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whines prick me. Things point accusingly—frantic paws, untended grass and flowers, overgrown trees.
    “Let’s get you something to eat.”
    I do, then walk him, then head inside to turn on every light in the place, pull every shade, draw all the curtains. Thinking about Delgado. My original prediction turned out to be right. After that senior meet she’d been absorbed quickly into the fifty-meter expanse of big-time college swimming. It looked for a while like she’d maintain her top-ten ranking in the 100 breast-stroke, but she didn’t. Nobody heard that much about her until a few years later. Sager had taken his entire team to San Juan for winter break—a few of his kids were slated for international competition there later that year and he must have wanted to give them practice in the Pan Am pool, which tended to run shallow. They spent two weeks there, doing heavy doubles and getting to a peak. Not Sager’s fault—given the resources, I’d probably have done the same thing. But their flight back soared into Angelita.
    People talked about it for a while. It made every newspaper, national radio and TV station—one of the worst disasters of the century. No one expected survivors. Unbelievably, there were two. One was Babe Delgado.
    *
    I stop halfway to the bedroom. My robe’s draped over a bathroom door and I undress in the hallway instead, shower, rummage through the medicine cabinet for aspirin and take three. There is nothing in the refrigerator that I’m hungry enough to eat. Now, just tired, too tired to do much else but sleep.
    The horror is that, if I sleep now, I’ll be awake for good in an hour or two. But if I wait until the exhaustion passes I will be awake all night. And a couple hours’ sleep is better than none.
    I give Boz a biscuit and he curls in front of the dark television set, munching. I take a blanket from the linen closet and stretch out on the couch. Listen to his tail thump the rug.
    Kay, what now?
    A clock ticks. Lights blaze. I’m ashamed of this—return of an old childhood phobia. But lack the energy to fight it tonight. I’m afraid of the dark.
    Soon, for an hour or so, I will sleep.
    *
    Before I do, she comes to my mind very sweetly.
    Aside from the swimming, things always seemed sorry and confused to me. Then there were women, and life got comprehensible, began to seem very real somehow. But even then there was this split between one life and the other: love and a couple of friends here, work and everything else there, and the thought of ever bringing these lives together sent frightened chills of nausea right through me. It still does.
    A closet case, Chick always said, I don’t know why I bother with you, Bren. But aside from that one incident in our college days—which was a mistake, and at least never ruined the friendship—Chick and I went way back deeply, comfortably. And she was the one who introduced me to Kay.
    It was at this bar, a few of us were sipping beers together, and after Kay asked me what I did and I’d told her, after I asked what she did and she’d told me, and after we’d both oohed and aahed politely about it, we didn’t really have much to say to each other. But once in a while, in the middle of cigarette and liquor and perfume smells, electronic songs and all the talking, our eyes would catch and hold. Some nice music came on the jukebox and, just to pass the time, I asked did she want to dance.
    One dance turned into another. In between, we talked, I don’t remember about what. But it felt good, we bought each other things to drink and after a while danced some more. I turned around once, very late, to see that Chick and the others had left. We laughed about that. Then Kay said, .Here we are, a big cold beautiful WASP and a plump warm little Jew, and do you really want this kind of trouble? and if so, what are we going to do about it. .I’m not so cold,. I told her. She said, Yes you are sweetheart, but everybody’s got their reasons. We