"You look as if you swallowed a clam shell. Are you all right?"

"Yes, but I have to go to the bathroom."

"Uh huh." She was already back into the private motions of undressing and seemed to have barely heard me. I was grateful for that, because I needed time to break the uncertain spell she had cast.

I had only just clicked on the light in the toilet when she screamed.

The first thing I saw was her standing by the side of the bed in only her white panties, looking down. Her breasts were so much older than Karen's.

She had pulled the bedspread back. Laid carefully in a row were many centerfolds from Playboy magazine. The vaginas of the women had been cut out, and in their place were faces: old men, children, dogs . . . All of them were smiling with the greatest glee. Written somewhere on each picture in big crude letters was WELCOME HOME, JOE! GOOD TO HAVE YOU BACK WITH US!

4

The Viennese, who are old hands at snow in the Austrian mountains, seemed dismayed that it had come to visit them in town, particularly in such abundance. Children and a few slow-moving cars owned the streets. While looking out the window, I saw both a man and his dog slip and fall down at the same time. Every few hours the snowplows tried to bully the snow out of the way, but it was useless.

India stayed with me that night, but I did no more than hold her in my arms and try to calm her. At her insistence I took the pictures off the bed and burned each to a gray-violet crisp in the sink before washing the ashes down the drain.

The next morning the sun shone weakly for a few hours, but by midmorning the sky had clouded over, and it was snowing hard again by the time we reached the street.

"I want to walk for a while. Can we walk?" She was holding my arm and watching where our feet went. With every step her high rubber boots disappeared up to the calf in the white.

"Sure, but I think it'd be better if we walked in the street."

"I don't know why, but I feel a lot better today. Maybe it's just being outside." She looked at me, and her eyes, straining to be happy and unconcerned, asked that I agree. The complete whiteness of the world did calm some of the violence of the night before. But I had a strong feeling that no matter what we did or where we went, we were being watched.

India reached down and took a handful of snow. She tried to pat it into a ball, but it was too fresh and light to stay together.

"Old snow is best for that."

We were standing in the middle of the street, and I kept looking around for cars. "India, are we going to walk or what?"

"I'm pretending this interests me so I can avoid asking why you didn't make love to me last night."

"Last night? Are you nuts?"

"I wanted you to."

"Even after all that?"

"Because of all that, Joey."

"But, India, he . . . he might've been there."

"Too bad. I wanted you."

"Come on. Let's walk."

She dropped the snow and looked at me. "You know what? You held me as if I were dying of the plague."

"Stop it!" My embarrassment turned to anger. The kind of anger that comes when you know you're to blame but don't want to admit it.

"You said he might've been in the room. But you know what, Joe? He's been in the room for months. You know what it's like to have him there for months? It's shit, Joe. And, God, I wanted you back. If you came back, so what if he was there? Months, Joe. Live alone with him for months like this and then ask me why I wanted you last night. He's everywhere now; there's nowhere to hide. So take me and let him see us. I don't care."

What could I say? Better to explain it all, tell her about Karen, so at least she'd have a concrete answer? There are so many different ways to fail a person. Answer this question honestly, thereby hitting her again after she'd already been hit so many times? Keep quiet and add to the confusion, her valid fear that she was almost entirely alone now in the battle against her dead husband? Standing there, helpless, I felt the weight of her need, and I came close to hating her for it.

My heart was beating like an angry dog's, and I was so overdressed against the snow that I felt hot and bound in by all my clothes. If I'd had three wishes, I'd have rolled them into one and asked to be sitting in a Chock Full o'Nuts in New York, drinking coffee and eating doughnuts with Karen. That's what owned my mind then – coffee and doughnuts with Karen.

The year before he died, Ross had a girlfriend named Mary Poe. She was a tough babe who smoked two packs a day and had the longest fingernails I'd ever seen in my life. She'd been Bobby's girl for a while, but it hadn't worked out, and Ross'd inherited her. Between cigarettes, she laughed a lot and hung on Ross like tinsel on a Christmas tree. After they'd gone out for a few months, however, Ross grew tired of her and tried to end the relationship. It turned out to be one of the few times I ever saw my brother completely confused, because no matter what he did, she would not go away. He stopped calling her, wouldn't go near her at school, and for spite started dating her best friend. That didn't stop Mary. The crueler he got, the more she pursued him. She knitted him two sweaters and a pair of gloves (which he ceremoniously burned in front of her at school one day), called at least once a night, and sent him letters so drowned in Canoe cologne that our mailbox began to smell like a whore's handkerchief. At one particularly desperate point, he halfheartedly threatened to kill her, but she shrugged and said she was already dead without him. Luckily, in the end she found someone else, and Ross vowed he would never get involved with girls again.

Why I bring all this up is that I remember the scared, trapped look he used to get whenever the phone rang at night during that time. As India and I trudged down the silent, abandoned street that morning, I felt the same "no exit" way, only a hundred times worse because of Paul's immanence.

"Let's go in here for a coffee, Joe. My toes just went into shock."

It was midmorning, but because of the snow, the cafй was almost empty. A tired-looking old man sat with a glass of white wine in a corner, a chow dog asleep at his feet under the table.

We ordered, and the waiter, happy to have something to do, rushed behind the counter to get it.

Things were uncomfortably silent; I got so desperate for some kind of noise I was about to tell India a dumb joke, when the door opened and a big fat man came in with a dachshund right behind him. The chow took one look at them and leapt to attention, barking. The dachshund marched right over to the chow and nipped him on the leg. India gasped, but the big dog loved it. He jumped back and started hopping around, barking all the time. The dachshund took two steps forward and nipped him again. The two owners watched it all with big smiles on their faces.

India crossed her arms and shook her head. "What is this, the zoo?"

"I just noticed the dachshund's a girl."

India laughed. "That's the answer. Maybe if I bite Paul, he'll go away."

"Or at least he'll baric at you."

"Yeah." She stretched both arms over her head and, smiling, looked at me. "Joe, I'm being really stupid. I apologize. Maybe it's my way of paying you a compliment."

"How so?"

"Maybe I had so much faith in you I thought once you returned, everything would immediately be all right again, like I said last night, you know? Did you ever get that feeling about a person? That they can fix anything as soon as they get their hands on it? Yeah, that's what it was. I thought your return would send those bogeymen way the hell away."

"Bogeyman."

"Yeah, singular. One at a time, huh? Let's go. This place is beginning to sound like Born Free."

The rest of the day went well as we roamed around town, relishing the feeling that the whole place belonged entirely to us and the snow. We went shopping in the First District, and she bought me a crazy-looking T-shirt at the Fiorucci store.