“It does not matter. Perhaps I will wander for a time.”

“Perhaps,” said Brightwell. “In time, we will find you again.”

He sprayed gasoline upon his companion, dousing his clothes, his hair, his skin, then poured the remainder upon the interior of the Buick. He tossed the empty containers onto the backseat, then stood before Blue.

“Good-bye,” he said.

“Good-bye,” said Blue. He was almost blinded by the gasoline, but he found the open door of the Buick and eased himself into the driver’s seat. Brightwell regarded him for a moment, then took a Zippo from his pocket and watched the flame take life. He tossed the lighter into the car and walked away. He did not look back, not even when the gas tank exploded and the darkness behind him was lit by a new fire as Blue passed from this world, and was transformed.

Each of us lives two lives: our real life and our secret life.

In our real life, we are what we appear to be. We love our husbands or our wives. We care for our children. Each morning we pick up a bag or a briefcase and we do what we must to oil the wheels of our existence. We sell bonds, we clean hotel rooms, we serve beer to the kind of men with whom we would not share our air if we had a choice in the matter. We eat our lunch in a diner, or on a bench in a park where people walk their dogs and children play in the sunlight. We feel a sentimental urge to smile at the animals because of the joy they take in the simplicity of a stroll through green grass, or at the children paddling in pools and racing through sprinklers; but still we return to our desks or our mops or our bars feeling less happy than we formerly were, unable to shake off the creeping sense that we are missing something, that there is supposed to be more than this to our lives.

Our real life-anchored by those twin weights (and here they come again, our careworn friends) duty and responsibility, their edges considerately curved, the better to fit upon our shoulders-permits us our small pleasures, for which we are inordinately grateful. Come, take a walk in the countryside, the earth spongy and warm beneath your feet, but be aware always of the ticking clock, summoning you back to the cares of the city. Look, your husband has made dinner for you, lighting the candle that his mother gave you for a Christmas gift, the one that now makes the dining room smell of mull and spices although it is already mid-July. See, your wife has been reading Cosmo again, and in an effort to add a little spice to your waning sex life has for once gone farther than JCPenney for her lingerie, and has learned a new trick from the pages of her magazine. She had to read it twice just to understand some of the terminology, and had to rely on ancient memory to summon up a picture of the sad, semitumescent organ that she now proposes to service in this manner, so long has it been since any such matters passed between the two of you without the cover of blankets and smothered lights, the easier to fantasize about J. Lo or Brad, perhaps the girl who takes your order at the sandwich bar, or Liza’s kid from two doors down, the one who is just back from college and is now transformed from a geeky little kid with railroad braces into a veritable Adonis with white, even teeth and tanned, muscular legs.

And in the darkness, one upon the other, the real life blurs at its margins, and the secret life intrudes with a rush and a moan and the flicking tongue of desire.

For in our secret life, we are truly ourselves. We look at the pretty woman in marketing, the new arrival, the one with the dress that falls open when she crosses her legs, revealing a pristine expanse of pale thigh, and in our secret life we do not see the veins about to break beneath her skin, or the birthmark shaped like an old bruise that muddies the beauty of her whiteness. She is flawless, unlike the one we have left behind that morning, thoughts of her new bedroom trick already forgotten for it will be put away as surely as will be the Christmas candle, and neither trick nor light will see use for many months to come. And so we take instead the hand of the new fantasy, unsullied by reality, and we lead her away, and she sees us as we truly are as she takes us inside her and, for an instant, we live and die within her, for she needs no magazine to teach her arcane things.

In our secret life, we are brave and strong, and know no loneliness, for others take the place of once-loved (and once-desired) partners. In our secret life, we take the other path, the one that was offered to us once but from which we shied away. We live the existence we were meant to lead, the one denied us by husbands and wives, by the demands of children, by the requirements of petty office tyrants. We become all that we were meant to be.

In our secret life, we dream of striking back. We point a gun and we pull the trigger, and it costs us nothing. There is no regret at the wound inflicted, the body slumping backward, already crumpling as the spirit leaves it. (And perhaps there is another waiting at that moment, the one who tempted us, the one who promised us that this is as it was meant to be, that this is our destiny, and he asks only this one small indulgence: that he may place his lips against those of the dying man, the fading woman, and taste the sweetness of what passes from them so that it flutters briefly like a butterfly in his mouth before he swallows, trapping it deep inside him. This is all that he asks, and who are we to deny him?)

In our secret life our fists pummel, and the face that blurs with blood beneath them is the face of everyone who has ever crossed us, every individual who has prevented us from becoming all that we might have been. And he is beside us as we punish the flesh, his ugliness forgiven in return for the great gift that he has given us, the freedom that he has offered. He is so convincing, this blighted man with his distended neck, his great, sagging stomach, his too-short legs and his too-long arms, his delicate features almost lost in his pale, puckered skin, that to gaze on him from afar is like looking at a full, clear moon as a child and believing that one can almost see the face of the man who dwells within it.

He is Brightwell, and with sugared words he has fed us the story of our past, of how he has wandered for so long, searching for those who were lost. We did not believe him at first, but he has a way of convincing us, oh yes. Those words dissolve inside us, their essence coursing through our system, their constituent elements in turn becoming part of us. We begin to remember. We look deep into those green eyes, and the truth is at last revealed.

In our secret life, we once were angels. We adored, and we were adored. And when we fell, the last great punishment was to mark us forever with all that we had lost, and to torment us with the memory of all that once was ours. For we are not like the others. All has been revealed to us, and in that revelation lies freedom.

Now we live our secret life.

I awoke to find myself alone in our bed. Sam’s cradle was empty and silent, and the mattress was cold to the touch, as though no child had ever been laid upon it. I walked to the door and heard noises coming from the kitchen below. I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and went downstairs.

There were shadows moving in the kitchen, visible through the half-ajar door, and I could hear closets being opened and closed. A woman’s voice spoke. Rachel, I thought: she has taken Sam downstairs to feed her, and she is talking to her as she always talks to her, sharing her thoughts and hopes with her as she does whatever she must do. I saw my hand stretch out and push the door, and the kitchen was revealed to me.

A little girl sat at the end of the kitchen table, her head slightly bowed and her long blond hair brushing the wood and the empty plate that sat before her, its blue pattern now slightly chipped. She was not moving. Something dripped from her face and fell to the plate, expanding redly upon it.