Transgressions

Echo glanced past at him, to the doorway where Peter was standing around with the other two men, trying not to appear anxious and irritable.

'He's a fine young man,' Ransome said with a smile.

'It isn't just Peter, I mean, being away from him for so long. That would be hard. But there's my mother.'

'I understand. I didn't expect to convince you at our first meeting. It's getting late, and I know you must be tired.'

'Am I going to see you again?' Echo said.

'That's for you to decide. But I need you, Mary Catherine. I hope to have another chance to convince you of that.'

Neither Echo nor Peter were the kind to be reticent about getting into it when there was an imagined slight or a disagreement to be set-tied. They were city kids who had grown up scrappy and contentious if the occasion called for it.

Before Echo had slipped out of the new shoes that had hurt her feet for most of the night she was in Peter's face. They were driving up Park. Too fast, in her opinion. She told him to slow down.

'Or put your flasher on. You just barely missed that cabbie.'

'I can get suspended for that,' Peter said.

'Why are you so angry?'

'Said I was angry?'

'It was a wonderful evening, and now you're spoiling it for me. Slow down.'

'When a guy comes on to you like that Ransome—'

'Oh, please. Comes on to me? That is so— so—I don't want to say it.'

'Go ahead. We say what is, remember?'

'Im-mature.'

'Thank you. I'm immature because the guy is stuffing me in the face and I'm supposed to—'

'Peter, I never said I was going to do it! I've got my job to think about. My mom.'

'So why did he say he hoped he'd be hearing from you soon? And you just smiled like, sure. I can hardly wait.'

'You don't just blow somebody off who has gone out of his way to—'

'Why not?'

'Peter. Look. I was paid an incredible compliment tonight, by a painter who I think is—I mean, I can't be flattered? Come on.'

Peter decided against racing a red light and settled back behind the wheel.

'You come on. You got something arranged with him?'

'For the last time, no.' Her face was red, and she had chewed most of the gloss off her lower lip. In a softer tone she said, 'You know it's not gonna happen, have some sense. The ball is over. Just let Cinderella enjoy her last moments, okay?—They're honking because the light is green, Petey.'

Six blocks farther uptown Peter said, 'Okay. I guess I--'

'Overreacted, what else is new? Sweetie, I love you.'

'How much?'

'Infinity.'

'Love you too. Oh God. Infinity.'

Rosemay and Julia were asleep when Echo got home. She hung up the gown she'd worn to John Leland Ransome's show in her small closet, pulled on a sleep shirt and went to the bathroom to pee and brush her teeth. She spent an uncharacteristic amount of time studying her face in the mirror. It wasn't vanity; more as if she were doing an emotional self-portrait. She smiled wryly and shrugged and returned to her bedroom.

There she took down from a couple of shelves of cherished art books a slim over sized volume entitled The Ransome Women She curled up against a bolster on her stu dio bed and turned on a reading lamp spent an absorbed half hour looking over the thirty color plates and pages with areas of detail that illustrated aspects of the artist's technique.

She nodded off about three, then awoke with a start, the book sliding off her lap to the floor. Echo left it there, glanced at a landscape on her easel that she'd been work ing on for several weeks, wondering what John Ransome would think of it. Then she turned off the light and lay faceup in the dark, her rosary gripped unsaid in her fist. Thinking what if what if.

But such a dramatic change in her life was solely in her imagination, or in a parallel universe. And Cinderella was a fairy tale.

FIVE

Peter O'Neill was working the day watch with his partner Ray Scalla, investigating a child-abuse complaint, when he was abruptly pulled off the job and told to report to the Commissioner's Office at One Police Plaza.

It was a breezy, unusually cool day in mid-September. Pete's lieutenant couldn't give him a reason for what was officially described as a 'request.'

'Downtown, huh?' Scalla said. 'Lunch with your old man?'