The woman rested her head against the door frame, a buzzard eyeing the final moments of dying roadkill. She said, "You're at the right address." She spoke in English, the accent a clear, unmistakable Boston tw.a.n.g.

Her face was a mere strip of white behind the silken armor, her eyes blue b.a.l.l.s of fire. Another c.o.c.k-hungry American wh.o.r.e. I knew her type. But what was the deal with the sheet?

"Your name Pitt?"

She laughed. "No, silly."

"Well then." I stepped backward down the stairs.

"My husband's name is, though."

I lost my footing, banged my knee. "You're Pitt's wife?"

She shifted in the doorway. The silk stretched tight across her body. Was she wearing any clothing underneath?

"You with the company?" she asked. Her eyes darting below my belt.

"Yes," I said. "I mean no. That is, I'm a friend of Pitt's. I need to find him." d.a.m.n. That came out kinda lame. You got a horsie, act like it for chrissakes.

She c.o.c.ked those b.a.l.l.s of fire sideways, as though taking aim with a shotgun. "Since when did Pitt have friends?"

I lifted my eyebrows in self-defense. "Since when did Pitt have a wife?"

A child's voice broke the spell. "Who is it, Mommy?"

She shouted over her shoulder, "Friend of Daddy's!"

"But Daddy doesn't have any friends!"

She held out a hand, exposing a slender wrist. I snorted at the sight, a bull aroused by a moving cape. The hand was soft, and the touch of her skin sent a jolt of fire to my groin. Resisting this woman was going to be tough.

She squeezed my fingers. "Janine. Janine Watters."

"Horse."

"What, like the animal?"

"It's Horace, actually. But people call me Horse. As in hung like a."

"Are you really?" she asked, her voice a throaty purr.

"You're nice to me, you might find out."

She laughed. "You better come in."

As I walked past, she pressed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s against my arm. They quivered, nipples like pebbles under the thin silk.

Toy with her, I told myself, ignoring the bulge in my pants. That's all. You don't need to add "cheating on your best friend's wife" to your list of sins. Of course, he wasn't my best friend anymore. And f.u.c.king his mother wasn't exactly high on the list of n.o.ble activities. c.r.a.p. I adjusted myself as subtly as I could. Which for me was difficult.

I stepped into the main room of the house, a large atrium. Unlike the mortuary facade, the interior overflowed with life: primeval ferns hung from hooks along the walls, dripping their damp and steamy essence on the tile floor. The walls of the house were clad in teak. A pyramid skylight caught the weak sun. Mirrors of varying shapes and sizes hung from impossible angles, scattering light into the far corners of the building. The second and third floors loomed above me, balconies encircling the s.p.a.ce below.

"Your fly is open, by the way."

"Is it?" She caught me off guard. I yanked at my zipper. I must have forgotten to close it after talking to the albino receptionist.

She padded barefoot ahead of me. "Don't want your horsie popping out now, do we?"

A long table stretched down the center of the atrium. Beneath it, three young children played with an orange tabby. An infant cried in a nearby crib. The newfound agony of its existence shattered in mournful echoes against the wood-paneled walls.

"Pieu, pieu, pieu! You're dead!"

The oldest child, a pretty black boy of six or seven, had discovered me, and was a.s.sa.s.sinating me with a Lego automatic.

I nodded. "Sometimes I wish I was."

"Were."

"I'm sorry?"

"Sometimes you wish you were. Mommy taught me that." He glowed up at Janine. "Right, Mommy?"

She patted his shoulder. "Good boy, Jerome. Go play with your brother and sister, OK?"

Thus dispatched, the errant s.p.a.ce fighter detached itself from the mothership, ran in circles about the great hall, firing imaginary projectiles at all manner of objects, stationary and otherwise, and p.r.o.nounced them dead on sight.

The infant renewed its complaint with mounting volume. Her cries were knives in my ears. Against my will, my feet carried me to the crib. I bent over the railing. Red-faced, screaming, the little one beat her tiny fists against the mattress. Six months old or so. Same age as Lili...

"What's her name?" I asked.

Janine stood at my side. "Esmeralda."

I sniffed. "I think she needs her diaper changed."

"I'm a bad mother and a lousy wife," she said, and crossed her arms. "Anything else you want to know?"

"Whoa," I said, hands out. "I didn't mean it like that."

"Then how did you mean it?"

"I just hate to see a baby cry is all."

"Fine." Janine shrugged. "You wanna change her?"

The little girl looked so much like my own. "Would you mind?"

"Whatever turns you on."

I hadn't touched a baby since La Paz. Something drew me to her. Because she was Pitt's? Because she needed a fresh diaper? Or because she suffered, and there was something I could do to make it better? Her tears were for the whole world, even if she didn't know it yet.

Janine looked on with amus.e.m.e.nt. When I finished, her only comment was, "You've done that before."

I wiped my hands and dried the baby's face. Her crying subsided. I chucked Esmeralda under the chin. She gurgled happily and squeezed my finger.

"Some grip," I said.

"Yeah, well, she'll need it to keep herself a husband."

Janine walked over to a black leather sofa, her silk bustling with the movement. She sat down. The leather creaked. She patted the seat next to her.

I remained standing. "You mind I ask you something?"

"Go right ahead."

"I didn't know Pitt was a Muslim," I said.

"He's not."

"But you are?"

"Catholic, actually." She laughed, a bitter sound. "You mean the sheet."

I eased myself onto the sofa. She snuggled against me. Pitt had married Mrs. Mile-a-Minute. I put my arm around her. I could smell her, a bra.s.sy mixture of s.e.x and sweat. An exercise bicycle stood near a shuttered window, a damp towel draped across the handlebars. From under her niqab, a buzzing noise whirred and throbbed, like a cell phone on vibrate.

"Pitt is often away."

"Yes?" I said, jarred from my reverie.

"I find I have a certain...effect on men."

"I know what you mean," I said. "I have a similar effect on women."

She tilted her chin up at me. "Do you?"

I brought my lips close to hers. "You tell me."

An instant before our lips touched, she turned away. "I'm not being vain," she said. "I'm just saying. I want to be faithful. You understand?"

I sat back. So tiresome, these games. "I thought you said you were a lousy wife."

"Oh, I am."

An awkward silence fell between us, two satellites circling the planet Pitt, and abruptly sent crashing together. She ground her hips into the sofa. The buzzing noise continued.

"You need to get that?" I asked.

She nodded. "Just let me turn it off."

One arm disappeared under her robes. She lifted her b.u.t.t. The buzzing got louder. Her arm emerged from a sleeve bearing a two-p.r.o.nged violet vibrator. She plunked it on the coffee table. Flipped a switch. The buzzing ceased.

"Sometimes it goes on all by itself," she explained.

The d.i.l.d.o stank with juices from both holes. "Does it," I said.

"So." She clapped her hands together. "You're yes-no-sort-of-with-the-company." Her eyes twinkled. I could hear her mocking grin.

I wrenched my gaze away from the soaking s.e.x toy. "Which company would that be?"

"Anglo-Dutch. Who else?" She propped her hidden chin on one hand. Her blank stare convinced me she knew nothing of Pitt's clandestine calling.

"No," I said. "We used to work together, but not anymore. We're just friends."

Janine laughed, long peals of e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. merriment.

"What's so funny?"

"Guess how long I've known Pitt."

"No idea."

"Senior year at Va.s.sar."

"Which is?"

"Eight years. I tell you where we met you'll laugh."

"Try me."

"A strip club."

"Really," I said.

"Stuffed a hundred-dollar bill inside my thong."

"And that was that."

"It was."

I put a hand on her knee. "I'd like to stuff more than that inside your thong."

She leaned into me, trailed a thumbnail along my thigh. A bolt of lightning stiffened my back, cracked my neck sideways. I pulled away.

Down, boy. Down!

"And in all that time," she continued, delighting in my torment, "I have never known him to have a friend of any kind."

"No?" I struggled to keep my voice steady.

"Drinking buddies, maybe. Work mates, sure. Fellow students. Roommates." She observed me from behind her veil, her eyes the inscrutable blue of a Siberian husky. She withdrew her fingernail from my leg, and I sighed, a victim of the Inquisition released momentarily from torment. "But never a friend."