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watching her face for a warning, a change. ‘Shall we look,’ he asked timidly, ‘or eat?’
    ‘Let’s look. My stomach is funny.’
    And in the galleries, she was conscious of existing among paintings, of shining in portraits’ eyes, of glancing, bending closer, backing off, of posing in a rapt and colourful theatre. Jerry was manic in museums; all the old art school came out in him. His enthusiasm tugged her from room to room. His hands demonstrated, slid hungrily through the motions of tranquil masterpieces. People obedient to lecturing boxes plugged into their ears glared. She must seem his dumb student. He had found what he wanted – the wall bearing three Vermeers. ‘Oh, God,’ he moaned, ‘the drawing; people never realize how much drawing there is in a Vermeer. The wetness of this woman’s lips. These marvellous hats. And this one, the light on her hands and the gold and the pearls. That touch , you know; it’s a double touch – the exact colour, in the exact place.’ He looked at her and smiled. ‘Now you and me,’ he said, ‘are the exact colour, but we seem to be in the wrong place.’
    ‘Let’s not talk about us,’ Sally said. ‘I’m too tired tobe depressed. My feet hurt. I must have walked miles this morning. Couldn’t we sit down and eat?’
    The cafeteria walls were hung with beady-eyed Audubon prints. Sally’s stomach sank under the weight of unwelcome food. She had no appetite, which was unlike her; perhaps it was sleeplessness, perhaps the pinch of dwindling time. Whereas Jerry ate briskly, to keep from talking, or in relish that another adulterous escapade was all but safely completed. They were silent together. The immense lesson she thought they had for each other felt to be fully learned.
    She sighed. ‘I don’t know. I guess we’re just terribly selfish and greedy.’
    Though she had said it to please him, he disagreed. ‘Do you think? After all, Richard and Ruth weren’t giving us much. Why should we die just to keep their lives smooth? Quench not the spirit, didn’t St Paul say?’
    ‘Maybe it’s just the newness that makes it seem so wonderful. We’d get tired. I’m tired now.’
    ‘Of me?’
    ‘No. Of it.’
    ‘I know, I know. Don’t be frightened. We’ll get you back safely.’
    ‘I’m not worried about that. Richard doesn’t really care.’
    ‘He must.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘I don’t think Ruth really cares either, if she just knew it.’
    And though she knew Jerry said this just to match her, she heard herself pressing him with, ‘Do you want to not go back? Shall we just run off?’
    ‘You’d lose your children.’
    ‘I’m willing.’
    ‘You say that now, but a week with me and you’d miss them and hate me because they weren’t there.’
    ‘You’re so wise, Jerry.’
    ‘But it doesn’t help, does it? My poor lady. You need a good man for a husband and a bad man for a lover, and you have just the opposite.’
    ‘Richard’s not such a bad man.’
    ‘O.K. Pardon me. He’s a prince.’
    ‘I love it when you get mad at me.’
    ‘I know you do. But I don’t. I won’t. I love you. If you want to fight, go home.’
    She looked around at the tables – the art students, the professors with taped spectacles, the plump women escaping the heat, the ever-so-dead-looking birds on the walls. ‘That’s where I’m going,’ she said.
    ‘Yes. It’s time. We’ll have to stop somewhere and buy my damned kids something.’
    ‘You spoil them, Jerry. You’ll have hardly been gone a day.’
    ‘They expect it.’ He stood up and they left, by the ground level exit. His anxious long stride hurried her past the Popsicle vendors and the tourist buses, and she had no breath for words. Pitying, he took her hand, but the contact was damp and made them self-conscious; they were too old to hold hands. At the door of the drugstore displaying the usual cheap souvenirs – piggy-bank monuments, flags, sickly Kennediana – she panicked and refused to go