are you ready?"

"Yes," said Frank.  He took a few dollars out of his wallet and tucked
them beneath an ashtray, for the maid.

In the coffee shop, after they ordered breakfast, Frank's mother asked
if he really needed to go to the mortuary.

"Yes," he said.  "It's important."

"Why not let the doctors make the identification?  It isn't natural for
you to see."

"I need the closure," said Frank.

"Closure," said his mother, with disdain for the grief counselors.

"I can't think about you seeing them like that."

"You don't have to."

"I'm not in control of the things that trouble me, not all the time."

Lowell said, "That's quite a confession, Mom."

They were quiet, until their father said, "Mary Sifka.  That's an
amazing story.  I can't believe they released her name."

Lowell turned a suspicious face to Frank.  He looked ready to punish
him.  "Yesterday, when you were talking about lunch with Mark Sifka, the
name rang a small bell, because Sifka is sort of a familiar name.  Mary
Sifka works for Jack Ney, doesn't she?"

"If it's the same one," said Frank.

"You think there's two Mary Sifkas in Los Angeles?" said Lowell, cutting
Frank with his scorn.

"Maybe one of them lives in the Valley," said Frank.

"So you had lunch with an insurance agent named Mark SiIka, and then
there's a Mary Sifka who also works in insurance, who you know."

"It's a strange world," said their father, and Frank wanted to kiss him
for distracting Lowell from the truth.  "Touched by tragedy and
coincidence.  What would the Talmudists say about that?"

"I don't know," said Frank.

"What's Mary Sifka like?" asked Leon.

"I only know one of them," said Frank.  "And I don't really know her."

"The one you do know," said Leon.

"She's nice," said Frank.

"Nice," said their mother.  "What does that mean?"

"It means," said Lowell, "that she may have been having an affair with a
married man, but that doesn't mean she couldn't also be nice.  She's not
a vampire.  And it was over, remember.  The affair was over."

"How do you know that?" asked their mother.

"It says so in the letter."

"So that's what he was telling his wife.  Maybe he knew that someone was
about to tell her about it, or else he suspected that she knew, so he
was making a preemptive strike against her accusing him."

So this is where my mind comes from, thought Frank.  From my mother,
from the way her brain works and thinks about things.

"I think he was being sincere," said his father.

"Why is that?" asked Frank.

"It's just a feeling.  He wouldn't have named her if it was still going
on."

"Good point!" shouted Lowell, in triumph.  "He's right, isn't he, Mom?"
Lowell was glad to see his father outwit his mother.

"Probably," she said.

"Probably," his father said, repeating the word to show his frustration
with her, for refusing to accept that he was right, that he had to be
right.

"He's right, Mom," said Frank.

"It's not important," she said.  "Let's not talk about it anymore.

The whole thing is very depressing."

Frank wanted to ask her to divide the depression pie into sections, the
size of each piece corresponding to the percentage she would assign to
the different causes of the depression, so many degrees of depression
for the general misery generated by the loss of daughter-in-law and
granddaughter, so many degrees of depression generated by the son's
remarkably bizarre grief, so many degrees of depression generated by the
continuous humiliation of living in a condominium instead of a mansion.
He imagined the graphic rendering of this pie, each section shaded to
give the impression of three dimensions.  The Los Angeles Times could
print this pie chart every day, allowing the world to record the changes
in the marketplace of his mother's emotions.  Would there be a small
wedge under the heading of "Miscellaneous Annoyances," to cover such
daily sources of pain as the publication of a mistress's name?  And
would there be a futures market in which speculators could bet on the
likelihood of certain minute problems becoming major issues deserving of
their own pieces?  The letter today means nothing more than the usual
events of the unmerciful world (arson, rape, death squads, political
scandals, serial murders, child molestations, the embezzlement of
pension funds), but tomorrow, or even later today, when Frank's name has
been broadcast into the ether, the letter's slice might swing past 180
degrees, might go as high as three quarters of the whole pie, could even
become, for a day, the entire pie, in which any other causes for
unhappiness will have been so occluded as to be left statistically
insignificant, or converted to crust, for statistical accuracy.

And what of his mother's rage when she recognizes the extent of the
shock to her life from the letter?  Nothing would ever be the same for
her.  Nothing would ever be the same for the family.  Would anyone blame
her if she killed herself?  Would anyone be surprised if the whole event
ended when the Gales laced their pudding with poison and died together,
dying of shame?

As they left the coffee shop, they were approached by two men, one
black, one white.

"Mr.  Gale?" said the black man.

"Yes, Frank."

"Dave Armitage, and Bill Brewer, NTSB." He showed a badge.

"May we talk to you privately?"

Frank looked to Lowell for help.

"You better go with them," said Lowell.

"I'd like my brother with me," said Frank.

"That's okay," said Lowell, "you can go without me."

"But what if I need you?" asked Frank.

"The days of rubber hoses are over," said Brewer.  "We're not going to
hurt you."

"So if those days were still here, you'd be working me over?" asked
Frank.  "Lowell, we really do need a public-relations person now."

"Too late for that," said Lowell.  [I "The hotel's manager has given us
his office," said Brewer.  "We can go there."

Lowell told Frank he would get the car, and Frank could meet him outside
when the interview was finished.

They led him to a room behind the front desk.

"So how can I help you?" asked Frank.

"Why did you visit the crash site?" asked Armitage.

"I wanted to see it."

"You're the only one who went," said Brewer.

"There were a lot of people there," said Frank.

"None of the survivors went.  You were the only one of the I, survivors
who went."

"I can't speak for anyone else."

"You haven't joined the lawsuit either.  That's a form of speaking for
someone, isn't it?  It's a form of criticism, isn't it?"

"Is my lawsuit your business?" asked Frank.

"What were you looking for when you were arrested?"

"Nothing," said Frank.

"But you found something."

"Yes, I found my wife's suitcase."

"You had no business looking for it." "I wasn't really thinking about
what was right or wrong at the time."

"When did that start?"

"What?"

"Not thinking about what was right or wrong."

"I don't know how to answer that question."

"Try."

"Can I have a lawyer?" asked Frank.

"Berberian or Dessick?" said Brewer.  It might have been a joke, but he
wasn't smiling.

"You were looking for the letter, weren't you, Frank?" asked Armitage.

"What letter?"

"Do you want to take that back?  Do you want us to pretend that you
don't know what we're talking about?"

Brewer answered a knock on the door.  He opened it only a crack, but
Frank could see into the hall, where a few photographers were there,
with reporters.  Armitage said, "Soon," and closed the door.

Frank said no.

Armitage asked again, "Were you looking for the letter, Frank?"

"No," he said.  Then he added, with an attitude of what he hoped was
reckless defiance, "I don't think so." "But you knew it was in the
suitcase." I' "I packed it in my own."

"That's not where we found it."

"She must have moved it." "Anything is possible," said Armitage.

Everyone was quiet for about a minute.

"What are you really trying to get me to say?" asked Frank.

"Are you going back to Los Angeles today?" asked Brewer.

Frank said he was.

"See you there," said Armitage, and then everyone left the room.

Frank left the office.  There were photographers in the lobby, taking
his picture.

Someone asked if he had spoken yet to Mary Sifka.  Someone else asked,
"Where is she?"

A reporter called out, "Did your wife read the letter?"

Lowell's Explorer was at the curb.  Frank ran to it as his father held
the door open for him.  Copper-haired Brenda and sad Geoffrey were
putting their bags into a taxi, and Brenda cursed him as he ran past. "I
hope you haven't fucked this up for all of us!"

Frank pulled his door shut, and as Lowell drove away, with the press
taking pictures of them, Frank looked back at the hotel, trying to fix
it so he would remember the place forever.  Was there such a thing as
the mind's eye, he wondered, something the vaguely mystical often talked
about, the thing inside that is the true eternal self that controls
destiny, that turns wishes into reality?  Of course, the hotel was like
eight hundred others just like it around the country, but he could fix
the shapes of the clouds behind it, the usual zoo shapes, of course, a
few big puffs, a few small ones, animals, a castle, and a profile of
Sherlock Holmes.  He closed his eyes and saw the tan building, the two
wings visible from this side with their slight angle embracing the thin
strip of garden between the parking lot and the hotel.  The cobbled
pavement of the driveway underneath the archway to the lobby.  The
photographers and reporters hurrying away, on to deliver their
videotapes or process their film.  Frank wanted to remember them, and
also the palm trees in the circular islands at the end of each row in
the parking lot, and the twentypassenger hotel bus that ferried
businessmen to and from the airport, with the hotel's name on both sides
and the back.  It was a stupid place, but Frank had felt deep emotions
here, and so it was important to him.  He opened and closed his eyes
three times, taking in more space around the hotel, until the camera in
his brain told him that the subject of the shot was too far away and
would not register clearly on the emulsion of his memory.  I will not
forget this moment, thought Frank, I do not want to forget it.  I'
"There was never anyone named Mark Silka, was there?" asked Lowell.

``No,'' said Frank.

"You have made fools of us," said his mother.

Frank didn't say anything.  He shut his eyes.  He tried to remember what
Anna and Madeleine looked like.  He could picture their faces, but
without emotions, like passport photographs.  He tried to conjure an
image of them smiling at him, but their smiles looked forced.  Well,
they are forced, he thought.  I'm forcing them.

They drove through the gates of the naval yards, and then to the cold
warehouse.  Lowell turned to Frank and stared at him.  The look meant:
Do you really want to go through with this?  Frank replied by opening
the car door and stepping out, wordlessly.

"Okay," said Lowell, matching him in this fabrication of manliness.  As
they walked away from the car, Lowell said, "I can't believe what you've
done to the family.  I can't imagine a way to make all of this better.
In the old days if they didn't kill you for bringing on shame, you would
have been banished from the kingdom."

They gave their names at the door.  A medical corpsman from the National
Guard took them into the main room.

Everything inside was different.  A cadre of robots was lined up by the
wall, like golf carts in winter.  The buckets of flesh were gone, and
all that remained were a few hundred stainless-steel caskets, some of
them draped with American flags, lined up in five rows.  There were
other corpsmen leading the bereft through the rows.  A casket in the
middle of the room was opened for a woman Frank did not recognize: She
was fat, in her thirties, and she must have lived on Cohassett Street.
She looked inside and nodded her head, and the casket was closed.

Frank and Lowell were led to two caskets in the second row.

"They're all the same size," said Frank.

"Yes," said the corpsman.  "It's the only size we have.  You know, the
military."

"Not much call for child size in the navy," said Frank.

"No sir," said the corpsman.

Frank stood by the first casket and put his hands behind his back,
imitating something he thought was appropriately stoic, something that
suited the room, the occasion, the rigid dignity of the silent robots.

"Sir," said the corpsman, "your wife and daughter were in a plane that
crashed.  You know there were no survivors.  We have done the best we
could to maintain the physical integrity of the dead, as we found them,
and to deliver the dead to these caskets with as much respect for their
integrity as possible."

"Yes," said Frank.

"He's trying to tell you that it's an ugly sight," said Lowell, with
contempt.

"Thank you, sir," said the corpsman.

"I need to know."

"Sir, the bodies were hurt."

"I know that."

"There was fire."

"I know that."

"They were thrown against the ground from a great height."

"I'd like to see."

"They were identifiable only through tissue typing and medical and
dental records."

"And you've done a remarkable job."

"Try to remember them as they were, sir."

"I do that."

"This is your wife, sir, said the corpsman, as he opened the first
casket.  Lowell grabbed Frank's arm.  A barrel of meat, with an arm and
hand attached, lay on the bed of black plastic lining.

"What happened to her head?" asked Frank.

"We have allocated to the proper casket, sir, every part that could be
identified.  Obviously with her fingerprints we were able to identify
her.  There were so many loose body parts, sir, you understand."

"Yes," said Frank, who understood the enormous difficulty of putting
every last scrap of a person into one box.

"But the hand, sir, the fingerprints match."

"Close it," said Lowell.  "This is ridiculous.  This is sick.  This is
more of your sickness, Frank."

"Sir?" asked the corpsman, looking to Frank for the final word.

"So what happened to her?" asked Frank.

"By the looks of it she was cut by debris."

"In the air or on the ground?"

"When the plane hit, it rolled a few times.  That's when it blew up. She
could have been thrown out of the cabin and into the air, and then been
cut down by whatever it was that hit her, before she came to rest.  Or
she could have been bounced on the ground a few times.  She could have
hit a chimney, or gone through a window."

"But you don't know for sure," said Frank, not meaning to accuse, only
to satisfy an assumption.

"We'll know soon.  They can make a pretty close guess.  They start with
a computer model of the plane at impact, knowing where everyone was, and
then a computer model of the plane and the bodies when all movement had
stopped.  When people sitting next I, to each other are scattered, we
get a sense of the forces within the crash, the different directions of
those forces."

"My daughter was sitting next to my wife.  Is it the same with her?  Is
she this badly cut up?"

"I don't know, sir.  I haven't seen everybody."

Lowell grabbed Frank's hand and held it in both of his.  "If you ask to
have that casket opened up, Frank, I can't be responsible for what
happens to you.  It would be like trying to stop history."

"No one is forcing you to look," said Frank.

"I don't even want to know about it."

"I do."

"No, I don't even want to know about you knowing about it.

Once I know what you have in your mind, then I have it in my mind, and I
don't want it there."

"I can handle it," said Frank.

"You're thinking only of yourself," said Lowell.  "And if that's how you
want it "What?" asked Frank.

"Nothing," said Lowell.

Frank turned to the corpsman and told him to open the other casket.  "I
want to see my daughter."

When the casket was opened, Lowell hit Frank on the shoulder, hard.
"That's the end, Frank.  That's the end of yyou.  You're fired."

Her face was gone, from the jaw to the top of her head.  A brain pan,
scraped clean, with her dark hair still fixed to the neck.  Her left arm
below the elbow was missing, and her right hand was smashed flat, and
her knees were almost gone.  A little mole on her shoulder.  That's her.

The corpsman studied her.  "She must have been found in her seat.  Some
seats blew out of the plane as it broke up, and most of the people in
them came out of the seat belts, but I don't think your daughter was one
of them."

"How can you tell?"

"The seat rolled on the ground, and that's how she lost her face and
knees, and I guess her hands were outside the seat, or something caught
them.  I think that's what happened."

Frank touched his dead daughter's hair.  Hair is made of dead cells, he
thought, and that's why, dead, her hair feels no different than when she
was alive.  Do the worms feed on hair?

"You can close it," he told the corpsman.

The corpsman thanked him, and he asked Frank to sign a release form,
which attested to Frank's identification of the two bodies.

They were told that the caskets would be delivered to a location to be
determined, in Los Angeles, tomorrow or the next day.  After that the
caskets could be picked up by a mortuary and buried.

Lowell asked about the funeral in Los Angeles.

"What funeral, sir?"

"I heard there was supposed to be a big funeral, in L.  A., for
everyone."

"I'm just based here, Mr.  Gale.  I wouldn't know about Los Angeles."

"Mom and Dad," said Lowell, meaning: Mom and Dad are waiting for us, and
we've taken too long on a bad mission.

And so they went outside, and back to the car, and drove home to Los
Angeles.  They listened to the radio a few times, looking for news of
the crash.  The lead story was the search for Mary Sifka.

By now everyone knew she was married, and where she worked.

Reporters were camped outside her door, but no one was home.

They went to her husband's office, but he was gone, and no one knew
where to find him.  The police worried that he might have murdered her
and then killed himself, out of shame.  On the radio stations where
people call and let their opinions be heard on the air, everyone had an
opinion about Mary Sifka and the letter.

One caller said that the crash was God's punishment against the
adulterers.  Another caller defended Mary Sifka.  "The man who wrote the
letter lied to his wife, and he was probably lying to Mary Sifka.

Maybe she didn't even know if he was married.  I think it was wrong of
the press to publish her name."

"Finally," said Frank, meaning: Here's an intelligent person who has
perfectly defined the real scandal of this sordid episode in all our
lives, that none of this was anyone else's business but mine.

"Frank, I want to listen," said Lowell.

"And besides," said Frank, ignoring his brother, feeling rather giddy
about plowing ahead against everyone's hatred of him, "I never lied to
Mary Silka."

"But you lied to your wile, didn't you?" asked his mother.

Lowell grunted in approval.

Frank felt a surge of blood in his cheeks.  Was this the final
embarrassment?  No.  Now anything could happen.  His mother had caught
him.  She was right.  He should have kept his mouth shut.

And then, as though the blood in his flushed cheeks was at a boil, and
the steam melted all of his good sense, a petulance which he knew was
wrong, which he knew would make him look even worse, incompetent and
stupid, but which he could not resist, forced him to say, "Well, I'm not
joining the lawsuit."

After that, he was silent for the rest of the trip home, although no one
asked him any questions.

ulia Abarbanel was waiting for them on the front porch at Frank's house.

As he walked up the steps with his family, his brother said, "They don't
know yet.  They don't know what you've done."

Julia was older than he had remembered, and more tired.  He looked for
something in her face that could excite him the way her voice had on the
phone.

He thought she looked disappointed in him, too, but he didn't know, and
knew that he couldn't know, if she was disappointed because he had aged
poorly over the last year, or if the past week's miseries had corroded
his face, or if she knew how weirdly he had behaved and now looked upon
him as a stranger.

"Your mother gave me the key so I could clean up."

"Thank you," said Frank.

"I picked up some things at the dry cleaner.  And I also bought some
storage boxes, for when you want to pack things away."

"Madeleine's toys, Anna's dresses?"

"We could give the toys to charity.  I'd like a doll."

"Take whatever you want."

"Oh, no, that's not what I meant.  I don't mean I want to talk about
taking things, I just meant, it was something I wanted to remember the
baby by.  To have a doll.  You know, to hold it, so I could think about
her."

In the house Lowell made a few calls, and soon fifty people were there,
cousins, friends, with trays of food and bottles of scotch.  `I Potato
salads and raw vegetables, and sliced meats from a delica- J' tessen,
and bottles of mineral water and juice-flavored sodas.  Someone came
with a fifty-cup coffee percolator and a carton of Styrofoam cups.

Anna's parents arrived from Philadelphia with her sisters.  When they
came through the front door, the house, after so much activity and
conversation, and the noises of children too young to understand that
this was not a normal party, and the chatter of children old enough to
understand that this was about death but too young to know better than
to rehash the issue of the plane crash with Frank, became quiet. Someone
said, "The KIaubers are here."

Peter and Margot came in with Andrea and Barbara.  This is another one
of those moments, thought Frank, that everyone here will use as coin for
a long time, an anecdote that their friends will hear more than once,
the entrance of the other side of the family.

The crowd had been in the house for an hour before the Klaubers arrived
and had made of the wake something festive.  Now the handshakes between
the men, and then the deep hugs, and the tears, reminded everyone that
this was better than a party, because this was about something real.

"I want to see the baby's room," said Margot.

Ethel took her hand and they walked up the stairs.  Frank followed.

"I can't," said Peter.

Leon offered him a drink, and they went to the bar.  On the way, others
extended hands, hugs.

In the baby's room the grandmothers picked up the dolls, opened the
drawers, took out the clothing, and wept.  "There is no God," said
Margot, "there is no God."

Frank wanted to tell her that he had heard this before, but what would
that have proven?

"My baby, my baby," said Ethel, holding a black-and-white teddy bear in
her arms.  She kissed it.

"Her name is Panda," said Fraiik.

"Panda," said Margot.  "I'd like to hold Panda."

Frank saw that Ethel was afraid that Margot, once she held Panda, would
never let go.  Both women wanted the doll, wanted to keep it.  Well,
it's mine to give away, he thought.

Julia knocked on the inside of the door.  "There's a phone call for you,
Frank."

"Who is it?"

"A woman, a friend."

"Did you ask her name?"

"Yes."

"What did she say?"

"Just answer the phone."

He went to his bedroom and told Julia to hang up once he was on the
line.  He said, "Hello," and Mary said hello back.  The line clicked,
and they were alone, or at least their voices were.

"We're in the car.  We've been driving around.  It's the only way to
stay ahead of the press.  How come your name isn't in this yet?"

she asked.

"I don't know."

"They have to know."

"I think they're just waiting."

"My husband wants to talk to you."

Then he came on the line.  "Frank?"

"Yes?" Frank had forgotten his name.  He felt stupid, but didn't want to
ask.  It's normal, isn't it?  he thought.  I'm under terrible stress.

"You fucked my wife, Frank."

"I didn't force her.".

"What do you want me to say?"

"You can't say anything.  It's over.  It's all over.  Everything has
been revealed."

Frank said, "What does that mean?"

"It means what you think it means.  Everything has been revealed."

He hung up.  Frank left the bedroom and went to Madeleine's door, but
the room was empty.  Panda was on the bed.

He walked down the stairs.  The television was on in the kitchen, with
the sound off.  There was a picture of the crash, and then a picture of
Mary Sifka, and then a picture of Frank.  The photographer II had used a
long lens, and you couldn't tell from the picture where `I' Frank had
been, but he knew, by what he was wearing and his look of dismay, that
this was the picture taken in the hotel lobby after """ his run from the
crisis center.  He turned off the television, because he didn't want to
know anything else.

His mother told him to turn it back on.

"I can't look at this anymore," said Frank.

"That's not your decision to make, is it?" asked Margot Klauber.

"It's my house," said Frank.

"You can't expect to go on living here," said his father.  "You have no
one to take care of you."

"I can take care of myself," said Frank.  He said this to everyone in
the room and, turning to them in supplication, he wanted to make of them
an audience, or a jury, but he felt the weakness of his performance, or
was it his argument?

"And my brother says he doesn't even want to work with me anymore," said
Frank.  "And what did I do?  I didn't do anything."

The front door opened, and Mary Sifka came in with her hus- `I band.  He
had black hair and a black close-trimmed beard.  The beard surprised
Frank, and then he wondered if part of his allure, when Mary had found
him alluring, was his smooth skin.  He looked at Stewart Sifka's beard
and touched his own cheek, trying to remember what Stewart's wife's hand
felt like when she was tender to him.

"You fucked my wife!" cried her husband.

"I'm sorry, I didn't get your name," said Frank, trying to be terribly
polite, hoping that if he maintained his grace, his friends and family
in the room would vote for him in the contest for sympathy.

"You don't need it." "I remember," said Frank.  "It's Stewart." And then
he remembered the names of the women from San Diego, those names he'd
forgotten in the bar.  "Kelly and Chris."

"What?" asked Stewart.

"Nothing," said Frank.  "I was just remembering some names."

"I'm sorry about everything that's happened," said Lowell.  "I don't
know what we can do now."

"Do you know what you've done to me?  I'm famous now," said Mary Slfka.
"I never wanted to be famous, I never asked to be famous.  I made a
mistake.  You know that all I ever wanted in life was to live my life
quietly.  I don't want this.  I love my husband.  He understands.  He
could have forgiven me, but how can we go on now?  We've been branded."

As Mary spoke, Frank remembered why he loved her.  He thought that
everyone watching her, as they compared her to Anna, to his dead wife,
could see what was so spectacular about this woman who compelled Frank
to break a commandment.  She was a little younger than Anna, but not so
much prettier, maybe a bit taller, although her haircut seemed cheap, a
permanent that was growing out, and his wife's hair had been famous in
the family for its thickness and luster.  But here was Mary, standing in
his living room without taking the obligatory and understandable glance
around the room to see the house she could never have visited during the
affair, unless THE WIFE was out of town.

"I'll still forgive you, you know that," said Stewart.

"You say that now, but everywhere we go people are going to recognize me
now.  And all of our friends, and our families, they know all about
this.  My life is ruined."

"Don't say that," said Frank's mother.  "It's only over if you want it
to be over."

"That's right," someone said.  Frank didn't recognize the voice, and he
looked behind him.  It could have been any one of four men, but none of
them looked to him, they were waiting for Stewart or Mary to speak. They
didn't care about Frank anymore.  Frank's attention withdrew from the
room as a new reverie pulled him into its spell.  If he took Mary's
side, perhaps he could prove that logically the only person in the world
with whom she could share a life was him.

"Maybe this will bring you together," said Frank's father.

"That's an awful lot of death to heal a marriage," said Stewart.

"I don't know that the price of anyone's happiness, let alone ours,
should be so high.  How can we repay that kind of sacrifice?"

The startling nobility of this little speech illuminated the room.

Frank knew what everyone in the room was thinking: that this woman, Mary
Sifka, for whatever reasons she had been drawn to Frank, was lucky to
have such a fine, fine husband.  Somehow Stewart Sifka's automatically
gracious words, spoken so quietly, without hesitation, and delivered for
the precious benefit of everyone in the room, although his eyes calmly
shifted their focus from Leon to Ethel to Lowell, so none would feel
favored or excluded, restored to all the Gales, the KIaubers, the
Abarbanels, the cousins, the friends, the old and the young, a sense of
the possibility that the terrible sacrifice of all those lives would
indeed have a meaning.

Could anyone not deny their souls' recuperation as Stewart's simple
truths gave them the blazing torch of courage, whose hot beam they could
now bravely point at the mistakes to which we are all entitled and which
we have all committed, errors of judgment clouded by the murkiness of
damaged character?  Everyone is forgiven, thought Frank.  Everyone but
me.

"Maybe you should stay here," said Lowell, "until all this blows over."

"That's a gracious offer," said Stewart, "but I don't think we can
really accept it." "You must," said Lowell.  "After all, the press only
knows what Mary looks like, they don't know you.  And it's better to
hide out here than in a room at an Embassy,, Suites.  You must be our
guests."

"Frank will stay with us, said Ethel.  "When the press knows he's not
here, they'll have no reason to watch the door.  No one will bother you.
And you can have time, together.  And that's what you need."

Frank looked to Julia Abarbanel to find something in her eyes, some hint
of disapproval for the coup that had robbed him of his palace.

"I think it's a good idea," said Julia.  "Everyone needs to cool off."

Leon offered Stewart a drink, and then Mary.  Frank was sure that
Stewart would ask for water, but he wanted vodka on the rocks, and he
asked for it with some relief.  Mary followed her husband's choice.
Perhaps this was a signal she shared with him-the call for hard liquor
was the beginning of sex, rough sex.  He thought they must be ready for
some hard lovemaking, because they seemed so secure with each other, and
in spite of their agony, wasn't Mary glowing?

Mary sat down.  "This is a beautiful house," she said.  There was a
photograph in a silver frame on the mantel, Anna and Madeleine in the
snow.  Frank had taken it in Aspen.  The week had been a disaster.  Anna
had hired a baby-sitter through an agency, but she was too young, and
Anna did not trust her.  After the second day, Anna let her go, and then
demanded of Frank that they take turns coming down from the mountain and
playing with the baby, who was one and a half.  It would be impossible
for the two of them to ski together.  Frank told Anna that he had seen
little to complain about in the baby-sitter, but he knew that he was
only trying to get her on the slopes with him, so they could ride the
chair lifts together and ski together.  He would not admit to her what
he knew, which was that Anna was right about the sitter, who had been
cold and nervous with the child, and that Madeleine had had good reason
to nervous with the child, and that Madeleine had had good reason to cry
in her arms.  So every time it was Frank's turn to get off the mountain
and take Madeleine for a few hours, he pouted, he refused to smile, or
he came down half an hour after the agreed time.  Looking at the happy
woman and happy child in the picture, Frank remembered how Anna had
struggled to put aside her rage at him for his resentment at the hobbled
day.

Julia volunteered to help the Sifkas make their bed and to show them
around the kitchen.  "And there'll be plenty of lefiovers from all of
this," she said, sweeping her hands over the trays of cheese and meat
and salad and bread and cake that all of Anna's friends had brought to
share with each other.

"This doesn't feel right," said Frank.

"That's not really your decision," said Lowell.

"It's really more of an opinion," said Frank.  He heard Julia say
something under her breath.  "What?" he asked, although he knew that if
she answered, he would only feel worse.

"I said, `I can't believe it." "We should go," said Leon, and he put his
hand on Frank's shoulder.  The touch, so frighteningly unfamiliar, so
old, so full of authority, brought Frank to tears.

He followed his parents to the door.  No one looked at him.

Already his cousins and friends were collecting dishes, glasses,
napkins, and cups from around the room.  Anna's father was in the
kitchen, putting plastic wrap on the fruit salad.

Stewart stood up and offered his hand to Leon.  The contact between
them, the look that passed, was martial, full of an unspoken knowledge
that only men can share.  Frank recognized pieces of the code, but could
not break it.  Behind them, Mary's head was turned away, she was talking
to Julia, who nodded her head a few times, and glanced over at Frank in
a way that told Frank that Mary was telling her side of the story of the
affair.

Frank's mother opened the door and let him go through first.

He turned to look inside, just as Stewart asked Lowell a question.

"Lowell, have you settled on a lawyer?"

"Yes, we have, and I'm sure we made the right decision," said "So who
will it be, Dessick or Berberian?"

Before Frank could hear what his brother said, their mother closed the
door, and the sound of the lock clicking into place destroyed the
answer.  And then he heard Stewart say, "An excellent choice, Lowell.
That's what I would have done.  He's a good man."

Frank hovered at the door, hoping to hear more, but his father called to
him.  He fell in step behind him, and they walked to their car, parked
on the street.

"How did your car get here?" asked Frank.

"What difference does it make?" said his father.

Frank couldn't say.  He tried something else.  "Julia looks good,
doesn't she?  Well, maybe she looks a little tired, but don't we all?"

Neither of them answered.  They drove to Wilshire Boulevard, and to the
condominium.

Frank coughed a few times in the elevator, just to be heard.

"You should have some herbal tea," said his mother.

"I think I'd like a drink," he said, happy, finally, for a conversation.

"No," said Ethel, "herbal tea."

As the elevator rose, Frank wanted to yell at them, he wanted to curse
his mother and his father for being born, he wanted to soak the curtains
of their bedroom in lighter fluid and then burn the fucking place, he
wanted to push his mother and his father into the rooftop swimming pool
and hold their heads under water with a steel garden rake, he wanted to
pull the doors of the refrigerator off its hinges and smear the food
over the living room walls, and wait a few days for the mayonnaise to
rot, so that the manager of the building, when he responded to the
neighbors' complaints about odd smells, would vomit from the stench when
he used his pass key  to open the door, he wanted to skillfully crack
each of the apartment's windows with a brass candlestick and force big
sheets of glass to the street, to decapitate mailmen and Guatemalan
nannies pushing downstairs, he wanted to stab his feet with cuticle
scissors and then turn the burners on the stove to high and stand on a
stepladder and push his feet into the flames, he wanted to do all of
this, but he asked himself, Yes, so, where will the profit be?

And so he said good night to his mother and his father.  "I have some
shopping for you to do in the morning," she said.  "The list is by the
phone in the kitchen."

Frank said nothing.  He went down the hall to the guest room.

There was a single bed against one wall, a desk, and bookcase.

Everything came from his old bedroom at the mansion in Bel Air.

There were the books he'd read in high school, photographs of Frank and
Lowell at summer camp.  There was his old baseball glove, and the first
reading lamp he'd had as a child, part of a set of cowboy furniture. The
lamp was a covered wagon with a bulb inside.  There was a little carved
man holding the reins of a team of carved horses.  "I Frank undressed
and got into bed, thinking that he should go to the `I bathroom because
he needed to pee, but he decided he could ignore I' the pain in his
bladder, and hold it in until morning.

He turned off the cowboy light, and looked at the darkness, saw nothing,
and fell asleep listening to the muffled sound of the television in his
parents' room, as they watched the news.

That night he had this dream: He is standing in the middle of a dirt
road, in the mountains.

There are two lines of people on either side of the road.  Dessick is at
the head of one line, Berberian is at the head of the other.  ` I "What
is this?" asks Frank.

"We gave you a chance," says Berberian.  "I'm sorry you didn't take it."

"Why are you all here?"

"It's too late to ask questions."

As Frank walks between the two rows, he is struck on the face, the back,
the chest, and he is kicked.  When he is hit, the hands are always open,
and the slapping, from a distance, might even look like a celebration,
but by the end of the line, he is in pain.

And these are the names of those who beat him: Dessick, Berberian,
Dennis Donoghue, Bettina Welch, Ed Dockery, Lowell Gale, are always
open, and the slapping, from a distance, might even look like a
celebration, but by the end of the line, he is in pain.

And these are the names of those who beat him: Dessick, Berberian,
Dennis Donoghue, Bettina Welch, Ed Dockery, Lowell Gale, Leon Gale,
Ethel Gale, Peter Klauber, Margot Klauber, Barbara Klauber, Teresa
Walter, Dale Beltran, Chris, Kelly.  And others, too, are also there, to
beat him.

At the end of the line, after passing the last of the people in the two
rows, he sees clearly to the top of the road, and a little cabin in the
woods.  He turns to say something to the crowd, but they are already
leaving.  His father and mother and brother go with him up the hill.

"I'm sorry," says Frank.  "The letter was never supposed to be
published.  She was supposed to have read it in Mexico.  It was private.
I think it's against the law to open someone's mail.  I think we can
sue."

No one says anything, and he is ashamed of himself for suggesting a
lawsuit now, when he has been so diffident about joining the other suit.
But he can explain that, he wants to say, he isn't so much against a
lawsuit, he only wants to know whose suit to join.

"Someone will bring you food," says Lowell.

"You have been a disgrace to us," says his father.

His back and shoulders hurt, but he thinks, with some pride in himself,
that he really wasn't so badly damaged by the gauntlet.

The hell with them, he thinks, and would have turned to say this, but
then the word prudence comes to him.  So he goes into the cabin without
saying good-bye to anyone.

It would be a good place to bring a child, when the child is ready for
camping.  There is a simple metal frame bed with a gray blanket.  Next
to the door is a small stove, and a refrigerator.  The room smells
vaguely of horses.

He lies down on the bed and looks up at the ceiling.  Someone has nailed
a piece of wood to the beam over his head, perhaps the same person who
has carved, "This is more than you deserve."

 the end.