Part 1 (2/2)

Phil's bit of smile had gone but his face was still pleasant.

- I didn't leave my wife, he said quietly. She threw me out.

- He left his wife and children, Adele said.

- I didn't leave them. Anyway it was over between us. It had been for more than a year. He said it evenly, almost as if it had happened to someone else. It was my son's tutor, he explained. I fell in love with her.

- And you began something with her? Morrissey suggested.

- Oh, yes.

There is love when you lose the power to speak, when you cannot even breathe.

- Within two or three days, he confessed.

- There in the house?

Phil shook his head. He had a strange, helpless feeling. He was abandoning himself.

- I didn't do anything in the house.

- He left his wife and children, Adele repeated.

- You knew that, Phil said.

- Just walked out on them. They'd been married fifteen years, since he was nineteen.

- We hadn't been married fifteen years.

- They had three children, she said, one of them r.e.t.a.r.ded.

Something had happened-he was becoming speechless, he could feel it in his chest like a kind of nausea. As if he were giving up portions of an intimate past.

- He wasn't r.e.t.a.r.ded, he managed to say. He was . . . having trouble learning to read, that's all.

At that instant an aching image of himself and his son from years before came to him. They had rowed one afternoon to the middle of a friend's pond and jumped in, just the two of them. It was summer. His son was six or seven. There was a layer of warm water over deeper, cooler water, the faded green of frogs and weeds. They swam to the far side and then all the way back, the blond head and anxious face of his boy above the surface like a dog's. Year of joy.

- So tell them the rest of it, Adele said.

- There is no rest.

- It turned out this tutor was some kind of call girl. He found her in bed with some guy.

- Is that right? Morrissey said.

He was leaning on the table, his chin in his hand. You think you know someone, you think because you have dinner with them or play cards, but you really don't. It's always a surprise. You know nothing.

- It didn't matter, Phil murmured.

- So stupid marries her anyway, Adele went on. She comes to Mexico City where he's working and he marries her.

- You don't understand anything, Adele, he said.

He wanted to say more but couldn't. It was like being out of breath.

- Do you still talk to her? Morrissey asked casually.

- Yes, over my dead body, Adele said.

None of them could know, none of them could visualize Mexico City and the first unbelievable year, driving down to the coast for the weekend, through Cuernavaca, her bare legs with the sun lying on them, her arms, the dizziness and submission he felt with her as before a forbidden photograph, as if before an overwhelming work of art. Two years in Mexico City oblivious to the wreckage. It was the sense of G.o.dliness that empowered him. He could see her neck bent forward with its slender nape. He could see the faint trace of bones like pearls that ran down her smooth back. He could see himself, his former self.

- I talk to her, he admitted.

- And your first wife?

- I talk to her. We have three kids.

- He left her, Adele said. Casanova here.

- Some women have minds like cops, Phil said to no one in particular. This is right, that's wrong. Well, anyway . . .

He stood up. He had done everything wrong, he realized, in the wrong order. He had scuttled his life.

- Anyway there's one thing I can say truthfully. I'd do it all over again if I had the chance.

After he had gone outside they went on talking. The woman whose husband had been unfaithful for seven years knew what it was like.

- He pretends he can't help it, she said. I've had the same thing happen. I was going by Bergdorf's one day and saw a green coat in the window that I liked and I went in and bought it. Then a little while later, someplace else, I saw one that was better than the first one, I thought, so I bought that. Anyway, by the time I was finished I had four green coats hanging in the closet-it was just because I couldn't control my desires.

Outside, the sky, the topmost dome of it, was brushed with clouds and the stars were dim. Adele finally made him out, standing far off in the darkness. She walked unsteadily toward him. His head, she saw, was raised. She stopped a few yards away and raised her head, too. The sky began to whirl. She took an unexpected step or two to steady herself.

- What are you looking at? she finally said.

He did not answer. He had no intention of answering. Then, - The comet, he said. It's been in the papers. This is the night it's supposed to be most visible.

There was silence.

- I don't see any comet, she said.

- You don't?

- Where is it?

- It's right up there, he gestured. It doesn't look like anything, just like another small star. It's that extra one, by the Pleiades. He knew all the constellations. He had seen them rise in darkness over heartbreaking coasts.

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