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building, and while she tried to dismiss this as nothing more than sentimentality, she took them upstairs and put them in a vase. She walked by the flowers, at first touched that Blaine thought of her in such a way, and that he had been discreet enough to send them to her apartment rather than her office, but as much as she tried to dismiss them, she still got up and walked over to look at the yellow dust at the tips of the pistils, the sharp-edged red petals, their moist texture giving off an aroma that was indistinguishable from that relaxation and certainty which seemed to be part of those evenings she spent with Blaine. The transformation from cynic to heart-sick woman was sudden and complete, and while she tried to deny it, she enjoyed the frame of mind that allowed popular songs to seem profound, or that left her inhaling the fragrance of these flowers with such wistful pleasure.
    She was almost disoriented by the changes she had to make. In order to love him (and she finally had to admit that that was what it was), she had to abandon the methods by which she was accustomed to doing things, such as withholding approval, or not getting involved, or seeing people as creatures who were like life-sized photographs of themselves. More and more at work, she found that she couldn’t handle people the way she had in the past. She was desperate to keep people from knowing how vulnerable she was, but just when she needed the tools that had gotten her where she was, she was least able to use them. More and more she wanted Blaine’s advice, his affection, his crisp, even charming approval when she said something keen or clever.
    They went to concerts in the evenings. She noticed that Blaine was following a young Russian woman named Tatyana Barokova, who played the violin. She performed with precision, and yet she nevertheless had a sultry desirability. On a couple of occasions they had gone backstage and into the young woman’s dressing room, where she sat with her short blond hair and her lacy black top. Her blue eyes had an Asiatic quality. Carr had never seen a woman who so perfectly suggested “the other,” the distant and the exotic. Blaine spoke to this young woman in a way that he had never spoken to Carr, and Carr waited, her face flushed, while he did so (mentioning, in passing, that Mozart had never owned a piano, although Tatyana knew this). Tatyana appeared to dismiss Carr as a needy woman of no particular importance, and this left Carr with a jealous fear that was indistinguishable from nausea.
    Later, she and Blaine walked along an avenue where the buildings stretched away like walls bespeckled with lights, and in the fog, the lights from the shop windows made a golden haze. In one window, Carr saw diamonds and platinum, bracelets and necklaces, the impossibly bright gems suggesting everything she loved about being with Blaine, and while she wasn’t able to be precise about what this was, she knew that part of it was the affection of a powerful man. Just looking at the diamonds soothed her, as though, if she had them, they would reassure her anxious brooding.
    The next evening she found a courier with a package waiting for her at her apartment, and in the carton she signed for, buried in masses of rustling pink paper, she found a hinged box. She took a bracelet from it, which swung back and forth as it hung from her fingers. The sparkle made her skin white, and the tug of it on her wrist gave her the sensation of being part of a world that soothed her and filled her with a profound sense of ease. It wasn’t the expense or the value of the bracelet that she admired, so much as its suggestion of dependable affection. When she was afraid of what had happened to her, she looked at the bracelet. Blaine had known that she wanted a gesture, and had given it to her.
    At work, a couple of assistants took one glance at the slight bounce in the way she moved, the glow in her skin, and hearing the lilt in her voice, one of