"Very interesting, Miss Rolly," the professor was now saying. "May I examine the doc.u.ments?"

Both Rolly and Bulstrode now looked at Crosetti, and he felt his heart sink, as we do when an unfamilar doctor asks us to slip out of our clothes and into a gown. The papers were his his, and now they were pa.s.sing out of his hands, to be confirmed as genuine or rejected as spurious, but by someone else, someone he didn't know, whose eyes were all funny behind those thick lenses, avid, crazed really, and Rolly's eyes were blank blue fields with less feeling in them than the sky itself, and he had to resist the urge to grab up his package and flee. But what he did was to pull out only the letter from Richard Bracegirdle to his wife. It was easy to distinguish these pages by feel from the rest of the sheets. Let's see what this geek had to say about the letter before exposing the ciphered letters was Crosetti's thinking.

He slumped in his chair as Bulstrode took the letter and spread the pages out on his desk. It was fear that made him hand them over, a chicken-guts fear of appearing even more more stupid in the d.a.m.ned woman's eyes than he was already. He knew he would never remove the shame of that moment with Rolly from his mind, it would be a lifetime image, bubbling up at random time and again to blight his joy and deepen depression. And also the image of the girl locked in the root cellar listening to the approaching steps of her tormentor, and he'd never now be able to help her with that through love, he'd screwed that up too, you a.s.shole, Crosetti, you complete t.u.r.d.... stupid in the d.a.m.ned woman's eyes than he was already. He knew he would never remove the shame of that moment with Rolly from his mind, it would be a lifetime image, bubbling up at random time and again to blight his joy and deepen depression. And also the image of the girl locked in the root cellar listening to the approaching steps of her tormentor, and he'd never now be able to help her with that through love, he'd screwed that up too, you a.s.shole, Crosetti, you complete t.u.r.d....

"Can you read it, Professor?"

This was Rolly; the sound of her voice jerked Crosetti from the dear land of self-flagellation, Bulstrode cleared his throat heavily, and said, "Oh, yes, indeed. The hand is crude but quite clear. A man I imagine who did a good deal of writing. Not an educated man, I think, not a university man, but a writing man all the same. A clerk perhaps? Originally, I mean." Bulstrode returned to his reading. Time pa.s.sed, perhaps half an hour, that seemed like time in the dentist's chair to Crosetti. At last the professor sat up and said, "Hm, yes, in all, a very interesting and valuable doc.u.ment. This," he continued, pointing, "seems to be the last letter of a man named Richard Bracegirdle, who apparently was wounded at the battle of Edgehill, the first major battle of the English Civil War, which took place on October 23, 1642. He is writing from Banbury, it seems, a town close to the battlefield."

"What about Shakespeare?" Crosetti asked.

Bulstrode regarded him quizzically and blinked behind his thick spectacles. "Excuse me? Did you think there was some reference to Shakespeare in this?"

"Well, yeah! That's the whole point. This guy says he spied on Shakespeare. That he had an autograph copy of one of his plays, in fact, that he was the one who got Shakespeare to write one of his plays for the king. It's right there on the signature page."

"Really. Dear me, Mr. Crosetti, I a.s.sure you there's nothing of that sort. Secretary hand can be quite confusing to ah...an amateur, and people can see all sorts of meanings that don't exist, rather like finding pictures in clouds."

"No, look, it's right here," said Crosetti and came out of his chair and around the desk. Picking up the ma.n.u.script and indicating the relevant lines, he said, "This is the part I mean. It says, 'They tell all the tale nearly of our spying upon the secret papist Shaxpur. Or so we thought him although now I am less certain. In that manner and bent of life he was a nothing. But certain it is he wrought that play of Scotch M. I commanded of my Lord D. his plot and of him in the king's name. I find pa.s.sing strange that all though I am dead and him also yet the play lives still, writ in his own hand and lying where only I know and there may it rest forever.'"

Bulstrode adjusted his eyegla.s.ses and issued a dry chuckle. He picked up the magnifier he had been using and placed it over a line of text. "Very imaginative, I must say, Mr. Crosetti, but you're quite mistaken. What this says is, 'I shall tell to you of the sale of gems secretly proper Sal.u.s.t.' The man must have been some sort of factor in Salisbury for this Lord D. Then it goes on, 'Of these thefts I lack shriving. In that manner and bent of life I was a nothing.' And further along he writes 'the pearls live still willed by his own hand,' and he says he alone knows where they are. I'm not entirely sure of what 'willed by his own hand' means, but in any case the man was clearly dying and probably in intense distress. He seems to flit from subject to subject. In fact, much of this may be pure fantasy, going through his life in a kind of terminal delirium. But the doc.u.ment is interesting enough as it is without bringing in Shakespeare."

"What does the rest of it say?"

"Oh, it contains a quite vivid description of the battle itself, and these are always of interest to military historians. And apparently he served in the early stages of the Thirty Years' War, ditto. He was at White Mountain, Lutzen, and Breitenfeld, although he gives no detail about these. Pity. A professional artillerist, it seems, and trained as a cannon-founder. He also claims to have made a voyage to the New World and been s.h.i.+pwrecked off Bermuda. A very interesting seventeenth-century life, even a remarkable life, and potentially of great value to certain narrow fields of study, although I suspect there's also a touch of Munchausen in his narrative. But nothing about Shakespeare, I'm afraid." A pause here. Leaden silence for a good thirty seconds; then, "I would be happy to purchase it from you, if you like."

Crosetti looked at Carolyn, who returned a neutral stare. He swallowed and asked, "For how much?"

"Oh, for a Jacobean ma.n.u.script of this quality I should think perhaps, ah, thirty-five would be the going rate."

"Dollars?"

An indulgent smile. "Hundred, of course. Thirty-five hundred. I could write you a check now if you like."

Crosetti felt his belly twist, and the sweat started to bead up on his forehead. This was wrong. He didn't know how he knew, but he did. His father had always talked about instinct, although he always called it his gut, how you always went with your gut when you were out on the street in harm's way. Crosetti's gut made him say, "Uh, thanks, but I think I'd like a second opinion. I mean on the translation. Um, no offense, Dr. Bulstrode, but I'd like to eliminate the possibility that..." He gestured haphazardly, not willing to put it into words. He had remained standing after handling the ma.n.u.script, so it was an easy matter to s.n.a.t.c.h the papers from Bulstrode's desk and slip them into the brown paper wrapper. Bulstrode shrugged and said, "Well, suit yourself, although I doubt you'll get a better price." Turning then to Carolyn, he asked, "And how is dear Sidney these days? Quite recovered from the shock of the fire I hope."

"Yes, he's fine," said Carolyn Rolly in a voice so unlike her own that Crosetti stopped wrapping and looked at her. Her face was pained in a way he could not interpret. She said, "Crosetti, would you step outside for a minute with me? Excuse us, Professor."

Bulstrode smiled a plump formal smile and gestured to his door.

Outside, a scant summer population of students and professors pa.s.sed to and fro; it was clearly the interval between cla.s.ses. Rolly grabbed Crosetti's arm and pulled him into an alcove, the first time since the crying jag of the previous evening that she had touched him. She clung to his arm and spoke vehemently in a hoa.r.s.e tense voice. "Listen! You have to let him have those G.o.dd.a.m.n papers."

"Why do I? He's obviously trying to pull the wool over our eyes."

"Not our eyes, Crosetti. He's right. There's no mention of Shakespeare. It's some petty clerk running a scam and dying and confessing his sins."

"I don't believe it."

"Why not? What's your evidence? Wishful thinking and three hours' experience with secretary hand?"

"Maybe, but I'm going to show it to someone else, someone I trust."

As he said this, he saw her eyes grow fat with tears and her face began to crumple. "Oh, G.o.d," she cried, "oh, G.o.d, don't let me come apart now! Crosetti, don't you get it? He knows knows Sidney. Why do you think he mentioned him just now?" Sidney. Why do you think he mentioned him just now?"

"Okay, he knows Sidney-so what?"

"So what! Jesus, man, don't you see? He knows the ma.n.u.script came out of the Voyages Voyages, so he knows I'm taking the book apart. And that means..."

"You're not just breaking it, like Sidney told you to. You're trying to doctor it, which means you're going to try to sell it. And he's, what? Threatening to tell Sidney unless we give him the ma.n.u.script?"

"Of course! He'll tell him, and then Sidney...I don't know, he'll fire me for sure and he might call the cops. I've seen him do it with shoplifters. He's nuts that way, people stealing books and I can't...I can't take the chance...oh, G.o.d, this is horrible!"

She was frankly crying now, not hysterical yet as she was the night before, but building up to it, and that was something Crosetti had no wish to see again. He said, "Hey, calm down! You can't take what chance?"

"The cops. I can't be involved with the police police."

Lightbulb.

"You're a fugitive." It wasn't a question. Obvious, really; he should have picked it up right off the bat.

She nodded.

"What's the charge?"

"Oh, please! Don't interrogate interrogate me!" me!"

"You didn't whack Uncle Lloyd?"

"What? No, of course not. It was some stupid dope thing. I was desperate for money and I moved packages for some people I knew. This was in Kansas, so of course the sky fell in and...oh, G.o.d, what am I going to do!"

"Okay, get yourself together," he said, resisting the urge to wrap his arms around her. "Go back in there, and tell him it's a deal."

He started to move away and her face stiffened in what seemed like panic; he was happy to note that she clutched at his arm, as at a plank in a s.h.i.+pwreck.

"Where're you going?"

"I just need to do something first," he said. "Don't worry, Carolyn, it's going to be fine. I'll be back in ten minutes."

"What should I tell him?" she demanded.

"Tell him I got the runs from the excitement of his generous offer and I'm in the bathroom. Ten minutes!"

He turned and raced down the stairs, three at a time, holding the rolled ma.n.u.scripts under his arm like a football. Out of Hamilton at a run, he threaded through a quad full of strolling young people who had higher SATs than he did and ran into the vast columned bulk of Butler Library. One advantage of having a well-known research librarian for a mother is that she knows nearly all the other research librarians in the city and is pals with a number of them. Crosetti had known Margaret Park, the head research librarian at Butler, since childhood, and it was an easy matter to call her up and get permission. All big libraries have large-format Xerox machines that can reproduce folio pages; Crosetti used the one in the Butler bas.e.m.e.nt to copy all of Bracegirdle's papers. He explained to the bemused but amenable Mrs. Park that this was all to do with a movie he had a chance to make (somewhat true) and could he also cadge a mailing tube and buy some stamps?

He rolled the copies into their tube and added the originals of the ciphered letters and the sermons. As he did this, he wondered why he hadn't shown them to Bulstrode along with the Bracegirdle letter. Because the guy was an a.s.shole and he was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g him in some way on this deal, although Crosetti couldn't prove it, and besides there was Carolyn to consider. But keeping the ciphers to himself gave him an obscure pleasure. Shakespeare or not, the sheets had kept their secrets for four centuries and he was reluctant to let them out of his own hands, he who had brought them into the light. He sealed the tube, wrote out an address label, added postage, dropped the tube into the outgoing mail cart, and trotted back to Hamilton Hall.

Fifteen minutes later he was walking with Rolly down the center of campus again, but in the opposite direction. Crosetti had a check for thirty-five hundred folded in his wallet and was feeling not exactly good, because he felt he'd been ripped off in a number of ways, but that he'd done the right thing. Doing the right thing had been a major expression around the house while he was being raised. His father had been a detective second grade with the NYPD in an era when to be a detective was to be on the pad, but Charlie Crosetti had not been on the pad, and had suffered for it, until the revelations of Serpico, when the chiefs had cast around for the straight and clean, and found him and promoted him to lieutenant in command of a Queens homicide squad. This was taken as a sign in the Crosetti household that virtue was rewarded. The present Crosetti still tended to believe this, despite all the evidence to the contrary that had acc.u.mulated in the years since. The woman walking beside him, however, seemed to set the moral universe on its ear. Yes, she'd been hideously abused (or so she said) but had responded with a kind of desperate amorality, a stance he found hard to condone. Every skell has a hard-luck story, his dad used to say. But he could not consider Carolyn Rolly a mere skell. Why not? His gonads? Because he l.u.s.ted for her? No, not that either, or not only that. He wanted to ease her pain, make her grin, release the girl he glimpsed hiding under the dour, ascetic bookbinder.

He studied her trudging along, silent, her head down, gripping her roll of book leather. No, he was not going to end it with a handshake at the subway and let her roll off into her own astringent universe again. He stopped and placed his hand on her arm. She looked up, her face blank.

"Wait," he said, "what are we doing now?"

"I have to go to the paper guy in Brooklyn for the endpapers," she replied glumly. "You don't have to come."

"That can wait. What we're actually going to do now is go to the Citibank branch over there, on which this check in my wallet is drawn, and cash it. Then we're going to cab to Bloomie's, where I will buy a jacket and pants and a s.h.i.+rt and maybe a pair of Italian loafers, and you will buy a dress, with colors in it, something for the summer, and maybe a hat, and we'll change into our new clothes and we'll take a cab to a fancy restaurant and have a long, long lunch with wine, and then we'll-I don't know-do city stuff, go to museums or art galleries or window-shop until we get hungry again and then go out to dinner and then I will take you in a cab cab back to your spare and illegal loft and your two chairs and your lonely bed." back to your spare and illegal loft and your two chairs and your lonely bed."

What was that on her face, he wondered: fear, surprise, delight? She said, "That's ridiculous."

"No it's not. It's exactly what felons are supposed to do with their ill-gotten gains. You can be my moll for a day."

"You're not a felon."

"I am. I converted my employer's property to my own use, probably grand larceny if you want to get technical. But I don't care. Come on, Carolyn! Don't you ever get tired of grunging around, squeezing every penny while your youth withers a little every day?"

"I can't believe I'm hearing this," she said. "It sounds like a bad movie."

"But you don't go to movies, so how would you know? Putting that aside, you happen to be absolutely right. This is exactly the kind of thing they put in movies, because they want people to feel joy, they want people to identify with beautiful people having fun. And now we're going to do it, we're going to imitate art, we're going to be in our own movie and see what it's like in real life."

He could see that she was thinking about it, testing it, as we do with a limb lately out of a cast, gingerly, afraid to let it take the weight. "No," she said, "and if the money's burning a hole in your pocket why don't you just give it all to me? I could live for three months on-"

"No, that's not the point point, Carolyn. The point is experience, for once, not prudence, red meat not ramen f.u.c.king noodles!" With that he grabbed her arm and hustled her across 116th Street.

"Let go of my arm!"

"No, if you won't come along of your own free will, I'm kidnapping you. This is now a major felony."

"What if I scream?" she said.

"Scream away. The cops will arrest me, and they'll get the whole old book and ma.n.u.script story out of me, and then where will you be? Up s.h.i.+t's creek is where, instead of dressed in a gorgeous new dress drinking champagne in a fine restaurant. You better choose right now, baby, because here's the bank."

He found a cocoa silk-and-linen Varvatos jacket on sale for three-fifty and some linen slacks and a nubbly black silk s.h.i.+rt and woven Italian loafers to go with it and she was yelled and chivied into a Prada ruffle-front flowered dress, a matching silk scarf and shoes, a couple of sets of devastating La Perla underwear, and a big panama hat with an upturned brim like an English schoolgirl, all of which did not leave much change from a thousand bucks, and then they had lunch at the Metropolitan Museum and took in the Velazquez show and then went to an afternoon concert at the Frick that he happened to know about because his mom had tickets from her library mafia and had pressed them upon him (go, take a date!), another example of magic, because he'd been carrying the d.a.m.n things around in his wallet for two weeks with no intention of going and now here it was that very afternoon. So they went, and it was the Concerto Vocale doing a program of Monteverdi sacred music. They sat in folding chairs and were lifted, to the extent their spiritual development then permitted, up to the divine regions. cocoa silk-and-linen Varvatos jacket on sale for three-fifty and some linen slacks and a nubbly black silk s.h.i.+rt and woven Italian loafers to go with it and she was yelled and chivied into a Prada ruffle-front flowered dress, a matching silk scarf and shoes, a couple of sets of devastating La Perla underwear, and a big panama hat with an upturned brim like an English schoolgirl, all of which did not leave much change from a thousand bucks, and then they had lunch at the Metropolitan Museum and took in the Velazquez show and then went to an afternoon concert at the Frick that he happened to know about because his mom had tickets from her library mafia and had pressed them upon him (go, take a date!), another example of magic, because he'd been carrying the d.a.m.n things around in his wallet for two weeks with no intention of going and now here it was that very afternoon. So they went, and it was the Concerto Vocale doing a program of Monteverdi sacred music. They sat in folding chairs and were lifted, to the extent their spiritual development then permitted, up to the divine regions.

Crosetti was no stranger to this world, his mother having made sure that American barbarism was not an option for him, but his covert glances at Carolyn revealed a person stunned. Or bored senseless, he really couldn't tell; and after the concert he was hesitant to ask her which it was. But she said, after one of her long intervals of silence, "Wouldn't it be nice if the world was really like that, the way that music says it is, just flowing along in beauty?" Crosetti thought it would be exceedingly fine, and used the Hemingway line about it would be pretty to think so, without attribution.

They walked down Madison and he got her into pretending to be not just temporarily rich and to select choice items from the windows of the great boutiques, and when they grew tired of that he steered her down a side street and into the first restaurant they encountered, because he was sure that anyplace they went to would be perfect and this one was, a tiny boite specializing in provincial French cuisine, where the patron took a liking to the nice young couple and kept sending out exquisite little tastes from the kitchen and recommended the wine, and watched them eat the entrees, beaming; and except that he did not actually break out singing in an accent it was exactly like, as Crosetti noted, The Lady and the Tramp The Lady and the Tramp. Which she had actually seen, it turned out, and they talked about that and about other Disney movies, and about the films he loved and the ones he was going to make, stuff he hadn't ever told anyone, and she talked about beautiful books, their aesthetics, their structure and the cryptic subtle beauties of paper, type, and binding, and how, as she put it, she wanted to make things that people would be handling and loving a thousand years from now.

He had to wave a hundred-dollar bill in the rearview mirror before the cabby would consent to take them to Red Hook, something he had never done before, nor ever dreamed of doing, and they arrived in the dark industrial street, and when the cabby had roared away with his C-note, Crosetti grabbed Carolyn Rolly, spun her around, and planted a good one on her wine-and-coffee-tasting mouth, and she kissed him back. Just like the movies.

Unlike, they did not tear off their clothes as they staggered up the stairs, into the loft, and into bed. Crosetti had always thought this a cliche and unrealistic; such a thing had never happened to him nor to anyone he knew who was not either drunk or cranked to the gills. So it was not going to happen in his movie. Instead, he sighed deeply and she sighed. He held her hand lightly, as if it were a dried blossom as they slowly ascended. They entered the loft, they kissed again. She pulled away and rummaged in a drawer. She's going to light a candle, he thought, and she did, a simple plumber's candle, which she stuck carefully in a saucer and set by the bed. Crosetti did not move. Then she looked straight at him, her face set in its lovely grave lines and silently and slowly took off her new clothes in the candlelight, folding them tenderly, which was exactly the way he would have shot it, maybe a little more blue coming in from the window, and as he thought this he laughed.

She asked him why he laughed and he told her, and she told him to undress, that this was the part they didn't show in the regular movies, this was the fade-out. But after they were in bed together he thought of the horrible uncle and was abashed and too tentative until she used her nails and a harsh urgent command to unleash the animal. They did not practice safe s.e.x, which he considered a little odd, a thought he entertained just before all thinking ceased.

After that, the director was out of the building for a long time. When he returned, Crosetti was on his back, feeling the sweat and other fluids drying on his skin, staring up at the tin ceiling. The candle was only an inch high. He had nothing to say, and his mind was quite blank: dead air, white screen. They'd had the setup, the development, the first plot point (discovering the ma.n.u.script), the second plot point (this incredible evening), and now what? He had no idea what the third act was going to be, but he was starting to feel fear. He'd never had anything like this happen to him, except in dreamland. He reached over to caress her again but she held on to his hand and kissed it. She said, "You can't stay."

"Why not? Are you going to turn into a bat?"

"No, but you can't stay. I'm not ready for...mornings. And all that. Do you understand?"

"A little. I guess. Well, Red Hook at...where's my watch? Threeten a.m. a.m. with a roll of cash and smelling like a bordello. That sounds like fun." with a roll of cash and smelling like a bordello. That sounds like fun."

"No," she said, "I'll wash you."

She took him by the hand and led him to the sink behind the screen, lit two candles set in wall sconces made of tin cans, and filled the sink with steaming water. She stood him on a thick straw bath mat and washed every inch of him, slowly, with a washcloth and Ivory soap. Then she drained the suds and washed him with clear water, kneeling lightly on one knee like a courtier before the prince. She had small flattish b.r.e.a.s.t.s with broad pink nipples. Despite the night's epic exertions he hardened painfully under this treatment. It had an unnatural appearance, like one of her bookbinding implements, something suitable for burnis.h.i.+ng leather to a high gloss. She looked up at him and said, "You can't go out in Red Hook at three a.m. a.m. in that condition." in that condition."

"No, it would be unwise," he said in a hoa.r.s.e croak.

"Well, then," she said.

He noticed that she held it at the base with two fingers, the other three extended, like a d.u.c.h.ess sipping tea. Her dark little head moved slowly back and forth. How did they learn how to do that, he thought, and also: Who are you? What are you doing to me? What's going to happen?

THE B BRACEGIRDLE L LETTER (6) (6).

Thus I began my lyfe as an ordnancer of the Tower 10s. the moneth wage, prentice wages that but beggars cannot be chusers. We took lodgings two mean roomes in Fenchurch St. by Aldgate, verey poore were wee but had liverie from the Tower so saved on my cloathes. One yeare spent thus: in the winter of the second yeare came a chill & my mother sickened & wee had not coales enow to warme her. Methinkes she wase besydes wearied from her sorrowes. Alas to come to this end through no fault of hers: all ways a good, sober, virtuous woman & no papiste neither, as I asked her then, she sayinge no sonne but I did pray for the sowles of my dead babes & for the sowles of my parentes as wee learnt in the olde religion a great sinne I know & wille burn in h.e.l.l for it though I praye G.o.d not. Soe she died 2nd February AD 1606 & is buried in St Katherine Colemanchurch. Now you know, my Nan, that after that sadde tyme you gave me comfort soe that I wish to marry you but your father sayeth what, nay nay, no man can marry on prentice wages how will you keepe my daughter & I hadde no answer & and left sad & wast sad many daies. February AD 1606 & is buried in St Katherine Colemanchurch. Now you know, my Nan, that after that sadde tyme you gave me comfort soe that I wish to marry you but your father sayeth what, nay nay, no man can marry on prentice wages how will you keepe my daughter & I hadde no answer & and left sad & wast sad many daies.

Comes now Thomas Keane saying ho d.i.c.k what say you to Flanders? For I am off to-morrow to deliver four cannon royal to the Dutch at Sluys & shoot em too against Spain. Come & be my mate & matrosse: wee will eate cheese & drinke genever & blaste papiste dogges to h.e.l.l. I answer him yes by G-d & my hand on't & the thynge is settled. We must needs goe from the Tower at night for the Kinges majestie had late made peace with Spain so 'twould be thought ille to arme Spaines foes. But some at court (that Prince Henry I think mee who after untimely died) thought it a shame on England to shrink cowardly from warre gainst wicked King Phillipe who pressed so cruel on the reformed faith. Besides the Dutch had payed for the gonnes before this so wase it justice too, for the King would not yield a pennie backe & thus we went for the honour of England besydes.

Wee brought out the cannon & theyre carriages braken all in peeces & all necessaries as: 500 shottes, rammers, worms, port-fyres, &c. by barges & then to the Pool where mariners swayed them into the holte of the s.h.i.+p Groene Draeck a saloop of 6 gonnes belonging to Captain Willem van Brille. Soe with a fair wind wee sayled down river. A three-daye voyage wee had & a goode enough sea for winter not too colde & wee ate fresh: bread & cheeses, pickel-herrynge, ale. At Sluys a flat dreare place to my eye all brick dun or red & verey goode businesse since the Spanish have tooke Ostende these many moneths tis the onlie port in western Flanders. Soe we off-lade the gonnes & placed them on theyre carriages.

Nay I am too longe about my foolishe youth & I fear I have but little tyme. My wound now gripes me more than before & the surgeon saith it is fowle & gives me two daies no more.

7.

Yes, ridiculous. Did I give the impression that I am a famous lecher about town? Not true. I seem to keep falling in love, which is not the same thing. Yes, Dr. Freud, I am compensating for withdrawal of maternal affection, and yes, Dr. Jung, I am unable to make peace with my negative anima, and yes, Father, I have sinned through my own fault, in what I have done and what I have failed to do. Yet it is not, I must insist, merely s.e.x. I have never had a better s.e.xual relations.h.i.+p than the one I had with Amalie, but clearly, it was not enough. From very early in our marriage I was in the habit of having one on the side, and as I believe I've already noted, there is no shortage of such opportunities in New York City.

Ingrid, my current girlfriend, is a good example, and the clever and impatient reader may be thinking, Oh, he's avoiding getting to Miranda, he's stalling. This is true, and tough s.h.i.+t. I may die, but I am not actively dying like poor Bracegirdle; perhaps I have all the time in the world.

Ingrid was happily married for nearly twelve years to Guy, a successful television executive, and by all accounts a prince among men, and especially princely compared to many others in that business, but one day in his fifty-second year he got out of bed, walked into the bathroom and began to shave, whereupon something popped in his brain and he died right there. No symptoms, perfectly healthy, good blood pressure, low cholesterol, but dead. Ingrid spent the next three years in the most intense mourning, after which her naturally sunny disposition burst through again, and she decided to get on with life. She had not gone out at all during those three years but now accepted an invitation to one of those anonymous award or fund-raising galas that enable the rich to mingle with the creative and thereby draw some of the divine afflatus into their desiccated lives. She went to a spa and got done, had her hair cut at the salon of the moment, bought a new outfit and made her appearance.

She has such a nice appearance: just forty, quite tall, perhaps too fleshy to dance at the highest levels, which is why she switched early to ch.o.r.eography. Her hair is boy-short and light brown, very fluffy, and she has those long wolf eyes in gray. Terrific wide mouth too with a little overbite, which I find quite attractive. And the dancer's body. I was at the party too, being myself a rich person needing a whiff of the real stuff, and as soon as I saw her, I grabbed the arm of my law partner Sh.e.l.ly Grossbart, who knows everyone in the music business, and asked him who she was. He had to think for a moment before he said, "Christ, that looks like Ingrid Kennedy. I thought she was dead." He made the introductions. We chatted about dance and intellectual property and actually had a fascinating conversation about the extent to which dance was protected by the laws of copyright. I found her intelligent and amusing; I suppose she found me likewise.

Later in the evening, the two of us having consumed what I suppose was the better part of two bottles of Krug, she caught me up with those long gray peepers and inquired whether she could ask a personal question. I said she could and she said, "Do you like to f.u.c.k women?"

I said that, given an appropriate other, I rather did.

"Well," she said, "I actually haven't had any s.e.x since my husband died three years ago and you seem like a nice man and lately I've been having these incredibly h.o.r.n.y feelings and just masturbating doesn't seem to work."