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shoes. Peter did not like blood. When he and Janice had sex duringher period, he’d withdraw and see himself slick and glistening and erect, and though Janice hastened to mop up, he’d be stunned by the sight of himself—felt strangely and powerfully guilty, as if he had wounded her.
    There remained one last thing to do before sleep. He forced himself up and went to the bathroom to get his glasses. They had toothpaste crud on them from the sink. He put them on anyway, and little pale stains blurred his vision, making him feel dazed and clumsy. Downstairs he retrieved the two halves of the hunger envelope. He found a roll of tape and carefully rejoined the envelope, aligning its bar code so well that the post office optical scanner would be fooled. His checkbook was in his desk. He’d be paid at the end of the week, but money was becoming a problem. Virtue was not attainable by doing what he planned to do, but he did it anyway, quickly wrote out a check for three hundred dollars—after taxes, about two days’ work—and put it in the envelope. He sealed and stamped the envelope and pulled on his coat and boots. Outside, he hurried through the cold toward the corner mailbox as the PNB clock tower twelve blocks west gonged midnight. What was Janice doing now? Dreaming? Her feet tended to flutter as she slept, and sometimes she called out. So often she had woken to nightmares about her mother and he had woken, too, to hold her. She suffered the freefloating fear of an orphan—that she was not worthy of love, that those who might love her would abandon her. His reassurance had its limits, beyond which Janice ventured alone. The cold metal handle stung his hand as he pulled open the mailbox. Tomorrow was already today. He slipped the envelope into the slot and walked quickly back—a big, hunched, hatless figure in pajamas and dark coat—shut the door, turned the heat down in the house to save money for his estranged wife’s rent, and found sleep.

Chapter Two
    PETER STOOD IN THE COLD and through the restaurant window suffered an intimate view of his wife. It was the first he had seen her in twelve days, and time was slipping past too quickly. Was she getting used to being without him, liking it? These, the dead days of January, when daylight seemed to last only a few hours, were the absolutely worst time of year to launch a reconciliation, but here he was, doing his best.
    Janice wore her burgundy dress and her hair was up, and she only put her hair up when she had time to fuss around before a mirror. It occurred to him that she would pick a place to eat that was more or less on the way to work at the women’s crisis center in West Philly and not far from where she was staying. So maybe she had an apartment around the corner, or a few blocks away. She wore the pearl earrings he had bought her in San Francisco. Peter squinted and saw Janice had on eyeliner. She never wore makeup to the shelter; she was a good-looking woman unadorned, and the women who came in there were so distraught and ashamed and suspicious that the last thing they needed was to feel they were competing with silk and tastefully applied makeup. How many women would choose careers in which their beauty could work
against
their effectiveness? And that wasn’t all. The shelter’s support community included a few hard-core lesbians who chopped off the hair on their heads, grew it under their arms, went unashamedly fat, picnicked on the solstice, and dressed in overalls and flannel shirts. Some of these women looked at Janice with disgust, andothers with longing, as he did now. Her lips moved a little as she read the menu written in colored chalk on slates. He knew her breath tasted of the natural toothpaste she used, that because she had on the black hose with the little white diamond design, which he could see, she also wore the black heels, which he couldn’t see. They were beautiful calfskin shoes and she saved them for special occasions. He liked it