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years, figuring about thirty pops to the tube. She had only smiled.
    Janice had kept the supply under the bathroom sink, stacked neatly like firewood. As a man with nothing better to do than to wander through the wreckage of his marriage, Peter pulled back the covers, padded into the bathroom, and opened the cabinet door under the sink. She’d left one solitary, curled, used-up tube there, strangled and dead. A note was taped to it.
    I KNEW YOU WOULD LOOK, said her wry, tight script.
    Back in the darkness, the blood pooling in his brain, already forgiving her for her little cruelty, since as a dark-humored jest it acknowledged his torment, he suddenly and quite against his will recalled the ritual he and Janice had performed a thousand or more times when he put her to bed on the nights he worked late. He would lie next to her and ask, “Hey, you, whisper-woo, how many kisses do you want?” She would turn a sleepy face toward him, enjoying his sticky sentimentality, and be able to say any number that came to mind, knowing that even if it took all night, he would give her that many kisses; it was like money in the bank, and she derived great pleasure from making very small withdrawals, since they implied by inverse proportion all the love she had from him. So she would dreamily say, “Seven,” or “Nineteen,” or even, in a rare mood of profligacy, “Thirty-two and all of them
good
ones,” whereupon he would indulge her, knowing in his heart that it was one of those rare acts that was easy and meant so much to her.
    Then they would snuggle and maybe talk a little happy nonsense and she would fall asleep, her breath evening out; at the same time he would snooze for ten or twenty minutes, just let the first layer of sleep wash over him. Then he would get up and prep a case in his study, his eyes burned out by the lamp, and finally go downstairs and putter around, get a couple of things done. If he had any energy left, he’d do the dishes; if not, he would at least take the garbage out to the cans in their tiny backyard. Walking over the moist rug of grass toward the yellow square of the open kitchen door, he might look up, able to see a couple of stars under the bright Philly sky. If he was lucky, he picked out the Big Dipper, but beyond that he was lost.
    But that was then and this was now and he lay back in bed, empty except for him, and wondered about his heart. There was pain in there, some ventricle too tight. His grandfather had died of a massive coronary in his father’s arms. These things skip generations. He took a deep breath and his chest muscles seemed to flutter, faster than a spasm, as if trying to squeeze out all the caffeine, Nutrasweet, MSG, and other daily poisons. Janice would live to be one hundred. He probably already had early arteriosclerosis, the gunk clogging his pipes.
    The pain receded. He wanted to sleep but his mind pulled up the day one last time. Robinson slept now on prison-issue sheets, waiting. And only twenty-two. On
his
twenty-second birthday, Peter was already in law school, starting the slave years, which were better forgotten except for the good times with Janice. He always worried about whether the verdict actually matched the reality. With decent evidence, anybody could convict the obviously guilty person; it took real skill to convict somebody who was innocent. He had that skill to convict somebody who was innocent. He had that skill. Therefore, it was his habit now, after seven years, to ask himself quietly before a trial began if he was sure of a defendant’s guilt. He could not and should not convince a jury if he was not sure himself. Of course, this sentiment had little to do with the truth. The law dealt with evidence, not with proof. Once Robinson was convicted, his youth would be squandered within the concrete walls of prison. Peter pictured Robinson wiping Judy Warren’s quickly coagulating blood on his shirt, tracking it over the floor of her apartment with his