Italian, or so he believes, like one you might find on Sicilia or Sardegna, with ornate drawer pulls and paintings on the sides and top.

"C'ho un mal raffredore," she says, telling him she has a bad cold, and then gently warning him not to come near her, "Non ti avvicinare."

Irina the cat is lying at the foot of the bed. She is a fat grey and black and white animal. She blinks up at Lorenzo as he comes into the room, and then catches the scent of the fresh fish wrapped in white paper, and is suddenly all uptight ears and flashing green eyes and twitching nose. Like a jungle beast, Lorenzo thinks.

Svetlana asks if he would mind feeding Irina one of the fish. He needn't do anything but put it in Irina's bowl under the sink; Irina eats everything but the spine and the hard part of the jaw. Lorenzo goes out to the kitchen, unwraps the fish while the cat rubs against his leg. There is something about cats that makes him enormously uncomfortable. He never knows what a cat is thinking. He never knows whether a cat is going to lick his hand or spring for his throat. He puts the raw fish in the cat's bowl and backs away at once.

When he comes back into the bedroom, Svetlana asks him to sit for a moment, please, there is something she would like to discuss with him.

He takes a chair near the dresser. Across the room, he can see into an open closet where old but stylish clothes, tattered and frayed, are hanging on silk-covered hangers the color of Svetlana's robe. She coughs, takes a Kleenex from a box beside the bed, blows her nose, and then says, "Lorenzo, voglio che to mi ammazi."

"Lorenzo, I want you to kill me."

He does not at first know how to react to this. Is this some sort of Russian joke? If so, Slavs have a very peculiar sense of humor. But is he supposed to laugh? No, she seems quite serious. She wants him to kill her She would do it herself, she says, but she doesn't have the nerve. Besides, how does a person kill herself if she doesn't own a gun? Does she jump off the roof?. Or turn on the gas? Or slit her wrists with ':-3,' a razor or a knife? Or hang herself from the closet pole?

No, all these seem too horrible even to contemplate. A gun swift and sure, but where would she get a gun? Does Lorenzo know where to get a gun? And if he can get one, would he be so kind as to shoot her? She is not smiling. This is no joke.

In the kitchen, he can hear the cat demolishing fish Lorenzo put in her bowl. The sounds are obscene. Cats are too much like wild animals.

One step backward and they would be in the jungle again, hunting.

Svetlana goes on to explain that she has been to see a neurologist who diagnosed a benign tumor on the nerve in her left auditory canal.

Unless this is removed surgically, she will go completely deaf in that ear. But the chances of... "Well, then of course you must..."

"No," she says, "you don't understand. Even if I elect surgery.."

this is what they say, Lorenzo, as if I would be electing a president, elect surgery, can you imagine? Even if I were to choose surgery, agree to surgery, even then..."

She shakes her head.

"I've waited too long, Lorenzo. The tumor is very large, they may not be able to save my hearing. The larger the tumor, the smaller the chance, is what he told me. The doctor. And with . ." with anything larger than three centimeters in diameter . ." with any tumor larger than that..."

And here she begins weeping.

"They might not.." be... be able to save my facial nerves, either. Is what he told me. The doctor." Lorenzo stands helplessly beside the bed.

"So what's the use? My hands are already dead, I can't play anymore.

Should I now choose to live without being able to hear? Without being able to express feeling on my face? Whenever I played, my hands and my face said all there was to say. Do you know what they called me? A tornado. A tornado from the Steppes. A wild tornado. My face and my hands. A tornado."

Sobbing bitterly, the words coming out brokenly... "What's left for me, Lorenzo? What? Why should I choose to live? Please help me."

Her hands covering her face, crying into them. "Please," she begs.

"Kill me. Please." He tells her this is absurd.

He tells her that in' any case, however slender the chances of success, she must undertake surgery, of course she must. Besides, a person shouldn't make

decisions when she isn't feeling right, she's sick just now .. .

"See how pale you look!" she'll feel different about all this when her cold is gone. But she keeps shaking her head as he talks, no, no, no, insisting that she's given this a great deal of thought, truly, and he would really be doing her an enormous service if he would only get a gun and kill her. "You're serious," he says. "I'm serious."

"Svetlana," he says, "no." "Why not?"

"Because we're friends. You're my friend, Svetlana."

"Then kill me," she says.

"No."

"Please, Lorenzo. Kill me. Take me out of my misery. Help me.

Please!"

"NO".

"Please."

"NO".

I'll pay you."

"No."

"I'll pay you ten thousand dollars."

"NO.".

"Twenty thousand."

"No."

"Lorenzo, please. Please."

"No Svetlana. I'm sorry no."

"Twenty-five. To kill me and to take care of Irina afterward. Take her home with you, feed her, care for her."

"I can't. I won't."

"I would pay you more, but..."

"No, Svetlana. Please. Never. Not even for a million. Never.

Please."

But that is before he loses the money to Bernie the Banker.

What Bernie is telling him, if he correctly under stands his very rapid English, is that he is going to kill Lorenzo unless he comes up with the money he owes by Sunday morning. Bernie is a Jew, he supposes, but he is beginning to sound very Italian with all this talk about swimming with the little fishes, very Italian indeed. Lorenzo has dealt with enough bookmakers, both Italian and American, to know that very often they won't necessarily kill you because then they will never get the money you owe them. On the other hand, having your legs broken or an eye put out is not a very cheerful prospect, either. He listens quite solemnly to what the little bookie is telling him, never doubting for a moment that Bernie himself or someone Bernie knows will hurt him very badly if he doesn't come up with the twenty thousand dollars he bet on those fucking Steelers, what are Steelers anyway, people who steal? The English language is sometimes mystifying to him, but he sure as hell understands what Bernie is telling him now. Bernie is saying "Pay me by Sunday morning, my friend, or you may have cause to be very sorry."

Is what B.ernie is saying.

Which is when he calls Svetlana to say that if she still wants him to do what she proposed earlier this month... "Yes," she says at once.

"Then I'm ready to do it," he whispers into the phone.

"When?" she whispers.