"I don't know what you're saying, Sax."

"Okay, all right. Look, do you remember that first day that we got here? The barbecue that they were having downtown?"

I bit my top lip in and nodded.

"Do you remember that the first thing I did when I started talking to Goosey was to tell her about the book?"

"You're damn right I remember! I wanted to kill you. Why did you do that after all we'd talked about?"

She put the puppets down on the couch and ran both hands through her hair. I realized from the gesture how much longer it had grown. I had never told her how nice it looked. "Do you know about women's intuition? Don't start making faces, Thomas, because it's true. There is something there a lot of the time. Another sense or something. Remember I told you that I knew when you and Anna started sleeping together? Anyway, whether you believe me or not, I was sure almost from the moment that we got here that somehow things between us were going to go wrong if you started to do that book. I was trying to get them to throw us out of here that day. I'm sorry, but I was. I thought that if I told them what we wanted to do, they wouldn't let us get within three feet of Anna France."

"Sabotage."

"Yes, that's right. I was trying to sabotage this whole thing. I didn't want it to happen after how strong we'd become in just those few days together. I knew that once you got involved here, everything would go bad. And I was right, wasn't I?" She picked up her puppets and walked out of the room. We didn't talk any more that night.

Two days later I bumped into Mrs. Fletcher outside the market. Her metal cart was filled with a fifty-pound bag of potatoes and about ten quart bottles of prune juice.

"Well, hello there, stranger. I haven't seen much of you lately. Working hard?"

"Hi, Mrs. Fletcher. Yes, pretty hard."

"Anna tells me that the book is going along fine now."

"Yes, it's good." My mind was on a million things, and I had no desire to shoot the breeze with her.

"You've got to get Saxony out of here soon, Tom. You know that?"

A dog barked, and I heard a car start up. The cold air filled with exhaust smoke.

A chunk of anger and despair moved up through me and stopped in my chest. "What the hell difference does it make if she stays or goes? Christ almighty, I'm getting goddamned tired of being told what to do. What the hell difference does it make if Saxony stays?"

Her smile fell. "Anna didn't tell you?" She put her hand on my shoulder. "She really didn't tell you anything?"

Her tone of voice scared me. "No, nothing. What is it? Come on, what are you talking about?" Cars and people moved around us like fish in an aquarium.

"Did you see… ? No, you couldn't have. Look, Tom, if I really say anything to you about this, I could get into some real trouble. I'm not kidding. All of this is very dangerous. I'll tell you this much, though…" She pretended to straighten some things in her cart while she spoke. "I'll tell you this – if you don't get your Saxony out of here, she'll get sick. She'll get so sick that she dies. That was part of the journals. That was how Marshall kept Galen away from everything else."

"But what about me? Why won't I get sick too? I'm from the outside."

"You're the biographer. You're protected. That's the way Marshall wrote it. There's no way to change it."

"But, Mrs. Fletcher, what about the journals? The things in them haven't been happening for a long time. Everything is out of whack here."

"No, you're wrong, Tom. Ever since you started writing, everything's gone right again, that's the point." She rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand. "You have to get her out, Tom. You listen to me. Even if the journals are screwed up and she doesn't get sick, Anna don't want her around. That's what you've got to worry about most of all. Anna is a strong woman, Tom. You don't ever want to play games with her." She hurried away, and I heard the shivering rattle of her metal cart as it moved away across the parking lot.

"Do you have a minute?"

She was chopping celery on a small wooden butcher-block square I'd bought her.

"You look like you're sick, Thomas. Are you feeling all right?"

"Yeah, sure, I'm fine, Sax. Look, I don't want to lie to you anymore, okay? I want to tell you exactly how I feel about all of this and then let you decide."

She put her knife down and walked to the sink to wash her hands. She came back to the table drying them on a yellow dish towel I had never seen before.

"All right. Go ahead."

"Sax, you are incredibly important to me. You're the only person that I've ever been with who sees the world almost exactly the same way that I do. I've never experienced that before."

"What about Anna? Doesn't she see things your way?"

"No, she's totally different. My relationship with her is totally different. I think I pretty much know what would happen if you and I stayed together."

She dried her hands slowly, carefully. "And is that what you want?"

"That's what I don't know, Sax. I think I do, but I don't know yet. What I am sure of is that I want to finish this book. It's amazing that at the same time of my life I've come across two things that are so important to me. I wish that it could have happened a different way, but it hasn't. So now I've got to try to do it the right way, even though it will probably end up stupid and wrong.

"Anyway, what I've been thinking of is this, if it's all right with you. If I could have it my way right now, I'd have you go away for a while. Until I finish this draft and get through whatever is going on between Anna and me."

She smirked and dropped the dish towel on the table. "And what happens if you don't 'get through' with Anna? Huh? What then, Thomas?"

"You're right, Sax. I honestly don't know what then. The only thing that I'm sure of is that this way stinks. Nobody likes what's going on now, and all of the hurt and worry and confusion is totally fucking everybody up. I know that it's my fault. I know it, but it's something that has to happen, or else…" I picked up the towel and wrapped it around my fist. It was still damp.

"Or else what? What has to happen – writing your book or going to bed with Anna?"

"Yes, all right, both. Both have to happen if –"

She stood up. She picked up a small block of celery and popped it into her mouth. "You want me to go away so that you can finish your draft and supposedly get through your 'thing' with Anna. That's what you want, right? Okay. I'll go, Thomas. I'll go up to St. Louis and I'll wait there for three months. You'll have to give me some money, because I don't have any left. But after those three months, I'm going to leave. Whether you're there or not, I'll be leaving." She started out of the room. "I owe you that much, but you've been a shit about all of this, Thomas. I'm just glad that you could finally make up your mind about something."

The day she left, it snowed. I woke up about seven and groggily looked out the window. The sun hadn't risen yet, but it had grown light enough to paint everything outside blue-gray. When I realized what was going on, I didn't know if I was happy or sad that we might be snowed in and Saxony wouldn't be able to leave. I stumbled over to the window for a better look and saw how high it had drifted up on the porch. It was still falling, but the flakes were big and slow and falling vertically, and I remembered somewhere that that meant it would stop soon. The house hadn't betrayed the snow's secret yet – the floors were warm under my bare feet, and although I wore only a pajama top and underpants, I wasn't cold.

Snow. My father hated it. He once had to make a movie in Switzerland in the winter, and he never got over the shock. He liked warm tropical places. The swimming pool in our backyard was heated to about three hundred degrees for him. His idea of heaven was heat stroke in the Amazon jungle.