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short laughs. “You’d think, with his nerves. And he’s got some bleeding.—He mentioned it a couple of months ago. Pains. The doctor in Philadelphia wanted him to see a specialist here, so he did, this afternoon. Louis rode up with me.”
    â€œOh.—Well, he can’t know anything today, can he? Already?”
    â€œMommy!” On the other side of the door, Amelia wanted attention.
    â€œHe said they did some kind of scraping today. Sounds awful.” Natalia winced, as if she were enduring it. She looked Jack suddenly in the eyes. “He’s awfully brave about it.”
    That was something, Jack supposed. “I can understand that you want to talk with him.—Shall I pick up something for dinner while I’m out? Or we go out?”
    â€œLet’s have something here.”
    A couple of minutes later, Jack was down on the street, walking east toward Bleecker, turning right when he came to it, not left as he usually did. The stores he usually went to lay to the left. It was only just past 5,and it wouldn’t matter if he didn’t get back until 7. The brisk walking felt so good, he began to trot. In no time he was at Washington Square, where he slowed to an ordinary pace. Kids on bikes rolled up the gray cement hill, and down. It was a miniature hill, in proportion to what Manhattan could afford by way of juvenile recreation, Jack supposed, hardly four feet high and thirty feet in diameter, but the small fry loved it.
    Depression dogged him now like a dark figure that he couldn’t shake, that ran as fast as he. It was one of those moments, those periods of hours sometimes, when he felt that he and Natalia weren’t really together and didn’t belong together, and that the slightest jolt could sever them forever. The idea shattered Jack, because he felt that Natalia was the only woman he would ever be in love with, ever love. He could imagine being a little in love with some other girl or woman, even marrying her—though that was not a happy thought—knowing that she would be second best, nothing to compare with Natalia.
    Or was he simply torturing himself? Weren’t most marriages made up of anxiety as well as contentment? Was he different, or like all the rest, young or middle-aged, fat or skinny, rich or poor?
    Ah, rich. His family wasn’t as rich as Natalia’s and the Hamiltons, that was for sure, but his father was a pretty close second. Only Natalia’s mother might measure every last half million to make a comparison, and Natalia didn’t give much of a damn. But Jack was sure she wouldn’t have married, or maybe even let herself get pregnant by someone who was broke. That was true, much as she loved artists, and a lot of good artists were broke at the start of their careers, maybe at the end too. At any rate, Jack’s family background, his schools, his social circle had matched Natalia’s well enough. And then, no sooner had Jack finished Princeton, his majors having been English and Fine Arts, than he had made his third or fourth Grand Tour, this time on his own, and had ended up in a Yugoslav jail with two crummy pals for having been caught with heroin. There Jack had languished and scratched lice for four months, while his uncle Roger, a warmer soul than Jack’s father Charles, had pulled every string he had in Washington to secure Jack’s release. Jack’s two chums had not been so lucky. They had also been sentenced to three years, and for all Jack knew, had served it. That was a dim and fuzzy past, even the faces of the other two fellows had become a blur of unshavenness, of silly or cocky smiles. He had met them somewhere in Austria, though they were Americans. Easy money they had said, carrying the stuff, and they would be paid at both destinations, more at the American end, of course, once they got to Canada, then America.
    The awful thing, Jack realized as he walked downtown on Mercer Street now,