When they came together after that, she had the gun again.
"Shit," said Michael.
"I want it," she said. "I have to have it. You're the only one I can do this with. You love it, I know you do."
"No!"
"Yes, yes," she said, and she guided the gun against her belly and his hand to the trigger housing and all he could think of was the safety, but he had no idea whether the circle around it showed red.
"What if I get what I deserve?" she said. "What if I get the slug there?"
That would be a story all right, long and difficult in the telling. But something — he thought it must be her trembling intensity — made him want it too. Crazy. She touched his prick.
"I'll lose it," he said.
He felt her turn the gun on him. He closed his eyes, terrified.
"You wouldn't die alone," she said.
He reached down and took the gun away from her very gently and put it on the floor. The safety was on. They did what they had done the first time, exploring, probing, penetration. No secrets, no shame. Nothing he had ever done came near it.
"Crazy," he said. He was trembling and laughing. Maybe crying too. "What are we doing?"
She began to recite: "Und wir? Glühen in Eines zusammen/In ein neues Geschöpf, das er tödlich belebt."
She reached out and touched his jaw and turned his face toward her. "Yes?"
"Yes. I mean, sure. Yes. What does it mean?"
"You'll look it up. It's Rilke."
"You'll have to write it down."
"Remember," she said when they were in the shower. "You mustn't use my soap. She'll smell it on you. Use the little hotel soap."
Then it was time for him to go. He dared not look at his watch. She walked him to his car. It had started to snow and the lights of her house caught the first intermittent flakes. So beautiful, he thought, looking at the delicate snow. So peaceful. So suggestive of the world he had once known, before the snow had become his enemy. The world that had been lovely, presided over, though it passed understanding.
"We have to have a meeting on Phyllis," Lara said.
"What?"
"The committee. Phyllis Strom's thesis committee. We have to contact Fischer."
"Yes, of course."
"We should set up a lunch. E-mail him, get him in the loop."
"Right," Michael said. "We have to do that."
"Oh," she said. "You wanted the quotation as well. Why don't I get it?"
He looked at her blankly.
"The Rilke," she said. "You know!"
"Oh," he said. "The Rilke. For sure."
"So," she said briskly, "let me just jot it down. For you. But you have to get the translation for yourself."
"All right," he said. Yes indeed, these little jeux d'esprit of the scholarly life are so wholesomely refreshing. And, bustling, she ran inside and got a Post-it pad and wrote down the verse and stuck it to his sleeve like a badge.
"Voilà!" she said. She touched his arm as he removed the sticky note. "Good blow, eh?"
"Oh," he said, "the coke," and saying it aloud he looked around him in their isolated place, guiltily wuss-like in his own aware observation. "Socko!"
"So we'll save the spliffs for next time."
"Right," he said.
"Soon, my love."
"Yes," he said. "Soon."
He drove home at about thirty-five miles an hour, the way he had driven stoned in college, creeping around the campus, speed bump to signal to stop sign.
Once home, he parked outside his darkened house. No lights had been left on for him. The darkness froze his heart. Not even a bulb over the door.
He tried to close his car door without making too much noise. Slamming it but not slamming it, doing it but hoping he wasn't doing it, the story of his sorry life. The front door was locked, so he had to use his key. He stood huddled against the dark shape of his own house, searching blindly through his possessions, before a door it seemed he had let shut on him forever.
7
THE NEXT WEEK, Michael came into the kitchen to find Kristin at the table, straightening out a yellow Post-it note that had been rolled into a cylinder. Her glasses were on her forehead. She put them on to read it.
"Und wir?" she read. "Glühen in Eines zusammen/In ein neues Geschöpf, das er tödlich belebt."
She looked up at Michael, then back at the note. Trying to translate it aloud.
"And we… glow as one… made new deathly… renewed." She looked up at him again.
"And we," he declaimed helpfully, "we glow as one. A new creature, invigorated by death."
"Whose writing is this?" she asked.
"It must be Phyllis. She sort of… made a note."
Kristin looked at the note again. "We glow as one?" she repeated. "Invigorated by death? Phyllis?"
Michael shrugged.
Kristin stared at him. "The little twit must be losing her tiny mind."
"It's Rilke," Michael said.
She soundlessly determined the meter. "OK. So why did she give it to you?"
"Just a note she made. I guess I ended up with it in my pocket."
"It was in your pocket all right. I sent those pants to the cleaners."
"Good."
"I mean, it sounds like some kind of suicide pact, doesn't it? Is she all right?" But it was Michael she was attentively examining.
"Oh, I think so. We're discussing vitalism."
"Oh really."
She was on her way to some kind of upscale Bible study class a few of the women had formed. It involved studying Greek and reading patristic literature. She had bought Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion from some Web site in Canada. She had another book, about the Synod of Dort.
"Literary vitalism."
She sighed, but he could not tell whether the sigh represented exasperation with the wrongheadedness of literary vitalism or over something lost. It moved and wounded him, reminded him that he loved her.
"By the way," she said when he was at the door, "should you perhaps have a conversation with Paul?"
He had no idea what she was talking about, but the suggestion of required explanations made him uneasy.
"About what?"
She pursed her lips and looked at her watch.
"You've been absenting yourself."
"I've been busy."
She nodded impatiently. "Sure. Well, this is sort of sweet but it's causing him terrible angst. He's being ragged about a valentine he sent a girl in his class."
"Oh God."
"The little bastards at school have it," she said. "They're driving him nuts with it. One of the kids managed to get it off the teacher and circulate it and they won't leave him alone."
"Poor kid."
"Listen, Michael?" She sounded faintly desperate. "Why don't you see what you can do in the way of paternal guidance."
"I'll look for a chance," he told her.
"You know," Kristin said, "he's much more innocent than other kids his age about this stuff."
"Yes," Michael said, "I realize that." He put his mouth under the kitchen tap to drink.
"You know, my dive club is sponsoring an excursion to Grand Turk this Easter break. It's a great dive. The Puerto Rico Trench."
He did not turn to look at her.
"Well," she asked, "could you take Paul? He might like to snorkel."
"Unfortunately not. It's adults."
"Oh really? All boys?"
"No, no. Not at all. You could come if we could get your mom over."
"Mom's pretty frail. I don't know. No, I won't go." When he looked at her she seemed so without suspicion that it quickened his guilt. "I guess you go ahead and do that one. It is a shame," she said, "that you can't take him."
"It is. I'll make some time for Paul and myself this spring."