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happiest islands of that time were those days when together they would go by train and bus to Arlington Park, or to the Hawthorne track in Cicero, or to see the trotters at Maywood; atthese places everything was thin and nervous and obliquely illuminated by chance – the legs of the horses white with tape, the whips of the jockeys, the slats of the fences, the rods of the turnstiles polished by pushing hands, the sideways glances of the men who might be gangsters, the fluttering scraps of losing tickets torn in half, the oblique rays of the sun like the spokes of a slowly turning wheel. Her mother’s fattening hands fiddled again and again at her pocketbook. Horses or men, is the instinct any different? Oh God, when he came he bucked as if he were dying, and now he was gone, lost among these marble buildings. One minute all over her, filling her, whimpering; the next minute meeting an appointment with the Undersecretary of Animation. What sense did it make? Who had made these arrangements? He had gotten her so confused, her husbandly lover, she didn’t even know if she believed in God or not. Once she had had a clear opinion, yes or no, she had forgotten which.
    As the sun passed noon, her shadow pinched in; her hot feet hurt. Idly Sally wandered north from the hotel, through stagnant blocks of airline offices, past verdant circles where pistachio-coloured military men on horses were waving to catch her attention. Jerry was to meet her at the National Gallery at one. The time until then moved forward or backward, depending on the clock she glimpsed; in the haste of her departure she had forgotten her watch. There was a gap in the tan of her arm where the watchband had been.
    The iron braziers and stone vases and Asiatic paper knives in the windows of antique shops glinted back at her stupidly as she sought to find herself in them. Onceshe had cared about these things; once, being in a city alone had fulfilled her and coveting objects and fabrics had been a way of possessing them. Now she sought herself in bronze and silk and porcelain and was not there. When she walked with Jerry, there was something there, but it was no longer her, it was them: her explaining to him, him to her, exchanging their lives, absorbing fractions of the immense lesson that had accumulated in the years before they had loved. She saw each thing only as something to tell him about, and without him there was nothing to tell; he had robbed her of the world. Abruptly, she became angry with him. How dare he tell her not to come and then make love to her when she did come! And then with such sad eyes beg her to feel guilty! How dare he take her free when she could sell herself for hundreds to any honest man on this avenue – to that one. A foreign official with snowy cuffs and an extravagantly controlled haircut preened, grey-horned on the burning sidewalk beside the Department of Justice. He was eyeing her. She was beautiful. This knowledge had been drawing near to her all morning and now it was hers. She was beautiful. Where she walked, people glanced. She was tall and blonde and big inside with love given and taken, and when, at last, she mounted the steps of the museum, the gigantic scale of the rotunda did not seem inhuman but right: our inner spaces warrant palaces. She studied Charles V , sculptured by Leone Leoni, and existed as a queen in his hyperthyroid gaze.
    ‘Stop,’ Jerry said, taking her elbow from behind. ‘Stop looking so beautiful and proud. You’ll kill me. I’ll drop dead at your feet, and how will you get the body back to Ruth?’
    Ruth, Ruth: she was never out of his mind. ‘I was feeling very indignant about you.’
    ‘I know. It showed.’
    ‘You think you know everything about me, don’t you? You think you own me.’
    ‘Not at all. You’re very much your own woman.’
    ‘No, Jerry I’m your woman. I’m sorry. I’m a burden to you.’
    ‘Don’t be sorry’ he said. ‘It’s a burden I need.’ His eyes were