in a cocoon of blankets. She jerked violently-
'Easy,' Peter said. He was sitting beside her on the sick bay rack, holding her hand.
'Where are we?'
'Coming in, I guess. You okay?'
She licked her chapped lips. 'I think so. Peter, are we in trouble?'
'No. I mean, there's gonna be a hell of an inquiry. We'll take what comes and say what is. Want coffee?'
'No. Just want to sleep.'
'Echo, I have to know—'
'Can't talk now,' she protested wanly
'Maybe we should. Get it out of the way, you know? Just say what is. Either way, I promise I can deal with it.'
She blinked, looked at him with ghostly eyes, raised her other hand to gently touch his face.
'I posed for him—well, you saw the work Taja took a knife to.'
'Yeah.'
She took a deep breath. Peter was like stone.
'I didn't sleep with him, Peter.'
After a few moments he shrugged. 'Okay.'
'But—no—I want to tell you all of it. Peter, I was getting ready to. Another couple of days, a week—it would've happened.'
'Oh, Jesus.'
'I just needed to be with him. But I didn't love him. It's something I—I don't think I'll ever understand about myself. I'm sorry.'
Peter shook his head, perplexed, dismayed. She waited tensely for the anger. Instead he put his arms around her.
'You don't have to be sorry. I know what he was. And I know what I saw—in the eyes of those other women. I don't see it in your eyes.' He kissed her. 'He's gone. And that's all I care about.'
A second kiss, and her glum face lost its anxiety, she began to lighten up.
'I do love you. Infinity.'
'Infinity,' he repeated solemnly. 'Echo?'
'Yes?'
'I looked at a sublet before I left the city a few days ago. Fully furnished loft in Williamsburg. Probably still available. Fifteen hundred a month. We can move in by Christmas.'
'Hey. Fifteen? We can swing that.' She smiled slightly, teasing. 'Live in sin for a little while, that what you mean?'
'Just live,' he said.
On a Sunday in mid-April, four weeks before their wedding, Peter and Echo, enjoying each other's company and one of life's minor enchantments, which was to laze with no purpose, heard the elevator in their building start up.
'Company?' Peter said. He was watching the Knicks on TV.
'Mom and Julia aren't coming until four,' Echo said. She was doing tai chi exercises on a floor mat, barefoot, wearing only gym shorts. The weather in Brooklyn was unseasonably warm.
'Then it's nobody,' Peter said. 'But maybe you should pull on a top anyhow.'
He walked across the painted floor of the loft they shared and watched the elevator rising toward them.
In the dimness of the shaft he couldn't make out anyone in the cage.
When it stopped he pulled up the gate and looked inside. A wrapped package leaned against one side of the elevator. About three feet by five. Brown paper, tape, twine.
'Hey, Echo?'
She wriggled into a halter top and came over to look. Her lips parted in astonishment.
'It's a painting. Omigod!'
'What?'
'Get it! Open it!'
Peter lugged the wrapped painting, which seemed to be framed, to the table in their kitchen. Echo followed with scissors and cut the twine.
'But it can't be! There's no way—! No, be careful, let me do this!'
She removed the thick paper and laid the painting flat on the table.
'Oh no,' Peter groaned. 'I don't believe this. He's back.'
