showered, drank, dressed in his thickest sweater, leather jacket, corduroys, and heavy 
boots, and headed out. Cabs were hard to come by, and after ten minutes of waiting in 
line beneath the hotel canopy, he decided to walk uptown a few blocks and catch a passing 
cab if he got lucky. If not, the cold would clear his head. By the time he'd reached 70th 
Street the sleet had become a drizzle, and there was a spring in his step. Ten blocks 
from here Judith was about some early evening occupation: bathing, perhaps, or dressing 
for an evening on the town. Ten blocks, at a minute a block. Ten minutes until he was 
standing outside the place where she was.
  
  Marlin had been as solicitous as an erring husband since the attack, calling her from 
his office every hour or so, and several times suggesting that she might want to talk 
with an analyst, or at very least with one of his many friends who'd been assaulted or 
mugged on the streets of Manhattan. She declined the offer. Physically, she was quite 
well. Psychologically too. Though she'd heard that victims of attack often suffered from 
delayed repercussions-depression and sleeplessness among them-neither had struck her yet. 
It was the mystery of what had happened that kept her awake at night. Who was he, this 
man who knew her name, who got up from a collision that should have killed him outright 
and still managed to outrun a healthy man? And why had she projected upon his face the 
likeness of John Za-charias? Twice she'd begun to tell Marlin about the meeting in and 
outside Bloomingdale's; twice she'd rechanneted the conversation at the last moment, 
unable to face his benign condescension. This enigma was hers to unravel, and sharing it 
too soon, perhaps at all, might make the solving impossible.
  In the meantime, Marlin's apartment felt very secure. There were two doormen: Sergio by 
day and Freddy by night. Marlin had given them both a detailed description of the 
assailant, and instructions to let nobody up to the second floor without Ms. Odell's 
permission, and'even then they were to accompany visitors to the apartment door and 
escort them out if his guest chose not to see them. Nothing could harm her as long as she 
stayed behind closed doors. Tonight, with Marlin working until nine and a late dinner 
planned, she'd decided to spend the early evening assigning and wrapping the presents 
she'd accumulated on her various Fifth Avenue sorties, sweetening her labors with wine 
and music. Marlin's record collection was chiefly seduction songs of his sixties 
adolescence, which suited her fine. She played smoochy soul and sipped well-chilled 
Sauvignon as she pottered, more than content with her own company. Once in a while she'd 
get up from the chaos of ribbons and tissue and go to the window to watch the cold. The 
glass was misting. She didn't clear it. Let the world lose focus. She had no taste for it 
tonight.
  There was a woman standing at one of the third-story windows when Gentle reached the 
intersection, just gazing out at the street. He watched her for several seconds before 
the casual motion of a hand raised to the back of her neck and run up through her long 
hair identified the silhouette as Judith. She made no backward glance to signify the 
presence of anyone else in the room. She simply sipped from her glass, and stroked her 
scalp, and watched the murky night. He had thought it would be easy to approach her, but 
now, watching her remotely like this, he knew otherwise.
  The first time he'd seen her-all those years ago-he'd felt something close to panic. 
His whole system had been stirred to nausea as he relinquished power to the sight of her. 
The seduction that had followed had been both an homage and a revenge: an attempt to 
control someone who exercised an authority over him that defied analysis. To this day he 
didn't understand that authority. She was certainly a bewitching woman, but then he'd 
known others every bit as bewitching and not been panicked by them. What was it about 
Judith that threw him into such confusion now, as then? He watched her until she left the 
window; then he watched the window where she'd been; but he wearied of that, finally, and 
of the chill in his feet. He needed fortification: against the cold, against the woman. 
He left the corner and trekked a few blocks east until he found a bar, where he put two 
bourbons down his throat and wished to his core that alcohol had been his addiction 
instead of the opposite sex.
  At the sound of the stranger's voice, Freddy, the night doorman, rose muttering from 
his seat in the nook beside the elevator. There was a shadowy figure visible through the 
ironwork filigree and bulletproof glass of the front door. He couldn't quite make out the 
face, but he was certain he didn't know the caller, which was unusual. He'd worked in the 
building for five years and knew the names of most of the occupants' visitors. Grumbling, 
he crossed the mirrored lobby, sucking in his paunch as he caught sight of himself. Then, 
with chilled fingers, he unlocked the door. As he opened it he realized his mistake. 
Though a gust of icy wind made his eyes water, blurring the caller's features, he knew 
them well enough. How could he not recognize his own brother? He'd been about to call him 
and find out what was going on in Brooklyn when he'd heard the voice and the rapping on 
the door.
  "What are you doing here, Fly?"
  Fly smiled his missing-toothed smile. "Thought I'd just drop in," he said.
  "You got some problem?"
  "No, everything's fine," Fly said. Despite all the evidence of his senses, Freddy was 
uneasy. The shadow on the step, the wind in his eye, the very fact that Fly was here when 
he never came into the city on weekdays: it all added up to something he couldn't quite 
catch hold of.
  "What you want?" he said. "You shouldn't be here."
  "Here I am, anyway," Fly said, stepping past Freddy into the foyer. "I thought you'd be 
pleased to see me."
  Freddy let the door swing closed, still wrestling with his thoughts. But they went from 
him the way they did in dreams. He couldn't string Fly's presence and his doubts together 
long enough to know what one had to do with the other.
  "I think I'll take a look around," Fly was saying, heading towards the elevator.
  "Wait up! You can't do that."
  "What am I going to do? Set fire to the place?"
  "I said no!" Freddy replied and, blurred vision notwithstanding, went after Fly, 
overtaking him to stand between his brother and the elevator. His motion dashed the tears 
from his eyes, and as he came to a halt he saw the visitor plainly. "You're not Fly!" he 
said.
  He backed away towards the nook beside the elevator, where he kept his gun, but the 
stranger was too quick. He reached for Freddy and, with what seemed no more than a flick 
of his wrist, pitched him across the foyer. Freddy let out a yell, but who was going to 
come and help? There was nobody to guard the guard. He was a dead man.
  Across the street, sheltering as best he could from the blasts of wind down Park 
Avenue, Gentle-who'd returned to his station barely a minute before-caught sight of the 
doorman scrabbling on the foyer floor. He crossed the street, dodging the traffic, 
reaching the door in time to see a second figure stepping into the elevator. He slammed 
his fist on the door, yelling to stir the doorman from his stupor.
  "Let me in! For God's sake, let me in!"
  Two floors above, Jude heard what she took to be a domestic argument and, not wanting 
somebody else's marital strife to sour her fine mood, was crossing to turn up the soul 
song on the turntable when somebody knocked on the door.
  "Who's there?" she said.