"I see it," I said.

"That was the manifestation of our will-to-bigness." There was a long silence. I heard the toilet flush inside the house. "You know, ah, Bechstein…"

"Hmm?"

"When do I get to meet your father?"

"You're crazy."

"No, I can tell I'd like him. He's big too. I've heard about him. I hear he's one of the real wise guys. I'd like you to introduce me. If you don't mind. Even if you do mind."

"What, exactly, are you into with Dave Stern? Numbers?"

"P and D."

He meant pickup and delivery for a loan shark: dropping off the principal to the unfortuante borrower and then stopping by once a week to collect the ridiculous interest.

At first I hadn't taken Cleveland 's supposed involvement with the underworld seriously, but now, suddenly, I did. Cleveland would do it. He would breach the barrier that stood between my family and my life, and scale the wall that I was.

"No, but, Cleveland, you can't meet my father." If a whisper and a whine can be combined, that was the tone of my voice. "Come on, tell me more about the searchlights and giant women."

"I remember them," said Arthur, who had just returned. "He wanted that, not me. I only wanted to know who built the Cloud Factory. Which, by the way, is rather small."

"God built the Cloud Factory," said Cleveland. "And God is the biggest of the big."

"Wrong," said Arthur. "There is no Cloud Factory. Or God, or giant women, or zeppelins."

"Fuck you," said Cleveland. "They'll come for me, one of these days. They'll come for you too. Prepare yourself. Prepare your father too, Bechstein." And he stood up and went into the house and did not come back.

"What was that about your father?" said Arthur.

"Who knows?" I said. "He probably has me confused with Jane."

As I stood looking in the mirror at my hangover the next morning, balancing my headache carefully between two hands, I heard shouts, then some thumping at the front of the house, and then a woman's voice, a familiar southern accent. I trudged out to see.

Cleveland and Jane were squared off just inside the front door, beside two bags of groceries, and Arthur, in his underpants, and wearing the T-shirt that said last call, watched warily, but with a thin smile, his eyes round. I thought of our first meeting outside the library. Jane, sunburned and fine, her hair bleached almost white, wore a pink-and-yellow plaid cotton dress, which did not harmonize with the fists at her sides, or with her muscled shoulders, or with her fierce eyes.

"Go 'head," Cleveland said. "I dare you."

"I will," said Jane. "I'll hit you."

"Hi, Jane," I said. "You look great."

She turned toward me, undid her fists, and smiled, then turned back and gave Cleveland a right hook across the jaw. He fell against the wall; he touched his finger to the corner of his mouth and looked in bemusement at the blood that came away on it. For a moment he smiled at Jane, at me, at Arthur, before he threw himself at Jane and brought her down with a hard sound to • the wooden floor. They began to wrestle, grunting and saying shit, you fucker, et cetera. Cleveland had the advantage of weight, though I doubted he was any stronger than she.

"Come on, Cleveland, Jane, cut it out," said Arthur mildly. He looked at me, raised an eyebrow, did not move. I went over to try to do something, and got smacked in the groin by someone's fist. It hurt, and I fell breathless to the floor. Jane, beneath Cleveland, brought her knee up to his chest and pushed. He flew backward, and Jane leapt up and threw herself upon him, screaming, " Cleveland!" Motion ceased. They panted, I panted; I drew myself to my knees and watched Cleveland begin to laugh and Jane to cry.

"Oh, Cleveland," she said.

"Did you drive a hundred and fifty miles just to beat the shit out of me?"

"Yes," she said, and she sniffed, in a show of pride, and snapped her head back and thrust out her chin.

"Really?"

"No," she said, dropping her forehead to his chest and kissing his big belly, and at that moment, Arthur, whom I had not noticed leaving the room, came in again, holding a saucepan full of water, which he emptied onto their desperate heads, grinning.

"They're fine," I said. "Pour some water onto my balls, for Christ's sake."

"I've been waiting so long for you to say that," said Arthur.

So Jane was among us now, and although I missed the intimacy of the previous day, I found her so thrilling, so prim and sportive, that I welcomed her arrival-we all did. She went back to her car to fetch her luggage, singing loudly and earnestly some sad hymn, like a young girl who had learned it only that morning at church. As she came back into the house, she stopped singing, looked around her, dropped her bags, and sighed. She unpacked two pressed, polka-dot dresses from her plaid dress bag and hung them from the living-room doorknob, then carried the groceries in their torn sack from the hallway to the kitchen, and dumped them out on the counter.

"Oh, no-a salad," said Arthur.

Jane had brought several pounds of vegetables with her, and she proceeded to make an enormous salad and, rather mechanically, to vent her spleen at Cleveland. "You raped our dog," she said, slicing thin, translucent wafers of cucumber into a wooden salad bowl as big as a bicycle wheel. "I mean…" Cleveland changed completely. He switched from drinking beer to drinking the orange juice that she had brought, and he kept going over to embrace her, to smell her, to assure himself that she was really there. Arthur and I sat down at the kitchen table, ate grapes, and watched them reunite; they forgot us completely, or pretended to do so.

"They said you were dead," Cleveland said happily. "Dead of dysentery."

Jane blushed and said, "You made them say that," changing carrots and scallions to orange nickels and green dimes. "You left them no option." She made as though to slice her rosy throat with the Sabatier knife, and stuck out her tongue. "I hear you took it very well."

"I was devastated," he said, and his face grew grim, and he looked, for a moment, like a devastated man. "How was New Mexico?"

"It was wonderful."

"Was it stark? Starkly sensual?" As she chopped, he orbited her, slow as Jupiter, regarding her from every angle, but on this last word his orbit decayed and he fell against her, softly.

"Starkly sensual doesn't even begin to describe it. You asshole," she said.

Jane and Cleveland had been an item for nearly six years, and although their manner with each other was utterly familiar, they nonetheless displayed all the intoxicated rancor of a brand-new couple. It was as though they still had not decided if they liked each other. When she looked at him lovingly, her eyes were filled with the strong regret and disapproval of a mother with a jailbird son. And though when speaking to her he came closer than with anyone else to ridding his voice of its smirk, nevertheless the smirk remained. I think that fundamentally he was jealous of her: not of any phantom lovers-for she never had any-but jealous of her, of her half-English crazy optimism and her manias for salad-making and endless walks. And I think that Jane was afraid for Cleveland, afraid of the inevitable day when he really would ruin everything.

"Do you all like chives?" she said. "I bought some fresh chives." She waved them hopefully. "I'll bet you haven't had a single vegetable since you got here."

"We had beans," I said.

There was silence while we all watched her make a vinaigrette, shaking flakes of this and that into the cruet without looking at the labels on the spice jars. I saw her shake nutmeg into the dressing, and curry. After she had held the bottle to the light and examined it closely for half a minute, watching the particles slowly sink through the line from oil to vinegar, she looked at Cleveland. "You know, I did like New Mexico an awful lot. So many interesting animals, and the Indians are so kind. I saw a rattlesnake, Cleveland. And tons and tons of motorcycles. I think you'd like it. I was thinking maybe the two of us could go out there sometime."