sitcom. The public confused actors and politicians with the roles they

  played. A mystery writer was supposed to be not merely like a character

  in one of his books but like the cartoonish archetype of the most common

  character in the entire genre. And year by troubled year, fewer people

  were able to think clearly about important issues or separate fantasy

  from reality.

  Marty had been determined not to contribute to that sickness, but he had

  been suckered. Now he was fixed in the public mind as Martin

  Stillwater, creepy and mysterious author of creepy murder mysteries,

  preoccupied with the dark side of life, as brooding and strange as any

  of the characters about whom he wrote.

  Sooner or later a disturbed citizen, having confused Marty's

  manipulation of fictional people in novels for the manipulation of

  actual people in real life, would arrive at his house in an old van

  decorated with signs accusing him of having killed John Lennon, John

  Kennedy, Rick Nelson, and God-alone-knew-who-else, even though he was an

  infant when Lee Harvey Oswald pulled the trigger on Kennedy (or when

  seventeen thousand and thirty-seven homosexual conspirators pulled the

  trigger, if you believed Oliver Stone's movie).

  Something similar had happened to Stephen King, hadn't it? And Salman

  Rushdie had sure experienced a few years as suspenseful as any endured

  by a character in a Robert Ludlum extravaganza.

  Chagrined by the bizarre image the magazine had given him, flushed with

  embarrassment, Marty surveyed the parking lot to be sure no one was

  watching him as he read about himself. A couple of people were going to

  and from their cars, but they were paying no attention to him.

  Clouds had crept into the previously sunny day. The wind spun dead

  leaves into a miniature tornado that danced across an empty expanse of

  blacktop.

  He read the article, punctuating it with sighs and mutters. Although it

  contained a few minor errors, the text was generally factual.

  But the spin on it matched the photographs. Spooky old Marty

  Stillwater. What a dour and gloomy guy. Sees a criminal's wicked grin

  behind every smile. Works in a dimly lighted office, almost dark, and

  says he's just trying to reduce the glare on the computer screen (wink,

  wink).

  His refusal to allow Charlotte and Emily to be photographed, based upon

  a desire to protect their privacy and to guard against their being

  teased by schoolmates, was interpreted as a fear of kidnappers lurking

  under every bush. After all, he had written a novel about a kidnapping

  a few years ago.

  Paige, "as pretty and cerebral as a Martin Stillwater heroine," was said

  to be a "psychologist whose own job requires her to probe into the

  darkest secrets of her patients," as if she was engaged not in the

  counseling of children troubled by their parents' divorces or the death

  of a loved one but in the deep analysis of the era's most savage serial

  killers.

  "Spooky old Paige Stillwater," he said aloud. "Well, why else would she

  have married me if she wasn't already a little weird?"

  He told himself he was over-reacting.

  Closing the magazine, he said, "Thank God I didn't let the girls

  participate. They'd have come out of it looking like the children in

  "The Addams Family."

  " Again he told himself that he was over-reacting, but his mood didn't

  improve. He felt violated, trivialized, and the fact that he was

  talking aloud to himself seemed, annoyingly, to validate his new

  national reputation as an amusing eccentric.

  He twisted the key in the ignition, started the engine.

  As he drove across the parking lot toward the busy street, Marty was

  troubled by the feeling that his life had taken more than merely a

  temporary turn for the worse with the fugue on Saturday, that the

  magazine article was yet another signpost on this new dark route, and

  that he would travel a long distance on rough pavement before

  rediscovering the smooth highway that he had lost.

  A whirlwind of leaves burst over the car, startling him. The dry

  foliage rasped across the hood and roof, like the claws of a beast

  determined to get inside.

  Hunger overcomes him. He has not slept since Friday night, has driven

  across half the country at high speed, in bad weather more than not, and

  has experienced an exciting and emotional hour and a half in the

  Stillwater house, confronting his destiny. His stores of energy are

  depleted. He is shaky and weak-kneed.

  In the kitchen he raids the refrigerator, piling food on the oak

  breakfast table. He consumes several slices of Swiss cheese, half a

  loaf of bread, a few pickles, the better part of a pound of bacon,

  mixing it all together without actually bothering to make sandwiches, a

  bite of this and a bite of that, chewing the bacon raw because he

  doesn't want to waste time cooking it, eating fast and with

  single-minded fixation on the feast, ravenous, oblivious of manners,

  urgently washing down everything with big swallows of cold beer that

  foams over his chin. There is so much he wants to do before his wife

  and kids return home, and he doesn't know quite when to expect them.

  The fatty meat is cloying, so periodically he dips into a wide-mouth jar

  of mayonnaise and scoops out thick wads of the stuff, sucking it off his

  fingers to lubricate a mouthful of food that he finds hard to swallow

  even with the aid of another bottle of Corona. He concludes his meal

  with two thick slices of chocolate cake, washing those down with beer as

  well, whereafter he hastily cleans up the mess with paper towels and

  washes his hands at the sink.

  He is revitalized.

  With the silver-framed photograph in hand, he returns to the second

  floor, taking the stairs two at a time. He proceeds to the master

  bedroom, where he clicks on both nightstand lamps.

  For a while he stares at the king-size bed, excited by the prospect of

  having sex with Paige. Making love. When it is done with someone for

  whom you truly care, it is called "making love."

  He truly cares for her.

  He must care.

  After all, she is his wife.

  He knows that her face is good, excellent, with a full mouth and fine

  bone structure and laughing eyes, but he can't tell much about her body

  from the photograph. He imagines that her breasts are full, belly flat,

  legs long and shapely, and he is eager to lie with her, deep inside of

  her.

  At the dresser, he opens drawers until he finds her lingerie.

  He caresses a half-slip, the smooth cups of a brassiere, a lace-trimmed

  camisole. He removes a pair of silky panties from the drawer and rubs

  his face with them, breathing deeply while repeatedly whispering her

  name.

  Making love will be unimaginably different from the sweaty sex he has

  known with sluts picked up in bars, because those experiences have

  always left him feeling empty, alienated, frustrated that his desperate

  need for true intimacy is unfulfilled. Frustration fosters anger, anger

  leads to hatred, hat
red generates violence--and violence sometimes

  soothes. But that pattern will not apply when he makes love to Paige,

  for he belongs in her arms as he has belonged in no others.

  With her, his need will be satisfied every bit as much as will his

  desire. Together, they will achieve a union beyond anything he can

  imagine, perfect oneness, bliss, spiritual as well as physical

  consummation, all of which he has seen in countless movies, bodies

  bathed in golden light, ecstasy, a fierce intensity of pleasure possible

  only in the presence of love. Afterward, he will not have to kill her

  because then they will be as one, two hearts beating in harmony, no

  reason for killing anyone, transcendent, all needs gloriously satisfied.

  The prospect of romance leaves him almost breathless.

  "I will make you so happy, Paige," he promises her picture.

  Realizing he hasn't bathed since Saturday, wanting to be clean for her,

  he returns her silken panties to the stack from which he had plucked

  them, closes the dresser drawer, and goes into his bathroom to shower.

  He strips out of the clothes he took from the motorhome closet of the

  white-haired retiree, Jack, in Oklahoma on Sunday, hardly twenty-four

  hours ago. After wadding each garment into a tight ball, he stuffs it

  into a brass wastebasket.

  The shower stall is spacious, and the water is wonderfully hot.

  He works up a heavy lather with the bar of soap, and soon the clouds of

  steam are laden with an almost intoxicating floral aroma.

  After drying off on a yellow towel, he searches bathroom drawers until

  he finds his toiletries. He uses a roll-on deodorant and then combs his

  wet hair straight back from his forehead to let it dry naturally.

  He shaves with an electric razor, splashes on some limescented cologne,

  and brushes his teeth.

  He feels like a new man.

  In his half of the large walk-in closet, he selects a pair of cotton

  briefs, blue jeans, a blue-and-black-checkered flannel shirt, athletic

  socks, and a pair of Nikes. Everything fits perfectly.

  It feels so good to be home.

  Paige stood at one of the windows and watched the gray clouds roll in

  from the west, driven by a Pacific wind. As they came, the earth below

  them darkened, and sun-mantled buildings put on cloaks of shadows.

  The inner sanctum of her three-room, sixth-floor office suite had two

  large panes of glass that provided an uninspiring view of a freeway, a

  shopping center, and the jammed-together roofs of housing tracts that

  receded across Orange County apparently to infinity.

  She would have enjoyed a panoramic ocean vista or a window on a lushly

  planted courtyard, but that would have meant higher rent, which had been

  out of the question during the early years of Marty's writing career

  when she'd been their primary breadwinner.

  Now, in spite of his growing success and impressive income, obligating

  herself to a pricier lease at a new location was still imprudent.

  Even a prospering literary career was an uncertain living.

  The owner of a fresh-produce store, when ill, had employees who would

  continue to sell oranges and apples in his absence, but if Marty became

  ill, the entire enterprise screeched to a halt.

  And Marty was ill. Perhaps seriously.

  No, she wouldn't think about that. They knew nothing for sure.

  It was more like the old Paige, the pre-Marty Paige, to worry about mere

  possibilities instead of about only what was already fact.

  Appreciate the moment, Marty would tell her. He was a born therapist.

  Sometimes she thought she'd learned more from him than from the courses

  she had taken to earn her doctorate in psychology.

  Appreciate the moment.

  In truth the constant bustle of the scene beyond the window was

  invigorating. And whereas she had once been so predisposed to gloom

  that bad weather could negatively affect her mood, all of these years

  with Marty and his usually unshakable good cheer had made it possible

  for her to see the somber beauty in an oncoming storm.

  She had been born and raised in a loveless house as grim and cold as any

  arctic cavern. But those days were far behind her, and the effect of

  them had long ago diminished.

  Appreciate the moment.

  Checking her watch, she pulled the drapes shut because the mood of her

  next two clients was not likely to be immune to the influence of gray

  weather.

  When the windows were covered, the place was as cozy as any parlor in a

  private home. Her desk, books, and files were in the third office,

  rarely seen by those she counseled. She always met with them in this

  more welcoming room. The floral-pattern sofa with its variety of throw

  pillows lent a lot of charm, and each of three plushly upholstered

  armchairs was commodious enough to permit young guests to curl up

  entirely on the seat with their legs tucked under them if they wished.

  Celadon lamps with fringed silk shades cast a warm light that glimmered

  in the bibelots on the end tables and in the glazes of Lladro porcelain

  figurines in the mahogany breakfront.

  Paige usually offered hot chocolate and cookies, or pretzels with a cold

  glass of cola, and conversation was facilitated because the overall

  effect was like being at Grandma's house. At least it was how Grandma's

  house had been in the days when no grandma ever underwent plastic

  surgery, had herself reconfigured by liposuction, divorced Grandpa to

  Vegas with her boyfriend for the weekend.

  Most clients, on their first visit, were astonished not to find the

  collected works of Freud, a therapy couch, and the too-solemn atmosphere

  of a psychiatrist's office. Even when she reminded them that she was

  not a psychiatrist, not a medical doctor at all, but a counselor with a

  degree in psychology who saw "clients" rather than "patients," people

  with communication problems rather than neuroses or psychoses, they

  remained bewildered for the first half an hour or so.

  Eventually the room--and, she liked to think, her relaxed approach--won

  them over.

  Paige's two o'clock appointment, the last of the day, was with Samantha

  Acheson and her eight-year-old son, Sean. Samantha's first husband,

  Sean's father, had died shortly after the boy's fifth birthday.

  Two and a half years later, Samantha remarried, and Sean's behavioral

  problems began virtually on the wedding day, an obvious result of his

  misguided conviction that she had betrayed his dead father and might one

  day betray him as well. For five months, Paige had met twice a week

  with the boy, winning his trust, opening lines of communication, so they

  could discuss the pain and fear and anger he was unable to talk about

  with his mother. Today, Samantha was to participate for the first time,

  which was an important step because progress was usually swift once the

  child was ready to say to the parent what he had said to his counselor.

  She sat in the armchair she reserved for herself and reached to the end

  table for the reproduction-antique telephone, which was both a working

  phone and an intercom to the reception lounge. She intended
to ask

  Millie, her secretary, to send in Samantha and Sean Acheson, but the

  intercom buzzed before she lifted the receiver.

  "Marty's on line one, Paige."

  "Thank you, Millie." She pressed line one. "Marty?"

  He didn't respond.

  "Marty, are you there?" she asked, looking to see if she had punched

  the correct button.

  Line one was lit, but there was only silence on it.

  "Marty?"

  "I like the sound of your voice, Paige. So melodic."

  He sounded . . . odd.

  Her heart began to knock against her. ribs, and she struggled to

  suppress the fear that swelled in her. "What did the doctor say?"

  "I like your picture."

  "My picture?" she said, baffled.

  "I like your hair, your eyes."

  "Marty, I don't--"

  "You're what I need."

  Her mouth had gone dry. "Is something wrong?"

  Suddenly he spoke very fast, running sentences together, "I want to kiss

  you, Paige, kiss your breasts, hold you against me, make love to you, I

  will make you very happy, I want to be in you, it will be just like the

  movies, bliss."

  "Marty, honey, what--" He hung up, cutting her off.

  As surprised and confused as she was worried, Paige listened to the dial

  tone before returning the handset to the cradle.