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Archie smiled at me. "Danger," he said. "Compound words ahead."

—•—

That night he told me about the girlfriend of his who'd committed suicide. I knew he was telling me the truth, and that it was the worst thing that had ever happened to him. It was unlike any other story he'd ever told me. He didn't improve details, or pace it for suspense. When he finished, he said, "Please don't ever tell that to anyone." "No," I said. "I won't."

—•—

I heard him talking on the phone in his study, and his voice was low and intimate. After he hung up, he found me in the kitchen. "Elizabeth's mother is in town," he said. "She wants to meet you."

"Goody," I said.

He ignored me. "You know what she said when I told her I plan to marry you? 'Well, old dear, I guess love is the real suspension of disbelief.' "

I said, "I heard how you talked to her."

"Jesus," he said. He told me he hadn't so much as looked at another woman since he'd met me. Then his voice changed. "Which is more than you can say."

I said, "What're you talking about?"

"The night you found Jamie in your apartment," he said. "Your final fuck."

I stood there.

"I thought so," he said.

—•—

He wouldn't speak to me. He slept in the guest room, and he was gone when I woke up.

At work, I was a zombie.

I called Sophie. "Cut the guy a break," she said, and reminded me that I got jealous of women he hadn't seen in thirty years.

"It's different," I said. "I think of the sex he used to have."

She said, "It's the same for him."

—•—

I brought home shrimp and bread and an armful of flowers. The hall was dark. "Honey?" I called.

I thought, He's up there with Elizabeth's mother.

Still carrying the shrimp and flowers, I went upstairs. The bedroom door was closed, and I opened it, slowly. The room was dark. It was empty.

I saw the light coming from the study. I smelled cigarette smoke.

He was sitting at his desk, wearing a T-shirt and boxers, socks and slippers. He didn't turn around.

"Honey?" I said, and then I saw the martini.

I couldn't breathe right.

I stared at the glass until everything else blurred out. It was just the glass and me. The glass was large and elegant, shapely.

A voice said, Nobody drinks from a glass like that at home.

Maybe he just brought it out to look at.

He could just be reminiscing.

He might just be flirting.

You don't know.

He swiveled around in his desk chair, and I saw his eyes. He squinted at me, and it was his voice, but it wasn't him when he said, "What're you looking at?"

—•—

After a week, I packed my stuff.

I went up to his study.

He didn't turn around. "You're the one who did something wrong," he said. "And you're punishing me for it."

"Look," I said, and my voice was thin and false. "The reason I'm leaving is because of the booze."

"Jesus," he said. "The reason is because?"

I realized I was waiting for his permission to leave.

—•—

He called me sometimes, late. I'd listen for the alcohol in his voice. I couldn't always hear it right away, but it was always there. After a while, I didn't answer the phone anymore. I let my machine pick up.

Once, in the middle of the night, I did answer. He told me he was killing himself, and I took a cab over there.

The door was unlocked and all the lights were on. He was up in his study.

"Well, hello," he said. He smiled.

I told him he didn't seem like he was about to kill himself.

"I was being figurative." He said, "Listen to this," and he picked up a page from a manuscript, and read.

It took me a minute to understand that he was reading his own prose. It was a novel, and it opened with that party on Central Park West.

When he'd finished reading, he said, "See?"

"No," I said.

"The guy you say I am couldn't have written that page."

"I never said anything."

He said, "People wait their whole lives for the kind of happiness we have."

—•—

The publisher called me into his office. He told me that he'd just received a novel by Archie Knox, an exclusive submission. "I've never liked Archie,"