"The black socks with the sandals."

"Part of the disguise."

"I watched you all the way down the street."

"I could feel it."

"You were going to see Adele, weren't you?"

"I don't think we should get into that."

"No, you're right. Or Buddy. I won't ask if he's with you or what you're doing here. Or if you've run into Glenn Michaels yet."

He said, "Don't talk like that, okay? You scare me." He said, "I was trying to remember-Faye Dunaway and Robert Red-ford start kissing..

."

Karen nodded.

"As he's untying her."

"How did they get from there into bed?"

Foley watched her get up from the sofa and hold out her hand to him.

She said, "Come on, I'll show you," and took him into the bedroom. He sat on the bed to take off his shoes, stood up to take off his pants.

Got his socks off. She said, "Are you gonna leave your tie on?"

Watching her undress, Karen getting down to a black bra and panties, he said he wasn't sure if the old ticker would be able to take this. When she got out of her undies and came over to him, standing close to help him with the tie, he was thinking he might Ve died already and gone to heaven. When his clothes were off he looped the tie around his neck again. Seeing her in lamplight before she turned it off he said, "My God, look at you." He had never seen a woman's body like hers naked.

In magazines maybe, but not in real life. In the next few minutes he realized he had never met anyone under the covers like she was: man, all over him with her scent, touching, kissing, saying his name, saying "Oh, Jack," in a whisper that sounded sad. He asked her if she was having fun and saw her face in the light from the sitting room that filtered the dark, saw her smile, but even her smile was sad. They made love and she didn't speak or make a sound until she began to say his name again, "Jack?" He asked her what. But that's all she was doing, saying his name, saying it over and over until she was saying it pretty loud and then stopped saying it. No woman had ever said his name like that before.

"What am I now?"

Lying in his arms in the king-size bed, light from the sitting room almost reaching them.

"You're still my zoo-zoo."

She moved away from him to sit up and swing her legs off the bed.

"Are you coming back?"

She said, "You can always depend on the old bank-robber fucker."

He reached her before she could leave the bed, and sat up, getting close behind her, his hand touching her breasts as his arm came around to hold her against him.

"Are you being funny?"

"I have ta go to the bathroom."

"Are you?"

She said, "I don't know."

He let go of her, watched her get up and go into the bathroom. The door closed. He felt they were coming to the end of the time-out and he'd hear a whistle blow the way hacks blew whistles to tell you to stop doing something and start doing something else. He didn't know what to say to her now to get her back; he wasn't sure if he could put himself in her place to know what she was thinking. He did know how to listen and how to wait; he was good at waiting. If he couldn't get her back, at least for a while-there was no time limit-then he would become serious, not wanting to but knew he would, and they'd play it out.

But when she came back to the bed and stood naked looking down at him, he believed he could get her back.

She said, "I want you to know something. I wasn't looking for just a fuck, if that's what you're thinking?"

"Why are you mad?"

"Or I did it for some kind of kinky thrill. Score with a bank robber the way some women go for rough trade."

"What about my motive?" Foley said.

"Now I can say I fucked a U.S. marshal. You think I will?"

She hesitated.

"I don't know."

"Come to bed."

He raised the covers and she stood there making up her mind before finally slipping into bed and his arms took her in.

He said, "I know of a guy-his wife held him down, wouldn't let him go out with the guys, wouldn't give him any money-he was a drunk. So he robbed a bank to get back at her, a bank where he was known and he'd be sure to get caught. The wife was humiliated and the guy was happy. He did fifty-four months, came out, patched things up with his wife and robbed the same bank all over again. Another guy, he goes in the bank holding a bottle he says is nitroglycerin. He scores some cash off a teller, he's on his way out when he drops the bottle. It shatters on the tile floor, he slips in the stuff, cracks his head and they've got him. The nitro was canola oil. I know more fucked-up bank robbers than ones that know what they're doing. I doubt one in ten can tell a dye pack when he sees one. Guys like-remember that movie, Woody Alien robs the bank?"

"Take the Money and Run."

"He hands the teller the note, she looks at it and says, "You have a gub? What's a gub?" That's par, because most bank robbers are fucking morons. You've heard some of the nicknames they get? The B.O. bandit, the Chubby Cheeks bandit, Mumbles, the Laurel and Hardy bandits? A guy they call Mr. Pleats? Another one, the Sheik, guy wears something that looks like a turban? The Vaulter? Guy always jumped the counter for no reason. Robby Hood?"

She said, "What were you known as?"

"I don't think I had a nickname. But the point I'm making: to go to bed with a bank robber so you can say you did, you'd have to be as dumb as they are. I know you're not dumb, I know you're not looking for lanky thrills, as you say. So why would I think that? Why would you think I might think that?"

She said, "You're not dumb."

"You can't do three falls," Foley said, "and think you have much of a brain." He waited a few moments, lying there holding her, before he said, "If you get serious on me, it's over. You have to stop thinking."

Now Karen took time, holding on to him. She said, "I don't want to lose you."

"That's part of the feeling we both have. It's how we got here.

But there's nothing we can do-you know that. You're not gonna give up the life you have and it's way too late for me. I couldn't if I wanted to. Change my name and look for work? You say 'work' to a con he'll go out the window, not even bothering to see what floor he's on. Look, we knew going in," Foley said, "when the time's up, it's up. I say that knowing I love you with all my heart, I sincerely do."

Her face came up to his; they began to kiss and touch again, Foley with a tender feeling he had never experienced before.

Looking at her eyes he thought maybe she was crying or was about to.

She said, "I can't go with you." She kissed him again, and in a voice so quiet he could barely hear her she said, "I want to know what's gonna happen."

"You know," Foley said.

When Karen woke up, lying on her side facing the bathroom, she didn't open her eyes right away. She wanted to; she wanted to look at the radio clock next to the bed and she wanted to turn her body enough to reach with her hand and, if he was there, touch him. As long as she didn't open her eyes or move he was still there. She could take her time, creep up on him and they'd make love again and she would hear his name coming out of her in the dark. So she lay there with the stale taste of whiskey in her mouth. All that was left. Until she said, Oh, for Christ sake, grow up.

And opened her eyes.

It was ten-fifteen. The bathroom door was open, the light off.

She rolled to her back and turned her head. His side of the bed was empty; the room silent, the windows dark. She remembered looking at herself in the bathroom mirror and coming out to say things that were so fucking stupid now, hearing herself, her tone, and remembered him saying, "Why are you mad?" And later saying, "If you get serious on me, it's over." And that's what she did, became emotional and blew it because she was thinking too much, wanting to know how it would end.