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commies.”
    “Who are you?”
    “The daughter, if you can believe it. I’m a nympho with a thing for Ruskies in uniforms.”
    “That’s great. And you got it?”
    “Yes. Unless they decide to make the family black. As you know, black is very popular out here now. They’re negotiating with Richard Pryor, and if he says yes, then it will be black. But I doubt he will.”
    “Maybe you could be an adopted daughter. That would be interesting.”
    “I’ll suggest it. So when are you coming back?”
    “I don’t know. In about a week. I’m a little worried about my grandmother.”
    “Why?”
    “Well, my aunt who usually stays with her is drying out at Betty Ford. I don’t think she should be living alone.”
    “Can’t you get someone to stay with her? A nurse or someone?”
    “I guess so. I’ll have to look into it.”
    “If this Ruskie thing falls through maybe I’ll fly out. It would be fun to spend some time in New York together.”
    “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m kind of preoccupied.”
    “You must be tired,” Langley said. “What time is it there?”
    “One o’clock.”
    “You want to go to bed?”
    “Yes,” he said.
    “O.K., then. We’ll talk later?”
    “Sure,” he said. “Listen, good luck with the thing. The pilot.”
    “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll let you know if I get it.”
    “Well, good night.”
    “Good night,” Langley said. “I love you.”
    Jack hung up quickly, hoping his failure to respond to her declaration had gone unnoticed. But of course he knew it had not. And he had some idea of how Langley must feel: Langley, in her bedroom, the TV on, the sprinkler spraying the window; Langley in bed in her Tina the Killer Whale T-shirt, having said I love you to the miles between them, to the darkness, to his inevitable silence. She was better and braver than he, he understood that, but what he did not understand was why she tolerated his constipated dumb love, which he could express only when they lay down together and allowed their bodies to speak. He redialed the number of her house in Topanga Canyon. “Hello,” he said. “C’est moi.”
    “Bonjour moi,” Langley said. “What’s up?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Oh,” said Langley.
    “I miss you,” he said, after a pause.
    “I miss you, too,” Langley answered.
    “I’m a little drunk,” he said.
    “Go to bed,” suggested Langley. “Sleep it off.”
    “I wish you were here,” he said.
    “So do I,” said Langley.
    “I really wish you were here,” he said. “Really.”
    “I love you,” said Langley.
    He didn’t answer. He just sat on his bed, the drapes drawn, the traffic in the street, the phone pressed to his ear.
    “Sleep well,” Langley said, and hung up.
    While his grandmother and the twins had a tea party in the gazebo, Jack mowed the lawn. The gardener was in the hospital. Although he couldn’t hear their conversation, which was obscured by the roar of the mower, he could tell they were having fun. Every time he trudged past the gazebo all three waved at him. His grandmother raised her teacup in salute.
    The party was still in progress when he finished the lawn, but before he could join it his grandmother told him to shower and change. Jack still had clothes in the house, which he and his father had lived in from the time his mother had died till the time he went to college. His father died five years ago, of a heart attack while swimming in Long Island Sound.
    Except to keep them clean, his grandmother had touched nothing in their bedrooms. His was the same as the day he had left for college, and his father’s was the same as the day he went for his swim. Jack took a shower in the bathroom they had shared. There was still a bottle of his father’s cologne in the medicine chest. He smelled it and then tentatively put some on his skin, but he didn’t smell like his father. He stood naked in the cool bathroom and looked out across the lawn at his grandmother and his daughters in the