'But we're not there, she and I.'
'And there's the small sign you mentioned on one of the stores with the funny word on it, the Indian word or whatever, and in a way the whole picture, the wide sky and wide street, everything so lonely and eloquent and commonplace at the same time, it all flows into the strange word on that sign.'
'I remember now. Ha-Hush-Kah. A Bill Gray touch. It's a Bill Gray place. It really is.'
They drove on these same roads finally, going the other way of course, and she asked questions about Bill. Scott realized this was the first time she'd said more than ten words about anything outside herself. He didn't know whether Bill would let her stay.
It turned out the subject never came up in so many words. They walked in and talked to Bill about the trip and he seemed to take to Karen. His eyes showed a detached amusement that meant there are some things that just have to happen before we know how smart or dumb they are.
After she read Bill's novels she moved from the old sofa into Scott's bed and it felt to him as though she'd been there always.
Bill lay smoking in bed, the ashtray resting on his chest. Every time he did this he thought of old rummies in single-residence brownstones expiring in the slow smoke of mattress fires.
Karen came in wearing her briefs and an oversized T-shirt.
'Feeling any better, Mr. Bill?'
She climbed on the bed, straddling Bill near the midsection, her upper body vertical, hands on her thighs.
Light folding in from the hallway.
'Want to put the cigarette away and smoke some of Scott's marijuana? Might help you sleep if you're still upset.'
'I don't think I'm ready to sleep just yet.'
'I never took to dope for some strange finicky whatever reason.'
'It gives me heart-attack dreams.'
'Scott uses it mainly to settle him down when he works late on manuscripts or files.'
'The operational direction right now is up, not down.'
She bounced a little, making him groan, then sat back on her haunches.
'He says you are familiar with a number of substances that alter the biochemistry.'
'These are regulated medications. A doctor writes a prescription. All perfectly statutory.'
'I definitely feel a stirring under the covers.'
'Did I ever tell you what my first wife?'
'Don't think so. What?'
'She used to say I was all dick. I spent so much time locked up and was so tight-lipped about my work and eventually about everything else that there was nothing left but raw sex. And we didn't talk about that either.'
'Just did it.'
'She didn't like writers. I realized this, stupidly, way too late.'
'If you were stupid, what was she? Marrying a writer.'
'She expected us to adapt to each other. Women have faith in the mechanics of adjustment. A woman knows how to want something. She'll take chances to secure the future.'
'I never think about the future.'
'You come from the future,' he said quietly.
She took his cigarette and stubbed it out and then put the ashtray on the floor, sliding it toward the foot of the bed.
'What's a heart-attack dream?'
'Panic. Rapid heartbeat. Then I wake up and I'm not sure if the heartbeat was dreamed or real. Not that dreamed isn't real.'
'Everything is real.'
She shook easily out of the T-shirt, arms unfolding full-length above her head, and Bill almost turned away. Every time she did this, breasts and hair swinging, he felt the shock of seeing something full-measure, almost lost in the force of it. He advanced the action in time to give it stillness and coherence, make it a memory of shape and grace caught unaware. She wouldn't ever know how deep-reaching that painted moment was when her elbows scissored out and she slipped free of the furled shirt and stretched to a figured yawn, making him forget where he was.
'I know it's bad form to ask.'
'But what?' she said.
'Does Scott know you come up here?'
They were working him out of his pajama top, one arm at a time, then had to stop while he had a coughing fit.
'Is there anything in this house Scott doesn't know?'
'That's what I thought,' he said.
'The mice are his friends. He knows which window gets the best moonlight on any given night on the lunar calendar.'
She changed position to lower the bedcovers and undo the drawstring on his pants.
'And it's okay with him,' Bill said.
'I don't see what choice. I mean he hasn't shot us yet.'
'No, he hasn't.'
'And he wouldn't.'
'No, he wouldn't, would he?'
'And anyway and anyway and anyway. Didn't he bring me here for you?'
Bill could find no cheery features in this thought. He wanted to believe she'd just found the words tumbling on her tongue, which was how she hit upon much of what she said. But maybe she thought it was true and maybe it was and how interesting for Bill to imagine that he was betraying Scott all along by the other man's design.
His cock was dancing in her hand.
'I think we ought to have our intercourse now.'
'Yes, dear,' said Bill.
She went to the chest across the room and took a small package out of the middle drawer. She removed a condom and came back to the bed, straddling Bill's thighs, and began to outfit him with the device.
'Who are you protecting, you or me?'
'It's just the norm today.'
He saw how absorbed she was in the task, dainty-fingered and determined to be expert, like a solemn child dressing a doll.
Scott stood looking around the loft apartment. Columns extended the length of the room. There was a broad plastic sheet slung under the leaky skylight. Brita walked around switching on lights. A small kitchen and dining area and a half-hidden recess of files and shelves. He followed along behind her, turning two lights off. A sofa and some chairs in a cluster. Then a darkroom and printing room with black curtains over the doors. Out the south windows the Trade towers stood cut against the night, intensely massed and near. This is the word 'loomed' in all its prolonged and impending force.
'I will make tea for the travelers.'
'Now I finally feel I've seen New York inside and out, just standing here in this space and looking through the window.'
'When it rains out, it also rains in.'
'Brita, despite whatever inconvenience.'
'It's small as these places go. But I can't afford it anymore. And I have to look at the million-storey towers.'
'One has an antenna.'
'The male.'
'Tea is perfect, thank you.'
In the kitchen she took things out of cabinets and drawers, an object at a time, feeling as though she'd been away for a month, six weeks, a sense of home folding over her now. These cups and spoons made her feel intact
