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  After a while she drifted away from the conversation in the kitchen and began wandering a little in the house. It was a bad habit of hers -- her mother used to yell at her about it when she was a little kid. Don't go wandering around in strangers' houses. But curiosity always got the better of her. She drifted into the living room. No TV, lots of books. Fiction, biography, history, science -- so that's what accountants read. I never would have guessed.

  And then up the stairs, just to see what was there. Not meaning to pry. Just wanting to know.

  Standing in the upstairs hall, in the near darkness, she could hear the children breathing. Which room is which, she wondered. The bathroom had the nightlight in it; she could see that the first two rooms belonged to the kids, one on the right, one on the left. The other two rooms had to be the one Douglas shared with his absent wife, and Grandpa's. A houseful. The extended family. Three generations present under one roof. This is the American home that everyone dreams of and nobody has. Dad goes off to work, Mom stays home, Grandpa lives right with you, there's a white picket fence and probably a dog in a nice little doghouse in the back yard. Nobody lives like this, except those who really work at it, those who know what life is supposed to be like and are determined to live that way.

  Lord knows Mom and Dad weren't like this. Fighting all the time, clawing at each other to get their own way. And who's to say that Douglas and Jaynanne aren't like that, too? I haven't seen them together, I don't know what they're like.

  But she did know. From the way the kids were with their father. That doesn't come out of a home torn apart with power struggles, with mutual fear and loathing.

  She walked down the hall -- just to see -- and opened the last two doors. The one on the right had to be Grandpa's room, and she closed the door immediately. The one on the left had the big bed. Douglas's room.

  She would have closed the door and gone downstairs at once, except that in the faint light from the bathroom nightlight she caught a glimpse of bright reflection from an old familiar shape, and suddenly she was filled with a longing that was so familiar, so right, that she couldn't resist it, not even for a moment. She snapped on the light and yes, it was what she had thought, a guitar, leaning against the wall beside the dresser that was obviously his -- cluttered on top, no knick- knacks.

  Pulling the door almost closed behind her, she walked to the guitar and picked it up. Not a particularly good make, but not a bad one. And the strings were steel, not that wimpy nylon, and when she strummed them softly they were perfectly in tune. He has played this guitar today, she thought. And now my hands are holding something that his hands have held. I don't share the having of children with him, I don't share this sweet impossible house with him, but he plays this instrument and I can do that too.

  She didn't mean to play, but she couldn't help herself. It had been so long since she had even wanted to touch a musical instrument that, now that the hunger had returned to her, she had no will to resist it. Why should she? It was music that defined who she was in this world. It was music that gave her fame and fortune. It was music that was her only comfort when people let her down, which was always, always.

  She played those old mournful melodies, the plucked-out ones, not the strumming tunes, not the dancey, frolicking ones. She played softly, gently, and hummed along, no words, no words ... words would come later, after the music, after the mood. She remembered the hot African wind coming across the Mediterranean and drying her after a late-night swim on a beach in Mallorca. She remembered the lover she had had then, the one who yelled at her when he was drunk but who made love in the morning like no man had ever made love to her before, gluttonously, gorgeously, filling her like the sun coming up over the sea. Where was he now? Old. He'd be in his sixties now. He might be dead now. I didn't have his baby, either, but he didn't want one. He was a sunrise man, he was always gone by noon.

  Tossing and turning, that's what sleep was like in Mallorca. Sticky and sweaty and never more than a couple of hours at a time. In the darkness you get up and stand on the veranda and let the sea breeze dry the sweat off you until you could go back inside and lie down again. And there he'd be, asleep, yes, but even though you were facing away from him you knew he'd reach out to you in his sleep, he'd hold you and press against you and his sweat would be clammy on your cold body, and his arm would arch over you and his hand would reach around you and cup your breast, and he'd start moving against you, and through it all he'd never even wake up. It was second nature to him. He could do it in his sleep.

  What did Mallorca have to do with Harmony, Illinois? Why were tunes of hot Spanish nights coming out of this guitar here in the cold of December, with Christmas coming on and the little dying firs and pines standing up in the tree lots? It was the dream of love, that's what it was, the dream but not the memory of love because in the long run it never turned out to be real. In the long run she always woke up from love and felt it slip away the way dreams slip away in the morning, retreating all the faster the harder you try to remember them. It was always a mirage, but when she got thirsty for it the way she was now, it would come back, that dream, and make her warm again, make her sweat with the sweetness of it.

  Maybe there was a noise. Maybe just the movement at the door. She looked up, and there were young Dougie and Rose, both of them awake, their faces sleepy but their eyes bright.

  "I'm sorry," said Rainie, immediately setting the guitar aside.

  "That's Dad's guitar," said Rose.

  "You're good," said Dougie. "I wish I could play like that."

  "I wish Dad could play like that," said Rose, giggling.

  "I shouldn't be in here."

  "What was that song?" asked Dougie. "I think I've heard it before."

  "I don't think so," said Rainie. "I was making it up as I went along."

  "It sounded like one of Dad's records."

  "Well, I guess I'm not very original-sounding," said Rainie. She felt unbelievably awkward. She didn't belong in this room. It wasn't her room. But there they were in the doorway, not seeming to be angry at all.

  "Can't you play some more?" said Dougie.

  "You need your sleep," said Rainie. "I shouldn't have wakened you."

  "But we're already awake," said Rose. "And we don't have school tomorrow, it's Saturday."

  "No, no," said Rainie. "I have to get home." She brushed apologetically past them and hurried down the stairs.

  Everybody was gone. The house was quiet. How long had she played?

  Douglas was in the kitchen, making a honey sandwich. "It's my secret vice," he said. "It's making me fat. Want one?"

  "Sure," she said. She couldn't remember ever having a honey sandwich in her life. She watched him pull the honey out of the jar, white and creamy, and spread it thickly on a slice of bread.

  "Lid or no lid?" he asked.

  "No lid," she said. She picked it up and bit into it and it was wonderful. He bit into his. A thin strand of honey stretched between his mouth and the bread, then broke, leaving a thread of honey down his chin.

  "It's messy, but I don't care," he said.

  "Where do you buy bread like this?"

  "Jaynanne makes it," he said.

  Of course. Of course she makes bread.

  "Where is everybody?" she asked.

  "Went home," said Doug. "Don't worry about a ride. They all had wives waiting for them, and I don't, so I said I'd take you home."

  "No, I don't want you to have to go out on a night like this."

  "I figured we'd leave a note on Minnie's door telling her you'd be late tomorrow."

  "No," said Rainie. "I'll be there on time."

  "It's after midnight."

  "I've slept less and done more the next day. But I hate to have you have to drive me."

  "So what would you do, walk?"

  I'd sleep in your bed, Rainie said silently. I'd get up in the morning and we'd make breakfast together, and we'd eat it together, and then when the kids got up we'd fix another breakfast f
or them, and they'd laugh with us and be glad to see us. And we'd smile at each other and remember the sweetness in the dark, the secret that the children would never understand until twenty, thirty years from now. The secret that I'm only beginning to understand tonight.

  "Thanks, I'll ride," said Rainie.

  "Dad's out seeing to the dog. He worries that the dog gets too cold on nights like this."

  "What, does he heat the doghouse?"

  "Yes, he does," said Douglas. "He keeps bricks just inside the fireplace and then when he puts the fire out at night he wraps the hot bricks in a cloth and carries them outside and puts them in the doghouse."

  "Does the dog appreciate it?"

  "He sleeps inside with the bricks. He wags his tail. I guess he does." Douglas's bread was gone. She reached up and wiped the honey off his chin with her finger, then licked her finger clean.

  "Thanks," he said.

  But she could hear more in his voice than he meant to say. She could hear that faint tremble in his voice, the hesitation, the uncertainty. He could have interpreted her gesture as motherly. He could have taken it as a sisterly act. But he did not. Instead he was taking it the way she meant it, and yet he wasn't sure that she really meant it that way.

  "Better go," he said. "Morning comes awful early."

  They bundled up and went outside. They met Grandpa coming around the front of the house. "Night," Grandpa said.

  "Night," said Rainie. "It was good talking to you."

  "My pleasure entirely," he said. He sounded perfectly cheerful, which surprised her. Why should it surprise her?

  Because I'm planning to do what he warned me not to do, thought Rainie. I'm planning to sleep with Douglas Spaulding tonight. He's mine if I want him, and I want him. Not forever, but tonight, this sweet lonely night when my music came back to me in his house, sitting on his bed, playing his guitar. Jaynanne can spare me this one night, out of all her happiness. There'll be no pain for anyone, and joy for him and me, and there's nothing wrong with that, I don't care what anyone says.

  She got in his car and sat beside him, watching the fog of his breath in the cold air as he started the engine. She never took her eyes off him, seeing how the light changed when the headlights came on inside the garage, how it changed again as he leaned over the back seat, guiding the car in reverse down the driveway. He pressed a button and the garage door closed after them.

  No one else was on the road. No one else seemed even to exist -- all the houses were dark and still, and the tires crunching on snow were the only noise besides the engine, besides their breathing.

  He tried to cover what was happening with chat. "Good game tonight, wasn't it?"

  "Mm-hm," she said.

  "Fun," he said. "Crazy bunch of guys. We act like children, I know it."

  "I like children," she said.

  "In fact, my kids are more mature than I am when I'm with those guys."

  She remembered speaking to them tonight, their faces so sleepy. "I woke them, I'm afraid. I was playing your guitar. That's a bad habit of mine, intruding in people's houses. Sort of an invited burglar or something."

  "I heard you playing," he said.

  "Clear downstairs? I thought I was quieter than that."

  "Steel strings," he said. "And the vents are all open in the winter. Sound carries. It was beautiful."

  "Thanks."

  "It was -- beautiful," he said again, as if he had searched for another word and couldn't think of one. "It was the kind of music I've always longed for in my home, but I've never been good enough on the guitar to play like that myself."

  "You keep it in tune."

  "If I don't the dog barks."

  She laughed, and he smiled in return. She couldn't stop looking at him. The heater was on now, so his breath didn't make a fog. The streetlights brightened his face; then it fell dark again. He's not that handsome. I'd never have looked at him twice if I'd met him in L.A. or New York. He would have been just another accountant there. So many bright lights in the city, how can someone like this ever shine there? But here, in the snow, in this small town, I can see the truth. That this is the true light, the one that all those neon lights and strobes and spots and halogens are trying to imitate but never can.

  They pulled up in front of her apartment. He switched off his lights. The dark turned bright again almost immediately, as the snow reflected streetlights and moonlight.

  I can't sleep with this man, thought Rainie. I don't deserve him. I made my choice many years ago, and a man like him is forever out of reach. Sleeping with him would be another self-deception, like so many I've indulged in before. He'd still be Jaynanne's husband and Dougie's and Rose's father and I'd still be a stranger, an intruder. If I sleep with him tonight I'd have to leave town tomorrow, not because I care what anybody thinks, not because anybody'd even know, but because I couldn't stand it, to have come so close and still not belong here. This is forbidden fruit. If I ate of it, I'd know too much, I'd see how naked I am in my own life, my old life.

  He opened his car door.

  "No," she said. "You don't need to help me out."

  But he was already walking around the car, opening her door. He gave her a hand getting out. The snow squeaked under their feet.

  "Thanks for the ride," she said. "I can get up the stairs OK."

  "I know," he said. "I just don't like dropping people off without seeing them safe inside."

  "You'd walk Tom to the door?"

  "So I'm a sexist reactionary," he said. "I can't help it, I was raised that way. Always see the woman safely to the door."

  "There aren't many rapists out on a night like this," said Rainie.

  Ignoring her arguments, he followed her up the stairs and waited while she got the key out and unlocked the deadbolt and the knob. She knew that he'd ask to come inside. Knew that he'd try to kiss her. Well, she'd tell him no. Not because Minnie and Grandpa told her to, but because she had her own kind of integrity. Sleeping with him would be a lie she was telling to herself, and she wouldn't do it.

  But he didn't try to kiss her. He stepped back as she pushed open the door and gave a little half-wave with his gloved hand and said, "Thanks."

  "For what?" she asked.

  "For bringing your music into my house tonight."

  "Thanks," she said. It touched her that it seemed to mean so much to him. "Sorry I woke your kids."

  He shook his head. "I never would have asked you to play. But I hoped. Isn't that stupid? I tuned my guitar for you, and then I hid it upstairs, and you found it anyway. Karma, right?"

  It took a moment for her to realize what it meant, him saying that. In this town she had never touched a musical instrument or even told anybody that she played guitar. So why did he know to tune it for her?

  "I'm such a fool," she whispered. "I thought my disguise was so perfect."

  "I love your music," he said. "Since I heard the first note of it. Your songs have been at the heart of all the best moments of my life."

  "How did you know?"

  "You've done it before," he said. "Dropped out. Lived under an assumed name. Right? It took a while for me to realize why you looked so familiar. I kept coming back in to the cafe until finally I was sure. When you talked to me that day, you know, when you chewed me out, your voice -- I had just listened to your live album that morning. I was pretty sure then. And tonight when you played, then I really knew. I wasn't going to say anything, but I had to thank you ... for the music. Not just tonight, all of it. I'm sorry. I won't bother you again."

  She was barely hearing him, though; her mind had snagged on the phrase he said before: Her songs had been at the heart of all the best moments of his life. It made her weak in the knees, those words. Because it meant that she was part of this, after all. Through her music. Her songs had all her longings in them, everything she'd ever known or felt or wished for, and he had brought those songs into his life, had brought her into his home. Of course Dougie thought she sounded like his dad's recor
ds -- they had grown up hearing her songs. She did belong there in that house. He had probably known her music before he even knew his wife.

  And now he was going to turn away and go on down the stairs and out to his car and leave her here alone and she couldn't let him go, not now, not now. She reached out and caught his arm; he stopped on the next-to-top step and that put them at the same level, and she kissed him. Kissed him and clung to him, kissed him and tasted the honey in his mouth. His arms closed around her. It was maddening to have their thick winter coats between them. She reached down, still kissing him, and fumbled to unbutton her coat, then his; she stepped inside his coat as if it were his bedroom. She pressed herself against him and felt his desire, the heat of his body.

  At last the endless kiss ended, but only because she was ready to take him inside her room, to share with him what she knew he needed from her. She stepped up into her doorway and turned to lead him in.

  He was rebuttoning his coat.

  "No," she said. "You can't go now."

  He shook his head and kept fastening the buttons. He was slow and clumsy, with his gloves on.

  "You want me, Douglas Spaulding, and I need you more than you know."

  He smiled, a shy, embarrassed smile. "Some fantasies can't come true," he said.

  "I'm not fantasizing you, Douglas Spaulding."

  "I'm fantasizing you," he answered.

  "I'm real," she said. "You want me."

  "I do," he said. "I want you very much."

  "Then have me, and let me have you. For one night. Like the music. You've had my music with you all these years. I want the memory of your love with me. Who could begrudge us that?"

  "Nobody would begrudge us anything."

  "Then stay with me."

  "It's not me you love," said Douglas, "and it's not my love you want."

  "No?"

  "It's my life you love, and my life you want."

  "Yes," she said. "I want your life inside me."

  "I know," he said. "I understand. I wanted this life, too. The difference between us is that I wanted it so much I did the things you have to do to get it. I set aside my career ambitions. I moved away from the city, from the center of things. I turned inward, toward my children, toward my wife. That's how you get the life I have."