"I think so. There's a baby-sitter the girls are used to. I'm not sure yet."

"Are you planning on having any of your own?"

Timmy staggered past the doorway balancing three boxes of books one atop the other. Brigit glanced at him as he went by and said to me, "I don't know yet. Are you?"

She knew it was a dumb thing to say, and she flushed as she said it. But she'd pulled the old trigger. She had not liked being a victim of my self-deception, and during the last years of our marriage, the malicious humor that was part of what had drawn us together in the first place had hardened into cruelty on both our parts. I hadn't liked being a victim of my self-deception either, and I often took it out on Brigit, who dished it

right back. And-now here we were, in character to the awful end.

I sipped my coffee and said, "There's an equality, a symmetry about Timmy's and my sexual relationship. It has balance. In seven years you never fucked me once."

She tightened like a fist. "Yes. And you must have fucked me twelve or fifteen times." She smiled, tight-lipped, the flesh around her lower jaw quivering.

Sex. It isn't everything in a relationship. But it's plenty.

Hugh Bigelow came into the kitchen panting. "Whew. Jesus. Whew. Done." He tried to mop his forehead with the sleeve of his Orion windbreaker, but it just smeared the droplets around.

"Thanks for all your help, Hugh," I said. "That was twenty-two years' worth of books. Dinesen to Didion to Don Clark."

"Whew—oh—anytime, anytime."

Brigit and I glanced at each other quickly, then looked back at Hugh's big, nodding, wet face.

Timmy came in, and Hugh asked us to stay for peanut-butter-and-Fluff sandwiches. We thanked him but said we'd made other plans.

In the garage I said, "Good-bye, Brigit," and she said, "Good-bye, Don," like two stockbrokers who had just ended a business lunch. My impulse was to shake hands, but I knew mine were trembling.

Through a steady rain we drove out to the Gateway Diner on Central and had bacon and eggs. We didn't say much. I knew what Timmy was thinking but was too sensitive, and canny, to say out loud.

I said, "I suppose this would be a good time for me to move over to your place, now that we've got that van. Except the goddamn thing is full of books."

Timmy, ever the rational man, winning another war over his Irish soul, looked at me and said nothing.

We put half the books in my apartment—the stacked boxes took up an entire wall—and carried the other half down to the storage alcove in the basement of Timmy's building.

We showered together at his place, and one thing led to another.

At six we showered again, separately, and while Timmy made coffee, I dialed the number for Chris.

"Hello?" A woman's voice. Young, pleasant, a bit tentative.

"May I speak with Chris, please?"

"Oh—Chris isn't in just now. May I take a message?"

Discretion was indicated. "Yes, would you please have him call Donald Strachey at this number?" I gave my service number. "When do you expect him?"

A pause. "Who is this?" A real edge to the voice now.

"Uh—Donald Strachey. Chris may not recognize the name, but if you'll just tell him that I—"

The receiver was slammed down.

"What did I say?"

Timmy set a mug of coffee beside me. "What happened?"

"A woman--she hung up. It was something I said."

"It was something you are. Somebody's wife hung up on me once, too."

I decided to do what I'd planned on doing on Monday and should have done the day before. I said, "I'll be back in twenty minutes. I'm going over to the office. How about putting this brownish wet stuff you gave me back in the pot?"

"Will you want food?"

"Nothing much. Eggs or whatever."

"We had eggs for lunch."

"Then whatever."

I drove over to Central through a slicing cold wind under low, black, flying clouds. In the office I got out my directory of Albany phone numbers listed numerically. There it was. The Chris number was listed beside the name of Christine Porterfield. Of course.

I copied down the address on Lancaster Street and called Timmy.

"Chris is a woman. The woman I spoke with got pissed off when I referred to Chris as 'he.' They're lesbians. It was as if a strange woman called you up and said, 'Is Don there, when will she be in?' I want to go over there now and apologize—and probably learn something about Billy Blount. How about you going along? It should help if she knows I'm gay."

"Should I suck your cock while we're there?"

"A knowing glance or two should do it. I'll pick you up."

"I've got two frozen meat pies in the oven." "Take them out and set them under a warm radiator. You'll hardly notice the difference it makes."

We pulled in behind a dark green VW Beetle in front of Chris Porterfield's Lancaster Street address. I wrote down the bug's license number.

The old Greek Renaissance town house looked warm and serene with its crusty yellow brick and brown shutters. The young maples growing from neat squares of earth at the edge of the sidewalk still held most of their dead leaves, some of which exploded into the gusts of wind as we walked up the steps. The brass lamps on either side of the front door had flickering flame-shaped light bulbs. Early American Niagara Mohawk Electric.

I pressed the button and could hear the bing-bong inside.

"Maybe the woman you spoke to was Christine's mother," Timmy said. "Or her grandmother."

"Too young."

"Or her daughter."

"No. It all fits. Chris is the woman-friend Huey Brownlee saw Billy Blount with, and the woman of delicate sensibilities who answered the phone is Chris's lover. You'll see."

"You once told me that it's only in novels that things all fit. Real life tends toward implausibility."

"Not always. Which is exactly my point."

"That's quite a logical progression. You should run for the State Assembly."

Two brown eyes appeared in the little window in the door. The door opened the three inches its lock chain would allow.

The middle third of a face said, "Yes?"

"I'm Donald Strachey, I'm a private detective, and I want to apologize for my call a while ago. I only had Chris's first name, and since I knew only that someone named Chris was a friend of Billy Blount's, I assumed it was a man. That was unintelligent and presumptuous of me. Are you a friend of Chris's?"

She stared out at me as if I were selling aluminum siding. She said, "I don't know what you're talking about. Did you say you're a detective?" Her voice was flutey and pretty and apprehensive, and her face was dark and smooth, with maybe some Mayan in it.

I'm private." I hiked out my card and held it up to the crack. "This is my associate, Timothy Callahan." Timmy edged into range and showed his Irish teeth. "I've been hired by someone to help Billy Blount. But I've got to find him first. Could we talk?"

She hesitated. We didn't look the way detectives were supposed to look. I had on jeans, a flannel shirt, and a down vest. Timmy, who wore a Brooks Brothers suit to his job at the State Senate Minority Leader's office during the week, looked as if he'd just stepped off a B-29 after a run to Bremerhaven.

"I—well, I don't know. Chris isn't here. She's out."

"You look familiar," I said. "Have I seen you in Myrna's? I drop in there sometimes with friends from the alliance."