CARY
Despite myself I enjoyed the trivia night. I’ll admit I didn’t expect to, and it certainly didn’t begin well, but by the time I returned from helping with the sound system the table had finally clicked, people were laughing and Kate welcomed me back with huge and glowing eyes. I guess, too, I was feeling better: useful, successful. I enjoy using my hands, working things out. I think I would have liked to have been a surgeon, if I’d had the grades.
The competition was essentially over when I did get back, though, and I felt a little guilty for missing it all. Still, it wasn’t as if the team had been winning, or I could have done much to change that. Kate didn’t seem to have suffered either. After our seven years together she knew quite a few of the hospital staff and must have moved around to speak with them, because she wasn’t at our table when I’d glanced out from the stage wings once or twice. Besides, she also had Sarah, Rick and Joan, though when I looked Joan wasn’t at the table either. I suppose the two of them were off somewhere together, doing whatever it is girls do two by two in bathrooms. Anyway, the main thing was that I knew Kate wouldn’t be upset by my absence, that she could more than look after herself socially. It’s one of the things I’ve always admired about her.
Considering our loss, she was in high spirits when I returned to my seat. Kate has a competitive streak, and I remember her anger all the way home after the first hospital trivia night she’d attended, when Steve fluffed the capital of Panama and blew our chance of coming in second. The funny thing was that she hadn’t known the answer either.
Tonight, though, it appeared that she couldn’t care less, her mood so good that I risked a gentle jibe.
“Thirteenth out of fifteen teams? What happened? I’ve obviously been propping you up all those other years.”
Sarah started to reply but Kate quickly interjected. “They were silly questions,” she replied airily, jumping out of her seat to kiss me. “Let’s go out and console ourselves with a drink.”
I looked around at the others, who’d been silently preparing to leave: pulling on coats, fishing car keys from their bags. None seemed as if they were particularly keen to prolong the evening.
“Come on,” urged Kate, sensing the reluctance. “I’ve hardly had a chance to talk to you all night, Steve.” She flashed him a smile so intense that I almost felt it make contact. “Or you, Sarah,” she continued, gathering her friends around her. “And Rick! You must tell me how that lovely daughter of yours is. Does she like school?”
One by one she was winning them over. I saw Sarah peek down at her watch, then exchange glances with Rick.
“Well, I suppose one wouldn’t hurt,” he conceded. “The babysitter’s booked till twelve thirty.”
“Fantastic!” Kate bubbled. “You’re coming too, aren’t you, Mark?” she entreated my defenseless friend. “The Redback’s not far from here; we can easily walk. Steve, you’ll bring your friends as well, won’t you? Cary, see if there’s anyone from orthopedics who wants to join us. Now, where’s Joan?”
But despite Kate’s organizational frenzy Joan could not be found, and we left without her. Others had had the same idea, and by the time we got to the pub it was packed, hospital staff and their partners crowding doorways and spilling drinks on one another in the crush. I volunteered to buy the first round, though it took nearly twenty minutes. Finally successful, I spotted Kate in a corner and headed toward her. She was talking with Sarah, or rather to her, the other girl simply nodding now and then as Kate’s lips moved on and on. So absorbed was Kate in the conversation that she didn’t notice my approach, and jumped when I held her cold drink to the small of her back.
“God, you scared the life out of me,” she scolded, momentarily angry. I handed her a glass in reply.
“What were you two discussing so intently?” I asked, curious. Sarah colored. Maybe she and Rick were having problems.
“This and that. Girl stuff,” Kate said breezily, then took the drink with glee. “I thought I wasn’t allowed to have any of this?”
“After the team’s performance tonight I figured you’d need cheering up.” She smiled, delighted, opal eyes ablaze. On impulse I leaned down and kissed her.
“Cut that out,” said a familiar voice, though one I hadn’t heard in a while. I straightened up to find Tim smiling and extending his hand. The other one, I couldn’t help but notice, was holding fast to Joan, who lurked like a smirking pixie at his shoulder.
“You’re here!” exclaimed Kate, rather obviously. “We couldn’t find you, so we left. I’m so glad you’ve turned up. And with Tim,” she added, her surprise almost comical. “Have you two been introduced?”
They laughed, and Tim’s clasp on Joan tightened. “Not by you, thanks very much. No, I bumped into her at the hospital; we got to talking and then realized we both knew the two of you.”
I rapidly surveyed the crowd around us but couldn’t see Luke or Cressida. Hopefully Tim had come without them. Kate wound her own arm around my waist, distracting me.
“Well, that’s great, isn’t it, Cary? Now, Tim, this is Sarah and Rick, and Cary’s friend Mark. Joan, you’ve already met Steve, haven’t you?”
One drink turned into two, and it was four or five by the time the pub closed. Sarah and Rick had long gone, but the rest of our group had stayed on, as had most of the evening’s participants. Even as we left some of them were suggesting moving on to a club, determined to drag every possibility out of the night.
“Are you interested?” I asked Kate, feeling surprisingly wide-awake.
“Uh-uh.” She shook her head and slipped a hand inside my jacket for warmth. “It’s been a big night. Let’s just go home to bed.”
It was cold inside the car, but the roads were empty and we didn’t have far to go. Kate was quiet, tired, staring out the passenger window. As the heater came to life and we crept through the sleeping suburbs I had the distinct sensation that we were the only two people in the world, a unique partnership protected and enclosed in our warm metal capsule. It was a pleasant thought. Kate yawned and stretched, her thin arms brushing the roof of the car, and I felt a sudden rush of love and gratitude. Gratitude that she was here, with me, unbelievably my wife. And with the gratitude the first sharp stirrings of desire, familiar but rare in this intensity. More than desire. Something I’d been thinking about for a long time, perhaps without even realizing it.
We were stopped at a traffic light, though there were no other cars to be seen. Outside a discarded can was being blown around in the gutter, jangling like a tambourine. Kate was looking out the window again, the lights of the opposite signals reflecting green in her hair. I reached over and tucked a strand behind her still-cold ear.
“Kate, I’ve been thinking,” I started, suddenly nervous. If I’d planned my proposal this was how it would have felt. “I know it’s been a bit tough between us lately, but that’s all over. I love you madly; I always will. You know that, don’t you? I hate it when things aren’t right.” She nodded, still looking away. I felt tears thickening at the back of my throat and hurried on. “Let’s have a baby. A little girl who looks just like you. Or a boy. Twins, I don’t care, three or four or five. What do you say?”
She finally turned toward me, eyes deep green and wet. With joy, I supposed, or hope, or love. Wordlessly she held out her arms. As we embraced she cried into my hair, and we kissed and held each other as the lights cycled from green to red and back again.
SARAH
Kate can be flighty, but she’s not dishonest. Or so I’d thought. I’d assumed even the flightiness had gone by the time she’d been married to Cary for a year or two. I remember commenting on it to Rick, when they’d been over for one of Alice’s birthdays, how she seemed so relaxed, settled, as if she’d finally grown into her skin. Kate’s my closest friend and one of the most generous people you could ever meet, but for years she lived her life as if she were learning to windsurf: overbalancing, overcorrecting, swept off course by the slightest current. But then again, maybe that was just youth; maybe we were all like that in college.
I knew about that first kiss, but I hadn’t thought it was serious. She dropped around for coffee about a week after it happened, acting as if the whole thing were a big joke while scrutinizing my face for any hint of disapproval. It sounded innocent enough, though I doubt I got the whole story. The baby was distracting me anyway, and I was trying to shoo Alice out of the room in case she heard something she shouldn’t.
“I can’t believe I kissed him.” She giggled. “I must have had too much to drink.”
“What about Cary?” I asked, gently breaking Patrick’s suction on my right breast and raising him to my shoulder to be burped. Warm milk seeped slowly from the nipple he’d vacated, like an old tap that can’t be fully turned off. The light in Kate’s face was dimmed, and in contrast to her breathless confession five minutes earlier the words were careful and flat.
“Cary’s okay with it. He knows it didn’t mean anything.”
“And did it?”
“Of course not! I told you, it was just for fun. Maybe you had to be there.”
I think she expected me to see it as she did, a great big joke, an adventure, the sort of thing we had shrieked over in our student days. Except we weren’t students anymore, and all I could think of was how silly she’d been, how selfish, how I might even have felt ashamed of her had I been there. Kate changed the subject. I’d disappointed her with my worries about Cary and my moral high ground and my tired leaking breasts.
Now this. I’d seen the blond man sidling toward our table at the trivia night, lurking in the shadows as if his impossible looks weren’t sucking attention from every female eye in the room like iron filings to a magnet. I saw him follow Kate out and guessed who he was. The situation almost gave me heart failure, but by a stroke of luck Cary stayed backstage and seemed none the wiser when he finally returned.
In a hushed half minute while Cary got the drinks at the pub Kate admitted that she had been with Luke during her lengthy absence. I could only begin to imagine in what sense.
“Do you think she slept with him?” asked Rick, as we undressed for bed later that night.
“I wouldn’t think so. She was only gone for half an hour.”
“Heck, they could have done it twice in that time!” He laughed, making a grab for my uncovered body. The speculation was turning him on.
“But where? In the gardens, or one of their cars? How uncomfortable! Plus just getting out to the parking lot and back would have taken ten minutes alone, never mind undressing and … the rest.”
“Undressing and having sex, you prude,” Rick teased, his hands on my bra. “Not everyone restricts it solely to bed.”
He kissed my neck and I started relaxing against him, glad that I at least would be confining any congress to between my own sheets. Then Patrick began howling and the moment was lost.
Now Kate was on the other end of the phone evading my questions.
“We just went outside for a cigarette, nothing more. I didn’t want you to tell Cary because you know how much he hates me smoking.”
“I thought you’d given it up?” I didn’t believe her anyway—why would she kiss this guy in full view of an entire wedding reception, then when she was alone with him somewhere dark do nothing more than light up?
“I have, except occasionally,” she replied. “I could stop if I wanted to.”
“What are we talking about again?” I asked.
“Very funny,” Kate said, in a tone that implied it was anything but.
I tried another tack. “Look, you don’t have to tell me anything. Just be careful. These things have a way of getting out of control.”
“Nothing’s going to get out of control,” she said, finally dropping her guard. “It’s just fun, you know?”
I couldn’t help myself. “But what about Cary?” I asked, repeating my question of a month or so before.
“Cary’s fine. I love Cary. I’ll always be married to him. This is just a side dish or something, a trip down memory lane.”
“A what? Did you used to go out with this guy?”
“No, of course not. I just meant the excitement, that feeling you get when you realize you’re connecting with someone.”
“Doesn’t Cary excite you anymore?”
“I knew you’d think that. Yes, he does, and the sex is still good, to save you from asking. It’s just not really … new.” She sighed, stuck for words. “Doesn’t the grass ever look greener to you? Don’t you wonder what it would be like to be with someone else, to start again?”
“I’m too tired to even notice the grass most days,” I replied truthfully. “Anyway, who’d want me, with two children and stretch marks? Rick sees me in my tracksuit every day and still loves me. That’s what those vows we made are all about.”
“I know, I know.” Kate sighed. “It’s just that sometimes it isn’t …”
“Enough?”
“No!” she protested. “I was going to say spectacular.”
“Well, nothing is. Get used to it. I would have thought you got all the spectacular you wanted with Jake, but you didn’t marry him.”
“You’re right; I’m wrong.” She sounded contrite, but I knew she didn’t mean it. If we’d been talking face-to-face we would have looked at each other and burst into laughter, or tears. Instead there was silence on the phone, awkward and strained.
“Just be careful, won’t you?” I pleaded, longing to hug her or shake her, or both. “Use condoms. Don’t get pregnant.”
“Oh, God,” she groaned. “That’s something else I have to tell you.”
CRESSIDA
On the Monday morning after the trivia night Emma was readmitted. She’d been my first patient after I started the pediatric oncology fellowship, and I remembered her well—a quiet child who had blond hair like mine, missing front teeth and ALL, or acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a type of cancer where for some reason the body makes too many of the infection-fighting white blood cells. These don’t mature properly, but collect and crowd out the other cells. Emma’s mother had first become worried when her daughter fell half a foot from the monkey bars and was bruised for weeks. Then other bruises started appearing with no apparent cause, lingering on the girl’s pale skin like tattoos. The night Emma had a bloody nose that would not stop, her parents finally brought her to the hospital. They hadn’t wanted to make a fuss or sound paranoid, they said. Maybe she was just accident-prone. Children were always hurting themselves, weren’t they?
It was the first time I’d had to give a diagnosis like that. I was … what? Twenty-five? Twenty-six? Too young to be reassuring, or even empathetic. I’d told anxious mothers that their sons had fractured an arm or leg, had tonsils that had to come out or an ear infection that needed treatment. But this was something else altogether, the major league of bad-news breaking.
“Just be as natural as you can,” my supervisor advised me. “They won’t be able to take much in, so have some information sheets ready to hand out, the phone number for the Leukemia Foundation. Don’t linger on the prognosis—talk about treatment, remission rates, survival after five years. Be sympathetic. Do it somewhere quiet. And take tissues.”
So I told Emma’s parents what I knew, watching their faces collapse, their postures deflate, clenching my nails into my palm every time I felt tears threaten. “ALL is treatable,” I informed them. “Chemotherapy to send it into remission, then later maybe a bone-marrow transplant, if it’s necessary and if we can find a matching donor.” Throughout the fraught half hour Emma lay in her father’s arms, listless, too quiet. Her red blood cells had been overrun by the lymphocytes, trampled like hapless spectators at a soccer match. She was only six. She should have been tearing around the ward, making the nurses frown and shush, not this limp puddle in her father’s lap.
About half the children who develop ALL survive it, at least for the following few years. Eighty percent if you believe some studies, though I don’t. Chemotherapy puts almost all in remission; radiotherapy comes next to prevent any remaining rogue cells from starting the process over. Nonetheless, I had a bad feeling about Emma. It was the first time I’d experienced such a thing and I didn’t recognize the sensation, but the minute I’d first reviewed her history I’d felt something lodge in my throat, as if I’d swallowed a moth. I coughed and it was gone, but an unnerving furred sensation remained. I know that taste now.
Emma stayed with us for almost six months, going home once or twice but always needing to be readmitted within the week. As predicted, the chemotherapy worked, but at a cost. It devastated her little system, weakening her defenses to all the other bugs that thrive in hospitals … first a chest infection, then blood in her urine. One morning we heard a scream from Emma’s room and rushed in to find her mother shaking and sobbing. The girl’s hair had literally fallen out overnight, lying in golden clots like spilled coins all over her pillow. I gathered it up and tried to give it to the woman, but she wouldn’t touch it. “She’s dying, isn’t she?” she hissed at me as she pushed the locks away. Yes, I thought, glancing at my patient. She was barely conscious, nothing but bone wrapped loosely in a tent of skin, eyes sunken and rarely open. “No,” I said, slipping into doctor-speak. “Hair loss is a side effect of radiotherapy. She’s doing fine.”
I didn’t think of it as lying; it was what we had been taught to say. And as it turned out, Emma didn’t die. She crashed once while I was off duty but was revived, the wasted frame forced back into life by a massive jolt of electricity. After that, to our great surprise, she made slow but steady progress, the white-cell count dropping as her hair grew back. I plaited the strands I’d salvaged into a skimpy ponytail, which a staff nurse suggested I attach to a cap for Emma to wear until her own head sported more than pale fuzz. She smiled broadly when I gave it to her and I could suddenly see that her new front teeth were coming in. That surprised me—I don’t know why. She’d been so sick, and yet through it all her body had kept making these teeth, relentlessly preparing for her adult life. Where had the energy come from, when she’d needed all of her resources just to get well? The sheer persistence of those teeth staggered me. Was it just physiology, I wondered, or can cells hope like the rest of us?
I hadn’t yet met Luke at the time, though I told him about Emma later. I don’t think he understood, and I couldn’t fully explain. He just saw biology and luck; I saw a little girl whose body had never given up, who was eventually declared cured and discharged for good. A success, when there were so many failures.
LUKE
Kate makes love with her eyes open, blue-green orbs like miniature globes swimming before me as I touch her and hear her call out. Only when we kiss, I think, does she close them, and then only because there is nothing to see. The rest of the time she is alert, aware, unwilling to miss a thing. Her whole body hums, alive in the moment. She watches me reach for her, watches the effect her own caresses have on me. When I enter her, her pupils dilate, swelling and spilling over the irises like an eclipse, a shout louder, more joyful than any that might leave her lips.
Cress closes her eyes; she sighs and murmurs. Look, I want to plead when we lie together, show me that you want me; make me want you. Just look! There is nothing more erotic, I want to tell her, than watching your partner respond, her eyes clouded by desire or surrender, yet never leaving yours. But how would I suddenly know this? And would I want to replicate it anyway?
CRESSIDA
I’d headed to the ward round that morning hoping it would be quick, that there’d be some chat about the trivia night, a few case reviews and we’d all be on our way. A short round would give me a chance to catch up on the discharge summaries threatening to engulf my desk. Instead, I found that Emma was back. One of the nurses filled me in. She’d been admitted late the previous night, once again covered in bruises, so sick she could barely open her eyes. It seemed the leukemia had returned.
“Damn,” muttered the consultant, flicking through the thick file. “It doesn’t look good. And she was doing so well too. Anyone remember her from her last admission?”
“I do,” I called out.
“Your caseload’s already heavy enough, Cressida,” he replied without even looking up. “Someone else had better take this one. Gabrielle? Grant?”
The two doctors in question studied the floor, neither keen to volunteer. We were all too busy.
“I can do it,” I pleaded across their hesitation. “She was my first patient in the unit. I know the family. I want to help.”
The consultant finally lifted his eyes from the history, weary behind smudged glasses. “It’s not going to be pretty. Are you sure you want the case?”
I nodded and he handed me the file. “The WBC count is twenty-one thousand. We’ll do chemotherapy, then think about a bone-marrow transplant. Better talk to the parents and get them tested. Any siblings?”
I’d answered in the negative, though I turned out to be wrong. When I went to reintroduce myself to Emma’s parents they were cradling a small blond child, unmistakably Emma’s sister. The likeness was so uncanny that for a moment I was confused, thinking it was the girl herself, only three years younger rather than older. The father recognized me, and held out his hand.
“I was hoping never to see you again,” he said bluntly. “What are her chances?”
“Good,” I reassured them. “When relapse occurs over a year after discontinuing the initial therapy there’s a thirty to forty percent chance of long-term survival.”
“That’s good?” asked Emma’s father. “Less than fifty-fifty?”
“It’s less than ten percent with relapse in the first year,” I replied. Emma’s mother began crying soundlessly as I outlined the treatment plan.
Over the next two months chemotherapy brought Emma into a second remission. Her best chance now was via a bone-marrow transplant, provided a suitable donor could be found. We took blood from her parents to test their compatibility; then I placed the tourniquet around Emma’s little sister Shura’s chubby arm. Veins swelled beneath the skin like fat pink worms.
“It seems cruel, doesn’t it?” I said conversationally, preparing the tubes I would need to catch Shura’s blood. “It’s going to hurt, and she has no idea why.”
“She doesn’t need to know,” replied her mother, lips set. “Besides, it’s nothing compared to what Emma’s gone through, and to the benefit it might bring.”
She was right, of course, but her tone made me uneasy as I slid the needle in.
“You know that siblings don’t always match, don’t you?” I asked, slowly drawing up the plunger. Shura flinched as the red liquid rose in the cylinder.
“Yes, but Emma and Shura will. They have to,” the woman responded with determination. It suddenly occurred to me that for a two-and-a-half-year-old Shura didn’t speak much.
“Good girl,” I told the toddler, withdrawing the needle and hunting in my pockets for a toy. “You were very brave. Would you like to play with this monkey?”
The child reached for the animal, but her mother pushed her hands away. “It might have germs, and we need you to be healthy for Emma,” she said, heedless of her daughter’s disappointment. “When will we get the results?”
The day the results were due I felt nervous, scared. Trying to hurry breakfast that morning I dropped my coffee cup, then cut a finger as I picked up the pieces. Luke heard me yelp and rushed in from the bathroom, where he had been shaving. As he helped me to my feet I burst into tears.
“Does it hurt that much? What’s the matter?” he asked, turning the injured digit over for inspection.
“It’s not that,” I sobbed. “I’m worried about a patient—Emma, the one I told you about. We’ll find out today if we can do her bone-marrow transplant. It’s been worrying me all night—I hardly slept.”
It was true. I’d tossed and turned while Luke slumbered on beside me. These days he was sleeping more deeply than ever. What a luxury to have nothing to keep you awake, no issues more bothersome than the latest sales figures for toilet paper.
“Oh, Cress,” said Luke, kissing my finger and drawing me into his arms. “You care too much about those people. About everything. You’ve got to let go, my love. I know it’s sad, but you can’t let it consume you.”
He was right, of course, but how do you stop caring? Emotions can’t be turned on and off like tap water.
KATE
The second time we made love it was at the museum. First Cary’s workplace, then mine. Cressida’s too, I guess—that first time, I mean—though I thought about her as little as I could.
We hadn’t seen Luke and Cressida since the trivia night, and it bothered me. When I parted from Luke after our tryst on the roof I had felt elated, euphoric and supremely confident that that wasn’t the end of it. How could it be? We had been too natural, too good together, the fit just right. There had been too much desire for it to have all been spent. So I left him outside the ladies’ room without a backward glance or a second thought, sure I’d be seeing him again soon.
Only I hadn’t. Three weeks had passed with no word, just Cary following me around, wanting to talk about children. I snapped at him once, then immediately felt guilty. He loved me enough to be asking this, yet all I felt was irritation. I didn’t even dare analyze why. Six months ago the idea of kids had been quite an attractive one. I was thirty-two and happily married; it was time to get on with such things. Cary would be a good father, and a break from work appealed. But now I’d gone cold, and the reason was Luke. I wanted what had happened on that roof to happen again—the sex and the starlight and the subterfuge. Pregnancy and children didn’t fit the equation.
Still, maybe it wasn’t going to happen again anyway. I cursed myself as the days stretched by without a phone call, an e-mail, a sighting. Luke was undeniably attractive to women—maybe he did this sort of thing all the time. Heaven knows he was a flirt; I had seen him in action at too many parties or pubs to mention. But I was a flirt too, and I’d been so sure it was more than that. Something, I’d thought, had been simmering between us for a while. Was it so easily appeased?
Midway through Friday afternoon at the end of the third week the phone in my office rang. Foolishly my heart leaped, but it was only Cary. I wondered again why Luke hadn’t called as Cary explained that he needed to go through some slides for a conference with Steve, and wouldn’t be home until late. That was fine, I told Cary. I might go out with my colleagues for a drink after work, or even just head home for an early night. I was tired; it had been a long week.
“I’ll see you later then,” said Cary. Then he paused, and added, “Maybe we can even get started on that project?”
He meant the baby, of course. “Maybe,” I’d replied noncommittally. Weeks ago I’d said something to him about going off the pill, but had done no such thing. After I hung up I stared at the phone for a long minute, feeling confused and unsettled. It didn’t ring.
Two hours later I was leaving work when something caught my eye. It was a beautiful evening, spring easing into summer, a November night unable to make up its mind. At first I thought the flash of gold was the sun going down in the west, or reflecting off the windows of the tram trundling down Nicholson Street past the museum. For a second I was even annoyed that I’d missed that tram; then I turned my head and recognized the source of light. Luke. He smiled when he saw me, a warm, natural smile that pulled like the moon. I felt my own face come alive with pleasure and barely managed to stop myself from kissing him.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, awkwardly banging my briefcase against my legs in clumsy delight.
“Hoping to see you. Is there somewhere we can talk? Would you like a drink?”
“Yes and yes,” I replied recklessly. “Yes to everything.”
We went to the Pumphouse across the road. Luke had a beer, and bought me champagne without asking.
“So, how have you been?” he asked, sitting opposite me. The bubbles in my glass jumped and popped, heedlessly racing up through the liquid to explode on the surface.
“Good,” I replied simply, still smiling.
“I’m sorry I haven’t called,” he said, pushing his beer around on the table. “God knows I wanted to. But every time I picked up the phone I thought maybe I shouldn’t, maybe it was all too complicated. You know.”
And I did; I understood perfectly. Three weeks of second-guessing myself dissolved like those bubbles.
“Where’s Cressida?” I asked.
“At work. She’s on all night. Till eleven, anyway. Cary?”
“He’s working too. A conference presentation or something. He’ll probably be home around nine.”
Simultaneously we looked at our watches, then laughed as we caught ourselves doing so.
“Is there somewhere we can go?” asked Luke. His words were low and heavy with intent, his blue eyes suddenly darker. My hands felt shaky, and I set the glass down unfinished.
“Uh-huh,” I muttered, not trusting myself to speak. We stood up from the table together.
I’ve always loved being in the museum after closing time. On the evenings I worked late it was a treat to wander out through galleries suddenly free from crowds and the shrill voices and smeary hands of school groups. In the quiet, I’d stop and look at some of my favorite exhibits: the Clunes goldfield diorama that I was first shown as a child at the old Russell Street site; the cross-sectioned rocks and minerals, their impossible colors glinting even brighter in the encroaching darkness; the blue whale skeleton, its jaw a perfect horseshoe of bone. My heels would tap on echoing floors, the soaring glass vault of the foyer as still as a cathedral.
Now I was making the journey in reverse. I swiped my ID pass, nodded guiltily to a security guard, and hurried Luke to my office as if he were just any visiting colleague with whom I had work to discuss. Luke trailed behind me, looking around, obviously interested.
“I’ve never been here before,” he said.
“Never?” I was astonished. I assumed everyone in Melbourne had.
“Not this one,” he corrected himself. “I was taken to see Phar Lap at the old museum when I was about eight. I think it’s a compulsory childhood experience, isn’t it?” He smiled, then looked around again. “But this building is something else. It’s beautiful.”
He couldn’t have touched me more if he’d said the same about me.
My office wasn’t actually just mine, but an area I shared with three other anthropologists. Each of our desks squatted in a corner of the third-floor room, which was lit by a long rectangular window overlooking the Science and Life Gallery below. I brought Luke over to it. For a moment we stood there in silence, the blue whale skeleton seeming to swim away beneath us into the gloom. In the aftermath of leave-taking, computers hummed on deserted desks, their screen savers glowing with stars or fish or family photos. Some desks, like mine, were strewn with paper; others had been cleared with more care, the list of next week’s tasks already placed precisely for Monday morning.
“No one’s coming back?” asked Luke.
“No one ever comes back,” I told him, only just getting the words out before his mouth met mine.
We lay down this time, on the rug between the desks, beneath the fading light. Luke removed my clothes slowly, almost tenderly, scrutinizing each inch of flesh as it came into view. First he would look, then lightly touch, and finally kiss the exposed skin, moving slowly and deliberately down the length of my body. Once I reached for him, but he gently moved my hands away.
“Not yet,” he murmured against a rib, tracing its curve with his lips. “I want to know you first.”
So I waited until I felt I would explode with my need to touch him, then, naked in his arms, began my own survey. His chest was warm and steady, his navel a perfect O. The hair below it, I was surprised to see, was only slightly darker than that on his head, a burnished gold the color of doubloons or buried treasure. When I took him in my mouth I tasted salt and soap and heard his cry.
Later we held each other as the sky outside grew dark. Luke cradled me closely, occasionally moving to kiss an ear, a finger, my forehead, our heartbeats gradually returning to normal. In the half-light the past loomed all around: dusty files, old bones, the smell of formalin and the earth. And us, the smell of us, the present, the future, the new.
CARY
I knew almost immediately that Kate wasn’t keen, but thought that if I kept talking about it she’d come around. Children, that is. To be fair, we’d never actually discussed the issue, but she had been so eager for me to propose that I assumed she felt as I did. What’s the point of even getting married if you don’t want to have kids?
I thought we were of one mind when I first raised the subject after the trivia night. She’d seemed to agree, had said she’d go off the pill and have her rubella immunity checked. Some days later I noticed that the shiny pack of Nordette had disappeared from the bathroom, and my spirits soared. But as the weeks went by and no announcement came, I couldn’t help but wonder if Kate had simply shifted the pills to her purse or her bedside drawer and continued to take them.
I didn’t like distrusting Kate. I’d never done so before, but it was her own fault for giving me reason to doubt her in the first place. It sounds crazy, but before she’d kissed Luke at that wedding I hadn’t even conceived of the possibility of her being unfaithful. What’s that old saying? It doesn’t matter where you get your appetite, as long as you dine at home. Kate might tease and charm and trifle, but I thought we both knew what we had in each other, and were more than happy to eat in.
Initially everything appeared to have been smoothed over. It was just a drunken indiscretion, one tango too far. We’d talked; she’d apologized; I’d forgiven her. I’d put it out of my mind, started looking forward to the prospect of fatherhood. After a week or two, however, it became apparent that Kate wasn’t rushing to join the mothers’ club. She changed the topic when I brought up babies, shrugged her shoulders when I asked about those rubella results. In bed she was as accessible and desirable as ever, but something wasn’t right. I’d imagined us curled together postcoitally debating the merits of potential names, or where we’d send the kids to school. She was happy to make love but fell asleep almost immediately afterward, the silky arch of her spine curved toward me like a question mark.
I didn’t know what to do. Was she in this or not? I started thinking about the kiss again. And the more I did the more I began to feel that she owed me: a child to prove her love, to re-cement our vows. To be completely honest, I guess a part of me also wanted to secure her, to tie her to my side with blood. I didn’t feel like this all the time—when we cooked a meal together or shared a laugh at the end of the day I’d forget about such mad mental arithmetic. But by myself, stuck in traffic or waiting in line at the hospital cafeteria, I’d suddenly recall the way her shoulders had tilted toward Luke or wonder about the absent contraception, and my hands would go rigid around the steering wheel or tray. It wasn’t like me at all.
Of course, I’d wanted children long before this. That kiss might have intensified the drive or changed its impetus, but it didn’t provoke the desire. I’m an only child and I’d long ago determined that I’d have a big family of my own. Three children, preferably, two at the least. That seemed big to me.
CRESSIDA
The results weren’t good. The most likely source of a bone-marrow donor is always a sibling, but Shura didn’t match. She wasn’t even close. Only thirty-five percent of siblings do match, so the odds were never on Emma’s side, but still the news was devastating. I sat in the tiny doctors’ area reading the slip over and over before crumpling it in my hand. Then I reconsidered and smoothed it out. I’d have to show her parents, explain what it all meant and where we went from here. I longed to tell Luke and have his comfort alleviate some of the pain, but something stopped me from reaching for the phone.
Luke seemed preoccupied lately, and busier at work than he’d ever been. I assumed that the two were related. At first I was glad to see him as immersed in his job as I was in mine, not always asking me when I’d be off or phoning my cell if I was still at the hospital an hour past the end of my shift. But then I started to miss those calls. I missed knowing he was at home waiting for me, preparing our dinner and listening for the sound of my car in the drive. It was childish, really—most of the time he was at home waiting, eager to talk and share the few hours before pediatrics claimed me once more. But on a few occasions I arrived home before him to a dark and empty house, dinner unprepared, the ingredients not even purchased. Invariably he’d turn up not much later, the glow of outdoors still in his cheeks, full of talk and excitement for the campaign he’d been busy with or the deal he’d clinched. For years I’d been wishing that he’d like his job more, resent mine less, but when it finally happened it irked me. I don’t know why.
I ushered Emma’s parents into an interview room devoid of windows or any ornamentation save a struggling African violet perched precariously on the light box. I carefully lifted it onto the desk before turning to shatter their hopes.
“The news isn’t good, I’m afraid,” I said, my palms sweaty on Emma’s thick file. “As you know, neither of you was a perfect match. Shura wasn’t either.”
I heard Emma’s mother swallow hard. “You can still do the transplant, though, can’t you?” asked her husband.
“I’m afraid not. The HLA typing wasn’t nearly close enough. Giving Emma Shura’s bone marrow would do more harm than good.”
“But how can that be?” cried the mother. “They look so alike I was sure they’d match. They’re sisters, for God’s sake!”
I said nothing, letting the news sink in.
“So you can’t use her at all?” asked the father, gesturing toward his younger daughter. Oblivious, Shura played on the floor with some cars I’d thought to snatch up from the ward on the way to this meeting.
“We can look elsewhere for a match. Try the bone-marrow registry, maybe test Emma’s cousins, if she has any.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Emma’s mother shake her head.
“We need to tell Emma,” said the father, rising to his feet. “We promised her that it would all be okay.”
“It still may well be,” I called after him as he left the room. I turned to the mother, but she was also collecting her things, tears streaming down her face.
“My poor baby,” she keened. “My lovely girl.”
Neither had thought to pick up Shura, and she toddled after them crying.
Over the next week I saw the family again a number of times. We needed their permission to start a registry search and eventually obtained it, but only after they’d insisted on having Shura retested. The match was no different, and it saddened me. After the second failure the child appeared to have been dismissed from her parents’ notice. Not unwanted, but disregarded—as far as I could see her basic needs were met, but little else. Though Emma was sure to die if a matching donor couldn’t be found, Shura’s fate worried me more. Her sickly sister had her parents’ full attention and love, while healthy Shura was left to wander out into the corridor or the nurses’ station searching for company. One day I found her crying outside the bedpan-cleaning room, obviously lost and frightened.
“Mama,” she shrieked, “Mama,” holding out her arms to my familiar face. When I tracked down her real mother I could barely contain my anger.
“She was screaming for you. Didn’t you hear her crying?”
“Oh,” said the woman, barely looking up from her vigil at Emma’s bedside. “I thought that was somebody else’s child.”
The same afternoon I bumped into Cary in the corridor. I was late for a meeting; he was heading who knows where. We were both embarrassed and hurried away without much more than mumbled greetings, but I realized after he’d gone how much I missed him. Not just him, but the foursome that we’d made. For over a year he and Kate, Luke and I had been so close, had seen one another so often. It had almost been like family, or what I imagined a family would feel like if they stopped being doctors long enough to actually talk. Now as I sat in that meeting, not hearing a word that was said, I felt angry at Luke and Kate all over again. Not just for that wedding kiss or their fecklessness, but for ruining something worth so much more than any momentary pleasure they might have gained. I’d liked and respected Cary—he’d been a good supervisor and a steady friend. I’d liked Kate too, been drawn to her vivacity, won over by her generous spirit and love of laughter. But even more I’d liked who I was when Luke and I were with them: part of a team, a clique, where I belonged and was welcomed. Now all that was gone, and for a moment I felt as bereft as Shura.
LUKE
Soon it was all I could think about: Kate, and when I could see her next. Or talk to her, spend a minute with her voice in my ear and the phone cradled damply against my skin. We both had direct lines, though only I had my own office. At first we’d talk once a week, then every few days, until it got to the point that I couldn’t let the morning go past without speaking to her. My work suffered and I started to bargain with myself, to use those phone calls as rewards: once I got through that budget I could call her; if I finished the presentation I would let myself phone again. Of course, she wasn’t always there and then I’d have to set some other goal before dialing once more, hanging up if the shrilling wasn’t answered in the first three rings. If she was there, she always picked up.
Kate rarely called me. But then, she couldn’t, not with those other three desks lurking so close, those colleagues who would be sure to wonder at so much time spent talking to a man not her husband. When I called she would have to act as if it were business, restricting herself to yes-or-no answers, throwing in the occasional reference to relics or techniques I’d never heard of. Somehow she maintained this throughout even our raunchiest conversations. Or monologues rather, me at one end describing how I’d touch her the next time we met or the way she’d tasted when I kissed her, she at the other primly saying, “Yes,” or, “Maybe,” or, “Sorry, could you repeat that?” It drove me wild—her covert encouragement, the chance to verbalize everything I felt and wanted, being met with nothing but the faintest intake of breath and a cautiously officious, “Go on.”
I’d never tried talking dirty with Cress. It just hadn’t seemed right—not because she was my wife, but because she was a doctor. I wondered if maybe the words would sound crude to her anatomically correct ears or, worse still, silly. Of course, her being a virgin when we met had meant that I’d initially avoided the blue language for fear of shocking her. Then after a while it was just habit, I guess—most couples stick within the same sort of sexual routine, give or take the odd anniversary experiment. That was certainly true of me and Cress, and I don’t mind admitting it. It wasn’t broken, so why fix it? I’d tried pretty much everything before I’d gotten married. It was fun at the time, but after the frantic maneuverings of unattached sex, with all its posturing and trying to impress, there was something to be said for the comfort and tranquillity of the marital bed.
Or so I’d thought. Why, then, was I grappling with Kate on her office floor at every opportunity we had? Or making love to her in the backseat of my car, or the shadow of a Moreton Bay fig in the Royal Botanic Gardens, or against the wall in Tim’s apartment once when he was away on vacation and I was meant to be watering the plants? I began to long for a bed, to feel that there would be nothing more erotic than to lie with Kate between white sheets, all our clothes removed rather than hastily pulled up, down or aside. We never used our houses. Cary’s hours were unpredictable, and I couldn’t relax at my place. Tim was always dropping in, or the hospital would ring looking for Cress, and I worried she’d notice anyway. I couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t detect marks on the sheets, a strand of Kate’s dark hair in the bathroom.
There is nothing better than sex: anyone who says otherwise simply isn’t doing it right. In college one time some guys I had gotten friendly with invited me on a surfing trip. I’d never tried the sport, but their enthusiasm was infectious. “You’ll love it,” said one. “It’s better than sex!” Surfing was fun, but better than sex? Since then I’ve heard the expression used in many contexts, describing chocolate, football, even in one of our own advertising campaigns—for beer, if I remember correctly. Yet I’m still not sure if people actually mean it. How could they? There are lots of things that are enjoyable, but sex is a world apart. Sex, in fact, is the key. What else distinguishes, defines the relationship between a man and a woman? Isn’t that what marriage is all about? Legalized sex, recognizing that it is the carnal act that binds the two of you together, identifies you as husband and wife. For better or worse, sleeping with someone shifts the relationship from mere friendship or desire into a whole other dimension.
Kate and I rarely spoke when we were together. Sentences, that is—logical phrases with a beginning and end, the time for a reply. As soon as I saw her I was erect, aroused, the clock already ticking at my back. Who can converse in such circumstances? Instead our conversations were limited to moans and sighs, her whispered yes as my tongue probed between her thighs, my own half sob as I spent myself inside her. Afterward, we’d be too dazed to chat, communicating with smiles and kisses until forced to part or the passion rose again, muting us. That’s not to say we never talked. Between those one-sided exchanges during work hours and the wordless trysts outside them we found a way. Every few days Kate would work late, ostensibly sweating over a grant or categorizing the museum’s latest acquisitions. Her colleagues, government employees every one, would be out of the building on the dot of five, leaving us thirty, forty minutes to laugh and chat on the phone before Cary called to pick her up. After a while, and to my surprise, I came to enjoy the talking as much as the touching, stopped regarding one as a poor substitute for the other. I’d been infatuated before and had assumed that this was just another instance of it. But I had never really wanted to talk to those girls, never wanted to know what they thought or tease a smile out of their voice. Now, with Kate, I did. And I realized it was getting serious.
KATE
And then it was Christmas. For five weeks I’d been sleeping with Luke, going to work, dating artifacts, yet somehow completely missing the decorations that had sprouted like a tropical fungus across the museum’s foyer and the carols spilling out of every store in town. Distracted, I guess. Intoxicated, overwhelmed by Luke, caught up in something that I didn’t understand, but had no desire to get out of. Sex, sure, but more than that. Just being with him made me happy, as banal and trite as a teenage crush. I didn’t know what to make of it. Cary had won my love steadily and sweetly. This, though, was an abduction, a takeover, the violence of my emotions both thrilling and fearsome. I shook when Luke made love to me.
Sarah brought me back to reality by calling me at work to ask if I could fit in drinks and dinner before Christmas.
“Christmas?” I’d asked stupidly, flicking through my diary, looking for the date. To my surprise it was December 15.
“Yeah—ho, ho, ho and all that,” she replied while her brood shrieked in the background. “You’ll know all about Christmas soon enough, when you have kids.”
“Um, yeah,” I mumbled. “How about next week, the twenty-first? After work? We could go to that pub you used to like.”
“The Lemon Tree? Too noisy. I want somewhere we can talk. I feel like we haven’t caught up properly in months. And you didn’t rise to my bait.”
I heard the chime of an e-mail arriving. “What?” I asked, nonplussed. Everything was confusing me.
“Kids. Anything happening there? You told me Cary was keen.”
“God, no. Who’d be pregnant at Christmas, with so much drinking to be done?”
“Hmmm,” she responded. “I don’t think I’m getting the whole story. But I will next week. In vino veritas, or whatever it is.”
I hung up the phone feeling vaguely uneasy, then opened the e-mail. It was from Cary.
Kate, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about Christmas, it read. Mom and Dad have asked us up to their place for a few days. We didn’t go last year, so I thought maybe we should. Is that okay with you? How about we leave after work on Christmas Eve and come back on the thirtieth—we don’t have any other plans, do we? Love you, Cary.
Six days, almost a week. My immediate reaction was to e-mail him straight back and say no. Or that he could go, but I wouldn’t. The thought of being away from Luke for so long alarmed me. We’d been seeing each other every three days, two when we could manage it, and talking at least twice in each twenty-four-hour period. But six whole days? Yet I had no excuse. Cary knew that the museum offices closed between Christmas and New Year, that I always had leave at that time. I hadn’t suggested alternative plans, and his parents were owed a visit. My fingers hovered over the keyboard. Damn. Why was I even hesitating? Luke would no doubt be spending the time with Cressida anyway. For some reason, the thought almost made me weep.
Sarah was already waiting at the restaurant when I got there, a bottle of champagne chilling on the table.
“What are we celebrating?” I asked, sliding into my seat.
“Nothing in particular. I just thought that seeing as it was the festive season … Why—is there anything we should be celebrating?”
“Not as far as I’m concerned. Maybe making it through another year.”
“Don’t be like that. There must be something you want to toast. Your job? Cary? Having children? Not having children?”
I smiled, feeling my defenses wane. “Why are you so upbeat?” I asked.
“Rick’s home with the kids and I can stay out as long as I want. Plus I finished all the shopping today.”
“More Barbies?”
“More Barbies.” She nodded. “More designer outfits, more little shoes to get sucked up by the vacuum or caught between Tyson’s paws. But if that’s what she wants …”
We raised our glasses, briefly touching them together.
“To Barbie,” I said facetiously.
“To us,” Sarah responded firmly. “To friendships that last through everything. To you and me.”
So I told her. I hadn’t planned to, knew she wouldn’t approve, but after her toast I felt compelled to reveal all. Maybe I was testing her words. I knew how highly Sarah regarded Cary and valued fidelity. Would she still be my friend when she found out I’d betrayed both? Maybe, too, I just wanted to talk. To say my lover’s name, acknowledge his role in my life, make him as real to Sarah as her own children.
Predictably she was shocked, but surprisingly nonjudgmental.
“Oh,” she said after I’d finished, the champagne going flat on the table between us. “I guess it’s too late for warnings then?”
I nodded. She sighed.
“God, Kate, I just want you to be happy; you know that. And if he’s what makes you happy, well, I can live with that. But what are you going to do about Cary? Where’s it all heading?”
I shook my head. The future wasn’t something I’d even thought about, as unanticipated as ill health. Why should I, when the present was so delicious?
“I love Cary. I really do. I’ve told you that before, and I mean it. I’d never want to hurt him.”
“Well, you’re going to, whether you like it or not. Don’t you think he’ll find out? Or do you imagine you can just keep on switching between the two of them, flitting from one to the other with everyone being happy?”
Actually, the idea had some appeal. Already I couldn’t imagine giving Luke up, but the same was true for Cary. Luke was fireworks and flattery, desire, intrigue and elation. Cary was my past and my home and the warm body next to mine as I slept. I was having no difficulty moving between the two of them sexually, and saw no reason why I couldn’t do so emotionally either. They were poles apart, opposite but complementary.
I tried to explain this to Sarah, but she wasn’t convinced.
“Do you think about Luke when you’re with Cary?” she asked.
“Not in bed, if that’s what you mean. But sometimes, I suppose. When I’m cooking dinner or we’re watching TV.”
“Uh-huh. And do you think about Cary when you’re with Luke?”
I blushed, the color admitting the answer.
“There you go,” she said quietly. “And you think no one’s going to get hurt.”
“Cary won’t find out!” I protested. “He’s away a lot at conferences lately. We’re careful.”
“Is that the point?” she mused. “At first it was just flirting. Then it was just a kiss; now you’re just sleeping with him. Where’s it all going to end? Are you going to move in with Luke? Have his children?”
“You’re being ridiculous!” I almost shouted. “Nothing’s going to change! It’s just an affair.”
“Yeah, but you always said you’d never have one of those. Swore, in fact, before a church full of friends and relatives and God. And?”
I couldn’t answer. Something hot pushed at my eyelids.
“Look, Kate,” Sarah said, reaching across the table to take my hand. “Whatever you do is okay by me; it really is. I’ll always be your friend, and vice versa, I hope. I just want you to think about where it’s going. Can you do that?”
I nodded as a waiter set down our meals. Steam curled from a plate of pasta I’d ordered hungrily twenty minutes ago, but my appetite had fled. Where was this going? I couldn’t even begin to guess.
TIM
For the first time I understood why they called it the festive season. It wasn’t that I’d ever disliked Christmas, but I hadn’t experienced it like this. With a partner, that is: someone who made it personal, made it matter. I did my shopping well ahead of time, tapped my feet to carols in elevators, found the lunchtime crowds exciting and colorful rather than a nuisance. For weeks I deliberated over Joan’s present, trying to decide what would best provoke her sharp smile as she unwrapped it, imagining the scene and enjoying the indecision. Jewelry? We’d been going out for only a month, yet I wanted her to know I was serious. Or if that was too much, maybe perfume? Lingerie? I ventured into one such store, all lace and static cling, but the range overwhelmed me. Camisoles, teddies, basques. Who knew what was appropriate? Such things were Luke’s territory, and I hadn’t brought him with me.
Actually, I hadn’t seen much of Luke lately. There’d been the night I met Joan at the hospital trivia competition, then dinner a few weeks later. I’d wanted to introduce her properly to Cressida and Luke, to revel in the novelty of a double date instead of always being the spare tire to their cozy twosome. But the evening wasn’t a success. Cressida appeared distracted, fatigued, her mind elsewhere. She later apologized, claiming worry over a patient with leukemia, but I wondered if it was something else. Joan was Kate’s friend, at least originally, though they didn’t seem close now. Was Cress made uncomfortable by this reminder of her husband’s indiscretion? I hoped not—that kiss was months ago, the incident surely blown over by now. Nonetheless, I never suggested to Joan that we go out with Kate and Cary. I missed their company, but I knew where my loyalties lay.
Afterward, I asked Joan if she’d enjoyed the evening.
“They’re a striking couple, aren’t they?” she said. “I’m amazed you’ve stayed friends with them.”
“What do you mean?” I inquired, gazing in the rearview mirror as I negotiated the ubiquitous pillars in the multistory parking deck.
“Well, it’s just that people who look like that are out of my experience. And league.”
“But they were nice enough, weren’t they?” I replied, nonplussed. Luke’s looks had ceased being an issue for me long ago.
“I guess,” she conceded, then was quiet. Experience told me that she was thinking, and not to interrupt.
“I suppose I’m surprised,” she confessed after a minute. “Quite frankly, we’re average, and they’re not. Didn’t that ever bother you? Didn’t you ever hate him for it at school?”
“Hate him?” I was surprised. It all seemed so long ago. “I don’t think so. Not once we were friends, anyway.”
“Once you were friends?” she emphasized triumphantly. Before us a line of cars waited their turn to pay, brake lights tapping on and off impatiently as tickets were located, change was counted. “So before that you didn’t like him?”
“We met on our first day of school when we were made to sit together. There wasn’t really time to feel anything except hope that I wasn’t going to get beaten up.”
Joan persisted. “And even when he was your friend, did you think it would last? Didn’t you assume he’d just move on to someone else once he didn’t have to sit next to you anymore?”
I sighed. Maybe I had once thought that about Luke, but it felt like a betrayal to say that to Joan.
“What’s your point? Did you like them or not?” The words were sharper than I intended, though that seemed to work with her.
“I did. I thought they were nice. And they obviously care about you, which is the main thing.”
“But?” I prompted, knowing one was coming.
“I don’t know. I’m being silly. But I guess I just couldn’t trust a man who looked like him—so attractive to women that he’s bound to exploit it occasionally. I’m glad you’re not like that,” she finished without guile.
“Thanks a lot. But what about Cressida? You thought she was beautiful too. Does that mean she’s also under suspicion?”
“How would I know?” Joan smiled as we finally made our way out of the building, into the clean night air. “She’s a woman. What do I know about them?”
In the end I chose jewelry. A small gold cross on a necklace so fine it was almost invisible. Joan wasn’t religious as far as I knew, but still I was sure it would appeal to her: meaningful, discreet, tasteful without being trendy. In return she bought me a novel and appeared unconcerned by the discrepancy. That was fine by me—I had worried she’d chastise me for spending so much. Instead her keen eyes simply widened as she opened the gift, saw the sky-blue box, caught the glint of the object inside.
“Put it on me,” she instructed, sweeping aside her heavy hair and presenting me with her pale and freckled nape. The small dots seemed to blink in the unaccustomed sunlight. On a whim I bent to kiss the marbled skin, surprisingly warm beneath my lips. Joan giggled, an unfamiliar sound.
“Hey, do as you’re told!” she protested, yet didn’t move away. I drew her around to face me, then not for the first time kissed her self-sufficient mouth, feeling it relax into surrender, the gold cross still winking in its box. Joy to the world! Goodwill to all men!