«I know what you're saying, Danny, but please don't make little veiled threats like that. They're not necessary and you make me feel sleazy. I'm not _that_ bad.»

He put the tray beside me on the bed and sat himself down on the floor. We ate in an uncomfortable silence that made me quickly lose my appetite.

He shouldn't have threatened and I shouldn't have snapped. The sound of a spoon stirring coffee never rang so loudly as it did in those few long minutes of grim silence. Happiness, contentment, peace: all three of those things balance perched on the point of the thinnest pin. The slightest movement of the earth knocks them off – and boy, how they crash when they hit!

«Cullen, I want to tell you a story because the last thing I want is for you to misunderstand what I'm getting at.

«When I was a little boy, my father took me for a ride in the country one day, just the two of us. We drove alongside a lake for a few miles and then suddenly, out of nowhere, a bunch of ducks flew low out of the trees by the side of the road. My father hit the whole bunch, square on . . . all of them.»

Both of us had our hands wrapped around the coffee mugs. I looked down at Danny to see what this story had to do with the argument of a minute ago. But he was looking off into space and the steam from his coffee was being blown here and there by the strength of his breath.

«Dad pulled the car over and we got out to see wrhat had happened. It was a mess. Real carnage . . . blood and feathers were splattered across the whole front of the car. Even as a little boy I knew the sight upset him. He picked up the bodies – there were four of them – and threw them as far off the road and into the woods as he could. We were out in the middle of nowhere, so there was no way we could clean the car, which by then looked as if it had come through some kind of massacre. Our ride in the country was ruined, so Dad turned the car around and drove us straight home.

«But here's the real macabre part. As we drove up our driveway, my mother was coming out of the house with a load of washing under her arm to hang up on the line. She took one look at the front of the car and started screaming. And I mean _screaming_, Cul – not little 'ohs' and 'ahs' or something like that. These were screams and shouts, real hysteria! Dad and I were so shocked by it that we forgot for a moment what she was so obviously screaming about – the blood and guts that were still splattered across the front of the car! We simply thought she had flipped her lid.

«Dad slammed on the brakes and both of us jumped out. Mom started shouting, 'Who did you kill? Oh God, who did you kill?' Then she fell down on her knees and started moaning. Wow, I'll never forget that scene as long as I live! Sooner or later it dawned on us what she was raving about and we got her cooled down. But for a while it was frightening as hell. She was completely out of control.»

He sipped his coffee and silently I waited for him to go on. The picture of his mother down on her knees and the bloody, dripping car grille made me uneasy and trembly.

«The reason why I'm telling you this terrible story, Cullen, is because my father was a horrendous driver. Seeing all that blood on the car wasn't the only reason my mother had just gone crazy. For years she had been on at Dad in a nice way to be careful, because he was so bad behind the wheel. He never looked at the road, always drove too fast, never used his indicators. . . . Even as a kid I knew I was taking my life in my hands when I went out riding with him, although he loved to have us all in the car with him whenever he went somewhere.

«What happened this time was that my mother took one look at the front of the car and all of her years of fearing the worst came together in that one minute. He'd done it: she was sure he'd done what she'd been expecting him to do for years. She was sure he had killed someone. The blood told her everything she needed to know. Do you understand?»

I nodded slowly, still not seeing how all this connected to us.

«Cullen, everything you've been telling me these past few days adds up to your being confused and unsure of who you are in the world. The relationships you've had in the past – especially with that stupid Peter – have only made you _more_ unsure. Then the abortion thing topped it all off. Whatever self-esteem or conviction you had left went flying out of the window. You want everything to change now, like you said the other day, because you don't like where you are, either physically or . . . well, spiritually. Am I right?»

«I don't like hearing you say any ol this, but you're right.»

«Don't feel that way. I'm not trying to hurt you. If you come to Europe, things _will_ change. I promise you that. You'll have your streetcars and you'll have someone who'll take care of you. Me! But in the meantime, I don't want to be like my mother with my father, constantly worrying about you.»

«Worry? Why would you worry about me? What are you saying, Danny?»

«I'm saying that you have got to start knowing that you're good and smart and capable. You can't keep thinking you're a beautiful flunkey who only deserves another flunky like Peter. I'm not worried about your remaining true to _me_, Cullen; I'm worried about your remaining true to yourself. For God's sake, you're a wonderful woman. I don't know anybody else like you and that's why I love you. But I also know I think more of you than you do of yourself, and that's bad. It's dangerous.

«I don't think I need to say any more, do you?»

In April I flew to Athens and on the plane I met a Greek named Lillis, who invited me to visit him on the island of Skiathos. He described how the poppies were just coming into bloom now, and how he would love to take me to Koukounaries beach in his boat to swim in the Aegean. «Koukounaries» means pine cones in Greek and the Aegean _was_ Greece, and half an hour into the flight I realized I was flying to _Greece_! Greece, as in Plato and Sparta and Henry Miller's favorite country. Danny James would be there to meet me and after a two-week tour, we would fly to Milan and take life from there. I was so proud and excited to be doing this and I didn't even mind too much when Lillis got fresh during the movie a few hours later.

I told him it was very nice of him, but I was being met in Athens by my seven-foot-tall husband, and that calmed Lillis right down. I looked out of the window several hundred times, although it was dark out there and you couldn't see a thing. We were flying over the Atlantic Ocean to Europe. I had quit my job, emptied out my savings account, had several yelling matches over the telephone with my mother, and essentially taken my life in my hands. There was courage in those acts, courage and gumption, and I felt reckless and brave and magnificent all at the same time.

When we landed early the next morning, I saw the sea, old propeller planes painted in camouflage and white buildings everywhere. Danny was standing at the gate.