FONTAINE has two wives. Not, he will tell you, a condition to aspire to.

They live, these two wives, in uneasy truce, in a single establishment, nearer the Oakland side. Fontaine has for some time now been opting to sleep here, in his shop.

The younger wife (at forty-eight, by some five years) is a Jamaican originally from Brixton, tall and light-skinned, whom Fontaine has come to regard as punishment for all his former sins.

Her name is Clarisse. Incensed, she reverts to the dialect of her childhood: 'You tek de prize, Fonten.

Fontaine has been taking the prize for some years now, and he is taking it again today, Clarisse standing angrily before him with a shopping bag full of what appear to be catatonic Japanese babies.

These are in fact life-sized dolls, manufactured in the closing years of the previous century for the solace of distant grandparents, each one made to resemble photographs of an actual infant. Produced by a firm in Meguro called Another One, they are increasingly collectible, each example being to some degree unique.

'I don't want them, Fontaine allows.

'Listen up, Clarisse tells him, folding her dialect smoothly away, 'there is no way you are not taking these. You are taking them, you are moving them, you are getting top dollar, and you are giving it to me. Because there is no way, otherwise, that I am staying where you left me, cheek by jowl with that mad bitch you married'

Who I was married to when you married me, thinks Fontaine, and no secret about it. The reference being to Tourmaline Fontaine, aka Wife One, whom Fontaine thinks of as being only adequately described by the epithet 'mad bitch.

Tourmaline is an utter terror; only her vast girth and abiding torpor prevent her coming here.

'Clarisse, he protests, 'if they were 'mint in box …

'These never mint in box, idiot! They always played with!

'Then you know the market better than I do, Clarisse. You sell 'em.

'You want to talk child support?

Fontaine looks down at the Japanese dolls. 'Man, those things ugly. Look dead, you know?

'Cause you gotta turn 'em on, fool. Clarisse sets the bag on the floor and snatches up a naked baby boy. She stabs a long emerald-green fingernail into the back of the doll's neck. She is attempting to demonstrate the thing's other, uniquely individual feature, digitally recorded infant sounds, or possibly even first words, but what they hear instead is heavy, labored breathing, followed by a childish giggle and a ragged chorus of equally childish fuck-you's. Clarisse frowns. 'Somebody been messing with it.

Fontaine sighs. 'I'll do what I can. You leave 'em here. I'm not promising anything.

'You better believe I leave 'em here, Clarisse says, tossing the baby headfirst into the bag.

Fontaine glances into the rear of the shop, where the boy is seated cross-legged on the floor, barefoot, his head close-cropped, the notebook open on his lap, lost in concentration.

'Who the hell's that? Clarisse inquires, noticing the boy for the first time as she steps closer to the counter.

Which somewhat stumps Fontaine. He tugs at one of his locks. 'He likes watches, he says.

'Huh, Clarisse says, 'he likes watches. How come you don't have your own kids over here? Her eyes narrow, deepening the wrinkles at their outer corners, which Fontaine desires suddenly to kiss. 'How come you got some 'spanic-fatboy-likes-watches instead?

'Clarisse-

'Clarisse my butt. Her green eyes widen in furious emphasis, a green pale as drift glass, DNA-echo of some British soldier, Fontaine has often surmised, on some chosen Kingston night, these several generations distant. 'You move these dolls or you be vexed, understand?

She spins smartly on her heel, not easily done in the black galoshes she wears, and marches from his shop, proud and erect, in a man's long tweed overcoat Fontaine recalls purchasing fifteen years earlier in Chicago.

Fontaine sighs. Something weighs heavy on him now, evening coming on. 'Legal, here, be married to two women, Fontaine says to the empty, coffee-scented air 'Fucking crazy, but legal. He shuffles over in his unlaced shoes and closes the front door, locks it behind her. 'You still think I'm a bigamist or something, baby, but this is the State of Northern California.

He goes back and has another look at the boy, who seems to have discovered the Christie's auction.

The boy looks up at him. 'Platinum tonneau minute repeating wristwatch, he says. 'Patek Philippe, Geneve, number 187145.

'I don't think so, Fontaine says. 'Kind of out of our bracket.

'A gold hunter-cased quarter repeating watch-

'Forget it.

'-with concealed erotic automaton.

'Can't afford that either, Fontaine says. 'Look, he says, 'tell you what: that notebook's the slow way to look. I'll show you a fast way.

'Fast. Way.

Fontaine goes rummaging through the drawers of a paint-scabbed steel filing cabinet, until eventually he comes up with an old pair of military eyephones. The rubbery lip around the binocular video display is cracked and peeling. It takes another few minutes to find the correct battery pack and to determine that it is charged. The boy ignores him, lost in the Christie's catalog. Fontaine plugs the battery pack into the eyephones and returns. 'Here. See? You put this on your head.

THE apartment is large and has nothing in it that is not of practical use. Consequently, the dark hardwood floors are bare and quite meticulously swept.

Seated in an expensive, semi-intelligent Swedish workstation chair, he is sharpening the knife.

This is a task (he thinks of it as a function) requiring emptiness.

He sits facing a nineteenth-century reproduction of a seventeenth-century refectory table. Six inches in from its nearest edge, two triangular sockets have been laser-cut into the walnut at precise angles. Into these, he has inserted a pair of nine-inch-long rods of graphite-gray ceramic, triangular in cross section, forming an acute angle. These ones fit the deep, laser-cut recesses perfectly, allowing for no movement whatever.

The knife lies before him on the table, its blade between the ceramic rods.

When it is time, he takes it in his left hand and places the base of the blade against the left hone. He draws it down, a single, smooth, sure stroke, pulling it toward him as he does. He is listening for any indication of imperfection, although this would only be likely if he had struck bone, and it has been many years since the knife struck bone.

Nothing.

He exhales, inhales, places the blade against the right hone.

The telephone rings.

He exhales. Places the knife on the table again, its blade between the hones. 'Yes?

The voice, emerging from several concealed speakers, is a voice he knows well, although it has been nearly a decade since he has shared physical space with the speaker. He knows that the words he hears come in from a tiny, grotesquely expensive piece of dedicated real estate somewhere in the planet's swarm of satellites. It is a direct transmission, and nothing to do with the amorphous cloud of ordinary human communication. 'I saw what you did on the bridge last night, the voice says.

The man says nothing. He is wearing a shirt cut from very fine gray cotton flannel, its collar buttoned but tieless, French cuffs secured with plain round links of sandblasted platinum. He places his hands on his thighs and waits.

'They think you're mad, says the voice.

'Who do you employ to tell you these things?

'Children, the voice says. 'Hard and bright. The best I can find.

'Why do you bother?

'I like to know.

'You like to know, the man says, adjusting the crease along the top of his left trouser leg, 'but why?