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I went into my aunt's study and sat at the desk where she'd written her novels. I thought I might write something myself. But I wound up just writing what I'd said to Archie and he'd said back.

I got into bed and turned off the light. Lying there, I felt like Archie had sent me to my room.

Then I heard my father's voice saying his usual phrases:

Life is unfair, my love.

I can't make the decision for you.

Don't take the easy way out, Janie.

Then he was gone. The quiet sounded loud. I got dressed and walked to Seventh Avenue for a cab. I let myself into Archie's.

Upstairs, I got into bed with him. He turned away from me. I put my arms around him.

"I'm here about the apartment," I said. "You advertised for a roommate? A smoker who can't name the capitals?"

"I can't talk to you about our problem with sex," he said. "I can hardly talk to myself about it."

—•—

I asked him to tell me the truth about drinking, and he did.

He'd been drinking all along. He told me all the times he could remember. I went back over each one. Then I asked about other times when I'd sensed something was wrong, and went back over the years to the first time—when I'd gone over to his house to tell him that Jamie and I had broken up.

This was how I'd felt finding out about my father; it was like getting the subtitles after the movie.

Archie tried to reassure me. He told me that he was not drinking now, and he swore to me that he wouldn't again. He took Antabuse and kept the poker chip in his pocket. But these had failed him before—or he'd failed them. He would drink again, I knew that. It was part of who he was.

X X

I asked Mimi to have lunch with me. At the restaurant, she told me I needed protein and suggested I order the liver or steak with a good cabernet.

When the waiter came to the table, I told him that I'd have the salmon.

"I'll have the same," she said.

She said that she'd come to this restaurant for lunch alone after her own father had died. "I just sat at the bar and ordered soup." She told me that she was crying when an ex-boyfriend from years before happened to walk in. "He sat down and put his arm around me," she said. "He seemed to think I was still upset about our breakup."

I laughed, and she said, "Boys always think everything is about them."

I thought, Whereas everything is really about you, Me-me. But I understood her now as I hadn't before. I understood that she needed to be told who she was. Just as I had.

She said that her father's death had been the hardest thing in her life. "We are all children until our fathers die."

I said, "I feel sort of like an adolescent again."

She gave me a look of older-sister understanding.

"At work, I mean," I said. "I've gone backward. If I keep going this way, I'll be heading down to personnel soon to take a typing test."

She started to disagree, but I stopped her. "I've become your assistant," I said. "I used to be an associate editor."

She said, "That's still your title."

"I need to be one, though," I said. "I'm not asking for a promotion," I said. "I'm telling you that I need to be un-demoted—or else I have to quit."

Her face was even paler than usual, which I hadn't thought possible. I could see the blue of a vein just under her eye. "You haven't exactly proven yourself."

"I know," I said. "You're right."

"I have to think about this," she said.

I told her I was letting her pick up the check, on the chance that I'd soon be unemployed.

—•—

"You've got balls," Archie said.

"Could you put that some other way?" I said.

He said, "But what if she lets you quit?"

I told him I thought she would. "I don't think I belong in publishing anyway."

"Since when?" he said, strangely.

"I don't know."

He looked at me as though I'd said I wanted to sleep with another man.

"It's all about judging," I said. "I'm not sure I'm the judge type. I might be more of the criminal type."

"Judgment is power," he said.

I said, "I thought knowledge was power."

"Why are we talking like this?" he said.

"You're right," I said. But I told him that I didn't think I wanted power. "I think