"Not this alibi," Savard said.

"Not this alibi?" Francie said. "What do you mean?"

Someone rapped at the window of the car. A man in a clerical collar stood outside. Francie opened the door so he could talk to Savard, but it wasn't Savard he wanted.

"Francie Cullingwood?"

"Yes?"

"I wonder if you could help us this morning."

"How?"

"The deceased had a longtime tennis partner from Cleveland." He frowned at a sheet of paper. "I'm not sure which one of these it is. In any case, it was thought that representatives of various aspects of her life might speak briefly at the ceremony. Tennis being one, you see. The problem is that the woman, the tennis partner, is snowed-in in Cleveland. It's been suggested that you might be able to find a few words."

"Ask Nora."

"Ms. Levin? She was the one who gave me your name."

Impossible, out of the question, never. Francie, searching for some polite way to tell the reverend, felt Savard's eyes on her back, on the back of her head, specifically. Impossible, out of the question, never-but how could she say no?

"I'll do it," Francie said, and got out of the car. Savard got out, too, opened the driver's-side door, gave her a little nod over the roof.

Francie sat beside Roger in a pew five or six rows from the front. Roger leaned into her ear. "What was your little colloquium about?"

"I'll tell you later."

Ned, Em, Ned's mother, and a gray-haired man sat in the first row; all Francie could see were the backs of their heads and Ned's arm around Em's shoulder: the family. Do you have any sisters, Francie? Neither do I. I always wanted one. She saw Nora, across the aisle; a few tennis players she knew; forty or fifty other people she didn't know; the reverend, whom she stopped listening to as soon as she realized he'd never met Anne; and the coffin, a fine-grained blond wood coffin, not ornate. After a minute or two, she was looking at nothing, and withdrew into plans for her little speech.

Right away she thought of Swift's Marriage Service from His Chamber Window: Let none but Him who rules the thunder. She remembered exactly how Anne had looked reciting it at Huitres, her face flushed from wine, tennis, emotion. Wonderful wine, Roger. I'll know something to order from now on. From Swift it was a quick jump to Gulliver's Travels, from there to the Brobdingnagians, and there she was, up against two-stories-tall Anne, watching through the windows.

Are you mad at me?

Why would I be mad at you?

The way I played. Will you ever forgive me?

And: You're like a lion-strong, proud, loyal. Francie sat in the pew, hearing nothing, but no longer seeing nothing; she was staring at the coffin, couldn't take her eyes off it. She almost didn't feel Roger poking her arm, then jerked her head up and saw the reverend beckoning her from behind the lectern.

The next thing Francie knew she was the one standing behind it, overlooking the coffin, the eyes of the mourners all on her. I have no right to be here, less right than anyone. That was the truth, the honest beginning, but whom would it serve? Watching eyes and waiting faces. No impatience. They, all of them, had time in common. Faces: the gray-haired man's, same cheekbones, same chin, Anne's father; Em's, the face of the girl on the skateboard-and Francie suddenly understood what made oh garden, my garden work, the tension between the carefree girl and those tumescent grapes, just beginning to rot; Ned's, almost as white as the reverend's collar, except for two spots growing redder on his cheeks. And there was Savard standing at the back. She suddenly wanted to cry out: Let none but Him who rules the thunder. But did not, had nothing prepared; remembered Savard's little nod, started talking.

"I played the best tennis of my life with Anne. It's just a game, I know. But that's what Anne was like. She brought out the best in everyone. There was something about her, I don't know what it was, not to put in words. But I'm going to be thinking about it for a long time. About her. Even in death she'll still have that power, you see. To bring out the best, at least in me, I hope to God."

And what voice was this? Hers, of course, but strange in her ear-unmodulated, unmediated, undirected. Her inner voice. Had she ever heard it aloud before? Yes, once before: out on the ice with Ned, when she'd told him, "Maybe we'd better call this off."

Was there more to say? Just one thing, and Francie said it: "I'm going to miss her."

Then she was sitting beside Roger again, not knowing quite how she got there, left with three memories: Em crying; Nora squeezing her hand from her seat by the aisle; another little nod from Savard at the back, perhaps nodding to himself, not meant for her at all.

"Well done," said Roger.

At the graveyard: fewer people, a hole in the frozen ground, more talk. All familiar: she was in the art business, knew something of funerals. Coffin lowered, symbolic shovelful of dirt thrown in, ancient wordless method for getting the message across, and it did, sounding a wintry rattle on the coffin lid that made Francie flinch. She didn't believe in an afterlife, or God, although she'd just hoped to him in her little speech. And once before, made a deal with him, this time under the ice-a deal on which she'd reneged. Francie felt the cold then, through and through. The wind caught someone's hat, blew it between two gravestones and out of sight.

Ned, Em, and the two grandparents were standing at the gate as Francie and Roger went out. "Thank you both for coming," Ned said.

"So sorry," Roger said.

Anne's father stepped forward, took Francie's hand. "That was so beautiful, what you said. And true-everything about her, going back to when she was a little girl, came into focus for me when you spoke." His eyes filled with tears, but he blinked them away; Francie sensed some inner strength in him that hadn't been passed on. "Will you be coming to the house?"

"Grandpa and I are going to decorate the tree," Em said; she held tight to his hand. "It looks so bare." Or maybe it had been passed on after all, just skipping a generation.

"I . . ." Francie looked at Ned, saw that notch in his forehead above the right eye.

"Yes," he said. "Please do. Some people are stopping in." He turned to his mother. "You called the caterer, didn't you, Mom?"

She nodded. "But don't expect anything elaborate."

"Be that as it may," Roger said, "Francie and I wouldn't dream of intruding at a time like this."

"It wouldn't be an intrusion, would it, Ned?" said Anne's father.

"You could help with the tree," Em said.

Roger smiled down at her. "Perhaps some other-"

"I'd be honored," Francie said. "Why don't you take the car home, Roger? I'll be back later."

Their eyes met; his were cloudy, as though film were whizzing by at high speed, just beneath the surface. "As you wish," he said. "But don't be too too late."

The caterers had laid out a buffet in Ned's dining room: salads, cold cuts, a bar. There were people Francie didn't know, from the radio show, the B.U. psychology department, Cleveland. She poured herself a glass of red wine because she couldn't think of a convincing reason not to, and she needed it, and went into the living room.

The corduroy chair was gone, and in its place stood the tree, Anne's father looping a string of lights around it, Em cross-legged on the floor with a cardboard box of ornaments wrapped in tissue. Francie sat beside her.

"Mom," Em began, choked on the word, went on, "made most of these herself."

Francie wanted to comfort her in some way, to stroke her head, but it wasn't her place. She unwrapped an ornament. "She was a glassblower, too?"

"Oh,yes," said Anne's father. "She learned at summer camp. They said she had a knack for it."

Francie examined the decorations: delicate translucent balls, red, green, gold, and a few of all three colors at once, that changed from one to another as she turned them in her hand; tiny bells with tiny glass clappers that rang with tiny crystal peals; stained-glass saints with alien medieval faces but relaxed, modern poses; oddities, the opposites of gargoyles, she supposed-a dog with a pagoda-roof head, a bicycle with Marlon Brando faces for wheels, a smile made of two glass snakes, one red, one green, and white Chiclets; and a Tower of Pisa, with a robed figure on top. Galileo, but studying him closely, Francie saw that he held not metal balls but a bottle of champagne and a stemmed glass, perfectly formed but no more than a quarter of an inch tall. "These are great," she said.

"Do you think so?" Em said, watching her carefully; so was Anne's father, from a footstool on the other side of the tree.

"Oh, yes." Better than her paintings, much, much better; of another order entirely. "Are there more?"

"Just the angel," Em said. "It lights up from inside."

But it wasn't in the box.

"Maybe it's still in the closet," Em said. "I couldn't reach the top shelf."

"I'll get it," Francie said, rising. "What closet?"

"Upstairs," said Em, "on the left." She gazed down at a glass elephant in her hand, playing its saxophone trunk.

Francie climbed the stairs, opened the first door on her left. Something wrapped in red tissue lay on the top shelf. She took it down, removed the tissue, saw a shining black angel with spun-glass wings and a face that reminded her of Miles Davis. Anne, in death, kept growing in her mind.

Turning to go downstairs, Francie saw the closed door of the master bedroom. Inside hung the portrait of Ned, unless he'd taken it down. She went closer. Why hadn't Ned shown his portrait to Savard? Perhaps he simply hadn't wanted to bother taking it off the wall, carrying it down. Francie knocked on the door. No response. She opened it slightly, looked in. The room was unoccupied and the portrait hung in its place. Francie went in.

Standing at the foot of the bed, she studied the painting, saw what she had seen before-the resemblance, unaccountable in strictly photographic terms, the powerful, dominating pose, the surprising absence of sensuality-but nothing more, nothing that would explain any reluctance to have it examined. Then it struck her that something might be written on the back, some title or dedication. She laid the glass angel on the covers, walked around the bed, leaned over, got her hands on the frame-and heard a moan.

Ned's moan. Francie whirled around, eyes on the closed bathroom door, heard him again. He was there, a few steps away, in quiet agony. Francie took those steps, not to say anything, not to put any pressure on him, just to hold him, to let him know she was there. She knocked quietly on the door.

Silence. Then he said, "Em? Is that you? I'll be down in a minute."

Francie heard agony in his tone, yes, but something else as well, something urgent and furtive that made her try the door. Locked. So she stooped, stooped to a lower level, to look through the keyhole in the old period door in Anne's old period house. Ned was there, but not alone, and she'd misinterpreted the sound she'd heard. Francie's eyes, expert eyes, trained for grasping detail and composition, took it all in, understood for her what her reeling mind could not: the half-clothed embrace, the glossy-haired woman, Chinese-American, leaning back on the sink, Ned curved over her, their faces turned toward the door in listening attitudes. Then Ned's gaze fell toward the keyhole, fastened on it, and slowly went through changes that ended in horror.

"Francie?" Ned said. "Francie?" Through the keyhole, she saw him push himself away from the woman. "Oh my God, Francie, no."

What happened next? Francie didn't know, only knew she was somehow bolting down the stairs, free-falling, not even in contact with them, the glass angel in her hand. There was Em, still on the floor, going through the ornaments.

"Here you are, sweetheart," Francie said, and gave her the angel. Then came a pause, in which neither of them seemed to breathe, and Francie took the liberty of touching Em's head; her hand did so, really, and she didn't stop it.

Then she was in the hall, getting her coat, walking out of the house, leaving.Walking fast, fast, fast. She could tell how cold it must have been from the hard bright snow on the ground and the icy sky and the whining wind, but she didn't feel it at all. She was burning up. Walking, walking, walking: Francie walked and walked, but couldn't escape the burning, and finally there was nowhere to go but home.

34.

What a house Roger had! Whitey explored it from top to bottom. He'd been inside the cottages of the rich, the second homes, but never seen anything like this. The furniture, the rugs, the stuff! Even this sculpture or whatever it was on the bookcase in the living room, made of some material he'd never seen, maybe a rare stone or mineral, so smooth.What was it worth? Whitey picked up the sculpture-heavy, but not as heavy as it looked, maybe not so valuable after all-turned it in his hands: a strange, curved thing that reminded him of tits from one angle, ass from another. At that moment a phone rang, nearby and loud, startling him. He dropped the goddamn thing; it fell on the gleaming hardwood floor, just missing the edge of the thick carpet, and smashed in pieces. The noise was shattering; in the midst of it, he heard a voice, spun around, saw no one.

"Francie? Nora. I was going to swing by and ride out with you. Guess you've already left. See you there. God, I hate funerals, this one especially." Beep.

Beep. Just an answering machine.Whitey told himself to stay cool. He said it out loud. "Stay cool." Cool like ice, like snow. He glanced down at the remains of the sculpture. The cool thing, the smart thing, would be to leave no trace, right? In case some illegal act was going to happen, say. He went into the kitchen-what a kitchen! like there was a restaurant on the other side of the door-found broom and dustpan, swept up the mess, dumped it into a trash bin under the sink. Cool.

Beep. He jumped. The fucking thing had beeped again. Whitey returned to the living room, stared at the red light blinking on the phone. He wasn't sure which button turned it off; maybe better, cooler, to forget about it, leave no trace. But what about the jumpiness? He went to the cabinet beside the tall plant in the corner, a waist-high cabinet with a silver tray on top bearing bottles-Scotch, vodka, gin, all fancy brands. He tried the vodka, not that he liked vodka particularly, but because they said it had no smell: leave no trace. He was getting very smart, and it went down nice like that, surprisingly nice, warm from the bottle. Beep. He took another, just a tich, as Ma used to say back in her drinking days, before this religious shit. Didn't matter-he had no plans to see her again.

What were his plans, anyway? Exactly, like?

Mulling that question, Whitey opened the cabinet, just to have something to do while he thought. There were photograph albums inside. He leafed through one, saw Roger, a much younger Roger, in tennis whites, his arm around a beautiful woman, the woman he'd seen in his car, the superSue Savard. She wore a little tennis skirt. What a body! What was her name? He'd just heard it on the answering machine. Francie. He searched the albums for more pictures of Francie, preferably nude, but there was nothing like that. Roger and Francie smiling on a chairlift, Roger saying something to Francie on a sail-boat, Roger reading a menu at an outdoor cafe, Francie staring into the camera.

Beep.

Most of the pictures were dated underneath, none more recent than ten years ago. The last album, the most recent, petered out in the middle with two last pictures: Roger, Francie, and a big woman, standing on a tennis court, the two women laughing, Roger watching them; and Francie and another woman, both in bathing suits, sitting on a floating dock. They both had nice bodies, Francie's better-bigger tits, for starters-but the bathing suits weren't as revealing as some, and Whitey was about to close the book, when he realized there was something odd about that last picture. He studied it carefully, especially the wooden house behind the trees in the background, and then he recognized it-the cottage out on the island in the middle of the river. What did this mean? It had to mean something. Whitey didn't know. He peeled the photograph off the page and stuck it in his pocket.

Beep.

Whitey helped himself to another tich of vodka, more than a tich. It had to mean something. He went into the kitchen and opened the fridge, looking for chocolate milk. There was none, but he found a jar of peanut butter, scooped some out with his fingers, ate it. He wandered to the desk in the little alcove, glanced at the mail on top, opened a drawer, saw a twenty-dollar bill, pocketed that, too. Under it lay a newsletter from some tennis club. CULLINGWOOD-FRANKLIN TO VIE FOR DOUBLES CROWN, he read, a headline followed by a brief article summarizing tennis matches, and two photographs, one of Francie, the other of . . . could it be? Yes. How could he forget that face, face of the woman who'd tried to kill him? Meaning? Meaning that there were-what was the word? Connections. Had to mean something. What? Whitey couldn't take the next step, but the buzzing had already started, deep inside his head.

Beep.

Tich.

He didn't feel his strongest, because of what she'd done to him, and that might be bad. He ate more peanut butter from the jar to give him strength. What next? What next? There was still the basement. He found the stairs and went down.

Nice and dark, the only light coming from narrow windows at the top of the wall, at street level. He could see well enough, was in a laundry room: washer, dryer, clothes hanging on a line. Bra and panties, for instance, which he felt as he went by. He opened a door, entered a large room, darker than the first; here the street-level windows were covered with black paper, and the only light came from a glowing computer screen. Computer, printer, desk, file cabinets: an office, Roger's home office, where he worked late into the night, making all his money. Maybe he took little naps on that couch with the sleeping bag on top, or maybe that woman of his, Francie, sometimes came down for a quick one.

Beep. Very faint now, but he heard it; his senses were keen. That would explain in some way why darkness was his friend, but in what way, exactly, he didn't know.

Whitey sat at the desk, looked at the computer screen. On one side was a crossword puzzle. He checked two or three clues, had no idea. On the other side of the screen he saw a heading-Puzzletalk-and under it lines of print scrolled slowly by, a conversation of some sort. Was this one of those chat rooms, where, according to Rey, at least, you could pick up girls or download porn? He scanned it quickly, saw it had nothing to do with sex, but-what was this? Rimsky? His eyes flashed up to the top, catching a line as it disappeared from view.

criminals?

>BOOBOO: Oh, please, not capital punishment again!!!

>FLYBOY: Yeah, we know how you like to fry 'em up on a daily basis down there in Fla. but give it a REST.

>RIMSKY: This is why Rome fell. The barbarian's inside your walls and you don't even know it.

>BOOBOO: ???.

>RIMSKY: Member that guy I was telling you about? Whitey Truax?

>BOOBOO: ???.

>FLYBOY: Who gives a?

>MODERATOR: I remember.

>RIMSKY: First chance he got he jumped parole killed two more people, one of them his mother. Not a deterrent, kiddies?????

The buzzing grew louder. Whitey tried to read on, but the words had stopped scrolling; the response, if any, was off the screen, and he didn't know how to make it appear. One of them his mother? Impossible-he'd hardly even tapped her; picked her up, dusted her off. She'd been fine when he left. Rimsky had it wrong. And he could prove it, prove the asshole wrong, just by calling her on the phone.

Whitey picked up Roger's phone and dialed her number. It was answered on the first ring.