For a wedding present they were given a cruise in the wake of Odysseus along the Anatolian coast, and in not much more than a year their first child came, a little girl they named Lily, loving and good-natured. Sally was a mother who, though completely involved in her child, still found time for all the rest, entertaining, seeing films, dinners with her husband, equality, friends. The apartment was a little on the dark side, but she did not expect to be in it forever. Grace lived just ten blocks away with her husband and two children, and Eva, the middle sister, was married to a sculptor and lived downtown.
Lily was delicious. From the beginning she loved to be in bed with her mother and father, especially her father, and when she was three whispered to him in adoration,
— I want to be yours.
Two years later, as a reward, to make up for all the attention given to her new little brother, Brian took her to Paris for five days, just the two of them. In retrospect it was the moment of her childhood he cherished most. She behaved like a woman, a companion. It was impossible to love her more. They ate breakfast in the room and wrote postcards together, took the long, arrowy boat up and down the Seine, beneath the bridges, went to the bird market and the museums, Versailles, and in the giant Ferris wheel near the Concorde one afternoon rose high above the city, alarmingly high; Brian himself was frightened.
— Do you like it? he asked.
— I’m trying to, she said.
No one is braver than you, he thought.
At day’s end — the light was just fading — he felt spent. At the hotel, near the reception, there was a Canadian couple waiting for a taxi. Lily was watching the indicator light for the elevator, which had remained for a long time at the fifth floor.
— Is it broken, Daddy?
— It’s just someone taking their time.
He could hear the couple talking. The woman, blond and smooth-browed, was in a glittering silver top. They were going out for the evening, into the stream of lights, boulevards, restaurants brimming with talk. He had only a glimpse of them setting forth, the light on her hair, the cab door held open for her, and for a moment forgot that he had everything.
— Here it comes, he heard his daughter call, Daddy, here it comes.
In late April was Michael Brule’s fifty-eighth birthday. For gifts he had asked only for things to eat or drink, but Del, Eva’s husband, had carved a beautiful wooden seabird for him, unpainted and on legs thin as straws. Brule was deeply touched.
Brian was in the kitchen cooking. It was noisy. The children were playing some kind of game, to the annoyance of the dog, an old Scottie.
— Don’t frighten her! Don’t frighten her! they cried.
It was risotto Brian was making, adding warm broth in small amounts and stirring slowly, to the rapt attention of one of the girls hired to help serve.
— It’s almost ready, he called. He could hear the family voices, the dog barking, the laughter.
The girl, in a white shirt and velvety pants, was watching in fascination. He held out the wooden spoon on which there was a sample.
— Want to taste it? he asked.
— Yes, darling, she said.
Ssh, he gestured playfully. Not looking at him, she took the portion of rice between her lips. Pamela was her name. She wasn’t really a caterer; she worked at the U.N. She and the other girl were hired by the hour.
Her legs Brian saw when she came into the bar at the U.N. Hotel and sat down beside him with a smile, completely at ease. He had been nervous, but it left him immediately. From the first moment he felt a thrilling, natural complicity. His heart filled with excitement, like a sail.
— So, he began, Pamela. .
— Pam.
— Would you like a drink?
— Is that white wine?
— Yes.
— Good. White wine.
She was twenty-two, from Pennsylvania, but with some kind of rare, natural polish.
— I must say, you are. . he said, then felt suddenly cautious.
— What?
— Definitely good-looking.
— Oh, I don’t know.
— It’s unarguable. I’m just curious, he said, how much do you weigh?
— A hundred and sixteen.
— That’s what I would have thought.
— Really?
— No, but anything you would have said.
She had told them she had a doctor’s appointment and needed extra time for lunch. She told him that. As she entered the hotel elevator he could not help but notice her fine hips. Then, incredibly, they were in the room. His heart was uncontrollable and everything was prepared for them, the sleek furnishings, the chairs, the thick fresh towels in the bath. There had been four murders in Brooklyn the night before. The brokers were going wild on Wall Street. On Fourteenth, men stood in the cold beside tables of watches and socks. The madman on Fifty-seventh was singing arias at the top of his voice, buildings were being torn down, new towers rising. She rose to draw the drapes and for a moment stood in the space between them, in the light and looking down. The splendor and newness of her! He had known nothing like it.
Her apartment was borrowed, from someone on assignment. Even at that, it was sparsely furnished. He wanted to give her something every time he saw her, a gift, something unexpected, a chrome and leather chair that he showed her in the window before he ordered it delivered, a ring, a rosewood box, but he was careful to keep nothing that came from her— note, e-mail, photograph — that might betray him. There was one exception, a picture he had taken as she half sat up in bed, from over her bare shoulder, breasts, smooth stomach, thighs, you would not know who it was. He kept it at work between the pages of a book. He liked to turn to it and remember.
In those days of desire so deep that it left him empty-legged, he did not behave unnaturally at home — if anything he was more loving and devoted although Lily, especially, was beyond increased devotion. He came home filled with forbidden happiness, forbidden but unrivalled, and embraced his wife and played with or read to his children. The prohibited feeds the appetite for all the rest. He went from one to the other with a heart that was pure. On Park Avenue he stood on the island in the middle, waiting to cross. The traffic lights were turning red as far as he could see. The distant buildings stood majestic in the monied haze. Beside him were people in coats and hats, with packages, briefcases, none of them as fortunate as he. The city was a paradise. The glory of it was that it sheltered his singular life.
— Am I your mistress? she asked one day.
— Mistress? No, he thought, that was something older, even old-fashioned. He knew of no word to truly describe her other than probable downfall or perhaps fate.
— What’s your wife like? she said.
— My wife?
— You’d rather not talk about her.
— No, you’d like her.
— That would be just my luck.
— She doesn’t have quite your ideas of how to live.
— I don’t know how to live.
— Yes, you do.
— I don’t think so.
— You have something not a lot of people have.
— What’s that?
— Real nerve.
When he came home that evening, his wife said,
— Brian, there’s something I want to talk to you about, something I have to ask you.
He felt his heart skip. His children were running toward him.
— Daddy!
— Daddy and I have to talk for a minute, Sally told them.