Fury

CHAPTER ONE

“MS. WINTERS,” THE HOTEL receptionist said, “I believe we have a message for you.” The small black man moved down the counter to the computer terminal and typed in a command, then waited for the response on the screen.

Jennifer glanced around the lobby of the Washington, D.C., hotel and spotted a printed sign that read:

That’s what she needed, Jennifer thought wryly, a change, especially in her love life.

“Yes, here it is,” the reception clerk said. ” Room twenty-three fourteen. Jenny, I have a two o’clock appointment. See you at four.’ And it’s signed, ‘T.’ ” The reception clerk looked up. “Would you like a copy?”

“No, thank you. Room twenty-three fourteen, yes?”

“That’s right. I’ll delete this message?”

“Yes, please.” She bent down and picked up her briefcase.

“And I’ll have your luggage sent up,” the clerk added, handing her a computer card. “Your room won’t be ready for another twenty minutes, at two o’clock.”

Jennifer took a deep breath. It was Tom who had also made sure his Justice Department meetings were scheduled for this Thursday so that they could spend the night together in the Washington hotel. She had not seen Tom in three days; they had not made love in a week. She wanted to make love to him so much now, she could taste it. Sometimes it seemed to her that all they had in common was good sex. They certainly did know how to make that work.

Turning away from the reception counter, she caught her reflection in the lobby mirrors and was pleased and surprised to see how thin she looked in her new Calvin Klein suit. The French blue color was right, she saw. It favored her fair complexion and her honey blond hair. But she wasn’t happy with her lip gloss. The shade was too orange and exaggerated her lips. Her mouth was big enough as it was.

“Jenny! Jennifer Winters!” A woman’s high, sharp voice stopped her. Jennifer glanced around and spotted Eileen Gorman waving to her from deep in the lounge. “Jennifer, is that really you!” the woman said, rushing toward her.

Jennifer grinned and went to her. “Eileen, I can’t believe it’s you!” She wrapped her arms around the smaller woman and briefly hugged her. “It’s so good to see you! What a surprise!”

“Are you here for the conference?” Eileen asked.

“Yes, the foundation conference. Who are you with, Eileen?”

“Foundation, no. I’m here for Kathy Dart. She’s going to channel Habasha.”

“Who? What?” Jennifer let go of Eileen’s hand and set down her briefcase.

“You don’t know who Kathy Dart is?” Eileen asked, her green eyes widening.

She still looks like a cheerleader, Jennifer thought, smiling at her old friend. “Eileen, you look wonderful! Do you live here in Washington?”

“No, I’m still living on Long Island.” She took a deep breath and sighed, then, still grinning, said, “What a wonderful surprise! It’s so good to see you, Jenny.” She reached over and again embraced Jennifer. “You look beautiful. Now, what do you do? Where do you live?” she asked.

“In the city. New York. Brooklyn Heights, really. I’ve been there since law school.”

“I had heard you moved to California. Anita told me. You remember Anita?”

“Yes, of course. Yes, I did move to L.A., but—”

“Some guy?”

Jennifer nodded, then turned her thumb down.

Eileen laughed and asked, glancing at Jennifer’s left hand, “Married?”

“No, just well, involved.” She shrugged her shoulders. “You know how it is.”

“Tell me!” Eileen sighed, still smiling at Jennifer. Then she said, “It’s so good to see you, Jennifer. What is it that you do exactly?”

“I’m a lawyer with the James Thompson Foundation. We give money to good causes—civil rights outfits, that sort of liberal thing. I came down for a meeting. Now, who is this Kathy Dart?”

“Oh, you must see Kathy. She’s just wonderful!” Eileen’s voice rose, and she beamed at Jennifer. “She’s a channeler. A wonderful channeler!”

“What?” Jennifer asked, laughing.

“You know what a channeler is, don’t you?”

Jennifer shook her head, suddenly feeling foolish. “I’m sorry, but I—”

“Channeling was written up in People magazine. There was a story about Kathy’s psychic powers. Kathy receives information from this prehistoric human called Habasha who has returned to help us with our lives today.”

“Are you into that stuff?” Jennifer asked.

“This is one of her few East Coast appearances this winter,” Eileen went on.

“Appearance? Does she do seances?” Jennifer kept smiling at Eileen, amused by her overwhelming enthusiasm.

“No! She’s a channeler.” Eileen opened a pink folder. “It’s a special session called ‘A Weekend with Habasha’!”

“Who?” Jennifer laughed out loud, and then touched Eileen’s arm and said, “I’m sorry to be so flippant.”

“That’s all right,” Eileen answered. “I can’t blame you. I was the same way until I heard him.”

“Him?”

“Habasha. I know it’s confusing, but Kathy Dart is only the channel, you see. Habasha uses her body to speak to us. It’s sort of like possession, but isn’t. She ‘channels’ him. He speaks to us through her body. What she does—Kathy that is—is to allow herself to set aside her waking consciousness to allow knowledge—Habasha’s knowledge—that lies beyond conscious awareness to flow into her mind and through her ability to speak.”

“A medium, you mean?”

“Yes, that, but more, Jennifer. You’ll see.”

“I’ll see?”

“Yes, come with me to hear Kathy. She’s about to have an introductory session. It’s for, you know, spouses, friends. C’mon with me, Jenny, and then we can have a cup of coffee and talk, or maybe dinner. Are you busy tonight?”

“Eileen, I can’t—”

“Do you have plans?”

“No, but the foundation meeting opens tomorrow.”

“It’s just a half hour,” she said enthusiastically.

“Okay, why not?” It might be fun, Jennifer thought, and also she’d have time to talk more with Eileen. “Are you sure it will only take thirty minutes?”

“It will take your whole life, once you hear him,” Eileen answered, linking her arm through Jennifer’s. “It’s so good to see you. How long has it been? Graduation, right?”

Jennifer nodded. “I think so. It seems like an age. I mean, so much has happened in my life.”

“You’re telling me?”

They reached a bank of elevators, and Eileen pressed the down button. “It’s set to start in five minutes,” she said. “Kathy and Habasha are is never late.”

“Who is she, he or it?” Jennifer asked, really confused now.

“He’s prehistoric. A Cro-Magnon man.”

“What!” Jennifer exclaimed, backing off.

Eileen laughed. “I know, I know. It all sounds silly and strange, but really it isn’t. Just wait! Keep an open mind. I was the same way until I heard Kathy Dart speak. You’ll see.”

When the elevator door opened, they stepped out into the lower lobby of the hotel. Through a set of open doors, Jennifer saw a crowd of people already gathered on at least a hundred metal folding chairs. It looked like any other hotel conference session she had ever attended.

But at the far end of the room was a winged green satin armchair placed upon a small platform. The chair was surrounded with flowers, bouquets of bright spring blossoms, and Jennifer was struck by how incongruous it all seemed. Directly behind the armchair, a beautiful crystal pyramid was suspended from the ceiling, though it seemed to hang in midair like a halo. Of course, she thought, remembering now some of the things she had read about the New Age movement. Quartz crystals were considered a source of psychic energy.

“They’re all women,” Jennifer said, scanning the crowd.

“Well, yes, mostly. I really hadn’t noticed,” Eileen answered as they stepped into an aisle and sat down in two of the folding chairs.

Jennifer saw that the majority of women were like her. They were mostly in their late twenties, well dressed, and many were wearing business suits and carrying briefcases, as if they had just come from the office. The few men in the audience were similarly well dressed and well groomed. This was not, she realized, a way-out group of people.

“One reason I feel comfortable going to one of these conferences,” Eileen whispered to Jennifer, “everyone looks like me. See, we can’t all be crazy.” She smiled at Jennifer. “Oh, I’m so glad I ran into you. It’s so exciting.” Before Jennifer could respond, Eileen said quickly, “There she is.”

Jennifer turned toward the door. Kathy Dart had appeared at the entrance, and the roomful of people immediately fell silent. Jennifer looked away for a moment and suppressed a smile. It would be impolite to laugh, she knew, but the flowers, the small throne, and all the pomp and circumstance were embarrassing. And now around her, Jennifer saw, people were smiling, and some had tears in their eyes as Kathy Dart entered the room.

The channeler came up the center aisle and smiled down at her audience. The palms of her hands were turned up, and as she moved toward the stage, she reached out to caress the cheek of one woman, to touch another’s hand, to make physical contact with her followers.

She was beautiful, Jennifer saw. Beautiful in a delicate and fragile way. Very tall and thin, with sloping shoulders that concealed her height. She wore no makeup, and her very long and straight black hair set off her pure white skin. She looked like a woman who needed to be protected, who was too fragile for the world. Yet when she stepped into the room, she immediately overwhelmed it with her presence.

As Kathy Dart passed their chairs, her eyes swept down the row and then caught Jennifer’s face, and she stopped walking. For a moment, her eyes were riveted on Jennifer, and the sweet smile slipped from her angelic face. Kathy Dart looked startled, as if she had been found out in some way. And Jennifer, at that moment, felt a surge of heat and pain sweep through her body, leaving her flesh aflame.

Kathy Dart broke off her gaze and turned abruptly away to find another face. She smiled warmly at the next person, as if she were trying to quickly reestablish herself with the crowd. Jennifer fell back into her chair, trembling from the silent exchange.

“She’s almost thirty-three,” Eileen whispered. “Don’t you think that’s interesting? You know, the same age as Jesus Christ?”

Jennifer could not catch her breath. The eye contact with Kathy Dart had surprised her, and seeing the disturbed look on the woman’s face had frightened her. She turned to ask Eileen if she had seen the way Kathy Dart looked at her, but at that moment there emerged from the assemblage a soft humming. It swept across the crowded room, as if dozens of mothers were gently humming their infants to sleep.

Kathy Dart had reached the flower-decked platform, and the humming increased to a rushing crescendo. Kathy Dart faced the audience with uplifted arms. She was dressed in a long white gown trimmed in light blue. Around her neck she wore a gold chain that held a small quartz crystal.

The room lights dimmed and a small spotlight focused on Kathy Dart. She lifted her right hand, and as she slowly lowered it, the humming faded away.

“Thank you,” she whispered, “for giving us some of your present time, for welcoming us into your life.” She spoke slowly, smiling constantly at the audience, her bright blue eyes flashing in the spotlight.

It’s going to be one of those talks, Jennifer realized at once. She was always uneasy around people who gushed with deeply felt emotions. Jennifer glanced at her watch. It was now 2:20. She had hoped to be through with her afternoon jog before Tom returned to the hotel. She would give this another twenty minutes, she decided, and then she’d leave.

“I’m sure you all know something—a little something perhaps— of channeling, of who I am, and of how this new man came into my life,” Kathy Dart began, and the audience laughed.

She certainly had a nice easy delivery, Jennifer noted, coolly appraising her.

“My Old Man, I call him. God knows he’s old enough,” she said quickly, raising her voice in mock seriousness. “He’s at least twenty-three million years old, give or take a few hundred years. Of course, I think he might be telling a few white lies about that age of his,” she added, raising her eyebrows. Then she threw up both hands. “But who’s counting!” The audience broke into quick applause.

Beside her, Eileen beamed up at Kathy Dart.

“Many of you, however, don’t know about Habasha, and that is why I have these little talks early in the weekend, to give you and your friends a chance to meet my lover, my mentor, my best friend. I am sure some of you know that Habasha was once my warrior lover; in another time we were both pirates off the Barbary Coast, and in yet another time and another place he was my son. That is the wonderful nature of reincarnation. The wonderful nature of our spirits, ourselves, our souls. With the help of Habasha, I have regressed to my distant past, have tracked all my previous lives.”

She paused and looked around the room, taking in the audience. Her large, shiny, saucer blue eyes caught and held everyone’s attention.

“Reincarnation is such a wonderful, strange, and also beautiful aspect of our existence. It is a basic tenet of many religions. We are reincarnated! I know. And you know in your heart of hearts, too, that somehow, someway, you have lived before, have been another person, suffered perhaps and died, and then lived again.”

“We know this from the religions of our childhood. I myself was raised a Roman Catholic, and within the teachings of my very first catechism, I learned how the saints of the early Christian faith came back from death to tell us about heaven as well as hell. I learned that all of us someday will join our Maker in eternity.”

She had softened her voice, Jennifer realized, to draw people closer, to force them to be more attentive. Even she was leaning forward and paying more attention to Kathy Dart.

“I mention reincarnation because some people are made nervous by the idea that they are somehow born again in another person, in another time.” Kathy laughed. “I guess if I thought I’d be reborn again with these big feet of mine, I’d be upset, too, but I have hope and faith that it won’t happen the next time.”

The audience broke into laughter. Jennifer leaned over to Eileen and whispered, “She does have a nice way about her, doesn’t she?”

“She’s wonderful,” Eileen answered, her eyes moist with tears.

“But how do we know that we lived before?” Kathy Dart went on. “That we might have been—as I was—a Barbary Coast pirate? Or as Shirley MacLaine has said she was once, a hardworking woman of the night.”

“We know,” Kathy Dart whispered. “We know.” She paused and swept her blue eyes across the room as she gently tapped her heart with her small closed hand. “We know in our hearts, don’t we? We know we have lived before,” she whispered, nodding to the crowd. Then her voice grew stronger and more confident. “We know because we have had that wonderful experience of turning the corner in some foreign country or looking at a photograph in a mossy old book and realizing, yes, we were there; we walked through those ancient streets, lived in those times. We, too, might have been a mistress of King George, a Christian tossed to the lions in the Colosseum, or perhaps a Cherokee princess, or an American housewife living the hard life on our western frontier. I mention those people in particular because they were some of my many former lives. I have lived and passed on. Lived and passed on again and again and again. We never die. Our spirits don’t die. We all know that, regardless of our religious faith. Our spirits, ourselves, our egos, you might call it, have always been, will always be.”

She paused and took in the audience. She had clasped her hands together as if in prayer.

“We know all this ourselves,” she went on slowly. “It is a secret that has been locked away in our subconscious, but how do we know? That’s the question.”

“Exactly,” Jennifer said out loud.

“Shhhh.” Eileen nudged her. Eileen was sitting on the edge of her metal chair. Everyone was leaning forward, Jennifer saw; they were all on the edges of their chairs, straining to hear every word.

“Let me tell you how I know,” Kathy offered. Her voice brightened and the audience stirred. They were going to hear a secret, Kathy’s secret. Jennifer recognized the anticipation. Despite her cynicism, she, too, wanted to hear the secret of Kathy Dart’s past lives.

Kathy Dart turned to the green satin chair and sat down. Even seated, she seemed to pull the audience close to her. She took her time straightening her long white cotton skirt, letting the audience adjust to her new position on the platform.

Jennifer glanced at her watch. She had been there for nearly twenty minutes. She should leave now, she thought, while there was a lull in the room, but the thought of standing up, of having everyone stare at her, kept her in her seat. It had been a mistake to let Eileen Gorman talk her into coming to this silliness. Jennifer glanced over and saw that Eileen was wearing a ring, and remembered that Eileen had married right after high school and hadn’t gone on to college. It had surprised everyone at the time. There had been some talk, back then, that Eileen Gorman had to get married.

“I was, I guess, like any one of you,” Kathy Dart began again, “just going along with my life, living it day by day, trying to get by, to be happy, to find someone to love.”

“I’m sure you have heard something about the power of quartz crystals. It certainly has been in the newspapers. Shirley MacLaine, in her wonderful books, talks about crystals and pyramids and how they have been important to her in reestablishing her past lives.”

“I didn’t know it at the time of my first encounter with Habasha, but throughout history mediums have used crystals to align themselves with spirits, to capture the energy of past lives.” She paused.

“I was a freshman at the time—this was in 1974—studying English at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota, and my older sister, Mary Sue, who was in Ethiopia with the Peace Corps, had sent me a piece of quartz crystal. She had found it along the Hadar River, a tributary of the Awash River in southern Ethiopia.”

“Some of you may remember that in 1974 Don Johanson, a paleoanthropologist working in East Africa with the famous Leakey family, found an early hominid and named her Lucy after the Beatles’ song ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.’”

“Lucy stood three and a half feet tall, lived at the edge of the shallow lake, and died sometime in her early twenties.”

“This all happened some 3.3 million years ago. But Lucy is very important in our lives—in my life especially—because she and her friends, all who camped and lived together on the banks of that Ethiopian river, proved that men and women had begun to bond, to share, to work together, to experience what we call human feelings.”

“I didn’t know any of this, of course. I was just eighteen years old; I had a paper due on Jane Austen the next morning and was secretly praying that the gorgeous boy I had met at Sunday afternoon’s mixer would call and ask me out. You know how it is!” She said, shaking her head ruefully. The women laughed delightedly.

Jennifer smiled, too, remembering her own adolescence.

“Anyway, I was trying to work on my Jane Austen paper and in the mail came this small quartz crystal from my sister,” Kathy Dart went on, fingering the clear quartz that hung around her neck. “I held it in my fingers, rubbing it slightly—out of nervousness, I guess—while I sat at my dorm desk.”

“It was a typical fall day in St. Paul. My window was open and I could hear kids on the lawn outside, and I was feeling sad that I was inside working on my paper when everyone else was having a good time—and then I heard a whooshing sound in the hallway. I glanced up and saw a brilliant blue-white light in the open doorway.”

“I raised my hand to shield my eyes, and it was then, in the midst of this beautiful white light, that I heard Habasha speak to me.”

She paused and looked down at her hands and the small quartz crystal. The room was silent. Jennifer realized she was holding her breath, waiting for Kathy Dart to continue.

“He spoke to me then,” Kathy said softly, her head still down. “I can’t say whether it was really words that he spoke, or if he just telepathically let himself be understood. But I did understand him. He said simply, ‘Are you ready to receive me?’”

“I remember shaking my head. I was too frightened to speak. And he went on, ‘I’ll come again when you are ready.’ That was all. Gradually the blue-white faded. Again I heard the voices of students on the campus lawn. Habasha was gone. I didn’t know his name, of course. I didn’t know why he had chosen me, but I knew something wonderful had happened to me.”

She paused to look searchingly at her audience. “I didn’t see him again for ten years. He was waiting. Waiting for me to grow up and prepare myself to be his host in this world. He was waiting for me to agree to be his channel.”

“I once asked Habasha why he had waited, instead of choosing someone else, and he explained that I had been ordained as his earthly host. Habasha and I are like runners in an endless race—passing each other and then stopping off somewhere, as it were, to spend a lifetime—and then in death flowing again in the endless cycles of the universe.”

“And that is how Kathy Dart, of Rush Creek, Minnesota, the daughter of a dairy farmer, the youngest of eight children, came to be the channel for Habasha, who was first on earth at the dawn of civilization, living on the banks of the Hadar River, in southern Ethiopia.”

“Habasha was killed on a sunny afternoon when a man rose up in anger and felled him with a blow of his club. His physical body died in a land we now know as Ethiopia, where my sister found a small piece of quartz crystal and sent it home to me. This piece of Africa that had once been part of Habasha’s world, that was linked to his spirit, his time as a man, was now connected to me.”

“When I touched the crystal that day at my dormitory, I pulled his spirit back to me through time. But I wasn’t ready then. I wasn’t open enough to receive him.”

“In 1984 I was married, living in Glendora, California, and the mother of a darling little girl, Aurora. I woke one summer morning and realized that I no longer loved my husband, that I hated my life, and that I had to do something to save myself.”

“I got out of bed before dawn and walked into the living room and over to the picture windows that looked out on our quiet suburban street. It was getting light outside. I could see the long line of palm trees that marked our cul-de-sac, and when I sat down in the window seat, I noticed my African crystal. Aurora had taken it out of my jewelry box to play with, and I picked it up and began to gently rub my fingers across its smooth clear surface. I was crying. I remember seeing my tears splash against my skin, and when I looked up again through the picture window, I saw him. He walked down the empty street, coming to me, and this time I knew I was ready, knew that I had suffered enough to be worthy of him. I knew then that I was going to be his channel.”

“I live now with my daughter and a few close friends on my family’s old farm in eastern Minnesota. It is there that we produce the tapes and books that reveal the wisdom of Habasha. It is from there that I travel to conduct these weekend sessions with Habasha.”

“Now for all of you who wish to hear Habasha speak, we will have a trance-channel session this evening, and I hope you will join us. I know it will change your life. And now I must go, but to use the words of Habasha, ‘I leave only for the joy of returning.’”

She stepped off the platform, taking the hand of a tall, thin, beautiful twelve-year-old girl who looked just like her, and walked out of the meeting room by the side exit. The audience rose and started to applaud. At the door, Kathy Dart paused, waved good-bye, and then dramatically disappeared.

“Oh, Jennifer, isn’t she wonderful?” Eileen said quickly, as the applause faded.

Jennifer hesitated. She had to admit that Kathy Dart had affected her, but she wasn’t ready to say how. “Well, it certainly was different!” She took a deep breath.

“She’s just marvelous!” Eileen declared, standing.

“Yes. Well. I think

” Jennifer stood. The woman’s presentation had dazed her. “I guess I don’t know what to think.” She turned to leave; she wanted fresh air.

“Are you coming tonight? To the channeling session?”

“I don’t think so. I mean, I have to prepare for my meeting. What does the word Habasha mean, anyway?” she asked, to change the subject. They had reached the lobby of the hotel.

“Habasha? That’s his name. Kathy told us it meant ‘burnt face,’ which is the name for Ethiopians. He took it himself, because when he was reincarnated as the female Lucy, speech hadn’t yet been developed in the hominids.”

“But Kathy Dart said he’s at least twenty-three million years old. I don’t understand. Lucy is only four million years old.”

“Yes, I know.” Eileen nodded. “What Kathy said was that Habasha’s spirit appeared on earth ‘in human form’ four million years ago, at the dawn of man itself. Then, later, he has had other lives, other reincarnations. Just like us. But his spirit, or soul, is older than that.”

Jennifer shook her head. The spell was broken. She no longer felt unnerved by Kathy Dart. She had been briefly swept away, but now she was all right. Jennifer was not like Eileen Gorman. She was not so overwhelmed that she had lost sight of what was reality.

“Well, I don’t know who I once was, but I know for sure that I’ve never been a hominid, protohominid, or whatever they were called.”

“But you don’t know, Jenny. You don’t know what you once were. And that’s what’s makes it all so exciting.”

“Makes what so exciting?”

“Channeling! Habasha will tell you who you once were.”

Jennifer was shaking her head before Eileen stopped talking.

“Not me. I’ve got enough bad memories just in this life. I don’t need to learn about more lives.”

“Oh, Jenny, come on, give it a try. Come see Kathy Dart channel Habasha, and you’ll learn who you were in past lives.”

Jennifer remembered the look on Kathy Dart’s face when the channeler spotted her, remembered how her body had flamed up with pain and passion.

“No,” she said firmly. “I don’t want to know.” And she meant it. She did not want to know, nor did she want to encounter Kathy Dart again.

“Excuse me,” a young man said, approaching them.

Jennifer and Eileen both stopped talking and glanced up at him.

The young man smiled. He looked like a college student, Jennifer thought at once. A graduate student, perhaps. She noticed his eyes immediately. They were gray and almond shaped, like her brother’s.

“My name is Kirk Callahan,” he went on quickly, as if he were afraid they would bolt away. “I’m doing an article on Kathy Dart for Hippocrates magazine. And I was wondering if I might have a few minutes to talk with you about her, you know, and your experiences with channeling?” He kept smiling and had now focused his full attention on Jennifer, who was shaking her head before he finished talking. “Not me!” she said defensively, and then laughed. “Perhaps my friend will talk to you. I don’t know anything about any of this stuff.” She glanced at Eileen and said quickly as the elevator arrived, “I’ll call you later. ‘Bye!” And then she stepped into the elevator before the doors closed, happy to be away from all these New Age people.

CHAPTER TWO

JENNIFER LEFT THE HOTEL by the side door, jogged down the sloping lawn to the bottom of Rock Creek Park, and picked up the bicycle path that she knew was good for running. She turned right and followed the level path under Massachusetts Avenue, heading for Georgetown and the C & O Canal. There was some snow on the ground, but the path was clear and dry.

The hour with Kathy Dart had made her uneasy, and she knew that being outside running would make her feel immensely better. It always did.

There were only a few joggers on the path, and Jennifer easily picked up speed. She hadn’t run in several days, and she was surprised that her muscles were this loose. She unzipped the front of her blue Gore-Tex jacket and lengthened her stride.

The C & O Canal was the best place to run in Washington. There was always room for both runners and bikers, and as she moved easily past other joggers, she held close to the narrow gauge of muddy water on her left. The path she was on was once the towpath used to help barges up and down the river as far away as West Virginia, but now it went only thirteen miles into Maryland.

Jennifer knew she couldn’t run that far. She had never run farther than three miles in her life. She had first taken up the sport because it was important to Tom, and it gave her another way to be with him. Now she ran because she loved the feeling it gave her, of being in shape and in control of her life.

She sped past a biker bent low over his front wheel. He was dressed in a tight black biking suit, with gloves and a black crash helmet. She caught his look of surprise as she swept past him, her feet now barely touching the hard-packed earth. He was breathing hard, gasping, and as she floated by, he rose up off the seat and pumped hard. She smiled and picked up her speed. For a few yards, she could hear him behind her, breathing deeply, and the slick sound of wheels on the hard earth, but gradually the sounds faded, and when she glanced back, she saw that the biker was disappearing from sight.

As she ran, she tried to establish a smooth easy stride, as Tom had taught her. “Run within yourself,” he always, urged. Jennifer had never been strong enough to run with his ease and speed. But Kathy Dart had upset her, and she wanted to bum off her anxiety.

She kept up the pace. She was well beyond Georgetown, running alongside the Parkway, and had outrun the other joggers on the path and even several dozen bikers.

She should go back to the hotel, she finally decided; it was getting dark, and she wasn’t familiar with the canal this far beyond Georgetown. She slowed her pace and gradually eased to a walk on the running path. Now she felt the pain, and when she saw the marker beside the running path, she leaned over to read it:

Jennifer glanced at her watch. It was after five. She had been running for an hour and a half.

“What did you do then?” Tom asked. He turned on his side in the bed to look at Jennifer.

“Well, I tried to run back, but I couldn’t, I was in too much pain. I came up out of the canal—there was a tollgate there—and I went onto the Parkway and hitched a ride from some woman. She took me here to the hotel. She was terrific. I mean, not like a New Yorker.” With a groan, Jennifer moved to face Tom.

“I can’t believe you jogged that far,” Tom said. He had pulled himself up on his elbows. “You’ve never run more than three miles, right?”

Jennifer nodded. “I just felt like running, I guess, and also I was so tensed up by that channel woman.”

“What?”

“You don’t want to hear about her.” Jennifer moved again with great effort, favoring her sore right leg, and stretched out on her stomach. “I thought making love was supposed to relax you.”

“It does. But you’ve got to do it repeatedly.” He nuzzled down next to her.

“Easy,” she said.

“It’s your legs that are sore, darling.”

“Everything’s sore.” She cuddled close, wanting to be held.

He had been waiting for her when she came back from the long run, and they had taken a shower together and then made love standing under the spray, their bodies lathered with soap! She had wanted to wait until they were in bed, but he couldn’t wait, wouldn’t wait, and she let him have his way.

He came at once, before she was ready for him, and then he picked her up, and she slipped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. He carried her back to the wide bed, where they soaked the sheets and blankets with their wet bodies and made love again, and this time she did come, a long rolling orgasm that drained all the strength from her limbs. The intensity made her cry, and when he came, she had a second climax just as violent and wrenching as the first, and she wouldn’t let him slip out of her. She held him tight, as if he were a secret prize she wanted to keep hidden forever inside her.

They had fallen asleep then, still wrapped in each other’s arms, and when she woke, Jennifer felt the pain in her legs and thighs and told Tom what had happened.

“What do you want to do?” he asked, whispering in her ear.

“I don’t want to do anything. I just want to lie in your arms for the rest of my life.” And she meant it. She didn’t ever want to move. She felt happy when she was in Tom’s arms, when he was holding her and she had nowhere to go and nothing to do. But she sensed the reason for his question. Tom never asked anything directly; he was always trying to position her so that he could do what he wanted.

“I’ve got a dinner meeting,” he told her.

“Damnit!” She moved to look at him directly. His dark eyes, intense even in the dim light of the room, had always affected Jennifer strongly. She could not see his face. “Now tell me again,” she said.

“Honey, I didn’t know myself until forty minutes ago. I had a message waiting when I got back to the hotel. The DA wants me to interview a new person down here who they’re thinking of hiring. Look, it’s only dinner. I’ll be free by nine, and we can come back and do some more of this.” He moved against her so she could feel his erection.

“Don’t,” she asked, but she knew there was no authority in her objection, and she knew that he wouldn’t stop. She, too, wanted to make love. She couldn’t get enough of him this afternoon, and her desire pleased her. In New York they were always in a hurry, rushing to make love in the brief moments that they could spare from their work.

“Turn over,” he told her, and when she heard the edge in his voice, her nipples grew hard. “This way,” he said, instructing her, and she let him pull her up by the waist. He was already kneeling on the bed.

“No, honey, that hurts.”

Tom didn’t answer her. His hands had seized her waist, and when she tried to pull away, he wouldn’t let her. Jennifer never liked it when he entered from behind so she couldn’t see his face, and it was only because he was so demanding that she let him.

“Honey,” she whispered, but he didn’t answer. She knew he wouldn’t; he never spoke when they made love. She wondered then if all men were the same. Did they all have sex like animals, silent and purposeful, without words of endearment? Or was it her? Did she somehow make men behave in a certain way?

She gasped. He was inside her, and she fell forward onto the wet sheets of the hotel bed. Her face was pressed against the hard mattress, and she grabbed its edges as he came, driving her down. It was not the way she wanted, but as he seized her by the shoulders, drove deep into her, she felt her own orgasm in a dizzying rush. It grew and grew, took her breath away, and she gasped with pain as her body shook and quaked, and then she came again and again, in wave after wave of sweet pleasure.

She awoke in the silence of the big house and heard the rooms speak to her, whispering. Her teddy bear and Raggedy Ann listened, too, and kept her safe. She pulled them both close to her and slipped farther down beneath the warm blankets. Through the window she could see the moon, and the moon’s shadow, as ghostly as her dreams, seeping across the rug.

She loved her room, it was safe and cozy, and full of her toys, and she spent hour after hour in it, playing with Barbara Ann, and Sally, and ail her dolls. She would make tea and sandwiches and have parties, just herself and her doll friends. And she’d have parties for Sam when he came home from boarding school. They would lock the door, and she would sit on his lap and pretend that there was no war in Europe, pretend that they were all alone in the big house, with Mommy and Daddy far, far away.

But at night, after everyone went to bed, she was afraid to be alone. Afraid of the ghosts and goblins, bats and little lizards that lived in the comers of her room. They waited for her beneath the stairs, too, and in the rafters of the attic and behind the sofa in the living room, and they darted from sight whenever anyone entered, and they came out at night to hunt down all the humans. Sam told her as much, whispering in her ear, and she didn’t want to believe it, but she knew it was true, and she wanted to be held by Sam in his arms, protected by his embrace.

Sam had first told her about the flying lizards and the ghosts when they spent a warm summer afternoon up in the attic, lying together in piles of their mother’s old clothes. Sam was looking for his football pads. That was the summer he turned fourteen, and he wanted to take them with him to prep school. They had rummaged together through the trunks, and Sam had told her to take off her white skirt and summer shorts and try on Mommy’s clothes. Okay, she had grinned. She liked the idea of taking off her clothes. It was hot in the attic, with the sun pouring through the small windows, and Sam had seen her without clothes before, wrapped up in a towel after her bath. But it was different now. She had breasts, tiny little breasts, and her mommy had already told her she’d need a brassiere before school started.

So she had taken off her skirt and shorts and tried on clothes for a while, posing for Sam, preening in the mirror propped against the attic wall. He searched for and found the farmyard set, then assembled it in a box to carry downstairs. But they didn’t want to leave the attic, and she got bored with trying on old clothes, so she lay down in the soft pile of discarded dresses. It was warm, and she liked the way her brother looked at her, so she didn’t put on her clothes again. As she lay there, in the pile of velvety dresses, she fell asleep, and when she moved again, Sam was lying next to her, holding her, touching her. He told her that he missed her, that he missed not being home with her all year, that he hated going to boarding school. Then he began to cry, and she kissed his soft cheek and held him and told him she would write him every day. Then he started to kiss her on the mouth like they did in the movies. She told him to stop, that they would both get in trouble, but he said it was okay, that he wouldn’t tell. And he asked her if she would, and she shook her head, too frightened and excited even to speak. Something was happening between them, and she didn’t know what or why, but she knew she couldn’t stop, nor did she want to stop, and she waited and watched for her brother to do whatever he was going to do.

He took off her panties then and tossed them away, and then he took off his own trousers, and she began to giggle. But she loved the way her body suddenly felt, all tingling, and then Sam showed her what boys did and what girls did, and it was wonderful. It hurt a little, but he said that was okay, that it wouldn’t hurt again, not the next time. She was so happy that he told her that; she knew she wanted to do it again.

Afterward, they lay quietly together in the warm, musty attic, and he told her that he loved her, and she told him that she loved him, too. He said that they couldn’t tell their parents, and she nodded. She didn’t want to tell them. She wanted it to be their secret forever.

Later, when they were getting dressed, he put his hands on her breasts and then he put his arms around her and hugged her, and they kissed like in the movies-She asked if they could do it again, and he said yes, at night, when Mommy was asleep and the house was quiet. He would come into her bedroom, and they would sleep together every night until he went away to school. She smiled. She would never again be so happy in her life.

After he left for school, she had written almost every day. But the next time he came home, he was different. He had begun to smoke, and their mother had yelled at him. Here they were paying two thousand dollars a year for his education, she had said, and he looked like one of those young toughs who hung around on city streets.

She had thought he looked neat, but when she hugged him, he acted funny, as if he didn’t like her anymore, and her feelings were hurt. Later, in bed, she had cried into her pillow, muffling the sound so he wouldn’t hear.

Now she wondered if she should creep down the hall to see him, but she was afraid to leave her bedroom. It was always safer in her bed, he had explained, because it was at the end of the hallway, farther away from their mother’s bedroom at the top of the stairs.

She tossed off the blanket and went over to stand against the windowpane, feeling the cold air seep in from outside, staring at the snow on the lawn. Tomorrow they could make a snowman, she thought. She and Sam could make a big snowman all by themselves. She hoped the snow was good for packing.

Maybe he had a girlfriend. She knew there was a girls’ school across from his. The thought made her jealous.

She heard a sound in the doorway, and when she looked up, she saw Sam slip into the room. He closed the door.

“Sam!” she whispered, bounding onto her bed.

“Shhh, for chrissake!”

“They won’t hear us!” she insisted. “Come here, please. I’ve been waiting for you.”

He sat down slowly on the bed and immediately she wrapped her thin arms around his neck and kissed him on the mouth.

“Don’t.” He pushed her away and wouldn’t look at her.

“What’s the matter?” She sat back, near tears.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning forward so that his long hair fell over his face and she couldn’t see him. He had lost weight since he left for school.

“Are you mad at me?” she asked in a small voice.

He shook his head, then looked up and tossed his hair back. “No,” he admitted. “I’m not mad at you.”

“I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too, sweetheart.”

“I thought you were coming home for Thanksgiving.”

Sam shrugged. “I couldn’t. I got sick. Mom told you, didn’t she?” He stretched out on the bed and put his head on the pillow.

“But I thought you’d come home to see me.” She curled down next to her big brother and embraced him. “I’ve missed you,” she told him again.

He just nodded.

“Did you miss me?” she asked.

“Sure I missed you, dopey.” He turned around and tickled her.

“Don’t!” she laughed, struggling, trying to keep his hands off her body.

He stopped then, and they lay together, smiling, staring at each other. Then she asked, “Do you have a girlfriend or something at school?”

“No, dopey, you’re my only girlfriend.” He hugged her, and she kissed his neck.

“Can I come up to school and see you sometime? I mean, I asked Mom and she said it was okay.”

“I don’t know. Where would you stay?”

“Couldn’t I just stay with you in your room?”

“No, you can’t stay with me, for chrissake.” He turned away from her and stared up at the ceiling.

“What’s the matter, Sam?” She curled closer to him, and wrapped one leg over his.

“Nothing’s the matter.” He pulled loose from her and sat up again on the edge of the bed.

“Where are you going?”

“Hey, look, Nora, we can’t do this anymore.”

“Sam, I didn’t tell Mom.”

“Jesus, you’re just a kid. You don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s not right, you know.” He stood up and walked to the window, and his face was silhouetted in the pale moonlight.

“But I love you, Sam. Besides, it makes me feel good.” She got out of bed then and scampered across to the window to wrap her arms around him. He had grown since he went back to school.

He slipped his arm around her thin shoulders and hugged her. She turned her face into his chest and kissed the cotton top of his pajamas. She loved the way he smelled. After he had left for school, she went through his dresser drawers, took one of his summer shirts, and slept in it all fall. When her mother discovered it in her room, she only smiled and shook her head, then kissed her daughter on the forehead. She had been pleased that the two of them were such good friends.

“But don’t you like me, Sam?” she asked, looking up.

He shrugged. “You’re only thirteen. You know I could get put in jail or something.”

“They can’t put you in jail, Sam. You’re sixteen. They don’t put sixteen-year-old kids in jail. And I’ll be thirteen years old next month. I read in a book that girls in Europe because of the war are getting married when they’re thirteen.”

“Not to their brothers, they aren’t.” He pulled himself from her arms and stretched out again on the bed.

She followed him onto the bed. “And I’m not your real sister, anyway. I’m only your half sister. We could get married, I bet. I have to ask Mom if we could.”

“Don’t you say anything!” Sam grabbed her arm.

“I wouldn’t. Sam, let me go. That hurts!” Her eyes filled with tears and she pulled loose from him. “I didn’t say anything to Mom, you jerk!”

“Shhhh,” Sam whispered, putting his hand over her mouth.

Both of them listened hard.

“I don’t hear anything,” she whispered, slipping down into bed and tucking her teddy bear and doll into their corners by the pillow.

Sam listened for a few more minutes, turning his head so he could catch any noise from the hallway, and then he relaxed and lay down beside her with a sigh. “I’m tired. I want to go to sleep.”

“With me, please,” she begged, edging closer to him, but he didn’t say anything, just lay beside her with his eyes closed. “We could just sleep together in my bed,” she said. “We don’t have to do anything. Please?”

He didn’t answer. He just pulled the blanket down, slipped his long legs underneath it, and then pulled it up over them both. Pleased, she turned on her side and snuggled down close to him, then took his arm and wrapped it around her body.

He touched her then, and she opened her eyes and stared across the room at the moonlight coming through the window. She did not move. She let him find his own way. He had begun to breathe harder, deeper, and then she began to match his ragged breath. He had put his hand beneath her long woolen nightgown and slipped it up to touch her breasts. His hand was cold for a moment on her flesh.

He was struggling now to get closer to her, to slip his other arm between her legs, and he was breathing hard, as if he had run a long way to reach her. She told him to wait, jumped out of bed, and quickly reached down to pull the nightgown over her head.

She felt a sudden draft of cold air between her legs, then the lights flipped on. With her nightgown caught in her arms, high above her head, and her brother lying there beneath the blankets, she turned to see her mother standing in the doorway.

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN JENNIFER AWOKE, TOM was gone and the room was dark. She had been conscious for only a few minutes when the phone rang. Clearing her throat, she said “hello” out loud a few times before answering so that her voice wouldn’t betray that she had been asleep so early in the evening.

“Jennifer? It’s me. Eileen. Did I wake you?”

“Of course not. I was reviewing some reports. They always make me sound sleepy.” Jennifer sat up. “Thanks for telephoning. I needed a break.” She tried to sound alert and businesslike.

“Well, I don’t want to bother you. I know you’re here on business…”

Jennifer smiled. She was suddenly glad that Eileen had called.

“I thought if you weren’t busy… I mean, if you didn’t have a meeting, we might have dinner together.”

“I’d like that, but don’t you have a meeting yourself with Kathy Dart and her friends?”

“Not till nine-thirty. Jennifer, if you’re busy, or whatever, I mean, I understand.”

“Eileen, I’d like to. What time is it, anyway?” She reached for her watch.

“Seven-twenty.”

“That’s all? My body feels like it must be eleven. I went jogging this afternoon.”

“Jennifer, you jog? That’s a new you!”

“Yes, well, I guess there’s a lot new about both of us.” Fully awake, she realized she was hungry. “Eileen, I’ve got to change clothes. Can you give me twenty minutes?”

“Of course. Why don’t we meet downstairs at eight?”

“Sure.”

“See you in the lounge, then,” Eileen said, and quickly added, “Oh, if you have the time, maybe you’d like to come to this evening’s session with Kathy Dart and Habasha. I have an extra ticket.”

Jennifer laughed. “Thanks, but no thanks. One session with your guru. But I do have some questions about her. See you at eight. ‘Bye.”

Eileen Gorman, of all people, she thought, hanging up the telephone receiver. Slowly she got out of bed and walked naked to the shower, still bruised from the long run and from Tom’s fierce lovemaking.

“I first heard Kathy eight months ago,” Eileen said. They were both looking over the restaurant menu as they talked about the meeting earlier that day. Jennifer asked how Eileen had first heard about the channeler.

“As soon as I saw Kathy trance-channeling Habasha, I knew that was what I was looking for in my life.”

“What do you mean, looking for?”

Eileen set down the large menu and sighed. She sat directly across from Jennifer, but she looked off across the room and into space. “I was lost. I mean, I had my marriage, but Todd has his work, you know, and what did I have? Bridge? A tennis game? Shopping? I mean, I was living out there on Long Island. I had—I have—everything that I could possibly want. I’m lucky, I admit, and I had no reason to feel at a loss for anything, but I did. I did feel lost. Lonely. I’d go to the malls and just wander around, do endless, useless shopping, and it didn’t bring me any satisfaction. I don’t wear most of the stuff I have jammed into our closets. I started to have affairs, you know, just to do something, to bring some sort of meaning into my life, or whatever.”

“Eileen, I thought—”

“Listen, Jennifer, I’m not the only one. Half the women on Long Island are like me. I mean, you’re lucky. You have this wonderful career. You have a life of your own, interesting friends.”

“Eileen, so could you! You’re attractive, you’re intelligent. You were our valedictorian!”

Eileen was shaking her head, cutting off Jennifer’s reply.

“You know I got married right after school. The truth was, we had to get married. There was this guy, Tim Murphy— I met him at Jones Beach. We were both lifeguards. Well, I got pregnant.” She shrugged her shoulders, looked over at Jennifer, and grimaced, as if to say that was it, her life was over, a fait accompli. But her eyes were glistening. Then she leaned forward and smiled. “But it doesn’t matter. I was meant to have that sort of life. It was my karma.”

Jennifer frowned. “Eileen, we make our own lives. We’re in control. Why do you think women fought so hard for equal status? What do you think the ERA is all about?”

“This is not a woman’s thing, Jennifer. It’s beyond the here and now, beyond all these daily problems.”

“Eileen, the feminist movement wasn’t—isn’t—a little daily problem.”

“Jennifer, you’re not listening to me. You’re not hearing what I’m trying to say.”

“I’m sorry, but—”

Eileen cut her off. “Kathy Dart is the most remarkable woman I have ever met. Maybe the most remarkable woman alive today.”

“Eileen, please.” Jennifer looked down at her menu.

“I mean it! You don’t know. You haven’t been exposed.” Her voice had picked up, and there was anger in her tone.

“I’m sorry,” Jennifer soothed. “You’re right. I asked about Kathy Dart, and I haven’t given you a chance to explain. Here’s the waitress. Let’s order and then I’ll be quiet. Promise.” She smiled at Eileen and for a moment tried to concentrate on her oversized menu but found she was too anxious. When the waitress arrived, she asked for the special of the evening.

“I saw her on television, the first time,” Eileen began. “It was the ‘This Morning’ show, and they had three or four people, mediums, psychics. I had never thought about any of that stuff in my life. But I had the TV on, and I was sitting at the counter in the kitchen watching

killing time, you know, and trying to decide what to cook for dinner. It was September seventh, I remember, and it was rainy and cold, and I couldn’t play tennis, but I was thinking maybe I should go to the club anyway. Then Kathy came on and I sort of started to listen, and it was as if she were talking just to me. She was telling me her life story, and what had happened to her as a child, and I found myself crying as I listened. I mean, she was talking about me, the mess I’d made of life, my feelings of being out of it, left behind, in the wrong crowd.”

“But, Eileen, you weren’t! You were the smartest person in our class. Brighter than Mark Simon, even! And you were captain of the basketball team.”

Eileen started to laugh, “Jennifer, I can’t believe you still remember all that stuff.”

“I was jealous of you, that’s why.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. You were going out with Andy Porterfield, and everyone on Long Island wanted to marry him.”

“Well, thank God I didn’t. He’s on his second wife, I’m told.”

“His third. We see him all the time at the club. But what I’m trying to say is that in high school you were having a good time. I wasn’t, and the only reason I even played basketball was because Mr. Donaldson put me on the team after I tried to commit suicide.”

“Suicide?” Jennifer whispered, remembering now the long-ago rumors about Eileen.

“I’m sorry. Of course, you didn’t know.” She reached over and touched Jennifer’s arm. “I was jealous of you, Jennifer. You were the great social one. You had all the friends. My teenage years were a tormented time in my life, and Kathy Dart, or really, Habasha, has explained to me why I was so unhappy, why my body was out of sync with my spirit life. So I went to her. There was a conference like this being held in San Francisco, and I flew out for it.”

“Flew all the way to California just to see her?”

Eileen nodded. “I had to know,” she said thoughtfully, pausing and looking off across the room.

Jennifer stopped eating and watched Eileen. How rested the woman looked, how satisfied, as if all her responsibilities had been lifted off her shoulders.

“I’ve never been a religious person. I mean, I was raised a Unitarian, which isn’t much of a religion, but when Kathy began to speak as Habasha…”

“He’s not Kathy Dart.”

Eileen nodded. “They are connected, as Kathy said. He was once her warrior lover. And they were pirates together. Kathy also told me that she once had his child in another lifetime. They are soul mates, from the same oversoul. And he speaks through her.”

“So he doesn’t sleep with her; he uses her body, instead.”

“Okay, be a smart ass,” Eileen replied with an indulgent smile. “If you’d only give Habasha a chance, you’d see.”

“See what?”

“See that he can help you,” Eileen said softly, not looking up from her plate.

“I didn’t realize I needed help,” Jennifer answered, annoyed.

“We all need help, Jennifer,” Eileen replied without raising her voice. “And I think if you gave Kathy Dart and Habasha a chance, they might explain to you why you two had such a strong attraction to each other at the session this afternoon.”

“What are you talking about? What do you mean?” Jennifer sat back and stared at Eileen.

“Kathy Dart asked about you,” she explained.

“Yes? What do you mean, asked about me?” Her voice rose and she felt her hands begin to tremble.

“She spoke to me after this afternoon’s session. She said she had a profound reaction from seeing you.” Eileen was watching Jennifer as she spoke.

Jennifer nodded.

“What did it mean?” she asked.

“Kathy asked me to tell you that she senses that she knows you, from a past life, of course, and that she thinks you should speak directly to Habasha.”

“Don’t be silly,” Jennifer answered at once.

“Kathy said to tell you that you are capable of a great deal in this life, and to tell you also that you are involved in a romantic situation that is not spiritually good for you.”

“What!” Jennifer was outraged, and also frightened of what Eileen might know.

Eileen shook her head. “I’m only telling you what Kathy said. She wanted me to invite you specially to her session this evening.” Eileen paused. “And she said to tell you that Danny is fine. That he has another life now, a happy life, and that he didn’t suffer.”

Jennifer threw down her napkin. She couldn’t eat. “I don’t want to hear any more of this silliness. I’m not interested in your seances and spirit entities.” She was furious at Eileen for mentioning her dead brother. They had been in junior high school when Danny was killed in Vietnam.

Her sudden rage made her dizzy. She tried to find the waitress to pay the check but couldn’t. As she glanced around the room, a glowing ball of brilliant light caught her eye. It was outside the windows; she leaned closer to the cold glass and squinted into the darkness.

Someone—something—was walking round the swimming pool. It was a man—a small, short-limbed man, moving clumsily, like a Cro-Magnon.

“Look!” Jennifer blurted out. “What’s that?”

“What’s what?” Eileen asked.

Jennifer looked back and nothing was there. The light must have been playing tricks on her.

Jennifer stood, dropping her napkin into her chair. “Excuse me, I can’t take any more of this metaphysical crap.” She glanced back out the window. The glowing light was gone from the terrace.

“Don’t be afraid,” Eileen said softly. “It will all work out. Kathy said it would.” She smiled up at Jennifer, looking conspiratorial.

“I’m not afraid,” Jennifer answered back. She opened her purse and withdrew a twenty-dollar bill. “The waitress can keep the change,” she said, throwing it down.

“Jennifer, you’re getting yourself upset over nothing. I’m sorry I frightened you.”

“You haven’t upset me, Eileen. I’m just sorry you’ve gotten yourself all tied up with these people. I always thought you were too smart for such… bullshit.” She spun about and strode from the restaurant.

She walked through the lobby and stopped at the desk for her messages. Tom would have called, she knew, to let her know when he would be back at the hotel.

“‘Having drinks after dinner with Yale buddies. Back late. T.,’” the clerk read, then looked up at Jennifer. “Would you like a copy?”

“No. No thank you,” Jennifer told him, and turning away from the counter, she went up to her hotel room alone.

CHAPTER FOUR

JENNIFER LIFTED THE New York Times off the mat and stepped back inside her apartment. It was Saturday morning, the day after she returned from Washington. Closing the door, she flipped the paper open to the second section and scanned the page as she walked down the hall and into the kitchen. It was not yet eight o’clock, and the building was silent. Tom was still asleep. She had just spread the newspaper on the kitchen counter when she spotted a headline:

Jennifer stopped to read the first couple of paragraphs.

Channeling, a metaphysical quest for truth and wisdom that sprang to life in California, has found its way east. Ms. Phoebe Fisher, who holds a doctorate from the Metaphysics University of San Jose, is currently dispensing metaphysical truths from her West Side apartment. According to Ms. Fisher, the “truth giver” is a spirit named Dance, who is a “sixth-density entity from Dorran, the seventh star of the seventh sister within the Pleiades system. He lives eight hundred years in our own future,” according to the blond and beautiful Ms. Fisher.

Jennifer perched on the counter stool and pulled her robe closer. It was cold in the kitchen, and she wanted her morning coffee, but first she had to read this article.

Recently, a poll by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Council indicated that 67 percent of Americans believe they have had a psychic experience. Many of these people are calling on the spirit world for solace and advice, using mediums, or channelers, who have established contact with “entities” from the past. Sometimes these “entities” beam down from outer space, such as Ms. Fisher’s “sixth-density entity,” Dance.

“I was walking through the Sheep Meadow in Central Park on a hot Sunday afternoon last August,” recalls Ms. Fisher. “When I looked up into the western sky, I saw this tall, elegant figure wrapped in a glow of brilliant light. I stopped in my tracks, right in the middle of the Sheep Meadow, with people sunbathing all around me, and I said out loud, ‘Yes.’ Yes, for I knew he was coming for me.”

“And he said to me from across the meadow, ‘Phoebe, you are beautiful. You are a beautiful person.’ I felt this enormous’ rush of cold air push against me. I was nearly knocked over, but I managed to nod. I couldn’t speak. But I knew he or she—they don’t have gender in the Pleiades system—wanted to use my body. He wanted me to bring the message of peace and love to our world, and I agreed to lend him my human form. We didn’t have to speak. I knew telepathically. And then I felt another rush of air, but this time it was blazing hot. Later, I realized he had settled himself into my home, my physical body.”

Jennifer shook her head, smiling to herself. She’d clip the article and send it to Eileen Gorman, she decided. Since storming out of the restaurant on Thursday night, Jennifer had been feeling guilty. This would make a nice peace offering, she decided, and a way of getting back in touch with her old friend. She slipped off the stool and went to the stove to boil water for coffee. She heard Tom then in the other room, padding across the floor to the bathroom. She glanced at the clock. It was only eight o’clock. Why was he up so early on a Saturday? He seldom told her his plans, and in the first days of their relationship had tried to make a joke of his secrecy, saying he would let her know “on a need-to-know basis.” She had thought that funny then. But not anymore.

She put the kettle on the stove and then scooped several spoonfuls of fresh coffee beans into the grinder. The little machine roared in the silent kitchen, and it was only after she had dumped the finely ground beans into the coffee filter that she realized Tom had entered the room. He was standing at the counter, glancing through the paper. When he didn’t look up or acknowledge her, she said coolly, “And good morning to you.”

“Good morning,” he answered. “Sorry. I was just checking to see if Giuliani made any statements. There was a rumor in the building yesterday that he was going to announce for the Senate.” He smiled across at her, trying to make amends.

“Well, it would be nice if you just said hello, that’s all.” She poured boiling water onto the filter.

“You know I never have much to say in the morning.”

“I wouldn’t think a simple ‘good morning’ is too much for a big assistant attorney general like yourself.” She added more water.

“Did you see this piece about the new yuppie fad?” Tom asked, as if to change the subject.

“Be careful what you say about yuppies. They’re us.” She glanced over at him. He was wearing only the bottoms of his pajamas and was standing at the counter scratching the thick dark hair on his chest.

“You may be, but I’m not.” He looked up from the newspaper. “Any coffee?”

“In a moment, sire.”

“Just asking, Jennifer. Just asking.” He grabbed the sports section of the Times and went over to the breakfast table, sitting down in the soft wash of pale winter sun to concentrate on the basketball scores.

Jennifer finished making coffee, poured Tom a cup, and added a splash of half-and-half. She carried his cup to the table and placed it down next to him.

“Thanks,” he said.

Jennifer slid down across from him at the table, satisfied for the moment with the taste of coffee and the slight warmth of the winter sun. She studied Tom while he read. She could see only his right profile—his better side, as he liked to say, because when he was still in prep school, his nose had been broken in a lacrosse game and badly reset. This morning his better side was shadowed with an overnight growth of beard. His long black hair tumbled over his forehead and into his eyes; it curled around his ear lobes. He looked like an unmade bed, she thought fondly.

She sipped her coffee and looked out the window at the snowbound Brooklyn Heights street where a few early risers were trudging through the snow. She wondered if this was the right time to tell Tom she wanted either to get married or break off the relationship. Her friend, Margit, had warned her about men like Tom who were afraid of commitment. She knew she couldn’t keep on living half a life with him. And besides, she knew she wanted to have children before it was too late.

“Are you okay?” he asked, glancing up. His cool gray eyes stared at her with the same compassion he might give the train schedule.

“I have no idea,” she answered truthfully, staring at the snow that covered the street like the hard frosting of a day-old wedding cake.

“Your job?” he asked.

Jennifer shook her head. “My life.”

“Your life, huh?” He nodded to the Times column. “Maybe you could use some spiritual guidance, one of these whatever-they-are.”

“Please, Tom, I’m being serious.” She looked straight at him. She was never any good at fooling people.

“You mean, us?”

“Yes, and more.”

“What do you mean, ‘more’?” There was an edge to his voice. At least she had his full attention, which gave her some satisfaction.

“I mean us, my stupid job at the foundation, and this!” She waved at the frozen street. All of it. The neighborhood, Brooklyn Heights, New York City. It hadn’t struck her until that very moment that she was sick of New York, sick of her daily life.

Tom pushed the paper away from him. It was a gesture he always made when he was upset, as if he was clearing his deck for a new problem.

She was afraid now. She was always afraid when she got Tom angry. That was one of the underlying problems in their relationship. She wasn’t honest enough with Tom, for in her heart of hearts she was afraid of losing him, of being without anyone at all.

“Well, what brought this on, this disgust about your life?”

“You know what.”

“For chrissake, Jennifer, I slept with that woman once, and I was a goddamn stupid fool to tell you.”

“You weren’t telling me, Tom, you were bragging. You were showing off, you were being a jerk, and just so you could appear as a stud in front of your stupid friends,” she answered back.

“Don’t go back over that bullshit,” he said softly, turning to his coffee.

“Bullshit yourself!” Jennifer looked away again, out the window at the cold day. She was surprised that she wasn’t crying. She had gotten tougher in the last few years, she realized.

At the Justice Department Christmas party, Tom had gotten drunk and boasted to the other males that he had slept with Helen Taubman, the television anchorwoman, that fall, just when Jennifer had begun dating him seriously.

Jennifer had become dizzy, trying to reach the ladies’ room in the crowded restaurant before she became sick. She had blamed it on the champagne, on the excitement and the warm restaurant, but of course all his friends knew she was lying. Tom’s admission had shocked them all.

“You want to talk about this, Jennifer?” Tom asked. He was focusing his full attention on her, but then she saw him glance at the kitchen clock.

“Are you in a hurry?” she asked, trying to pin him down. “Are you going into the office? What is it? Why the glances at the clock?”

“Jesus, remind me not to cross you again early in the morning.” He spun around and stood up.

“Tom! Listen to me!” He set his coffee cup on the counter and kept walking. She waited until he had reached the doorway before she called after him. “I think we should take a break from each other for a while.”

That got his attention. She saw the way his shoulder muscles tensed, and he halted in the doorway. She watched him make a slow and dramatic turn. He was stalling for time, giving himself a chance to think of a response. She knew all his gestures and habits as if they were her own.

“Are you sleeping with someone else?” he asked.

Jennifer recognized the tactic. He was putting her on the defensive. She stared back at him, refusing to rise to the bait. When he came slowly back into the kitchen, holding her eyes with his, she began to tense. Her fingers tightened around the warm coffee cup.

“Right? Is this what all this oblique talk is about?” He had reached the table, but he didn’t sit down. She knew he liked to hover over people.

“Our relationship isn’t going anywhere,” she told him.

“Don’t give me that shit! Who is it? One of those assholes from the foundation? Handingham, right?”

“David?” She looked up at Tom, startled by his guess. “You think I’d be interested in David?” Now she was offended.

“He’s your boss, isn’t he? He’s got the power around that place.”

“Oh, for God’s sake. You think I’d have an affair with David Handingham just because he’s the president of the board?”

“You wouldn’t be the first woman to fuck her way up the ladder.”

“Tom, that’s disgusting! I can’t believe you’d think that. Sometimes I don’t think you know me at all.”

“Sometimes I think you’re right.” He sat down across from her.

She realized he was upset, and that pleased her. She looked away again, back through the kitchen window. It was suddenly much brighter. The sun had reached the street and was shining off the frozen snow, and Jennifer stared hard at the gleaming surface until her eyes hurt.

“Okay, let’s talk about this later.” He glanced at the clock, then over at Jennifer. “I’ll call you later, okay?”

She wanted to say no, but that would be unfair to Tom, and unfair to herself. She had already invested over six months in their relationship.

“I’ll be here,” she told him.

Tom nodded, then sighed. “Okay,” he said, tapping the table and pulling himself up. “I’ll call before four. We’re having dinner, right?” When she nodded yes, he said quickly, “I’ll make the reservations.”

Jennifer knew this was an effort to appease her. She was always the one who made their dinner reservations, who wrote the thank-you notes, who did all the little housewifely chores.

Tom walked into the bedroom to dress. She got more coffee and sat by the windows and watched the winter sun grow brighter.

When Tom came back into the kitchen, he was dressed in the clothes he had left in her closet—the blue cords, his thick walking shoes, the beautiful red sweater she had given him for his thirtieth birthday. He was wearing his parka and carried a briefcase full of files. When he kissed her cheek, she could smell his aftershave lotion, his hair shampoo, and she wanted to make love to him there on the kitchen floor but didn’t have the courage to tell him so.

She didn’t move. She sat perfectly still at the kitchen table and watched the sun and the snow. She didn’t have the strength to get up and get dressed.

She would go back to bed, she thought. She would curl down deep into the blankets and sleep. She would stay there safe and warm in the dark shadows until she discovered what was going wrong in her life.

CHAPTER FIVE

JENNIFER LOOKED AT THE elephants, the herd of mammoths that dominated the museum’s African Hill, as she waited for Tom. It was Tom who insisted that they meet for a drink in such an out of the way place. These days his job consisted mostly of prosecuting drug dealers, and shortly before they began to date, someone had tried to kill him. Now he carried a gun and didn’t like being seen with her. It was silly of him to worry, she thought. If drug dealers wanted to blow him or her away, they would. They controlled the city as far as she could see.

Jennifer stopped at the Gemsbok display and studied the pattern-faced Kalahari Desert animals. In the Museum of Natural History’s magnificent diorama, they looked almost real. Then she thought: they were real once, roaming the great savannahs. She almost felt as if she could step behind the thick glass and walk through the long grass and acacia trees into the heat and heart of Africa. She wished she were in Africa. She wished she were anywhere but in New York City on a cold, snowy Friday afternoon waiting for her tardy lover.

She stepped up to another diorama, this one a cluster of hippopotamuses, sitatunga, and waterbucks, and saw that the sign said the animals were all gathered at the edge of one of the small rivers that formed the network of the Nile. The animals were standing in the thick grass and umbrella sedge. Jennifer stared at the posed figures; although she’d never studied anything about Africa, she felt something was wrong with the scene. Then she caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the bubbled glass. She had come directly from work and was wearing her corporate uniform: a tailored, heavy gray suit with a white silk blouse and the string of pearls Tom had given her for Christmas, their first Christmas together. She raised her hand to touch the pearls and felt a warm tear on her cheek. This was wrong. Why was she crying? She quickly brushed it away, thinking, I can’t look like this. I can’t be crying when he arrives.

Turning from the Nile River diorama to go find the women’s room, she found herself in Tom’s arms.

“Hi, sweetheart, sorry I’m late. It’s snowing. The whole damn city is gridlocked.” He stood shaking wet snow off his shoulders and from his thick black hair.

“That’s all right,” she said, relieved that he didn’t seem to notice her tears. “I just arrived myself.”

“Well, you look great!” He turned his full attention on her, stepping closer to kiss her on her cheek. “Look, it’s freezing outside. Is there someplace here where we can get a drink? Or at least some coffee?”

“Yes, there’s a bar under the great blue whale on the first floor. But come with me first; let’s look around. I haven’t been in this museum in ages.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Oh, let’s just wander. We’ll take the elevator to the third floor, then walk down.” Directing their tour gave her the sense of being in control. That was her problem with Tom. When she was with him, she always felt manipulated. Now she just wanted to make him do what she said, to prove to herself that she could control him when she needed to.

On the top floor, they stepped off the elevator and saw a sign for a new exhibition.

“‘Bright Dreams, Bright Vision,’” Tom read. “What’s that?”

“I have no idea,” Jennifer answered. They pushed through the glass gallery door and stepped into the dark interior.

“Oh, great,” he said, reading the first exhibit sign. “‘Prehistoric Man.’ Just what I thought when I woke up this morning: ‘I wish I knew a lot more about prehistoric man.’”

“I want to see this exhibition, Tom!” Her voice rose sharply.

“Okay,” he whispered, “okay.” He touched her arm. “Easy.”

Jennifer turned away, embarrassed by her outburst, but the gallery was nearly deserted. She noticed an older woman with a cane, a few mothers with babies in strollers, and two female guards in blue uniforms standing together at the entrance.

“Hey, look!” Tom pointed at the display in the center of the room.

The focus of the diorama was the model of a prehistoric hut, built of mammoth bone, tusks, and leather. The jawbones of the mammoths were turned upside down and fitted into each other like a puzzle to form a twelve-foot circle. The arching roof was made with dozens of huge, curving tusks, over which animal skins were tied to form a cover.

“It’s a model of one of their huts,” Tom said, reading from the printed information plaque, “from the Ukraine.”

“It’s wrong,” she stated in a whisper, staring at the diorama.

“What, sweetheart?” Tom asked, moving around the model to peer inside.

“It’s wrong. It’s all wrong! That’s Nan’s hut. I know it is!” Her voice rose, startling everyone.

“Honey, what the hell are you talking about?”

“I don’t know.”

Tom started to laugh, then stopped, startled by the look in her eyes. “Jennifer?”

She was trembling. He put his hand on her arm, but she slapped his fingers away.

“Damnit, Jennifer. That hurt!” He shook his hand.

Jennifer caught sight of a guard. She was moving around the diorama and coming toward her.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said. Only when she was in the brightly lit reptile gallery again did she take a deep breath and slow herself down.

“Jennifer, what in hell is wrong with you?”

She shook her head and kept walking. Her heels snapped on the marble floor.

“What was that bullshit about the hut?” He lengthened his stride. They reached the hallway and started down the stairs.

“I don’t know.”

“You hurt my hand.”

“Please, Tom, enough! I’m upset, that’s all. I’m upset about us.” They reached the first floor and kept walking, past the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial and into the Invertebrates Gallery.

“Well, do something about it, damnit!”

“I intend to.”

“What?” His voice hardened. “You’re going to do what?”

“I’m going to have a drink.” She walked into the Ocean Life Room, where a massive blue whale hung from the ceiling and dominated the two floors of the gallery. “Here’s the bar.”

Jennifer walked into the lower floor, where a few white-clothed tables were set up to create a small cocktail lounge. The room was dimly lit to suggest the ocean floor, and the huge, plastic blue whale hovered above them, swamping the room with its size. It was not a place where people went for a drink on Friday night after work. Anyone here would be from out of town, a tourist.

She let Tom order at the bar while she picked a table away from the others. When he came back, he sat down close to her, but she shifted her body to keep some distance.

“Are you feeling better?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute.” She took a quick sip of the scotch and water, then sat back and nodded.

“What was that all about?” He took off his topcoat and settled into the chair.

Jennifer shook her head. She was still trembling. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I just had this weird feeling that I had once been there inside that diorama. All of it was vividly real to me.” She took a quick gulp of her drink.

“You were saying something, mumbling.” Tom shook his head. “Maybe you saw the model in a book or something.” He glanced around then, checking out the room.

“Yes, maybe,” Jennifer whispered.

“It was like you were having a temper tantrum or something.” He stirred his scotch.

“I was having something.” She shrugged, feeling chilled. How she had behaved in the exhibition frightened her. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she announced.

“Okay, what do you want to talk about?”

“Don’t be so prosecutorial.”

He started at her. “Is it going to be one of those nights?”

She took another sip to bolster herself. Tom hadn’t asked her what drink she wanted, but had gone ahead and ordered a scotch and soda. It was like being married, she thought.

“Tom, I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep seeing you. I mean, we’re not getting anywhere, are we?”

He looked away. “I’m still married, Jennifer.”

“Then do something about it. You’ve been separated for three years. You told me when we met that you were getting a divorce.” Her voice grew stronger as she spoke. “You shouldn’t have started up with me if you still were in love with your wife.”

“I’m not in love with Carol.” He was angry now.

“Then get a divorce! You don’t have children. What’s stopping you? Tom, I deserve some answers and I deserve some respect.”

He glanced away again, and she began to cry, as quietly as possible, afraid of attracting attention. She bent forward and sobbed into her hands, using the fur of her winter coat to muffle the tears.

When she had calmed down, Tom leaned across the small table and whispered, “Jennifer, I love you. I want to take care of you. I want to marry you. I want to be in your life forever. Okay? Just give me some time. This case has dragged on longer than I thought. I don’t want to risk anything—any danger to you—by going public and having these greaseballs know you exist. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Do you love me, Tom?” she asked. The tears were gone.

“Yes, I love you. Of course I do.” He looked at her, and this time his gray eyes did show his feelings.

Jennifer shrugged. “I’m not afraid, I want to be part of your life, Tom. I want to take the risks you’re taking.”

He was shaking his head before she finished.

“I won’t let you.”

“I have something to say about that, too, you know.”

“Honey, you don’t know. These are crazy Colombians. They kill each other. They kill cops. They kill each other’s families. You read about it in the papers. A mother and child found shot in the face while their car is parked at a stoplight.” He shook his head as he spoke. “I won’t do it. I won’t expose you to that violence. Honey, we’re almost done. We’ll have the rest of that scum in jail by the end of the winter.”

“Bullshit! By the end of the winter there’ll be another case. If they want to kill me, they will. Don’t give me that crap, Tom. It’s nonsense.”

For a moment they both were silent. Jennifer blew her nose and wiped away her tears. Several of the tourists were staring at them, and Jennifer moved her chair to block their view.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I guess I’ve caused a scene.”

“Fuck ‘em,” Tom answered. He was leaning back, balancing himself on the two rear legs of the metal chair.

When he got mad, he acted tough. She had always found that exciting. She liked the way he brought her close to the edge of his anger, but she was afraid that someday things might get out of hand. Still, she couldn’t deny her attraction to his toughness, especially in bed.

“Okay, what do you want to do?” he asked, as if summing up a business meeting.

“I’m going to go to Margit and David’s for dinner,” she said, not looking up from her drink.

“Fine! You go ahead and do that!” He shoved the chair back and stood. He didn’t even try to lower his voice.

They were like characters in a cheap drama, she thought, listening to his retreating footsteps on the marble floor. She was afraid to look up, afraid that the tourists were again staring at her. She felt exposed and defenseless. Then, slowly, the voices of the other patrons grew louder. She waited a few minutes more, until she was sure Tom had left, and then she fled the museum.

Outside on Seventy-seventh Street, the snow had deepened, and Jennifer, walking west, knew she’d have trouble getting a taxi. Putting her head down against the sharp wind, she headed for West End Avenue, her feet plowing through the wet snow. She began to cry, but this time she let the tears flow, let herself sob out her heartache.

She crossed Columbus Avenue, stopped outside the Museum Cafe and looked up Seventy-seventh Street. Already the street was blocked with snow, and both sidewalks were deserted. Jennifer had lived on the Upper West Side when she was going to Columbia Law School, and she prided herself on knowing how to be careful in the city. She had even taken self-defense classes at the YWCA to boost her confidence, but once she left school and moved to Brooklyn Heights, she had become increasingly paranoid about being alone on the West Side.It was foolish, she realized, especially now that the neighborhood was so fashionable. Still, she couldn’t keep herself from being wary.

She stood a moment longer on Columbus and looked for an available yellow taxi, but the few cabs moving slowly downtown were either filled of on call.

“Damn!” she said, feeling sorry for herself. Everything, it seemed, was going wrong in her life. Defiantly she pushed forward up the deserted side street, thinking guiltily that she should have asked Tom to walk with her as far as Broadway. That was the trouble with her. She fought so hard to be independent, but whenever she felt afraid, she wanted a man around. That realization made her furious. She looked up and purposely exposed her face to the cold, as if trying to freeze the pain she felt in her heart.

Then she felt the hand on her shoulder and was stopped in her tracks.

Tom must have come after her. She twisted away and turned to him. But it wasn’t Tom.

This man was taller, bigger. He seemed to block the entire street. She could barely see his face, hidden in the dark cave of a jacket hood, but she knew he was dangerous.

“Get away!” she shouted. She tried to step back and run, but her boots didn’t grip in the slippery snow and she stumbled just as the man swung at her.

“You bitch,” he swore, then lunging at her, knocked them both into the gutter between parked cars.

He was on top of her, pushing through her coat and grabbing at her body. His hands were on her breasts, his thick lips on her face. He kept swearing, calling her filthy names, and then he jabbed his blunt, wet tongue into her mouth.

It was when he ripped away the front of her white silk blouse that she went for him. Reaching up with both hands, she raked her nails down his cheeks. She wanted to hurt him, and hearing him cry out gave her courage. She hadn’t hit anyone since she was a little girl in the playground, and the pleasure it gave her to strike back was gratifying.

With the ferocity of a cornered dog, she grabbed his throat and curled her fingernails into his neck. She felt the skin pop as her nails broke his flesh and his warm blood ran down her fingers.

He swung at her blindly, and she ducked the blow. Then, moving like an animal, she attacked, catching him in the groin with her knee. He stumbled forward, groping for his testicles, and fell face-forward into the deep snow.

She did not run to the corner, where the snowbound traffic honked along Columbus Avenue. Instead, she licked the corners of her bleeding mouth and tasted the blood with pleasure. He grabbed the front bumper of the parked car and pulled himself up. She hit him hard in the back of the neck with the heel of her right hand, swinging at him as if she were chopping a block of wood. His big body slumped forward, skidding off the car’s metal grill, and dropped into the gutter.

She couldn’t let him go. She wouldn’t. She grabbed him by his hair and, with her foot jammed against the shoulder blades, jerked back his head until she heard his neck snap.

Jennifer stayed on her knees beside the body for a moment, gasping for air. She cupped a handful of snow into her palm and, using it like soap, wiped her face clean of blood. Calmer, she moved close and saw that the predator was dead. She had killed him. She smiled.

Her name was Shih Hsui-mei. She was Chinese, the wife of Cheng-k’uan, and he was a young man then, living in the town of Silver Hill. It was during the boom years of mining, and he had come west with his father from St. Louis to settle claims for the government.

He delivered goods to Cheng-k’uan from his uncle’s store and would see Shih Hsui-mei sitting on the porch facing the Yellowjacket Mountains, combing her hair. She was his age—sixteen, perhaps seventeen—and had come from China to be old Cheng-k’uan’s bride.

She had long black hair, very long, very black, and she would comb it slowly, time after time, until it fanned across one side of her perfect round face like a blackbird’s wing.

She would then take a paste made of rhubarb and comb it through the hair until it lay straight and still, like a fan, and then she would tie it out of sight.

She never wore Western clothing but dressed always in silk trousers and tight, beautifully embroidered jackets and small silver slippers. She had such tiny feet. When she walked across the boards of Cheng-k’uan’s mountain shack, she never made a sound. He would see her one moment, then she would be gone, like a tropical bird.

He could never see enough of her. He went again and again to Chinatown just to catch a glimpse of the young Shih Hsui-mei, for she never came across the creek to the white side of town.

In the opium dives, he saw her tend to the men, bring them fresh pipes of opium. The men stayed for days, lost to the world, hidden away in their private hells.

The boy’s hell was Shih Hsui-mei. He wanted her. Her old husband used to laugh at him as he sat watching her comb her hair in the bright morning sun. The old man made fun of the boy and spoke rapidly in Chinese to Shih Hsui-mei, asking her if she wanted to feel the white man’s prick.

The boy went to the opium dives and paid to smoke in the cells. He went because she would come to him then and give him a pipe full of the sweet-smelling drug. She would look at him with her wet black eyes and her round, perfect face, and he would stare wordlessly at her.

Then she would pass away into the den, and he would smoke the sweet opium and cough into the filthy blankets. In time he would forget her, forget his pain, and in the dimness of his consciousness, she would appear again, and he would not know if she were alive or simply in his dreams.

He had her then as he always wanted her—in a place where they could be alone together, away from the world. Even if it was only a dream, she was with him, and he would smile and see her smiling, beckoning him farther and farther into the world of opium and dreams.

When he woke, into the fierce pain of daylight and consciousness, he did not want to live. He wanted only more opium, more dreams of her passing him in the den, hearing her silk trousers, seeing her lovely small body. But he would have to leave the den, stumbling down the snowy path, crossing the cold river on the narrow log bridge. Sometimes he’d be sick there, falling off the bridge, tumbling into the rocky creek, puking the night’s anguish of opium onto the slippery river rocks.

His father threw him out of his shack. He was no good to him, no good at work. The opium had destroyed his mind. He could not write down a simple claim in a government ledger or help his uncle. He wanted only Shih Hsui-mei. And now he had no money to buy opium, to

spend the night watching her slip through the dense fog in her silk trousers, tending to the worthless lot of Chinese miners, or himself, a hopeless pale-faced white boy.

He stole his father’s long-barreled pistol, the one he had been issued in the war, and went to get Shih Hsui-mei. He had a plan. A crazy plan. He would take her away from old Cheng-k’uan. The old man had no rights. He was a miserable Chink. The Chinese were killed by the dozens in the mines of Idaho. He would steal a horse and take Shih Hsui-mei with him across the Salmon River and into Oregon, where he had family, cousins of his mother.

When he went to Cheng-k’uan and told him what he intended, the old man laughed and spit in his face.

He shot the Chinaman in the head. The bullet made a small, neat black hole in the yellow man’s forehead and splashed blood and bone and brain on the whitewashed wall. The old man turned in a tight circle, dancing on his thin legs like a chicken when it’s axed.

He ran into the side wall before he stopped moving and slid down, smearing the whitewash with his blood. The boy had to step over him to get at Shih Hsui-mei. She was screaming. He had never before heard a Chinese woman scream.

He couldn’t get her to be silent. His hands tore her lovely embroidered silk jacket. He kept telling her to hush, talking to her as if she were a baby, but she wouldn’t stop screaming. He tore her silk blouse, and her breasts were so small and lovely he was suddenly dazed by the sight of them.

There were Chinese coming from the mines, running up through the mud of late spring, through the snow still frozen under shack porches. He had never seen so many Chinese.

He grabbed Shih Hsui-mei, this time with his arm around her waist. He would carry her all the way to the Snake River, he thought. But they made it only to the little creek below Cheng-k’uan’s shack. He ran through the cold water, slipping on the smooth stones, thinking that if he crossed the creek into the white part of town, he would be safe. No white man would harm him for killing a Chink.

Her people caught him at the river. There were too many of them. They pulled little Shih Hsui-mei from his arms, and one slit his throat as he might draw a blade across a squealing pig.

His gushing blood turned the cold creek water purple. He stumbled on the smooth rock and fell forward, grabbing his throat, and died faster than Cheng-k’uan.

The whites came running down from town. They found him cold and stiff and bloodless. There was not a mark on his body, except for the fine, thin slice across the length of his throat. His blue eyes held a steady, unflinching gaze, as if here in death, he had finally found the answer to his young life.

CHAPTER SIX

“OH MY GOD,” MARGIT exclaimed, seeing Jennifer. “What on earth has happened?” She reached out and pulled Jennifer into an embrace.

“I was mugged,” Jennifer stated, and in the comfort and safety of Margit Engle’s arms, she began to cry.

“David!” Margit shouted over Jennifer’s shoulder. “David, come quick! Jennifer’s been mugged.”

Jennifer pulled herself from her friend’s arms and wiped the tears from her eyes. She felt her bruised cheekbone.

“Jennifer, are you all right?” David asked. He handed his wife his drink as he approached Jennifer. “What happened?”

“She was mugged, David!” Margit’s voice betrayed her anxiety. “We have to call the police.”

“No. Don’t call anyone!” Jennifer blurted out. She caught sight of herself in the living room mirror and began to cry again, but this time she let the tears flow. David guided her to the sofa and arranged a pillow behind her head.

“I’ll get my bag and we’ll take care of these bruises. You’re okay, Jennifer, don’t be afraid.”

Jennifer nodded, but moving her head drove a piercing wedge of pain between her eyes, and she reached up with her hand to feel the raw flesh on her forehead. It would be days, she guessed, before the bruises would be gone, and that made her start crying again.

“I still think we should call the police,” Margit declared. She was standing in the middle of the living room, nervously twisting her fingers.

“No!” Jennifer said. She tried to sit up but couldn’t gather her strength.

“Jennifer is right,” David said, returning. “Jennifer has had enough trouble. And what are the police going to find anyway? Whoever did this is already long gone.” He knelt beside the sofa. “Get me towels and warm water,” he told his wife. “I want to clean up these bruises.”

“Thank you, David,” Jennifer whispered, but her lips had swollen and she was having difficulty forming words.

“Shhhhh,” David whispered, smiling down at her. “No need to say anything, just rest. Close your eyes. You’re all right.”

Jennifer did close her eyes, thankful that she had made it to West End Avenue and that Margit and David were taking care of her. She did fall asleep, knowing she was safe from everyone out on those city streets. But still she was frightened of herself, of what she had done.

When she awoke she could hear their muffled voices from the other room. She turned her head carefully on the pillow, trying to avoid the wedges of pain every time she moved, and saw through bruised eyelids that they had closed the door to the dining room. The lights were off in the living room, where she still lay, now covered with a heavy quilt. Her shoes had been removed and her skirt loosened.

She wondered if she should get up to tell them that she was all right, but even as she wondered, she knew she didn’t have the strength. How could she tell them what had really happened, how she had killed the man? She couldn’t tell anyone the truth, ever, and when she closed her eyes again, she wished that she wouldn’t wake up, that she would never have to face the nightmare of what she had done.

She woke crying, struggling to free herself from the hand on her shoulders. It was a moment before she realized she was being held by David. “You’re having a nightmare, Jennifer. That’s all,” he was whispering.

One lamp was lit, and she saw David above her and Margit at the foot of the sofa, both looking pained and upset. Jennifer relaxed and slipped down into the soft pillows.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

“Don’t be sorry. You just had a nightmare.”

“I’m sorry I’m causing you all this trouble. I really should go home.” Jennifer started to rise, but David placed his hand on her shoulder.

“You’re going nowhere. Stay with us tonight, and I’ll take you home tomorrow, if you’re up to it. Otherwise, you’ll be our guest for a few days.”

“Thank you, but I can’t. I have to go to Boston for a meeting.”

“Well, we can talk about that tomorrow. You listen to me; I’m the doc here.” He kept smiling, comforting her with his gentle manner.

“Thank you, David,” Jennifer whispered. She was relieved by his insistence. The thought of being by herself was frightening.

“What about something to eat? A clear soup?” Margit asked.

Jennifer tried to smile and said, “That would be wonderful, Margit. I’m famished.”

When Margit left the room, David asked, “Jennifer, nothing else happened to you besides being struck, am I correct?”

“What do you mean?”

“You weren’t raped, were you?”

“Oh, no.” Jennifer sighed, terrified that David might guess the truth. “I managed to get away.”

“Would you like to talk about it?” he asked.

Jennifer shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I feel so stupid, getting mugged. I mean, I should know better.” She had her eyes closed and her head back. In her mind’s eye, she saw the man again, saw him lunge at her, saw rage and hunger on his face, and then she hit him, attacked him like an animal, with her bare hands.

“You’ll feel better tomorrow,” David said reassuringly.

Jennifer nodded, but she knew that in the morning she would feel worse, not because of her bruises, but for what she had done.

“Here we are,” Margit announced, coming back into the living room with a bowl of soup, a place mat and cloth napkin tucked under her arm.

Jennifer tried to sit up and again felt the wedge of pain between her eyes.

“Easy,” David cautioned. He had taken hold of her elbow.

“Maybe we shouldn’t try this,” Margit suggested.

“No, I think getting something warm into Jennifer will do wonders. You can sit up, right? Otherwise, Margit will just feed you.”

“No, I want to sit up, please.” Jennifer forced herself to swing her legs off the deep sofa. She marveled to herself that she did suddenly have the strength to overcome the stabbing pain between her eyes. Something had happened to her. She was different, somehow. She was another kind of person. She had never been able to stand pain.

Margit stood hovering over Jennifer, her hands clasped together. “Would you like some Italian bread to go into the broth?” she asked.

“Let’s give Jennifer room to breathe,” David suggested, moving away from the sofa and sitting down across from the coffee table. Margit stayed on the sofa next to Jennifer.

“I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do this. I can’t feel my lips.”

“You look as if you just did a couple of rounds with Tyson.”

“And I feel it.” Jennifer picked up the soup spoon and realized she was no longer trembling. She smiled weakly at Margit and David.

“Well, that’s better,” Margit said, sighing, and she reached out to touch Jennifer’s leg. “Would you like to talk about what happened?” she said softly.

“Margit, leave Jenny alone.” He stood and went to the liquor cabinet.

“I just think it’s better if Jennifer has the opportunity to talk it out, that’s all,” she answered back.

“I know what you want,” David said, lowering his voice as he bent to retrieve the scotch bottle from the bottom of the breakfront. “You want all the gruesome details. And I think Jenny deserves to have her privacy.”

They kept talking past her, as if she were a child.

“There are no gruesome details,” Jennifer spoke up, “and I don’t mind talking about it.” She turned to Margit and tried to force her bruised face into a smile. “I didn’t lose my purse. He didn’t really hurt me. I mean, except for the obvious. I ran away, that’s all.”

“Well, where did it happen? Right here on West End Avenue?” Margit leaned closer, her eyes widening.

“No, it wasn’t here. It was over by—” Jennifer caught herself before she said Columbus Avenue. “It was over on Broadway.”

“Broadway? But it’s so busy. There are always people on Broadway. Didn’t anyone come to help you out? My God, this city!” She glared at her husband as if he were in some way responsible.

“There’s no one out tonight, Margit,” Jennifer said, returning to her soup. Eating made her feel better.

“That’s right. It’s been snowing all evening,” agreed David.

“I still think we should call the police,” Margit said again.

“Why? You heard Jenny. She wasn’t robbed. She got banged up a couple times, sure, but in this city, that’s not even considered a misdemeanor.”

“We can’t just let him get away with it.” Margit glanced back and forth, upset with Jennifer as well as her husband. “A woman isn’t safe.”

“Margit was attacked herself last week, Jenny,” David volunteered, “and she’s still edgy.”

“I’m not edgy, and I wasn’t attacked. Someone—a little black kid—tried to take my purse at Food City, that’s all. The guard grabbed him. But everywhere you turn, it seems, the great unwashed, all the homeless, the poor, are coming out of.their holes, or wherever they sleep at night, and attacking us. It’s the mayor’s fault, him and all these liberals.”

“You were once one yourself, dear,” David remarked coolly. “And the mayor certainly isn’t one anymore, either.”

Margit stood and began to pace the long living room.

“Margit, why don’t you go to bed?” David suggested, speaking softly. “Jenny would probably like to get some sleep, too.”

“I’m not going to sleep. I’m too upset.” Margit kept pacing.

“Darling, it was Jenny who was mugged, not you.”

“I know that,” she replied, biting off the words, “but it could have been me. I’m on Broadway all the time.”

“Oh, if you’re going to start talking like that, then you might as well move out of the city.”

“I’m not moving alone,” Margit snapped.

David glanced at Jennifer and smiled apologetically. “We’re sorry about all this, but you caught us in the middle of a long argument. Margit has had it with the city, wants to leave, move up the Hudson somewhere—”

“Or New Jersey.”

“—and I don’t. I’m not going to start commuting, not at my age.” He drained his scotch.

“I don’t blame you, Margit. Getting attacked like this is terrifying.” Jennifer finished the soup and tried to wipe her mouth, but when she touched her face with the cloth napkin, she winced. “I’m going to feel terrible tomorrow,” she moaned. “And I have to go to Boston.”

“Well, thank God nothing serious happened.” David stood up. “Margit, have you finished pacing? Ready to turn in?” He smiled over Jennifer’s head at his wife. He was a big, sloppy, overweight man, but when he smiled, he looked like a giant, lovable panda.

He had been Jennifer’s doctor since she was in law school, and then she had met and become good friends with Margit. Jennifer always felt that Margit treated her like the daughter she never had.

Margit seemed calmer. “Jennifer, I’ve made up Derek’s room. You can sleep there tonight. The boys are away at school.”

“Oh, Margit, thanks. I’m really sorry I’m causing so much trouble.” She limped out from behind the coffee table, knowing that she couldn’t walk to their son’s room by herself.

“If you wish, Jennifer, I’ll give you a sedative. It might help you sleep.”

“Thanks, David. I think I do need something. My whole body hurts.”

“Go with Margit. I’ll get you the pill.”

When he left, Margit whispered to Jennifer, “I’m sorry we carried on so. We’re going through a bad patch, David and I.”

“Margit, it’s okay, I understand.” She tried again to smile.

“No, I’m not sure you do,” Margit answered back. “It’s not what you think. We’re not fighting over where to live. David

well, David has found himself someone else, someone younger, and

” Margit began to cry. She was holding on to Jennifer as they walked to the bedroom.

“Oh, Margit, I’m so… I didn’t…”

“Of course. Of course. Why would you? He just told me.” Margit straightened up to turn on the light in Derek’s room. It was still littered with his teenage belongings, and a huge poster of Madonna posing half naked was pinned to the wall.

“Do you think you can sleep with her staring at you?” Margit asked, trying to laugh.

“I’ll keep the lights off.” Jennifer eased herself down on the narrow bed.

“Here you are, Jenny,” David said, returning with the pill and a glass of water. “You can take it when you want. It will give you at least six good hours.” He leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “Good night. In the morning I’ll have another look at those bruises.”

“Thank you, David. Thank you for everything.” She smiled up at him.

When he left them alone again, Margit said, “I shouldn’t bother you with my concerns. You’ve had enough for one night. How’s Tom? Do you want me to telephone him?”

Jennifer shook her head. She looked up at Margit, her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know. It’s not, you know, working out.”

Margit nodded. “It hardly ever does, does it?” She sighed.

“Margit, you’re going to be okay

We both are.”

“I had the best husband in the world for twenty-three years, and now he tells me he’s in love with a thirty-six-year-old woman—one of his patients, I might add—who’s an investment banker on Wall Street and makes more money than he does. She’s madly in love with him, he says. Now, how do you think that makes me feel?” She shook her head. “No wonder I hate this city. You know, Jennifer, I wish it had been me and not you that got mugged. I would have let that man kill me.”

“Margit, I won’t let you talk like that! I won’t let you believe—”

“Believe it, Jennifer. It might happen to you. Once you’re over forty, they put you out to pasture.” The small woman’s voice rose with anger. “Well, if he leaves me, I’ll make him pay.”

“Margit, I’m going to cry. Please.”

“I’m sorry. Please go to sleep. Don’t worry about tomorrow. I’ll take you back to Brooklyn Heights. David said he has to go into the office, or at least that’s the excuse he’s giving me.” She stood up and forced herself to smile. “Sleep tight, dear,” she said, and pulled the door closed, leaving Jennifer alone.

Jennifer sat very still, holding the glass of water in one hand and the sleeping pill in the other. She forgot about her own problems for a moment and thought of Margit and David: a lifetime together, two children, a long and happy life, and now David had found another woman. She hated him at that moment, even though David was her doctor.

She felt her hatred pump through her body. It began in her fingers and raged like a forest fire in hot wind. Her breath came quick and hard, and in an effort to try to control herself, she took the pill, washing it down with a gulp of water. Yet still she raged. She stood up, forgetting her pain. She wanted him. She wanted to hurt David.

She opened the door and stepped into the hallway. The lights were out and the apartment was quiet. With her feet silent on the thick carpet, she moved toward the light that seeped out from under their bedroom door.

Jennifer realized they were sleeping separately when she saw the light under Matthew’s bedroom door. That he had left Margit alone in their bed enraged Jennifer more. At that moment she felt a draft of cold air and shivered. A surge of blood pumped through her veins.

With a violent push, Jennifer swung the bedroom door open. David was in the bathroom. He was wearing just his pajama bottoms, and his heavy white flesh sagged over the drawstring. He was brushing his teeth and his eyes bulged when he saw her. He looked old and useless.

“Jenny,” he mumbled, his mouth foamed with the white toothpaste.

“You!” She came at him with her hands extended, fingers reaching to clutch his throat. She knew how she would kill him—with her fingernails ripping into the flesh of his neck. But suddenly her vision swam; she felt lightheaded and stumbled forward. He caught her before she fell to the floor.

“It’s all right, Jenny. You’re all right.” He lowered her to the carpet and called for his wife.

“What happened?” Margit asked, rushing from the other bedroom.

“She passed out from the medicine. It was too large a dose, I’m afraid. I forgot to ask her if she’d had something to drink earlier. She’ll be all right, though. Give me a hand.”

“She’s not hurt?” Margit asked.

“No, but she’s going to have a hell of a headache in the morning.”

“Damnit, David, why weren’t you more careful?”

“I was careful. She shouldn’t have had this serious a reaction. Something must be wrong with her metabolism.”

They had her in the hallway, carrying her between them like a sack of potatoes.

“What was she doing in there, anyway?” Margit asked as she struggled with Jennifer’s legs.

“I don’t know. I looked up and saw her in the mirror. She was coming straight for me,” David said, puzzled. “I was brushing my teeth. I didn’t have my glasses on. She looked wild, as if she were out of her head. I couldn’t tell whether she was just wandering, or whether she had—I don’t know —come to get me.”

“Get you?” Margit looked over at her husband. “What do you mean?”

“She looked like she wanted to kill me,” David replied, setting Jennifer gently on the bed.

CHAPTER SEVEN

JENNIFER STOPPED WALKING AND let the other Wednesday morning commuters rush by her. She stood staring at the bold headline of the New York Post:

Several people bumped against her in the crowded corridor, and she moved out of the steady stream of pedestrians, then closer to the newsstand to read the smaller print:

Jennifer walked over to the newsstand and stealthily purchased the newspaper, as if she thought she might be watched. She took it to a relatively quiet corner and flipped through the pages for the story. There was a photograph of the street and an arrow indicating where the body had been found, wedged between the parked cars.

As she rode from Brooklyn to Manhattan, she scanned the story for details that might link her to the death. No one had seen the murder. A neighbor had found the victim on Monday while walking his dog. It had snowed hard all weekend, and by then the body had been buried beneath twelve inches of snow, but the dog had sniffed out the blood. One foot of the murder victim had been sticking out, like a raised flag, the neighbor explained. And so he had called the cops. There was a close-up photo of the man’s battered old shoe.

“Inhuman,” the neighbor with the dog was quoted as telling the Post. “The killer must have been some kind of King Kong. What’s this city coming to?”

There was a description of how the man’s neck was broken, and the article speculated on the size of the assailant. “Two hundred and fifty plus pounds,” estimated Detective Coles Phinizy, “and maybe six feet six or seven. We’re looking for a man the size of a defensive back, someone who’d give Hulk Hogan a match.” The victim’s identity was being withheld until his nearest relatives were located, but anyone with information about the murder was asked to call the Twentieth Precinct.

She glanced around carefully and then tore out the article and tossed away the newspaper. Her fear had returned—not that it had really left her, but she had been able to suppress it.

She had taken Tuesday off from work and, with the help of another sleeping pill, had slept most of the night. When she did wake, she remembered the attack but had begun to believe that she had simply overreacted. It hadn’t been as brutal as she remembered. She hadn’t killed anyone, she finally convinced herself.

Taking a shower that morning, she had studied herself in the mirror, searching for some telltale signs, a new growth of hair, a change in the size of her muscles, but there were no marks on her body, no signs that her body had changed on her.

Now her fear flooded her body. It wasn’t fear of being arrested for murder. The police would not be looking for a blond white woman, five foot seven and 126 pounds.

Her fear was much more terrifying and secret. She had killed someone with the strength of her own hands, and she had no idea where it had come from.

She rushed through Penn Station, up to the street, and out into the cold New York morning. She was on her way to a meeting with the members of a nearby Catholic church that wanted funds for a homeless shelter. But as she hurried to the street, Jennifer knew she couldn’t sit through any meeting. Instead of going to the church, she’d take a taxi to her office and have Joan telephone and reschedule.

The snow had been cleared from the streets and pushed into the gutter to form a high ridge, already blackened with soot and broken down at places where pedestrians had beaten an icy path into the street. A taxi stopped ahead of her and a man with a suitcase jumped out, over the ridge of snow, and went toward Penn Station. Jennifer bolted immediately for the cab. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that another man had spotted the taxi and begun to run. Jennifer picked up her pace, found an opening in the ridge of snow, and ran into the street. She came at the taxi from behind, from the blind side.

She had it, she told herself, breathing hard as she raced through the slush. She had forgotten about her situation, the murdered man, forgotten her own fear. She needed that cab.

The other man, sprinting down the street, had reached the front of the cab. When he saw her, he began to shout. “Hey, lady, this is mine!”

Jennifer opened the back door, slid inside, and slammed the door.

“Broadway and Fifty-eighth,” she told the driver, leaning forward so she’d be heard through the glass. She heard the man shouting at her through the side window. She reached out and locked the door, then sank back into the seat with relief as the taxi pulled into traffic. She never looked at the man as he slammed his fist on the side of the departing taxi.

The driver swore, glancing around.

“Don’t stop!” Jennifer asked. She was trembling.

“Animals!” the driver shouted. “Goddamn animals!” He accelerated his taxi, still swearing, complaining now about the traffic.

Jennifer glanced at the name and picture on his hack license. It was unpronounceable, full of consonants. Now she stared out the side window, as if by looking away she could avoid any more confrontations.

“Animals!” the driver exclaimed again.

“Yes,” Jennifer whispered. “I think I am.”

“Oh my God, what happened to you?” Joan exclaimed, seeing Jennifer’s bruised face.

“I’m okay. I’m okay,” Jennifer assured her secretary. “Joan, follow me. I need you to cancel an appointment.” Jennifer walked through the foundation’s outer rooms and into her own small office that looked north. The sun reflected brilliantly on the hard-packed frozen snow.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” Joan asked, as she followed after her.

“Yes!” Jennifer called back, shedding her wool coat and dropping it on her office sofa. “And get Dale Forster on the phone. I’m going to have to break our squash date.” Jennifer slid into her chair. She didn’t look up, but she knew her secretary had followed her into the room with coffee. “I want you to call Father Merrill and tell him I’m sorry, but I can’t make this morning’s meeting. Also, I want you to clear my schedule for this afternoon.” She pulled her calendar across the wide desk and glanced down at Wednesday. “What do we have?”

“You have the eleven o’clock meeting with David Meyer on his film project. That’s set up in the conference room. He wants to show you his film on Sun Valley. And he’s already here. Then you have lunch with Evan Konechy upstairs in the dining room. Unless you want to have me make reservations elsewhere. This afternoon, there’s a slide presentation for the St. Louis project, remember?” The secretary carefully set down the coffee cup, then perched on the edge of a chair at the corner of the desk. She had her pad out, ready to take notes.

“Damnit! I forgot about St. Louis.” Jennifer fell back into her high-backed leather chair, the one David and Margit had bought for her when she started to work for the foundation.

“Jennifer, are you all right?” Joan asked. “Tell me what happened.”

“Yes, I’m all right now.” When she’d called in sick the day before, she’d said nothing about the assault. Now she was trying to make light of the incident. “I got mugged outside my apartment, that’s all.”

“Oh, you poor thing! You didn’t tell me! Are you okay? Did you have to go to the hospital?”

“No, I just have to go see the

police,” she lied, avoiding Joan’s eyes.

“And look at mug shots?” Joan asked. “Janet Chan— you know, the one who just took over the Woman’s World Foundation—was robbed last fall, and she had to look at mugshots. That was in Scarsdale.”

“Well, I don’t know about mugshots. I never saw the man.” Jennifer reached for the cup of coffee, thankful that her hands had stopped trembling.

“Was he a black person?” Joan whispered, still leaning across the desk.

“I don’t know. I told you, I never saw him.” Jennifer opened her leather briefcase and took out her files in an attempt to stave off other questions. “Any calls?”

“Yes, several

Tom called

twice.” Joan did not look up as she glanced through the yellow phone messages. “And the president’s office phoned. Dr. Handingham wants to speak with you about the talk he’s to give at the Silbersack luncheon on Monday.”

Jennifer suddenly felt overwhelmed by her work. On her desk were several bulky files, projects that needed attention. And there were all her meetings today. But she couldn’t concentrate. She couldn’t take her mind off what had happened.

“Jennifer, are you all right?” Joan asked again.

“Yes, I’m just tired, that’s all.” She gestured at the stack of files. “I’ve got to get some work done. Can you keep everyone away from me for a little while?” She smiled across at Joan, blinking away tears.

“Don’t worry about a thing, dear.” Joan Corboy stood.

“Drink your coffee, and I’ll close the door and let you have some peace and quiet.”

“Thank you, Joan, for taking care of me.” She smiled after her secretary, and when her office door closed, Jennifer reached for the telephone and dialed Tom at work.

“Is Tom Oliver available?” she asked his secretary.

“May I ask who is calling?”

“Ms. Winters.” Jennifer fingered the telephone cord as she waited, and spun her leather chair around to look out the window. She could see a long thin slice of the park from her windows and up Central Park West as far north as the museum. She focused on the massive Romanesque museum as she waited for Tom to come to the phone. She could not see Columbus Avenue, where she had killed the man.

It hadn’t happened, she told herself. It couldn’t have happened. But she knew now that was not true. She had gone over the murder a thousand times. In her mind, she had killed him a thousand times.

“Jennifer!”

“Tom, yes,” she whispered into the phone.

“Where have you been?”

“I need to see you.”

“I need to see you, darling.” He sighed into the phone. “God, I’ve been calling you. But your machine—”

“Tom,” she interrupted, “I have to talk to you.” She had cupped her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.

“What? Honey, I can’t hear you.”

“I need to talk to you!”

“Okay! Okay! When? Where?”

“Can you meet me for lunch?”

“Sweetheart, I can’t. I’ve got to be downtown.”

“All right!” She spun around and studied her calendar. “Are you free later, after four?”

“I will be. Where do you want to meet?”

“Come to Brooklyn, please.”

There was silence for a moment, as he decided. “Okay, but don’t be late. I don’t want to have to hang around on the street.”

“You have a key.”

“Not with me.”

“I’ll be home early. Tom, I need your help. Something has happened.” She was crying, and she reached over to pluck a tissue from the box on her desk.

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s not what you think. I’m okay.” She knew he was constantly worried that she’d get pregnant. “Don’t say anything. I mean, don’t tell anyone in the office you’re meeting me.”

“I never do, honey, you know that.”

“I’m serious, Tom, this is important!”

“So’s my case.”

“What I need to talk to you about involves just me. Me alone.”

“Honey, I just don’t get you.”

“Did you see the Post this morning?”

“Of course not!”

“Take a look at the headline.”

“Come on, what gives? I’ve got a hearing in fifteen minutes.”

“The headline says, ‘Ape Killer Makes Manhattan Jungle.’”

“Yeah

so?”

“I need to talk to you about this ‘ape killer.’ I know who it is!” Then, unable to say more, she slammed down the phone. What had happened to her? She stood and came around the desk as her office door opened. Joan was holding a bright red file.

“It’s for your eleven o’clock with Meyer,” she said, handing the thick file to Jennifer.

“Call this number for me, please,” Jennifer said as she strode from the office. “Eileen Gorman. See if she can have lunch with me today in the city. Tell her it’s very important. And call Evan Konechy and tell her I have to cancel.”

Joan followed Jennifer out of the suite of offices and stood with her in front of the bank of elevators. “Jennifer, are you sure you’re all right?” She peered over her glasses at her boss.

Jennifer stared at her reflection in the polished bronze doors of the elevators. In the contours of the metal, she looked gross and deformed, and she turned away from the image.

“I’m not sure,” she whispered. And then the doors opened and she stepped into an empty elevator. Turning, she pressed the button for the conference room floor, then glanced at Joan, who was still watching her, her face knit with concern.

“You can tell me,” Joan offered.

Jennifer managed to fake a smile. “I wish to God I could,” she whispered to herself as the doors slid smoothly closed, locking her briefly in the safety of the descending car.

CHAPTER EIGHT

JENNIFER COULD NOT EAT lunch. Instead, she sat across from Eileen Gorman and listened to the woman talk. Jennifer had wanted to see Eileen as soon as possible, once she realized that everything about her had started to go wrong after she met Eileen in Washington. She and Kathy Dart had exchanged a strange look, and then she had run thirteen miles. All of it, she guessed, was somehow connected to Eileen Gorman.

She had also wanted to tell Eileen what she had done, how she had killed the man who attacked her, but now she couldn’t tell her high school friend. In her heart, Jennifer still believed that she wasn’t capable of doing such a horrendous act.

So she spent lunch listening to Eileen tell her about the New Age philosophy, channeling, psychic auras, all of the metaphysical beliefs that Eileen followed. Something told Jennifer that she had to learn more about this new form of spiritualism if she was going to find out what was wrong with her body.

“I didn’t believe in meditation or est, or anything having to do with pyramids and quartz crystals, either,” Eileen went on, “not at first, certainly. But then I began to notice how my life—what was happening in my life—had a pattern. I started to read, to investigate everything, you know, the unexplained. And that is what finally led me to the teachings of Kathy Dart and Habasha.”

Jennifer waited for her to go on, to explain what she meant.

“I just decided I had been reincarnated.” Eileen shrugged. “I mean, reincarnation was the only thing that made sense about my life. Anyone’s life.” She waved her hand in the air. “None of our lives make any sense, unless there is some reason.”

“There is a reason,” said Jennifer. “Some people call it heaven and hell. Others call it evolution.” She could not yet accept what Eileen was telling her, but could she dismiss Eileen’s reasoning, either?

“Look, I don’t have your law degree,” Eileen said, leaning forward, “and I didn’t graduate from the University of Chicago like you did. I really haven’t studied at all, not since high school. But I’ve learned a lot on my own just from reading the New Age material. It’s incredible, really, once you see the connections, the links between lives. The plan of what we are doing here on earth.”

Jennifer raised her eyebrows.

“Listen, there’s something about me I never told you. You know I married that lifeguard, Tim Murphy. Well, we had a baby. A little premie. A girl. We called her Adara, and she lived just a week.”

“Eileen, I didn’t know.”

“Of course not. You were away at college.” Eileen continued, “It was a forceps delivery, and the poor little thing had these deep gashes on her forehead.”

“Oh, no,” Jennifer whispered.

“No, that didn’t kill her. She was just too young. Her lungs hadn’t developed. Perhaps today with all the advancements in medicine

but she didn’t live. And because of that, plus a lot of other things, naturally, Timmy and I just drifted apart. I mean, we really had nothing in common except Jones Beach.”

“I went a little wild after we split up,” she said with a grimace. “I got kind of heavy into drugs and playing around. Some mornings I woke up and didn’t know where I was, who I was with. It was that awful. I was trying to kill myself, I guess.” Eileen shrugged. “And I would have if I hadn’t met Todd. He was just getting over this terrible divorce, and we sort of found each other—saved each other.”

“Here he was, this big, successful New York City insurance executive, with this great house in Old Westbury. I mean, I couldn’t believe how lucky I was. And he loved me, too. I actually knelt down one night by the side of my bed and said my prayers, as if I was a little kid again, and thanked God for sending Todd into my life. But it wasn’t God who had given me Todd. I was simply fulfilling my karma.”

“Anyway, we were married on the fourteenth of September, and our son, Michael, was born the same day, two years later. It was exactly five years before that day that I had lost my little Adara.”

“Michael had a perfectly fine delivery, no forceps. Yet when I saw him, when the doctor laid him on my chest, he had two marks on each side of his forehead, just like Adara. And I knew. I knew.”

“Eileen, please.”

Eileen nodded. “Yes, I’m certain of it, Jennifer. Michael and Adara are the same soul. That’s not so strange, either. There’s a psychiatrist in Boston, Dr. Susan Zawalich, who has been collecting information on just such occurrences.”

“And I read about one case. It happened in Ireland. Two boys, eleven and six, were killed in an IRA bombing. Right after that, their mother got pregnant, but this time with twins. Two girls were born, and they had marks on their bodies that were exactly like the marks their older, dead brothers had had. The same kinds of marks, in the same places, the same color eyes, the same expressions, everything.”

“Eileen, you’re letting your imagination run away with you.”

“You mean my guilt?” Eileen suggested.

“Well, maybe,” Jennifer answered, caught short by Eileen’s self-awareness.

“I thought about that—that I might just be projecting onto Michael what Adara had looked like. So I did some checking. I went back into the drawer where we kept all her papers, all the hospital papers, and found that little first footprint they do of all newborns. I took Adara’s and I got Michael’s, and I gave them to a friend of Todd’s who is deputy sheriff over in Garden City, and asked him to compare the prints.” She paused dramatically. “They’re the same, Jennifer. My two children have identical footprints. They are the same soul.”

Jennifer looked away. She didn’t believe it, but perhaps Eileen needed to believe something like that. It would give her a way to justify what had happened to her firstborn.

“The unexplained, Jennifer, is just that. It is beyond our so-called rational thinking. We were brought up, taught, to have rational explanations for all actions. Well, the truth is that there are some phenomena that just don’t allow themselves to be easily explained. There is always a reason, but it is sometimes beyond our comprehension. And some people, like Kathy Dart and other channelers, they have a gift—a gift from God. There’s nothing satanic about any of this. Their gift is to show us that there’s a logic in the randomness of events, but it’s the logic of a superior power.”

“You sound like a TV evangelist,” Jennifer replied.

“I’m not religious, I told you that. We don’t attend church, Todd or I. But I believe in God, and I believe that we’re all part of a plan, a system of life. Here, let me give you one example.” She leaned on the table excitedly, ticking off the references on her fingers as she talked.

“Two of our presidents who were assassinated knew they were going to be killed. Lincoln had a dream where he saw himself wrapped in funeral vestments. This was only a day or two before he was killed. And Kennedy told Jackie that if someone wanted to shoot him from a window with a rifle, then no one could stop him. But there is more than just that. Both of them died on Friday. They were both shot in the back of the head while sitting next to their wives. Both of the killers had three-part names—John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald. The two killers were born exactly one hundred years apart, and both were murdered before they came to trial.”

“Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and fled into a warehouse. Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and ran into a theater. Kennedy had a secretary called Lincoln. Lincoln had one called Kennedy. Lincoln was in Ford’s Theater when he was shot. Kennedy was riding in a Lincoln, made by Ford. And both presidents were succeeded by southerners named Johnson.” Eileen sat back. “This isn’t just chance, Jennifer. There’s a plan. A divine plan. And I’m not alone in thinking that Lincoln and Kennedy were the same soul, reincarnated.”

For a moment they were both silent, tired from the long afternoon of talking. Jennifer could hear muffled traffic from the street, and the rattle of dishes and pans deep in the restaurant. It was past time to go back to the office. She glanced at her watch.

“I don’t believe in reincarnation,” Jennifer announced.

“I don’t see why not. All religions do, in one way or another. What’s life after death but reincarnation? All of nature is cyclical. The raindrop that falls from the sky into the ocean, first came from the ocean. It’s the same raindrop. It’s the same soul. We only come into existence once and are reborn throughout time. Our soul is the home of our good, our unselfish and noble aspirations. When we seek to aid the homeless, to stop suffering, to go to the aid of our neighbor, that is our soul at work.”

Jennifer thought of the man she had beaten to death. To stop herself from being overwhelmed with the image, she asked, “Well, where does this karma of yours come into it?”

“Karma is the law of consequences—of merit and demerit, as the Buddhists say. It is a sort of justice that is measured out to us—so much good, so much bad—in our next life in accordance with what we did in this lifetime. In a sense we’re condemned to pay for what we did in our past lives, to keep reliving our lives until all our bad karma has been replaced by good karma.”

“What happens then?”

“Then we gain what our souls came into life for in the first place: eternal peace and happiness. At least that’s what Kathy, or really, Habasha, tells us.”

Jennifer nodded. She knew just enough about occult teaching and the paranormal to follow Eileen’s argument, but what had suddenly happened to her behind the museum? Why there? Why then?

“I have to get back to the office,” she announced, too weary to continue.

“All right, but, Jennifer, I’m at home, you know, whenever you need to talk.” She smiled, and Jennifer marveled again at the peacefulness of Eileen’s face. Jennifer saw none of the tension that stared back at her each morning from her own bathroom mirror. Perhaps she should buy the whole bag of nonsense just for that look of contentment. It would be worth it, she thought fervently, to get a good night’s sleep.

“It’s snowing,” Eileen said with surprise when they stepped outside the restaurant. Jennifer walked with Eileen to where she had parked her car.

“I’m sorry you drove into town, Eileen. The expressway home will be a nightmare.”

“I never worry about things like that, not anymore,” Eileen answered. “Before I got connected with Kathy and Habasha, little things like driving in snow, making dinner for guests, meeting new people, why I’d go half out of my mind with worrying. Not now!” She shook her head, smiling confidently.

“How? How do you stop worrying, driving yourself crazy?” Jennifer stopped walking and turned to Eileen. “I want to know,” Jennifer insisted. She was tired of all the general talk of love, of getting in touch with one’s feelings, of meditating and using a quartz crystal for guidance and wisdom. She wanted answers and results. “Tell me how to live in this city without losing your humanity, and then I’ll believe in your African man.”

“It’s not that simple, Jennifer. I mean, you have to be receptive.”

“I’m receptive. Believe me, I’m receptive.”

“Try, Jennifer. Try. Open yourself up.” Eileen smiled and her eyes glistened from the cold. “Here!” she said, pulling a quartz crystal from her pocket. “Take this, carry it with you. The crystal will take care of you until you’ve had a chance to talk to Kathy or some other channeler. Just think about it, about having it in your pocket.” She leaned forward and kissed Jennifer lightly on the cheek. “Be caring,” she whispered, and then added, “Tiru no.”

“What?” Jennifer pulled away, frowning.

“It’s Habasha’s saying, meaning, it is good. You are good. We are good.” She waved good-bye and went into the entrance of the parking lot to pick up her car.

Jennifer kept walking east toward her office. It was snowing harder, and ahead of her the traffic stalled as cars tried to negotiate the wet city streets. Eileen would never get home, she thought guiltily.

She crossed the street, making her way between gridlocked cars, and reached into the pocket of her fur coat to feel the quartz. It was warm in her pocket, like a small heater, and having it with her did, for some odd reason, make her feel better. She wondered why.

Once in the building, Jennifer took the elevator to her floor, and went toward the ladies’ room. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a woman waiting at the elevator, and when she unlocked the bathroom door, the woman turned abruptly and followed after her. Jennifer stopped at the entrance, suddenly apprehensive. It was a small thin white woman that she had never seen in the building, but then she realized she could take care of herself and continued into the bathroom.

There was a black maintenance woman cleaning the toilets. Jennifer stepped to the sinks, set her purse on the ledge below the mirror, and began to apply fresh makeup. She only glanced at the heavyset woman when she came out of the stall. She moved slowly, with the roll of a big ship anchored in a harbor.

“Snowing out there, ma’am?” she asked.

“Yes, it is, I’m afraid,” Jennifer answered, as she applied her lipstick.

“Oh, I hates the snow. Nothing but trouble, winter.” She stuck her mop in the bucket of soapy water and came toward Jennifer. Her bulk, Jennifer realized at once, had blocked her in the corner.

“Okay, honey,” the black woman said softly, almost as if she were whispering to a child, “why don’t you just dump that purse out on the counter?” Her melodic voice sang sweetly in the silent room.

Jennifer stepped away from the mirror and backed up against the tile wall. Now she realized what was happening and was unable to speak, to even think of what she might do to escape. When the door of the first stall opened, she thought at once, Thank God, it was the other woman who had followed her from the elevator, but then Jennifer saw the thin woman’s eyes fix on her leather bag.

“No!” Jennifer moved as the thin woman grabbed at the bag. “Please, don’t,” she begged.

“Get back, you white bitch!” The heavyset woman hit Jennifer on the shoulder, tossed her off balance, then seized the purse and dumped the contents into the wash basin. Her chubby short fingers sifted through the contents.

Jennifer saw herself react. She saw herself push off the gray tile wall and jump the big woman. She seized her by the throat. She held up the woman with one hand for a moment, as if she were a lioness in Africa showing off her prize. Then she banged open the metal stall door and, still with one hand, shoved the black woman’s face in the toilet bowl. The water splashed from the bowl as the heavy woman thrashed under her hands, but Jennifer leaned over, pressed her full weight on the woman’s shoulder, and flushed the toilet with her foot. She kept flushing until the woman stopped struggling. Then Jennifer wedged the woman’s bulky body against the back wall of the stall and left her facedown in the blue toilet water.

Jennifer backed off, calming herself with deep breaths, turned to the counter and picked up the contents of her purse, slipping them into her large leather bag. She looked up into the mirror and caught a glimpse of her flushed face and blazing eyes, but then she saw the other woman, the thin white woman, had not run. She had stayed and now was coming at Jennifer with a club in her hand.

Without pausing, without a rational thought, Jennifer lunged forward and hit the woman. She caught her squarely on the bridge of the nose. Jennifer felt the bone crumble beneath her hand and saw a flash of pain in the woman’s dull eyes before her blood spurted out of both nostrils in thick red jets. Jennifer tapped her on the forehead, and the dead woman slid silently to the wet tile of the bathroom floor.

Jennifer stepped over her, straightened her suit skirt, and walked out of the bathroom. She turned away from the conference room toward the bank of elevators and hit the down button. Fright swept through her, leaving her trembling. She leaned against the wall, praying for the elevator to come, praying that no one would discover that she had killed again.

She dug her hands deep into the pockets of her fur coat and felt Eileen’s crystal. Slipping her fingers around the quartz, she felt its strange warmth and at once felt better. Jennifer closed her eyes and concentrated on the quartz crystal, letting its strange calming vibrations smooth her troubled soul.

$100 REWARD

RAN AWAY from my plantation, in Calhoun County, Alabama, a Negro woman named Sarah, aged 17 years, 5 feet 3 or 4 inches high, copper colored, and very straight; her teeth are good and stand a little open; thin through the shoulders, good figure, tiny features. The girl has some scars on her back that show above her shoulder blades, caused by the whip; smart for a Negro, with a pleasing smile. She was pursued into Williamsburg County, South Carolina, and there fled, I will give the above reward for her confinement by a soul driver.

Charles B. Smythe

Norfolk Times

October 6,

He stood away from the dusty dock, away from the crowds, and watched the slave speculators loading the runaways. He stood out of the wind, on the wooden porch of a riverside bar, and watched for women, but there were few of them being shipped south, and those that he saw, he did not want. They were old and beaten down by age and hard labor. Still, he waited. He only wanted one; two would be more than a surprise. It would be a blessing, he thought, and smiled to himself.

On the cold December day, the few slave women he saw wore thin dresses, little underwear or petticoats, and all were barefooted. Small ice balls hung from the hems of their clothes.

He took out a se-gar, struck a match against a post, and fit the corona while he kept scanning the busy river dock.

The slaves were already being led onto the steamer, so as to be safely in the holds before passengers like himself boarded. He watched a chain line of seventy Negroes, men, women, and children, each carrying a small bundle of their belongings, being whipped up the plank, the shouts of the soul drivers carrying clearly on the frosty morning. These slaves were runaways, being taken south to be sold at auction or returned for reward money.

The Negroes walked with their heads bent, making no protests as the whip cracked across their backs. Although he did notice in passing that several of the little ones were silently weeping, he guessed that was more from fatigue than fear. These little pickaninnies had no fear, he realized, because they did not know what waited for them in the Old South. Farther away, other slaves loading goods on the ferryboat began to sing, and their strong voices rose above the snap of whips and the shouts of the soul-drivers.

Poor Ros-y, poor gal,

Poor Ros-y, poor gal;

Ros-y broke my poor heart,

Heaven shall-a be my home.

He smiled, enjoying the spiritual. He had heard it before, sung by the slaves on Sea Island. There were no finer voices in the whole world, he guessed, than the simple voices of black people. God gives each of his creatures some meager gifts, he thought, even his blacks.

Then he saw the woman and he forgot about the spirituals. Standing up, he followed her progress as she approached the docked steamer. He had seen her once before, when he had spent a night at the major’s plantation, and then she had been no more than seventeen But it was her, he knew at once, and his heart quickened. She was in chains, and it appeared she was the sole possession of a slave driver. It was Sarah. She was headed for Calhoun County and Charles B. Smythe. But not, he told himself, if he could stop it.

The soul driver who had Sarah was a pinelander, he saw, poor white trash from Georgia. He was a small man with a yellow-mud complexion, straight features, and the simple dumb look of one baffled by his life. He appeared as if his head had been kicked by a mule. The pinelander would be no trouble, he thought with satisfaction, already feeling the flesh of the beautiful black woman naked in his arms. He moved off the porch and made his way across the crowded wharf to where the pinelander stood with his private bounty.

He’d buy her off the man for the stated reward money and save the man the trip to Calhoun County, if the pinelander questioned him, he’d simply say he was headed south to visit the major. But the soul driver wouldn’t protest, he knew. Not with a hundred greenbacks in his pocket.

He’d have the soul driver deliver the woman to his cabin and chain her there to the furnishings. No one would be the wiser, nor would he be seen with the girl. His mouth watered, thinking of having her, and he picked up his gait, suddenly in a rush to buy his prize.

He waited until the steamer was underway before going down to his cabin, and then when he opened the door to his rooms, he did not see her. His heart quickened, thinking the pinelander might have tricked him, gone off with his money and the slave, but then he saw that she was chained to the bedpost and was sitting in the dark corner of the small room.

The candlelight from the passageway caught only the gleam of her brown eyes. He closed the door behind him and locked them both in the darkness of the cabin.

“Hello, Sarah,” he said to calm her. “You are all right, girl. I won’t beat you.” He did not soften his words. He never treated slaves with kindness, for he had learned they always misunderstood intentions and later thought they had some claim on his affections. He treated all slaves the same, whether he had slept with them or not. “I will unshackle you from the bed, Sarah, and I want you to strip out of those filthy rags of yours, then use the bowl and water on the counter and wash yourself, especially your privates.”

He spoke calmly, not allowing her to notice his excitement. It was best with slave women that they not understand the desire he had for them.

The girl was trembling, but he did not try to soothe her fear. She knew well enough what he wanted, and it did not matter to him how she felt.

In the darkness of the tiny cabin, he lit another corona and watched the girl. She went to the washbasin and splashed the cold water onto her face, washed her hands.

“Take off those rags,” he ordered when she didn’t rush to do so.

She pulled the thin cotton dress over her shoulders, doing it so as not to look at him.

“All of it,” he added when she did not immediately slip out of her thin petticoat.

As she pushed off her petticoat, she began to cry.

“Stop it!” he told her, and in one quick motion, he sprang off the bunk bed and slapped her face.

Sarah slid to the floor, clutching his leg, still crying. He kicked out, but her arms were clutched around his leg, and he stumbled against the wall of the cabin.

Now he swore and, reaching down, seized her shoulders and lifted her to his face.

She weighed nothing. His massive hands held her easily off the floor. Her face was inches from his. He could smell her frightened breath, smell her flesh. Her kinky hair smelled of smoke, her body of the river musk, of her own animal sweat. He loved the smell of black women, even more than he loved their flesh.

He kissed her, forcing his mouth over hers, digging his tongue into her gasping mouth. She tried to struggle, and he quickly slipped his arms about her, pinning her naked body to him.

She cried out, but her small voice was muffled by the heavy beating of the paddleboat, the noise of the river.

“Scream,” he told her, laughing, enjoying her helplessness. No one would hear her. Then he pushed Sarah away and studied her face.

She was almost as beautiful as a white woman, he thought, with the same thin features, the small mouth of an English woman, and wide, bright, chocolate brown eyes. Her skin was copper colored and smooth. There was white blood in this bitch, he thought next, and he felt her small breasts.

She gasped, and he laughed again, clinching the tiny corona in his teeth.

“You like that, huh?” he asked. “And this?” He grabbed her sex with his right hand and hoisted her up.

She screamed and went to hit him, but he struck first, knocking her across the small cabin.

“Get up, bitch!” he ordered, “and over here.”

He turned to the small bed and took off his coat, then sat down and told her, “Pull these boots off, girl.” He reached down and pulled his small pistol from the top of his right boot and tossed it on the soft bed covers. “Hurry, you!”

Wordless, she crept over to him, still crying from the beating, took hold of his right boot, and jerked it off. “There,” he said, “that’s better.”

He raised his left leg, and she pulled off the boot. She was still on the wood floor of the steamer cabin, and she carefully placed the boots together at the foot of the small bunk bed, then slowly, still in pain, she pulled herself up. She was so small and thin that her whole body did not take up any space in the tight room. He towered in it. He crowded her.

“Forget about your Major Smythe, Sarah. I have no plans to put you back in those cotton fields. I have better plans for you. Plans of my own, girl, if you have the right temperament. How would you like to visit New Orleans?”

He was pulling off his ruffled shirt, placing the pearl buttons on a tray, and then she suddenly reached, like a hungry child seizing food, and he saw she had grabbed the derringer.

“Bitch!” he shouted, reaching for her arm.

She fired at once, not looking, screaming and terrified. The single shot would have been wild, but he stumbled forward and was hit in his left eye. The bullet smashed the socket and drove up into his brain, and the blood splattered her naked body, and then the walls and ceiling of the tiny cabin as he turned and stumbled to his death, crashing against the washstand, spilling the water and breaking the large porcelain pitcher.

No one heard the shot. No one heard her cry out in fright, and she wasn’t sure whether she was really crying or whether the rage and horror were only in her head. She sat for a while, trembling in the corner, watching him across the cabin. He no longer moved, and the blood spread like sewage around his body and across the floor, seeping into the wood.

Toward morning, the first song of the slaves rose from deep in the river steamer, and she awoke. The voices called to her, came to her through the vastness of the boat. It was a funeral song. Some slave had died in the hold of the steamer.

Sarah stood and, moving so that she wouldn’t see or come too close to the sprawling dead man, she retrieved her dress and petticoat and then dressed with her back to the man she had killed. She only looked at him once to be positive in her own mind that she didn’t know him, and then she opened the cabin door, slipped out into the empty passageway.

On the deck she went at once to the back of the steamer, knowing that at any moment she would be seen, shouted at by the white men. But it was still early and quiet on the river. Sarah could see the green shores and the calm river. It would be a lovely day, she thought, reaching the paddlewheel.

Someone shouted, and she glanced around and saw a black man, one that had helped load the cargo of slaves. He was waving, motioning her away from the spinning wheel, and getting up off the deck to come to her. Sarah smiled, thinking that she was a free woman now, and that she loved her God in heaven, and that she was glad she had killed the white man before he violated her. Then she jumped—as any young girl might, full of life and energy—into the twisting of the giant paddlewheel and disappeared down into the foamy white and deadly-churning paddlewheel water.

CHAPTER NINE

“I THINK I KILLED them,” Jennifer told Tom, holding the teacup in both trembling hands. The cup was warm and comforting. She sipped the tea slowly, letting it warm her whole body. She was in Tom’s apartment, sitting in the corner of his leather couch. She had telephoned him to meet her at once at his place.

Tom was in a chair on the other side of a glass coffee table. He listened patiently as she described what had happened in the foundation bathroom. He kept interrupting with questions, and he scribbled notes on a legal pad while she talked, as if she were his client instead of his lover.

“Don’t,” she told him.

“Don’t what?” He kept writing, using the gold Cross pen she had given him.

“Don’t take notes. It makes me feel like a criminal.”

“You’re not a criminal unless you’re convicted.” He finished a note, then sat back in the soft, light brown leather chair and watched her for a moment. She knew what was coming. He was framing his statement, trying to make it sound less threatening, but before he could speak, she stood and walked to the windows of the apartment, staring out across the Hudson River at the bleak industrial shores of New Jersey. The day had cleared. It had stopped snowing, and a hard-edged blue sky had reappeared. “We’re going to have to talk to the police,” he said behind her, trying to sound casual.

“No!” She felt a wedge of panic and reached out to touch the windowpane with the palm of her hand, as if to let the cold glass calm her. “No,” she whispered.

“We’re looking at justifiable homicide,” he went on, speaking in the same soft, measured tones.

She had first met him on a grand jury trial, and she remembered how she had been captivated by the way he cross-examined witnesses. He was like a bird of prey, a dark handsome falcon hovering, circling, closing in. Slowly, softly, without raising his voice or seeming to intrude, he had backed each poor witness into a corner, and then stripped him bare, exposing the lies.

“No!” Jennifer shouted, turning. “I won’t.”

“Honey. Jennifer, please,” Tom said. “You just told me. There are two, maybe three people dead. We’ve got to get on top of this situation. What happened to you has got to be drug related—the Colombians are on to you. If it isn’t, if we’ve got a simple mugging, you’re still okay. I mean, you’ll be viewed as a female Bernhard Goetz. No one is going to send you to jail. Look. We go to the police. We start a public relations campaign. No jury—”

“But I’m not Goetz!”

“Jennifer, you’ve admitted to me that you killed a person. And you may have just killed two others.” He nodded toward uptown. “I’m an officer of the court, for God’s sake. I can’t—”

“Please! Please!” She went toward where she had dropped her coat on the chair. “I’m sorry I came to you. I’m sorry I compromised your goddamn position.” She was crying as she grabbed for her coat.

Tom leapt to his feet, swearing, and seized her arm.

“You’re going to sit down here, Jennifer, and we’re going to prepare a defense. You’re a wanted woman. I’m not going to let you damage your life and career.” He pulled her away from the door, but she jerked loose from him.

“Leave me alone, Tom. I’ll work this out myself.”

“Jennifer, sweetie, you’re not being rational.” He moved toward her with his arms out, as if to embrace her.

She backed away. “Don’t touch me.”

The tone of her voice stopped him. She saw the sudden fear and apprehension in his eyes, and that pleased her.

“Please, Jennifer, you need help,” he offered, but kept his distance.

Jennifer realized she was no longer in control of her own body. Her heart was pounding, and she felt a surge of strength in her limbs. My God, she thought. I am a monster.

She looked up, into the mirror behind Tom’s couch, and stared at herself. Her own brown eyes looked frightened, not enraged. Her face was ashen, and what makeup she had put on that morning had worn off. Her hair needed to be combed. It frightened her to see how unkempt she looked, but her face wasn’t disfigured. She didn’t look like a monster. She took a deep breath.

“Jennifer, are you okay?” Tom whispered, alarmed at the expression on her face.

“I don’t know,” she confessed.

“What happened just then?”

“I don’t know. I get angry, enraged, and then

” She started to cry, deep sobs, but this time Tom came over and wrapped his arms around her. She collapsed in his embrace and let herself be comforted.

“I’ve got to get you to bed,” he finally said, after her sobs had abated. He leaned over and easily picked her up. After settling her into his bed, he pulled a heavy quilt up over her. “Are you warm enough?” he asked, arranging the quilt over her shoulders.

Jennifer nodded and pulled her legs up. She cuddled against his pillow and seized his hand in her fingers. “Don’t leave me,” she pleaded.

“I won’t,” he whispered, sitting on the edge of the bed.

She kissed his fingers, then laid her cheek against the warmth of his palm and fell asleep still holding on to her lover’s hand.

When Jennifer woke, the room was dark and silent. She came awake slowly as if she were swimming to the surface of her life. Then she recognized her surroundings, realized she was in Tom’s apartment, and immediately grew apprehensive. She sat up and swung her feet over the side of the bed.

She heard voices. Or at least one voice. Without her shoes, she moved quickly and quietly to the closed bedroom door and pressed her head against it to listen. Silence. Carefully, she opened the door. The empty living room was glowing like a Vermeer, with the clean yellow light of the winter sunset.

She noticed that Tom was in his office beyond the living room. She saw his shadow as he paced in the small room. He was probably on the phone. He always paced while talking on the telephone. She crossed the room, her feet silent on the hardwood parquet floor. At the office door, she paused and looked inside.

He was standing at his desk, looking out the window at the Hudson River. The sunset froze him in profile, softened the edges of his dark features. He was listening to someone, then whispering his replies. When he turned to pace back across the office, she stepped to one side of the door and stood in shadow. Her heart was in her throat.

He came to the threshold and stood looking across the long, darkening room to the doorway of his bedroom.

“No,” he said to someone, “she is still asleep. Yes, I understand. Yes, I’m letting her rest.” He stepped away from the open doorway. She heard the leather of his chair stretch as he sat down, and when she chanced a glimpse inside, she saw that he had swung his legs up over the edge of his desk and was leaning back in the chair, running his fingers through his hair. It was one nervous habit that always annoyed her. It left his hair standing up.

She moved stealthily from the dark corner to the other side of the living room, forcing herself to be calm. After picking up her fur coat and purse from the chair, she grabbed her boots from where she had left them by the front door. She moved quickly across the living room, through the swinging door, and into the dark kitchen.

She knew there was a service door off the kitchen, and behind it the back stairs and an elevator. She had used the exit before to do laundry in the basement.

Jennifer slipped off the chain lock and stepped into the lighted back stairwell. Her heart was racing. With trembling hands, she slowly pulled the door closed behind her. She kept imagining she heard Tom running after her, grabbing her before she could escape. She pressed the elevator button and then, too frightened to stand and wait for it, took off down the back stairs, her stockinged feet slipping on the concrete steps.

She reached the lobby level and stopped in the stairwell to slip on her coat and shoes. Then she opened the heavy steel door and looked out at the empty lobby. She saw the doorman outside under the entrance awning, helping a woman out of a taxi. Jennifer stepped far enough into the lobby to see that the front elevators were closed. Tom had not yet discovered that she was gone. Running to the entrance, she grabbed the now empty taxi and, brushing past the old woman and the doorman, slid into the backseat and slammed the door. “Uptown!” she shouted.

“Where, lady?” He picked up his clipboard to note the address.

“Uptown. Hurry, please.” She glanced at the entrance of the building, half expecting Tom to come barreling out after her.

“West Side or East, lady?” the driver asked, still waiting and watching her in the mirror.

“Uptown! The East Side.” Jennifer was trembling. “Hurry!” She glanced around again. The doorman and the old woman were moving slowly toward the glass door. She didn’t see Tom.

The taxi finally moved. The driver steered with one hand as he put aside the clipboard.

“You got to tell me, lady. The East Side is a big place.”

He laughed, trying to make a joke of her indecision. The car bounced out of the apartment building’s cul-de-sac and turned onto the side street.

Jennifer sank into the seat, exhausted by her fear. She was thankful that she had gotten away from Tom, but she didn’t know what to tell the taxi driver. Where in New York City would “a wanted woman” be safe?

She opened her purse to take out a tissue and wipe her eyes, and there, stuffed into the cluttered purse, she saw the newspaper clipping she had meant to give Eileen, the one about Phoebe Fisher, the channeler. She pulled it from her purse and scanned it, looking for an address, then leaned forward and spoke to the driver.

“I’ve changed my mind. Take me up to the West Side.” Now she knew where to go and who might help her.

CHAPTER TEN

AT SEVENTY-NINTH AND Broadway Jennifer got out of the cab and called information for Dr. Fisher’s telephone number. Then, standing at the pay phone, with the wind from the river blowing across the avenue, she called her. As the wind sliced into her, cutting between muscle and bone, she stamped her feet on the packed snow, trying to keep them warm.

It was only six o’clock, and the sidewalks were crowded, but still, Jennifer felt vulnerable. When a police car halted at the traffic light, she turned her face into the booth, but she was convinced they had spotted her, that the composite photo was already out and the cops were searching for a blond white woman, five foot seven, wearing a full-length fur coat, wool jacket and skirt, and a wool turtleneck. She pulled the collar of her coat up around her face and listened to the phone ring.

“Please, dear God, please let her be home,” she said out loud. When a woman did say hello after a half-dozen rings, Jennifer spoke rapidly. She explained about reading the article, about having the strange reaction to the Ice Age display. She told her about seeing Kathy Dart, and about the thirteen-mile run out along the C & O Canal. She stopped herself before she mentioned her attack on the mugger near the museum, and the women at the foundation.

When she stopped talking, she was out of breath, and crying. She couldn’t stop her tears, couldn’t keep herself from sobbing into the phone.

“Come see me at once,” the woman said, giving Jennifer her address.

“Thank you,” Jennifer whispered, wiping the tears from her face. “I’m coming.” When she finally hung up the phone, the traffic light had changed, and the police car was gone. Jennifer ran out into the street, and turned north toward Eighty-second Street and the home of Phoebe Fisher.

“Welcome,” a small woman said, pushing open the iron gate that guarded the basement apartment. “You were very close to me when you telephoned. I could feel your presence. I am Dr. Fisher.” She stepped back, and Jennifer saw that Phoebe Fisher was lame, that she used a thin, silver cane to support herself.

“I ran,” Jennifer replied, still gasping for breath as she followed the woman into the warm apartment.

Phoebe Fisher was dressed like a teenager in a tight black leotard and a wrap-around black skirt, with a bright red scarf knotted around her long thin neck. She was very small and very beautiful, with coarse black hair already streaked with gray. Her pure, white skin was the color of bisque pottery. Jennifer felt large and ungainly beside her in the low-ceilinged apartment.

“You have a fireplace!” she exclaimed as she entered the living room. The blazing fire made her feel immensely better.

“Yes, and I’ll make you a cup of tea, and we’ll talk.” Phoebe Fisher smiled at Jennifer. Her sculpted lips were neatly sketched into her tiny face. And when she smiled, her mouth widened and made her seem even younger. Jennifer liked her at once. She felt safe here. Maybe Phoebe Fisher would be able to help her. The fear that had been building and spreading through her body all afternoon eased away, leaving her suddenly lightheaded and very tired.

“Here,” Phoebe directed, touching the deeply cushioned chair close to the fireplace, “come sit down and get comfortable. We can get to know each other a bit while I make us a fresh pot of tea. Would herbal be all right? I’m afraid I don’t have anything else.”

“Thank you. Anything. I’m just fine, thankful to be here.” Her declarations surprised her. She was never this open with strangers, but now she felt the need to share her emotions, to tell this woman everything.

“Now, Jennifer, how did you meet Kathy Dart?” Phoebe asked, standing behind the kitchen counter that divided the rooms as she made the pot of tea. “And what were your feelings about her?”

Jennifer told the whole story as Phoebe made tea, then came back to sit beside her in front of the fire. Jennifer told her about Eileen Gorman and their chance meeting, about her jog along the C & O Canal and what had happened to her in the museum. She explained that she had known, really known, when that hut in the Ukraine had been built.

“What is wrong with me?” Jennifer asked, crying.

“There is nothing wrong with you, Jennifer. Nothing. You are a very fortunate person. A gifted person. It’s your electromagnetic frequency, that’s all.” Phoebe was smiling. “We share it, my dear. We are both gifted that way.” She reached out and touched Jennifer’s knee.

“I don’t understand,” Jennifer whispered.

“Of course you don’t. I didn’t either when it first happened. None of us know, really, but we learn. You are experiencing the first flashes of mediumship. To put it in academic terms, you have already gone through what is termed the first stage, conceptualization, and now you are in stage two. Preparation.” Phoebe paused for a moment, staring thoughtfully up at Jennifer. “Welcome to the gang.” Her soft brown eyes widened and glowed.

“Well, what is this gang? I feel like my body has been taken over or something.”

“You’re right. It has,” Phoebe said, “but you’re joining people like Emperor Wu, from the Han dynasty in China, and the Greek Dionysian cults of the sixth century B.C., the Celtic bards in the British Isles, not to mention Jesus Christ and his disciples. You’re in good company, Jennifer.” When she saw the uncomprehending look on Jennifer’s face, she asked, “Would you like me to try and explain how it all comes about? Why this is suddenly happening to you now, here in New York City in 1987?”

Jennifer nodded emphatically.

“Most of what we call mediumship, or channeling, is the product of an arrangement that is made between two bodiless entities—the person who is going to be the channel and the entity or consciousness that is going to be channeled. After that, one entity is incarnated in a body and begins life without even remembering the agreement. Life continues normally until the person gets to a place where he or she does remember. It’s called an encounter, and it’s different for everyone.”

“But I didn’t go through any encounter,” Jennifer protested. “I was just going on with my life, and then, wham, this!”

“I don’t know yet what happened, Jennifer. I don’t know enough about you yet, but later perhaps, if you are comfortable, I might try to channel to see what we can learn. I’m sure you were experiencing, or suffering, something

And then your frequency connected somehow.”

“How did it happen to you? What was your encounter?” She slipped out of her chair and sat down beside Phoebe on the small rug. “This is a Dessie rug, isn’t it?” she heard herself saying.

“Yes, it is. But how did you know about them? They’re from Ethiopia and very rare.” Phoebe laughed. “But of course you know. That is the wonder of being a medium.”

“No, I don’t know.” Jennifer was shaking her head, afraid again. “I mean, I know this is a Dessie rug, but I don’t know why I know it.”

Phoebe shrugged. “That’s it. You’ve always known. You learned it in another life, and you have carried that bit of information tucked away in your subconsciousness, from one age to the next.”

“Oh God, I can’t believe this.” Jennifer dropped her head into her open palms, held herself for a moment, then threw back her head, rubbing away her tears with her hands. It was very warm near the fire, but she didn’t want to move. For some reason she didn’t want to be away from Phoebe Fisher, who was silently watching her, smiling sweetly as if she had all the time in the world.

“Okay, how?” Jennifer asked. “Tell me what happened with you. That might help me understand what’s going on with me.”

“Well, about three years ago, at two different times within a two-month span, I had very close physical sightings of Dance’s spaceship here over New York City. What I didn’t understand then was that that was his way of signaling me, sort of tapping my subconscious memory. But it wasn’t until my experience in Central Park—the one that was written about in the Times—that I really began to investigate. I did all sorts of research into metaphysical theories, and eventually I came across ideas on mediumship.”

“Then I met several mediums, and one of the entities who came to those meetings offered to teach anyone who was interested how to channel. Even then I didn’t think I would devote my life to channeling. I was working as an editor at Redhook magazine. I had a career. I had a boyfriend who I was living with, and who I thought I loved. I was happy. Or thought I was.”

“But it was in that class, in a receptive state, under the guidance of the other entity, that Dance made the telepathic connection. And as soon as he did, the memory of that previous agreement came back to me: who he was, who I was, what the ship sightings and the experience in Central Park had meant. All of this that had been blocked out of my consciousness came back to me.”

She smiled over at Jennifer. Now it was dark in the room, and the firelight cast their shadows against the far wall of the apartment.

“When I saw you in the doorway, I knew,” Phoebe went on softly. “I knew that you had had a similar experience. The only difference is that the entity you’re channeling is from the past, and Dance is from the future.”

“You mean he tells you what’s going to happen a hundred years from now?”

Phoebe shook her head. “Dance isn’t of this planet—he’s an extraterrestrial, which makes him different. Most channels—like Kathy Dart—allow discarded consciousnesses, which have been alive and no longer are, to come into their bodies. Those consciousnesses have no physical entity, but Dance does—it’s just not like ours. His is an extraterrestrial consciousness, and he and I are linked telepathically.”

“Why is he here? Why is he doing this to you?”

Phoebe shrugged. “I’m not sure, really. I think he is coming through now to assist us in learning that we have the answers we need, to live the lives we want to live.”

“He does not appear physically, because he wants us to focus on the message rather than the messenger, which is where we’d focus, of course, if we saw this little green man walking around.” She laughed. “Dance is channeling through me so the message will stand on its own. And we can decide whether the message works for us or not.”

“What he has to share in no way implies that he thinks his world is better than ours, just that he—they!—are different from us. They recognize that we are learning a lot, that we are beginning to explore things that are relatively new to our society.”

“Is his name really Dance?”

“No, they don’t have names in their society because they are telepathic. I call him Dance because that was what he seemed to be doing when I first saw him hovering over Central Park. He seemed to be dancing before my eyes.”

“But I’m not like you. No one is trying to speak through me. I just have these feelings, these weird, frightening experiences, and suddenly—”

“Because, Jennifer,” Phoebe continued, “you have been trapped inside your own logical, organized, institutional world, and your so-called ‘logic’ has kept you from the great wealth of knowledge within what we call the spiritual world.”

“There’s nothing strange about psychic ability. It’s simply survival. It’s how our minds work to keep us functioning in the world. The reason we can see is so that we don’t fall off a cliff. The reason we can taste is so that we don’t ingest poison. All of our senses are keyed to survival, including the psychic sense.”

“However, we know our physical senses. The mystical is what we do not know. We have to surrender to this experience and enter into it.”

“I guess that’s my problem. I’m afraid to surrender to the mystical world,” Jennifer admitted.

Phoebe nodded. “You know, Einstein used to get up every morning and say that he didn’t know anything. He believed that everything he knew could be disproven at any time. He wanted to treat his mind like a piece of blank paper. Let me experience! Let me learn all over again! That’s what the New Age philosophy is all about.”

Phoebe sat up straight. One leg was pulled up underneath herself, the other sticking straight out. Using her long, thin fingers to tick off the names, she listed the great mediums from history.

“Joan of Arc heard voices telling her to go to the king of France. She was then thirteen years old. Joseph Karo, a fifteenth-century Talmudic scholar, channeled a source called ‘maggid’. Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross, both Christian mystics, were channelers. Joseph Smith channeled an angel named Moroni and, based on what the angel said, took his people to the promised land and founded the Mormon church. The list is endless.”

“But I can’t—”

“And didn’t you just tell me you were suddenly able to run thirteen miles after you saw Kathy Dart?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Jennifer shook her head and stared into the blazing fire. “I don’t know anything,” she whispered.

“Yes, you do. You know everything, and now you’re getting a glimpse of what the world as a whole has to offer. It’s frightening to realize your true potential. No one can blame you for not going forward, for saying: That’s enough. I’m comfortable. I’m happy. But are you really happy with the limits of rational thought? Jennifer, give yourself a chance at least to experience life.”

“How do I know it’s true? How do I know you’re to be trusted?”

“Begin with yourself. Trust yourself first. Ask yourself why you are feeling these emotions.”

“I don’t want to do this!” Jennifer interrupted. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want to be a channel! I don’t want anyone, or anything, to take me over, to use my body. I want it to stop!” Again Jennifer kept herself from saying more, from telling Phoebe how she killed, once she was seized with the brutal power.

Phoebe kept silent. She picked up one of the fire irons and poked at the burning logs till the dry wood sparked and hissed into a burst of sudden flame.

“What is it?” Jennifer asked, realizing the woman had more to say.

“I’m not sure there is anything you can do,” Phoebe said softly, then looked up at Jennifer. The sweet smile was gone from her face. “This entity wants to be heard. He, or she, wants to be channeled through your body, and I’m afraid there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Just as I could not stop Dance from coming to this world to teach, you cannot stop your entity. The spirit’s time has come, Jennifer, and you have been selected to serve its needs in this lifetime.”

Jennifer looked away and stared at the fire. Okay, she thought, but Phoebe’s Dance had come to teach. Her entity, Jennifer now realized, had come to kill.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

JENNIFER FLUNG HER ARM out and hit the bedside lamp, knocking it to the floor. The phone was ringing. As she reached for it, she knocked the receiver off the hook. The illuminated dial of her digital clock read 5:24 a.m.

She picked the phone up from the floor and said angrily into the receiver, “This better be good.” But the line went dead.

“Shit!” She slammed down the receiver. Fully awake now, she sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed her eyes. The heat was coming on in the building, and the steam pipes clanged. She knew she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep. Telephone calls in the middle of the night always made her think someone was watching from an apartment across the street or from a darkened phone booth at the corner.

She pulled on soft slippers and shuffled across the dark room. As she passed the mirror on the back of the closet door, she glanced at herself. As a child, she had been afraid of the dark, and the only way she could calm herself was to rush to a mirror. Her shrink had later told her that she’d had a low self-image. No, she had answered back, she was just afraid of the dark.

She went into the kitchen, turning on lights as she walked. Well, she told herself, if she was up, she was up. As she filled the kettle with cold water for coffee, she reached over and turned on the small Sony on the kitchen counter. Maybe she would make pancakes, she told herself, and cook sausages. She’d have a big breakfast and forget about running and staying in shape for one morning in her life.

She had opened the refrigerator and was pulling out butter and milk and eggs, only half listening to the all-night cable channel she was tuned into when she realized she was hearing Kathy Dart’s voice.

Jennifer stood up and turned toward the set. Kathy Dart was sitting cross-legged, facing the camera. She was not channeling, but talking to the group of people who also sat cross-legged, in a tight circle.

“It seems to me,” she was saying, sweeping her gaze around the circle of people, “that there are two generally accepted views of why we are all on earth.”

“One view I’ll call the religious. It tells us that we are creations of God, and damaged creations at that; that we are born into the world with sin and must spend our lives proving our value to God so that at death we can be accepted into heaven.”

“The second notion about life is the modern view. It explains that we are here today because of a series of chance occurrences in space. The big bang. The small bang. The survival of the fittest. Whatever you want to call it! Every few years we are given a new explanation.”

“The trouble with these two views of life is that they exclude a lot. They cheat us out of all the possibilities of our wonderful minds.”

Kathy Dart paused and looked around the circle. Watching her, Jennifer noticed again how beautiful she was. It wasn’t really her looks, but the calmness of her face. No wonder Eileen responded to her, Jennifer thought. Kathy Dart had such a trusting face.

“We must remember that the mind and the brain are not the same thing,” Kathy Dart said next. “The brain is a physical organ, while the mind is simply energy that flows through this organ. As human beings, as bodies, we cannot be everywhere. But the mind can travel, relocate, be somewhere else, as when we have an out-of-body experience. For example, we all know how it is possible for the body to be on the operating table while the mind is up on the ceiling, looking down, watching the surgeon operate.”

“Yes,” Jennifer said aloud. She stopped breaking eggs into a plastic bowl and turned her full attention to the screen. “Yes,” she said again.

“We do have other levels of reality. We daydream, hallucinate, sleep, dream, and all have some sort of mystical, or psychic, communication with others.” She leaned forward. “I will tell you a true story. It has happened to each of you. You are in a restaurant, you are on the street, you think of someone, perhaps a friend, someone you once knew in another place and at another time. His name pops suddenly into your mind, and then within moments, you see him. He suddenly appears, as if out of nowhere!”

She leaned back and smiled knowingly, and then the camera panned the small circle of people, and they, too, were smiling, in recognition of what Kathy Dart was saying.

Jennifer set the eggs aside and pulled the small kitchen stool up close to the television set. Opening up the pad she used to jot down her shopping list, she waited for the woman to continue.

“Perhaps the best way to understand what is happening to us,” Kathy Dart went on, “is to think of our psyches, our minds, as houses with many rooms. In our everyday lives, we use only one or two of those rooms, but we do not inhabit the attic or basement, we do not know what is happening at night down the long dark hallways.”

She motioned to the group, gesturing back and forth with one hand. “We speak to each other on one level, but that is a limitation. It forces us to see our world as having only one level, one reality.”

“When I go into a trance, it is as if I am moving to another room in my psychic house. There it is possible for me to have a different state of consciousness, a different persona, different knowledge. It is possible for me to speak directly to Habasha, and to have him communicate directly with you. We came naked into this world, but our psyches, our spirits, came with the collected wisdom and knowledge of all time. Plato said that the soul has been ‘born again many times, and having seen all things that exist, whether in this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all.’”

Then, as the camera closed in on her face, Kathy Dart grimaced and added wryly, “So why, you might ask, aren’t we rich?”

Her audience laughed.

“We’re not rich,” Kathy said, “because we have in our present life only a certain amount of all the knowledge we possess, knowledge that Plato says we are remembering. Nothing is new under the sun, as the saying goes. We are only remembering what we already know but have forgotten.”

“Artists tells us that they create by intuition, by bursts of creativity. What is creativity?” She paused to study the circle of students. “The act of creation is drawing from within, from our heart of hearts, from the knowledge we already know. We create what we have already created.”

The kitchen telephone rang, startling Jennifer. She looked at it for a moment, puzzled by its ringing. It was not yet six-thirty.

“Jenny?” The man’s voice was soft and far away.

“David? Is that you? What is it? What’s wrong?” She suddenly felt cold and shivered in her wool nightgown. A window had opened, she thought. Or a door.

“Oh, Jenny,” David whispered. He began to cry.

“What is it, David? Has something happened?” Even as she spoke, Jennifer knew.

“She’s gone, Jenny. She’s gone. I found her a few minutes ago. I had gotten up to go to the bathroom

there was a light under her bedroom door.” He was crying, stumbling over his words. “She had taken an overdose of Valium. It was my prescription. She had said she was having trouble sleeping. I had no idea.” He kept explaining, telling Jennifer the suicide was all his fault.

“It’s not your fault, David,” Jennifer said, raising her voice so he would hear her through his tears. “Stop blaming yourself! I understand! Have you called the police?”

“Yes, yes, I’ve done all that.” He was suddenly angry. “They’re here. I have a cop in my goddamn living room. They won’t remove the body until the coroner comes and signs the death certificate.”

“What can I do? I don’t want you to be alone.”

“You can’t take the subway at this hour.”

“I’ll call a car service. Don’t worry.”

He started to cry again. “Why, Jenny, why in God’s name would she do this?”

“We’ll talk about it when I get there. Hang up so I can get dressed and call a car. ‘Bye, David. Oh God, I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you, Jenny. Thank God for you,” David whispered. He sounded like a little boy.

When Jennifer hung up the receiver, her hand was trembling. She felt the cold again, a swift rush of wind, and from the dark hallway of the apartment, she could see across the living room, through the front windows and into the street. Dawn was breaking, and the very pale light of early morning was filling the dark corners.

Then she saw Margit in the room. She was standing by the door to the kitchen, smiling, motioning that everything was all right, that she was all right. She looked a dozen years younger, and beautiful in a way that Jennifer had never seen her. She moved through the dark apartment, her body a silver envelope of light. She was wearing a white dress, a long white dress that flowed around her and spread across the floor and furniture.

“Margit?” Jennifer asked, terrified by the sight of her friend.

“Hello, Jennifer,” Margit said, but she did not speak. Yet Jennifer knew just what she was saying, knew what she wanted.

“Let me hold you, please,” Jennifer asked, stepping toward her.

Margit shook her head. “I’m sorry, Jenny, but you can’t, not now.”

“Margit, what happened?”

“David

David poisoned me.”

“Oh no. Oh God, no!”

“It’s all right, Jennifer. It’s all right.” She kept smiling.

“But why? Because of that woman?”

“It was more than that. I had money. My family’s money, and he wanted it. Jenny, he’s a very unhappy man.”

“Margit, this isn’t possible. I’m not seeing you. I can’t be.” She tried to turn away but was frightened now to look away from the misty figure of Margit Engle.

“I’ve seen your brother Danny, Jenny. We’ve talked, and he wants you to know he loves you very much and that you can’t blame yourself for what happened to him. He is very happy.”

“You saw Danny?” Jennifer exclaimed. She began to smile. “Let me talk to him, please. Let me come close to you, Margit.”

“It’s not time, not yet. But I’ve come to warn you.”

“Warn me?”

“Be careful, Jenny. Someone wants to hurt you.”

“Who?”

“A woman. She was once your friend, Jenny. In another time, she was once your friend.”

“Who, Margit?” Jennifer whispered.

Margit shook her head, whispered that she couldn’t, and then her image began to fade from sight. Jennifer did not cry out to hold her on earth. She watched the image dissolve and then disappear. And then Jennifer realized it was daylight, and she was standing in the bright sun. Margit was gone.

She turned from the window and walked back into her bedroom. The sun filled that room, too, spreading light across the unmade bed. Jennifer glanced at the digital clock. It read 11:47. She had been talking to Margit for over five hours.