I shrugged. She stood up and walked to the door. "Come when you're ready." She went out. I listened to her clog resolutely down the hall and up the stairs to our room.

Because I was alone in the restaurant, things became preternaturally still the moment she left. I looked at the empty bottle of wine and wondered if I should fly to my feet or get up slowly and then run up to the room.

I could hear all of the sounds coming from the kitchen: the plink and clank of plates and silverware, a radio that had been playing since we'd first sat down. As I got up to leave, the song about Sundays in the sky that India had been accompanying earlier in the car came on the radio and I stopped at the door to listen. It seemed a good portent of things to come. When it ended this time, something clicked in me: I knew it had just taken its place in my mind forever. Whenever I heard it again, I would think of India and this time together in the mountains.

When I opened the door to our room, it was a blast of blazing white light after the darkness of the hall. India was in bed with the covers pulled up to her chin. She had opened both balcony doors and the place was an ice palace.

"Are we trying out for the Eskimo Pie team in here? What's with the windows?"

"It's good, pulcino. Smell the air."

" 'Little chicken'? I didn't know you spoke Italian, India."

"Ten and a half words."

"Pulcino. That's a nice nickname." I walked over to the balcony and took a few deep breaths. She was right. It smelled the way air should. When I turned to look at her, she had her hands behind her head and was smiling at me. Her arms were bare and soft peach in that sea of white colors. They framed brown hair that flowed across the pillow in all directions.

"India, you look absolutely beautiful."

"Thank you, pal. I feel like a little queen."

With more courage than I usually had, I pulled the covers down to see what she was wearing. She had on an old gray sweatshirt of mine with the sleeves pulled up. It made me feel even better: she had taken it out of my suitcase, and that small but entirely intimate gesture told me she really was ready to begin our physical relationship again.

"I feel like a banana being unpeeled."

"Is that so bad?" I untied a shoelace.

"No – very tropical."

No matter how willing both of us were, I was still nervous; my hands trembled as I took off my clothes. To make matters worse, she watched my every move with a smile and half-closed Jeanne Moreau eyes. Try to be calm when you're playing to an audience like that.

Before I got into bed I wanted to close the window to shut off the arctic flow, but she asked that I leave it open for a little while longer, and I wasn't about to argue. She turned off the bedside lamp. I slid in beside her and took her in my arms. She smelled of clean clothes and the coffee from dinner.

We lay there unmoving, the cold air sweeping through the room like an icy hand searching for something in the dark, not necessarily us.

She put a warm palm on my stomach and began to move it slowly down.

"It's been a long time, pardner."

"I was beginning to forget what it felt like."

Her hand kept moving, but when I tried to turn to face her, she pushed gently with the hand to keep me from doing it. "Wait, Joey. I want this all slow."

Far, far away a train crawled across the night; in my mind I saw the staccato blur of its yellow lights and the match-stick heads at the windows.

I was about to grab her when her hand closed on my stomach like a pair of pliers. I jerked from the pain.

"Hey!"

"Joey! Oh, my God, the window!"

As I turned to look, I heard the sounds. Clink-a-tank. Clink-a-tank. Metal wings. Metal wings flapping slowly but loudly enough to fill the room with an evil tin racket.

"Joe, Paul's birds! His trick! Little Boy!"

The same toy blackbird Paul had used in his Little Boy trick that night at their house. But now there were three of them perched on the balcony railing. When the first slash of fear passed, I realized they were all facing us in a perfect row, their wings beating in sharp unison like tin soldiers on the march.

The room was blue-black, but somehow the birds glowed from within; every detail of their bodies was easy to see. There was no mistaking what they were and whom they belonged to.

"Oh, Paul, Paul, Paul –" India's chant was slow and sexual, as if she were peaking to some kind of horrific orgasm.

The birds leapt from their perch and flew into the room. They were suddenly ten times faster: giant houseflies careening through the kitchen window in the middle of the summer. They zagged and dropped, flapped in a madness of flight. Bang, ka-chang, flank – it sounded like some maniac throwing tin ashtrays at invisible targets.

"Stop them, Joe! Stop!" Her voice was low and hoarse, emptied by fear.

What could I do? What powers did she think I had?

I started to get out of bed, and from different parts of the room the three of them came at me at impossible speeds. I ducked and threw my hands up to protect my head. Their beaks cut into my arms, my back, one across my scalp. I struck out and hit one, but it did no good – there was just another deep gash on my forearm as a result.

Then it stopped. I looked up and saw they were once again on the balcony railing in perfect order, facing us. My hands were up near my face, a failed boxer ready to be hit again.

One by one they turned and flew back out into the night. When they were ten or fifteen feet away, they sparked into blue and orange and grass-green flames. Familiar flames – colors I'd seen before in Paul Tate's living room the night the real bird danced and screamed in its small burning agony.

Ross believed in ghosts, but I didn't. He even beat me up once after we'd gone to a horror movie because I refused to believe anyone could be scared to death by anything as dumb as ghosts. I did an article for a travel magazine in America on a haunted castle in Upper Austria, but it was rejected because the only thing I could say was I stayed up all night in the hauntedest room of all, reading, and never once heard a peep or growl from the previous tenants.

My father once told me having children was like discovering new and amazing rooms in a house you've lived in all your life. Without children you don't necessarily miss these rooms; but once they're there, your house (and world) becomes a different place. I think I could have somehow rationalized the night of the birds if it had been the only incident of its kind in my life, but after what happened the next day, I knew that my "house" had grown too, only in a terrible, unbelievable way.

On our way back to Vienna the next morning, India slept with her head against the window on the passenger's side. We had talked until daylight and then tried to sleep, but it was impossible. When I suggested we go back to town, she quickly agreed.

A few kilometers before the turn onto the Sudautobahn, I stopped at a traffic light in the middle of nowhere. The sides of the road were marble-patterned with snow and black earth, but the road itself was dry and flat. I was so tired I didn't realize the light had changed until I heard a car honk behind me. I moved forward, but not fast enough for him, because he flashed his lights at me to get going. I paid no attention, because Austrian drivers are silly and childish; if the guy wanted to pass that badly, he had all the room in the world. There were no cars coming from the opposite direction. But he kept flashing and that, combined with leftover fear and fatigue from the night before, made me want to get out and bust the fool in the jaw.

For the first time I looked in the rearview mirror to see who the hell it was and what kind of car they were driving. From behind the wheel of a white BMW, Paul tipped his black top hat. Seated beside and behind him were four other Pauls, all tipping their hats too and looking directly at me. My feet came wrenching off the clutch and brake pedals. The car jerked forward twice and stalled. India murmured in her sleep but didn't wake up. I kept looking in the mirror and watching as the other car pulled out from behind and moved forward. When it was alongside I looked, and all five Paul Tates, all five Little Boys, with their prim white gloves on, waved and smiled. All of them out for a Sunday drive. The BMW accelerated and was gone.