“You see where your actions have gotten you, buddy?” He was still looking sympathetic. “You think you’re in control of your life? You’re not.”

The look wasn’t sympathetic after all. It was mean and conniving, like everything else about Roland Andrews. “Mr. Powell can make every aspect of your life miserable,” he said, “make you suspicious of every good thing that happens to you, make you so afraid that you won’t want to commit to anything, anywhere, anytime. You understand?”

I wanted to look out the window at the river, the boats, the cars going by on Storrow Drive, the people whose lives were their own to do with as they wished.

“This Marion thing is just an example, Georgie. He’s rolling over you. Just like he’s going to do to the Gregorys.” Andrews tapped my knee. In Philadelphia he had made my leg go numb. But this was just a tap.

“The only difference is,” he said, “you can still get out.”

“Leanne,” I said. “She didn’t give me a last name.”

2

.

IGOT IN MY CAR TO DRIVE HOME. IT WAS A STIFLING HOT DAY, THE first really hot day of the year. I was parked at a meter on Charles Street and there was a great deal of activity going on around me. The merchants and restaurateurs were getting ready for the big Fourth of July fireworks celebration at the Hatch Shell on the mall next to the river, just a few blocks away. Tens of thousands of people would be coming. They would line the riverbank waiting to hear the Boston Pops and whatever celebrity singer was going to join them this year. They would sit wherever they could, on lawn chairs and blankets, arrive early in the morning to get the best possible spots and then wait all day for the music and the colorful explosions. They would be there with family and friends, and the only people by themselves would be losers and perverts and weirdos, wandering around staring at everyone else having a good time.

I didn’t love Marion and I never had. I just felt so foolish.

3

.

MY PHONE RANG, BUT I DIDN’T ANSWER IT. THE MESSAGE MACHINE picked up and Barbara Belbonnet’s voice came on. “George, hope everything’s okay. You missed a court call today and one of the other guys had to cover for you. He apparently reported it because Dick O’Connor’s been looking for you. I didn’t know what to say, George. So, anyhow, if you could give me a call back I’d really appreciate it. Just tell me what to tell him. Okay. You’ve got the number.”

I stared at the ceiling and wondered why I should get up, why I should go in to work, go to court, risk running into all the people who knew what Buzzy and Marion had been doing behind my back. The Macs knew. If they knew, then Cello DiMasi knew. Cello, who didn’t like me in the first place. Or maybe that was why he didn’t like me. A guy like Cello wouldn’t have put up with his wife cheating on him with his friend. A guy like Cello wouldn’t have had that happen to him. And once he knew about me, he would tell everyone else, all his cops, all the assistant D.A.s. Maybe even Barbara.

I didn’t return the call.

An hour later she called again.

“Now I’m really worried,” she said. “Dick has actually come down here himself. He wants to know if I’ve heard from you, when was the last time I saw you, if you left early for the holiday. All that stuff. Please call me back, George. Even if you’re too hung over to talk. Just let me know you’re all right.”

She showed up at my house at 5:30. It was about a fifteen-minute drive from the office and she had somehow managed to get herself squeezed into a pair of jeans that would have impressed me if I had been in any condition to appreciate them. Barbara had never been at my house before, but she knew enough to park in the carport and go to the kitchen rather than walk around to the front, where the door was always locked. She knocked; I didn’t answer. She opened the door from the carport, called my name, came inside. She passed through the kitchen and came down the hallway to my bedroom. I knew she was coming and pulled the covers to my chin.

“Jeez, George!” she gasped, as though I had scared her, as though she had not really expected to find me there. “What is going on?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? You’ve been lying in bed all day, not going to work, not answering your phone, and nothing’s going on?”

“That’s right.”

The jeans made her legs look startlingly long. She was taller even than she usually was and I saw she had some kind of sandals with spike heels. White heels to match the white peasant blouse she was wearing. Her nearly blond hair seemed longer than it ever had been. Women and their hair: How can they make it disappear and reappear like they do?

She looked around. She walked to a window and forced it up. “You need some air in here.”

Her eyes went to the clothes I had thrown on the chaise longue. Then they went to the open closet, where a week’s worth of dress shirts lay in a pile on the floor. What passed across her face was more a look of exasperation than disgust. She came and sat on my bed. For one brief instant she had to turn those incredibly tight jeans in my direction. I had not realized Barbara Belbonnet was in such good shape.

She reached out and took my left hand away from its grip on the sheet and held it and didn’t speak for a long time.

Neither did I.

“Do you like cigars?” Of all the things she could have said to break the silence, that was not in the top thousand.

“I guess,” I told her.

“You want to go smoke one?”

Smoke a cigar. I was lying in bed. I hadn’t gotten up all day. I hadn’t gone to work or even called in to say I wasn’t coming, and she was asking if I wanted to go smoke a cigar. “Okay,” I said.

“I picked up a couple of Gurkhas at The Magic Dragon.”

I knew the place, a cigar bar at the east end of Main Street in Hyannis. I knew Gurkhas. I was surprised she did.

“We can sit out in the backyard,” she said, “keep your house from getting all stinky.”

Stinky. A woman’s word. I hadn’t heard a woman’s word in my house for a long time. “Okay,” I said.

“But you’re going to have to move,” she told me.

“I don’t have anything on but a pair of boxers.”

She looked bemused for a moment. “Then,” she said, giving my hand a squeeze, “I’ll go outside and wait for you.” She stood. She did it slowly. She let me look at her while she did. “But you have to get up.”

GURKHA ASSASSINS. Pretty good cigars. We sat in the Florentine chairs that were part of the Brown Jordan patio set Marion had bought once upon a time. The patio set made me sad. Barbara noticed that. She patted me on the knee. I had put on a pair of shorts, and her hand seemed cool on my skin, palliative. I tried to smile.

“What did you do all day?”

“Nothing.”

“Didn’t go out? Didn’t see anyone?”

“No.”

We smoked and watched a gray squirrel scamper across the lawn, leap, hit a tree a couple of feet off the ground, and scoot up the bark to the branches. So many important things for a squirrel to do.

“Yesterday? After work, I mean.”

“Boston.”

“See Marion?”

Pretty good guess, Barbara. “She wasn’t there. She’s moved back to D.C.”

Pause. Smoke. Think about it. “And that’s what has you upset?”

Think about it. Think about it. Think about it. “She was having an affair with one of my friends.”

“Which one?”

“Buzzy Daizell.”

“That asshole.”

I raised my eyebrow, looked over the burning Gurkha. “I didn’t realize you knew him so well.”