"Well, just tell me what"s happening with Stephanie," Karen said impatiently. "I don"t really feel like sitting around talking because I haven"t even unpacked yet."

"She"s at my apartment, and she"s pregnant, and she doesn"t even talk about Sammy."

She shook her head sadly. "How did you break your hand?" she said.

"I was mugged. After our last pleasant conversation on the phone-the time you told me to come over immediately or not at all. I didn"t make it because I was in the emergency room."

"Oh, Christ," she said. "Why didn"t you call me?"

"I was embarra.s.sed to call you."

"Why? Why didn"t you call?"

"You wouldn"t have been there anyway." He took her arm. "Let"s find some place to go," he said.

Two young men came up to the door of the Star Thrower. "Isn"t this where David had that great Armenian dinner?" one of them said.

"I told told you it wasn"t," the other said, looking at the menu posted to the right of the door. you it wasn"t," the other said, looking at the menu posted to the right of the door.

"I didn"t really think this was the place. You You said it was on this street." said it was on this street."

They continued to quarrel as Nick and Karen walked away.

"Why do you think Stephanie came here to the city?" Karen said.

"Because we"re her friends," Nick said.

"But she has lots of friends."

"Maybe she thought we were more dependable."

"Why do you say that in that tone of voice? I don"t have to tell you every move I"m making. Things went very well in Bermuda. He almost lured me to London."

"Look," he said. "Can"t we go somewhere where you can call her?"

He looked at her, shocked because she didn"t understand that Stephanie had come to see her, not him. He had seen for a long time that it didn"t matter to her how much she meant to him, but he had never realized that she didn"t know how much she meant to Stephanie. She didn"t understand people. When he found out she had another man, he should have dropped out of her life. She did not deserve her good looks and her fine car and all her money. He turned to face her on the street, ready to tell her what he thought.

"You know what happened there?" she said. "I got sunburned and had a terrible time. He went on to London without me."

He took her arm again and they stood side by side and looked at some sweaters hanging in the window of Countdown.

"So going to Virginia wasn"t the answer for them," she said. "Remember when Sammy and Stephanie left town, and we told each other what a stupid idea it was-that it would never work out? Do you think we jinxed them?"

They walked down the street again, saying nothing.

"It would kill me if I had to be a good conversationalist with you," she said at last. "You"re the only person I can rattle on with." She stopped and leaned into him. "I had a rotten time in Bermuda," she said. "n.o.body should go to a beach but a sand flea."

"You don"t have to make clever conversation with me," he said.

"I know," she said. "It just happened."

Late in the afternoon of the day that Stephanie had her abortion, Nick called Sammy from a street phone near his apartment. Karen and Stephanie were in the apartment, but he had to get out for a while. Stephanie had seemed pretty cheerful, but perhaps it was just an act for his benefit. With him gone, she might talk to Karen about it. All she had told him was that it felt like she had caught an ice pick in the stomach.

"Sammy?" Nick said into the phone. "How are you? It just dawned on me that I ought to call and let you know that Stephanie is all right."

"She has called me herself, several times," Sammy said. "Collect. From your phone. But thank you for your concern, Nick." He sounded brusque.

"Oh," Nick said, taken aback. "Just so you know where she is."

"I could name you as corespondent in the divorce case, you know?"

"What would you do that for?" Nick said.

"I wouldn"t. I just wanted you to know what I could do."

"Sammy-I don"t get it. I didn"t ask for any of this, you know."

"Poor Nick. My wife gets pregnant, leaves without a word, calls from New York with a story about how you had a broken hand and were having bad luck with women, so she went to bed with you. Two weeks later I get a phone call from you, all concern, wanting me to know where Stephanie is."

Nick waited for Sammy to hang up on him.

"You know what happened to you?" Sammy said. "You got eaten up by New York."

"What kind of dumb thing is that to say?" Nick said. "Are you trying to get even or something?"

"If I wanted to do that, I could tell you that you have bad teeth. Or that Stephanie said you were a lousy lover. What I was trying to do was tell you something important, for a change. Stephanie ran away when I tried to tell it to her, you"ll probably hang up on me when I say the same thing to you: you can be happy. For instance, you can get out of New York and get away from Karen. Stephanie could have settled down with a baby."

"This doesn"t sound like you, Sammy, to give advice."

He waited for Sammy"s answer.

"You think I ought to leave New York?" Nick said.

"Both. Karen and and New York. Do you know that your normal expression shows pain? Do you know how much Scotch you drank the weekend you visited?" New York. Do you know that your normal expression shows pain? Do you know how much Scotch you drank the weekend you visited?"

Nick stared through the grimy plastic window of the phone booth.

"What you just said about my hanging up on you," Nick said. "I was thinking that you were going to hang up on me. When I talk to people, they hang up on me. The conversation just ends that way."

"Why haven"t you figured out that you don"t know the right kind of people?"

"They"re the only people I know."

"Does that seem like any reason for tolerating that sort of rudeness?"

"I guess not."

"Another thing," Sammy went on. "Have you figured out that I"m saying these things to you because when you called I was already drunk? I"m telling you all this because I think you"re so numbed out by your lousy life that you probably don"t even know I"m not in my right mind."

The operator came on, demanding more money. Nick clattered quarters into the phone. He realized that he was not going to hang up on Sammy, and Sammy was not going to hang up on him. He would have to think of something else to say.

"Give yourself a break," Sammy said. "Boot them out. Stephanie included. She"ll see the light eventually and come back to the farm."

"Should I tell her you"ll be there? I don"t know if-"

"I told her I"d be here when she called. All the times she called. I just told her that I had no idea of coming to get her. I"ll tell you another thing. I"ll bet-I"ll bet bet-that when she first turned up there she called you from the airport, and she wanted you to come for her, didn"t she?"

"Sammy," Nick said, staring around him, wild to get off the phone. "I want to thank you for saying what you think. I"m going to hang up now."

"Forget it," Sammy said. "I"m not in my right mind. Goodbye."

"Goodbye," Nick said.

He hung up and started back to his apartment. He realized that he hadn"t told Sammy that Stephanie had had the abortion. On the street he said h.e.l.lo to a little boy-one of the neighborhood children he knew.

He went up the stairs and up to his floor. Some people downstairs were listening to Beethoven. He lingered in the hallway, not wanting to go back to Stephanie and Karen. He took a deep breath and opened the door. Neither of them looked too bad. They said h.e.l.lo silently, each raising one hand.

It had been a hard day. Stephanie"s appointment at the abortion clinic had been at eight in the morning. Karen had slept in the apartment with them the night before, on the sofa. Stephanie slept in his bed, and he slept on the floor. None of them had slept much. In the morning they all went to the abortion clinic. Nick had intended to go to work in the afternoon, but when they got back to the apartment he didn"t think it was right for him to leave Stephanie. She went back to the bedroom, and he stretched out on the sofa and fell asleep. Before he slept, Karen sat on the sofa with him for a while, and he told her the story of his second mugging. When he woke up, it was four o"clock. He called his office and told them he was sick. Later they all watched the television news together. After that, he offered to go out and get some food, but n.o.body was hungry. That"s when he went out and called Sammy.

Now Stephanie went back into the bedroom. She said she was tired and she was going to work on a crossword puzzle in bed. The phone rang. It was Petra. She and Nick talked a little about a new apartment she was thinking of moving into. "I"m sorry for being so cold-blooded the other night," she said. "The reason I"m calling is to invite myself to your place for a drink, if that"s all right with you."

"It"s not all right," he said. "I"m sorry. There are some people here now."

"I get it," she said. "Okay. I won"t bother you anymore."

"You don"t understand," he said. He knew he had not explained things well, but the thought of adding Petra to the scene at his apartment was more than he could bear, and he had been too abrupt.

She said goodbye coldly, and he went back to his chair and fell in it, exhausted.

"A girl?" Karen said.

He nodded.

"Not a girl you wanted to hear from."

He shook his head no. He got up and pulled up the blind and looked out to the street. The boy he had said h.e.l.lo to was playing with a hula hoop. The hula hoop was bright blue in the twilight. The kid rotated his hips and kept the hoop spinning perfectly. Karen came to the window and stood next to him. He turned to her, wanting to say that they should go and get the Thunderbird, and as the night air cooled, drive out of the city, smell honeysuckle in the fields, feel the wind blowing.

But the Thunderbird was sold. She had told him the news while they were sitting in the waiting room of the abortion clinic. The car had needed a valve job, and a man she met in Bermuda who knew all about cars had advised her to sell it. Coincidentally, the man-a New York architect-wanted to buy it. Even as Karen told him, he knew she had been set up. If she had been more careful, they could have been in the car now, with the key in the ignition, the radio playing. He stood at the window for a long time. She had been conned, and he was more angry than he could tell her. She had no conception-she had somehow never understood-that Thunderbirds of that year, in good condition, would someday be worth a fortune. She had told him this way: "Don"t be upset, because I"m sure I made the right decision. I sold the car as soon as I got back from Bermuda. I"m going to get a new car." He had moved in his chair, there in the clinic. He had had an impulse to get up and hit her. He remembered the scene in New Haven outside the bar, and he understood now that it was as simple as this: he had money that the black man wanted.

Down the street the boy picked up his hula hoop and disappeared around the corner.

"Say you were kidding about selling the car," Nick said.

"When are you going to stop making such a big thing over it?" Karen said.

"That creep cheated you. He talked you into selling it when nothing was wrong with it."

"Stop it," she said. "How come your judgments are always right and my judgments are always wrong?"

"I don"t want to fight," he said. "I"m sorry I said anything."

"Okay," she said and leaned her head against him. He draped his right arm over her shoulder. The fingers sticking out of the cast rested a little above her breast.

"I just want to ask one thing," he said, "and then I"ll never mention it again. Are you sure the deal is final?"

Karen pushed his hand off her shoulder and walked away. But it was his apartment, and she couldn"t go slamming around in it. She sat on the sofa and picked up the newspaper. He watched her. Soon she put it down and stared across the room and into the dark bedroom, where Stephanie had turned off the light. He looked at her sadly for a long time, until she looked up at him with tears in her eyes.

"Do you think maybe we could get it back if I offered him more than he paid me for it?" she said. "You probably don"t think that"s a sensible suggestion, but at least that way we could get it back."

The Cinderella Waltz

Milo and Bradley are creatures of habit. For as long as I"ve known him, Milo has worn his moth-eaten blue scarf with the knot hanging so low on his chest that the scarf is useless. Bradley is addicted to coffee and carries a Thermos with him. Milo complains about the cold, and Bradley is always a little edgy. They come out from the city every Sat.u.r.day-this is not habit but loyalty-to pick up Louise. Louise is even more unpredictable than most nine-year-olds; sometimes she waits for them on the front step, sometimes she hasn"t even gotten out of bed when they arrive. One time she hid in a closet and wouldn"t leave with them.

Today Louise has put together a shopping bag full of things she wants to take with her. She is taking my whisk and my blue pottery bowl, to make Sunday breakfast for Milo and Bradley; Beckett"s Happy Days Happy Days, which she has carried around for weeks, and which she looks through, smiling-but I"m not sure she"s reading it; and a coleus growing out of a conch sh.e.l.l. Also, she has stuffed into one side of the bag the fancy Victorian-style nightgown her grandmother gave her for Christmas, and into the other she has tucked her octascope. Milo keeps a couple of dresses, a nightgown, a toothbrush, and extra sneakers and boots at his apartment for her. He got tired of rounding up her stuff to pack for her to take home, so he has brought some things for her that can be left. It annoys him that she still packs bags, because then he has to go around making sure that she has found everything before she goes home. She seems to know how to manipulate him, and after the weekend is over she calls tearfully to say that she has left this or that, which means that he must get his car out of the garage and drive all the way out to the house to bring it to her. One time, he refused to take the hour-long drive, because she had only left a copy of Tolkien"s The Two Towers The Two Towers. The following weekend was the time she hid in the closet.

"I"ll water your plant if you leave it here," I say now.

"I can take it," she says.

"I didn"t say you couldn"t take it. I just thought it might be easier to leave it, because if the sh.e.l.l tips over the plant might get ruined."

"O.K.," she says. "Don"t water it today, though. Water it Sunday afternoon."

I reach for the shopping bag.

"I"ll put it back on my windowsill," she says. She lifts the plant out and carries it as if it"s made of Steuben gla.s.s. Bradley bought it for her last month, driving back to the city, when they stopped at a lawn sale. She and Bradley are both very choosy, and he likes that. He drinks French-roast coffee; she will debate with herself almost endlessly over whether to buy a coleus that is primarily pink or lavender or striped.

"Has Milo made any plans for this weekend?" I ask.

"He"s having a couple of people over tonight, and I"m going to help them make crepes for dinner. If they buy more bottles of that wine with the yellow flowers on the label, Bradley is going to soak the labels off for me."

"That"s nice of him," I say. "He never minds taking a lot of time with things."

"He doesn"t like to cook, though. Milo and I are going to cook. Bradley sets the table and fixes flowers in a bowl. He thinks it"s frustrating to cook."

"Well," I say, "with cooking you have to have a good sense of timing. You have to coordinate everything. Bradley likes to work carefully and not be rushed."

I wonder how much she knows. Last week she told me about a conversation she"d had with her friend Sarah. Sarah was trying to persuade Louise to stay around on the weekends, but Louise said she always went to her father"s. Then Sarah tried to get her to take her along, and Louise said that she couldn"t. "You could take her if you wanted to," I said later. "Check with Milo and see if that isn"t right. I don"t think he"d mind having a friend of yours occasionally."

She shrugged. "Bradley doesn"t like a lot of people around," she said.

"Bradley likes you, and if she"s your friend I don"t think he"d mind."

She looked at me with an expression I didn"t recognize; perhaps she thought I was a little dumb, or perhaps she was just curious to see if I would go on. I didn"t know how to go on. Like an adult, she gave a little shrug and changed the subject.