He had drifted off to sleep when he heard the phone ring. He stumbled barefoot out of Sang's room, into the kitchen, the linoleum chilly.

"Hello?"

No one replied on the other end, and he was about to hang up when he heard a dog barking.

"Hello?" he repeated. It occurred to him it might be Sang, a poor connection from London. "Sang, is that you?"

The caller hung up.

That evening, after dinner, the phone rang again. When he picked it up, he heard the same dog he'd heard earlier.

"Balthazar, shush!" a woman said, as soon as Paul said hello. Her voice was hesitant. Was Sang in? she wanted to know.

"She's not here. May I take a message?"

She left her name, Deirdre Frain, and a telephone number. Paul wrote it down on the message pad, under Partha Mazoomdar, a suitor who'd called from Cleveland in the morning.

The next day, Deirdre called again. Again Paul told her Sang wasn't there, adding that she wouldn't be back until the weekend.

"Where is she?" Deirdre asked.

"She's out of the country."

"In Cairo?"

This took him by surprise. "No, London." "In London," she repeated. She sounded relieved. "London. Okay. Thanks."

The fourth call was very late at night, when Paul was already in bed. He went downstairs, feeling for the phone in the dark.

"It's Deirdre." She sounded slightly out of breath, as if it were she, not he, who'd just rushed to the phone.

He flicked on the light switch, rubbing his eyes behind his glasses. "Um, as I said, Sang's not back yet."

"I don't want to talk to Sang." She was slurring her words, exaggerating the pronunciation of Sang's name in a slightly cruel way.

Paul heard music, a trumpet crooning softly. "You don't?" "No," she said. "Actually, I have a question."

"A question?"

"Yes." There was a pause, the clink of an ice cube falling into a glass. Her tone had become flirtatious. "So, what's your name?"

He took off his glasses, allowing the room to go blurry. He couldn't recall the last time a woman had spoken to him that way. "Paul."

"Paul," she repeated. "Can I ask you another question,

Paul?" "What?"

"It's about Sang."

He stiffened. Again, she had said the name without kindness. "What about Sang?"

Deirdre paused. "She's your housemate, right?"

"That's right."

"Well, I was wondering, then, if you'd know if-are they cousins?"

"Who?"

"Sang and Freddy."

He put his glasses on again, drawing things into focus. He was unnerved by this woman's curiosity. It wasn't her business, he wanted to tell her. But before he could do that, Deirdre began quietly crying.

He looked at the clock on the stove; it was close to three in the morning. It was his own fault. He shouldn't have answered the phone so late. He wished he hadn't told the woman his name.

"Deirdre," he said after a while, tired of listening to her. "Are you still there?"

She stopped crying. Her breathing was uneven, penetrating his ear.

"I don't know who you are," Paul said. "I don't understand why you're calling me."

"I love him."

He hung up, his heart hammering. He had the urge to take a shower. He wanted to erase her name from the legal pad. He stared at the receiver, remnants of Sang's mole-colored fingerprints still visible here and there. For the first time since the winter break had begun, he felt lonely in the house. The call had to be a fluke. Some other Sang the woman was referring to. Maybe it was a scheme on behalf of one of her Indian suitors, to cast suspicion, to woo her away from Farouk. Before Sang left for London, the fights had subsided, and things between Sang and Farouk, as far as Paul could tell, were still the same. In the living room, she'd been wrapping a brown leather satchel, a pair of men's driving gloves. The night before she left, she made a dinner reservation for the two of them at Biba. Farouk had driven her to the airport.

The ringing of the phone woke Paul the next morning. He remained in bed, listening to it, looking at the ashen branches of the tree outside his window. He counted twelve rings before they stopped. The phone rang half an hour later, and he ignored it again. The third time, he was in the kitchen. When it stopped, he unplugged the cord from the jack.

Though he studied in silence for the remainder of the day, he felt fitful. Sitting in the kitchen that evening with a bricklike volume of Spenser, he was unable to concentrate on the lines, irritated by the footnotes, by how much there was left to learn. He wondered how many times Deirdre had tried to call him since he'd unplugged the phone. Had she given up? The calling seemed obsessive to him. He wondered whether she was the type to do something. To take a bottle of pills.

After dinner, he plugged the phone back into the jack. There were no further calls. And yet his mind continued to wander. Something told him that she'd try again. He'd made the mistake of telling her when Sang would be back. Perhaps Deirdre was waiting to speak to her directly. Perhaps Deirdre would tell Sang the same thing she'd told him, about loving Farouk. Before going to bed, he poured himself a glass of Dewar's, a gift sent by his aunt in Buffalo. Then he dialed the number Deirdre had given him. She picked up right away, with a lilting hello. "Deirdre, it's Paul."

"Paul," she said, slowly.

"You called me last night. I'm Sang's housemate."

"Of course. Paul. You hung up on me, Paul." She appeared to be drunk again, but in a sunnier mood.

"Listen, I'm sorry about that. I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

Deirdre sighed. "That's sweet of you, Paul."

"And to ask you to please stop calling me," he said after a considerable pause.

"Why?" There was panic in her voice.

"Because I don't know you," he said.

"Would you like to know me, Paul?" she said. "I'm a very likable person."

"I have to go," he said firmly, hoping not to provoke her. "But maybe there's someone else you could talk to? A friend?"

"Freddy's my friend."

The mention of Farouk, the use of the nickname, unsettled Paul as it had the night before. Yesterday, he'd surmised that Deirdre might be a student of Farouk's at Harvard, practically a teenager, infatuated with an older man. He imagined her sitting at the back of a lecture hall, visiting him in his office, getting the wrong idea. Now a simple, reasonable question, which was at the same time a poisoned question, formed in Paul's mind.

"So, how exactly do you know Farouk?" Paul asked lightly, as if they were chatting at a party.

He didn't think she'd tell him, thought she might even hang up on him as he had on her, but they slipped easily into a conversation. It was Deirdre who did most of the talking. She told Paul that she was from Vancouver originally, and that she'd moved to Boston in her twenties, to study interior design. She'd met Farouk one Sunday afternoon, a year and a half ago, when she was walking out of a cafe in the South End. He had followed her halfway down the block, tapped her on the shoulder, looked her up and down with unconcealed desire. "You can't imagine," Deirdre said, remembering it. "You can't imagine how something like that feels." Nevertheless, he'd been gentlemanly. For their first date, they had gone to Walden Pond. Afterward, they bought corn and tomatoes, and grilled salmon in her backyard. Farouk loved her home, an old farmhouse on five acres. He asked her to draw up the plans for redoing his kitchen. On Labor Day, they had hiked Mount Sunapee together. She said other things Paul listened to, unsure of how much he should believe. For either they were true, and Farouk and Deirdre were having a full-blown affair, or Deirdre was simply inventing it all, the way lonely, drunk people sometimes invent things. At one point, he wandered into the hallway and opened Sang's door, making sure the curtain was tied as he'd remembered it.