They had four nights. They came home every evening to the Copper Whale Inn on the corner of Fifth and L to spend long hours in the enameled brass bed, loving and sleeping and waking to love again. Their host, a friendly, chatty young man, thought they were newlyweds and left them to themselves. They would have been grateful, if they'd noticed.

There were discoveries. They both loved raspberries, playground swings, the American Southwest, the sound track from the movie The Last of the Mohicans. Flying terrified him; it was her profession. He'd quit smoking, but walked slowly through the smoking section of a restaurant inhaling deeply for his nicotine fix. "In lieu of a bowling alley," he told her, grinning. She wore contact lenses she had to remove for twelve continuous hours once a week, and after he got over the mild shock he decided he kind of liked her in glasses. He listened to classical music, she sang backup for the Ronettes, and they wrangled over the radio settings in their rented Ford. She wanted the tipsy clams at Simon and Seafort's, and when there were no reservations available he asked the hostess, "Well, then, do you maybe have something left over from lunch?"

They read to each other from Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday, and they talked, nonstop, an unceasing flow of communication on every level that amazed them with its ease and empathy. "I didn't know," she said one night. "I didn't know I could talk to a man about everything, about work and poetry, about music and the movies, about society and sex."

Oh yes, the sex. They came together the first time like thunder, ardent, urgent, demanding, and it was so easy and so effortless and so incredibly satisfying that they both lay stunned in the aftermath.

Later, when there was time for play, she bound his wrists with a long blue silk scarf and he, the man always and forever in control, astounded himself by lying back and loving it. He made her come and come again, with his hands, his cock, his tongue, and she was amazed at her response and, she confessed, her head hidden in his shoulder, a little alarmed at her loss of control. He rolled to his back and said, "Feel free," and she startled them both by slithering down his torso and taking him in her mouth, until he was as mindless as she had been. "Jesus, woman," he said the fourth night, "is this the way it is with everyone? Have we been missing out?"

"No, Liam," she said, a little sadly. "It's the trusting."

He craned his head to look down at her. "What? What do you mean?"

She looked up to meet his eyes, and repeated, "It's the trusting." She blushed slightly. "Like the other night with the scarf. You trusted me not to hurt you. I trusted you not to be shocked, or offended."

After she was asleep he lay wakeful, turning her words over in his mind. He had put their attraction down to chemistry, plain and simple. He'd felt it before-not this strongly, true, but there had been times in his life when he had come together with a woman with whom he had absolutely nothing in common but sexual attraction. Why should this be any different?

But it was, and he knew it.

Later, he roused to find himself alone in the bed, and sat up to see Wy in one of the chairs in the bay window that overlooked Knik Arm. Moonglow silvered her hair, cupped her breast, gilded a smooth hip. He heard a soft, muffled sound and realized she was crying. "Wy?" he said, getting out of bed and dropping to his knees next to her. "What's wrong, sweetheart?"

She wouldn't look at him. "I'm going home tomorrow."

"What? But-Wy, we've got a week. Is something wrong, did somebody call?"

She shook her head.

"Then why? We planned this for three months. I want my week."

She looked up. "Liam, I have to go. And you have to let me."

He made as if to touch her, stopped himself when she warded him off, one hand upraised. "I always knew we had to go back. I always knew I had to let you go. But we agreed on a week." He was beginning to be angry. "I want my seven days."

She swiped at her tears with the back of a hand. "I can't do this. I don't do this," she said, angry in her turn. "I don't know how I got here. You are married," she said, and repeated it a second time as if to remind them both, as if both of them needed reminding. "You are married. You're a father."

What could he say? It was true. "Don't leave. Please don't leave. You promised me seven days. I want those seven days. Then we know if it's real. Then I can make some decisions."

"No you can't," she whispered.

"Wy-"

She shook her head fiercely, and he stopped. When she spoke again, her voice was so low and so filled with pain that he could barely hear it. "I can't do this. I can't live like this, live with it. I can't live with what we're doing, what we might do. And I hate all this sneaking around. It makes me feel cheap." After a moment, she added, "It makes us cheap."

"But-"

"No! Liam, don't." She held out her hands, and he put his own into them, the despair welling up like a black tide. "You have responsibilities. You can't turn your back on them. You shouldn't try."

"But-"

"No, Liam. You know I'm right." She paused, and he was silent. Her attempt at a smile was shaky. "You see? You know I'm right. I'm flying home tomorrow. Alone. You can take an air taxi."

He traced the back of her hand with his thumb. "All right," he said at last. "Call me in a couple of days. Or I'll call you."

She shook her head. "You know you can't." She took a deep breath, let it out, and continued in a steady voice, "And I won't be there long. I've found another job."

"What?" The panic was sharp and immediate. "Where?"

She shook her head. "I'm leaving on Wednesday."

"Wy," he said, drawing her name out. "No. Don't do this."

She put gentle fingers over his mouth. "We'll both be better off if we don't see each other after tomorrow." Again, she tried to smile. "It's not our time, Liam. Maybe in the next life."

She took him back to bed then, and they made love in a fury of pain and loss and despair, and when he woke the next morning she was curled in a ball against his chest, her shoulders shaking, her face wet against his skin.

She refused to let him drive her to Lake Hood, saying her good-byes at the car. She looked down at their clasped hands. "I've gotten used to this hand," she whispered. "This hand in mine. Your skin against mine. Warm. Strong. Holding me."

He couldn't speak. It took him three tries to get in the car, until finally she gave him a gentle push. "Go on. Go on, now. Your son is waiting."

Chin up, shoulders back, eyes blinded by tears, she walked steadily down to the intersection of Fifth and L. She did not look back. He knew, because he watched her in the rearview mirror, her hair a dark blond tumble against the blue silk scarf wrapped round her neck, until the light turned green and the car behind him gave an impatient honk. He stepped on the gas and started through the intersection.

When he looked up again, she was gone.

"Harry, dammit, I know it's not in the job description but try for a little friggin' compassion, would you!"

Wy's voice, angry, impatient, and just a little frightened, brought him back into the present with a jerk. He looked down to discover that he'd wound the scarf around his wrists, straining the delicate fabric between them. With an effort, he freed himself and replaced everything as it had been. He closed the drawer again and, still moving softly, went back out into the living room.

There was a framed poster on one wall with the title INTERNATIONAL SPACE YEAR 1992 running across the bottom. It had a couple of galleons sailing rough seas out of the bottomleft-hand corner of the frame and into space in the upper-right-hand corner of the frame, with ringed planets and gas giants and moons and comets interspersed with blueprint drawings of spacecraft.