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determined. Then he’d turned her around and pressed his body into hers, plastered his groin against her buttocks, absorbing her, and she’d felt slender and desirable and graceful in the strong embrace of his powerful arms, and she’d wanted to stay like that forever, her body melded to his, secure in her love, but then he’d doubled her over and spread her buttocks, plunged into her roughly, his penis soapy and slick and hard, moving her as he wanted, telling her to take it even as she was groaning in pain, gripping her then even more firmly, continuing, ordering her to relax. Confused and sore, she’d wondered how she’d got there, bent and wedged between the tiled shower walls, and when he was finished, finally, when he’d wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight, still inside her, when he was kissing the back of her neck, sweetly soft and loving, saying, “Sometimes it’s going to be like that, baby. Sometimes I like it hard, and you’re just going to have to learn to take it”—when he was doing all this, she’d wondered if that was the way love was supposed to be.
    She brushed her teeth, put on fresh clothes, and drove to Michael’s house. When he answered the door, he was holding a cordless telephone, talking to someone. He was dressed in corduroy slacks and a burgundy lamb’s wool sweater, and he looked tired, greeting her with a worn-out smile, his dark hair slightly tousled, spilling over the top of his forehead. He waved her in and she followed him into the den, a large, long room with elegantly overstuffed furniture and tall bookcases. A black piano, a five-foot baby grand, was at one end of the room, and a couch and desk at the other. He sat on the couch, continuing with his conversation. Franny shrugged out of her coat and drifted around the room, glancing at the book titles as he spoke on the phone. His desk was next to the bookcases, and mounted on the wall, above a framed picture of his parents, was his father’s sword, a steel cutlass almost three feet long, with a solid brass decorative hilt and a wooden handle, which he’d used in World War II. His father had been in the Navy, Michael had explained, and in 1944 he had captured and boarded a German submarine—the last time the Navy officially used the cutlass. Framed photographs of his relatives, aunts, uncles, grandparents surrounded the sword. Franny was envious of his family history; she’d never known her own grandparents, all of them dead before she was even born.
    Michael lay back on the couch, putting his feet up on the cushions. Apparently, he was talking to a friend in San Francisco. They were arranging a time to meet at Fisherman’s Wharf this Friday night. Franny didn’t think he would invite her to go along. She sat at his desk, which was scattered with papers. He taught a musical literature and theory class, and he’d been grading some student essays. She picked up the one on top and read: “Dvoák’s New World Symphony is a combination of American and Bohemian thematic material. It was written in the musical language indigenous to Bohemia, permeated with the musical temperament characteristic of Dvoák, and infused with the spirit of America.” Franny put the paper down. Since they’d been sleeping together, Michael never talked about his students or his work or his music. Whenever she asked, he brushed her off. He, on the other hand, knew everything about her. No longer was he content to let her be silent. He pried intimate details out of her, about her parents and Billy and how they’d died, about Nora, about her one-night stand with some nameless reporter from the Bee. He wanted to know how he kissed her, how he made love to her, what she did for him. He wanted specifics. The nittygritty. But when it came to his life and his relationships, he was closemouthed.
    Franny waited for him to finish his call. When he hung up, he stretched his arms and yawned. He put another pillow under his head and looked over at