They circled the platform again, pausing every few steps to gaze at the spectacular 
panorama, and Junior's tension quickly ebbed. Naomi's company, as always, was 
tranquilizing.
  She fed him an apricot. He was reminded of their wedding reception, when they had fed 
slivers of cake to each other. Life with Naomi was a perpetual honeymoon.
  Eventually they returned yet again to the section of the railing that had almost 
collapsed under her hands.
  Junior shoved Naomi so hard that she was almost lifted off her feet. Her eyes flared 
wide, and a half-chewed wad of apricot fell from her gaping month. She crashed backward 
into the weak section of railing.
  For an instant, Junior thought the railing might hold, but the pickets splintered, the 
handrail cracked, and Naomi pitched backward off the view deck, in a clatter of rotting 
wood. She was so surprised that she didn't begin to scream until she must have been a 
third of the way through her long fall.
  Junior didn't hear her hit bottom, but the abrupt cessation of the scream confirmed 
impact.
  He had astonished himself. He hadn't realized that he was capable of cold-blooded 
murder, especially on the spur of the moment, with no time to analyze the risks and the 
potential benefits of such a drastic act, After catching his breath and coming to grips 
with his amazing audacity, Junior moved along the platform, past the broken-away railing. 
From a secure position, he leaned out and peered down.
  She was so tiny, a pale spot on the dark grass and stone. On her back. One leg bent 
under her at an impossible angle. Right arm at her side, left arm flung out as if she 
were waving. A radiant rumbus of golden hair fanned around her head.
  He loved her so much that he couldn't bear to look at her. He turned away from the 
railing, crossed the platform, and sat with his back against the wall of the lookout 
station.
  For a while, he wept uncontrollably. Losing Naomi, he had lost more than a wife, more 
than a friend and lover, more than a soul mate. He had lost a part of his own physical 
being: He was hollow inside, as though the very meat and bone at the core of him had been 
torn out and replaced by a void, black and cold. Horror and despair racked him and he was 
tormented by thoughts of self-destruction.
  But then he felt better.
  Not good, but definitely better.
  Naomi had dropped the bag of dried apricots before she plummeted from the tower. He 
crawled to it, extracted a piece of fruit, and chewed slowly, savoring the morsel. Sweet.
  Eventually he squirmed on his belly to the gap in the railing, where he gazed straight 
down at his lost love far below. She was in precisely the same position as when he'd 
first looked.
  Of Course, he hadn't expected her to he dancing. A fifteen-story fall all but certainly 
quashed the urge to boogie.
  From this height, he could not see any blood. He was Sure that some blood must have 
been spilled.
  The air was still, no breeze whatsoever. The sentinel firs and pines stood as 
motionless as those mysterious stone heads that faced the sea on Faster Island.
  Naomi dead. So alive only moments ago, now gone. Unthinkable.
  The sky was the delft-blue of a tea set that his mother had owned. Mounds of clouds to 
the cast, like clotted cream. Buttery, the sun.
  Hungry, he ate another apricot.
  No hawks above. No visible movement anywhere in this fastness.
  Below, Naomi still dead.
  How strange life is. How fragile. You never know what stunning development lies around 
the next corner.
  Junior's shock had given way to a profound sense of wonder. For most of his young life, 
he had understood that the world was deeply mysterious, ruled by fate. Now, because of 
this tragedy, he realized that the human mind and heart were no less enigmatic than the 
rest of creation.
  Who would have thought that Junior was capable of such a sudden, violent act as this?
  Not Naomi.
  Not Junior himself, in fact. How passionately he had loved this woman. How fiercely he 
had cherished her. He'd thought he couldn't live without her.
  He'd been wrong. Naomi down there, still very dead, and him up here, alive. His brief 
suicidal impulse had passed, and now he knew that he would get through this tragedy 
somehow, that the pain Would eventually Subside, that the sharp sense Of loss Would be 
dulled by time, and that eventually he might even love someone again.
  Indeed, in spite of his grief and anguish, he regarded the future with more optimism, 
interest, and excitement than he'd felt in a long time. If he was capable of this, then 
he was different from the mail he'd always imagined himself to be, more complex, more 
dynamic. Wow.
  He sighed. Tempting, as it was to lie here, gazing down at dead Naomi, daydreaming 
about a holder and more colorful future than any that he'd previously imagined, he had 
much to accomplish before the afternoon was done. His life was going to be busy for a 
while.
  
  Chapter 4
  THROUGH THE ROSE-PATTERNED glasswork in the front door, as the bell rang again, Joe saw 
Maria Gonzalez: tinted red here and green there, beveled in some places and crackled in 
others, her face a mosaic of petals and leaf shapes.
  When Joey opened the door, Maria half bowed her head, kept her eyes lowered, and said, 
"I must be Maria Gonzalez."
  "Yes, Maria, I know who you are." He was, as ever, charmed by her shyness and by her 
brave struggle with English.
  Although Joey stepped back and held the door open wide, Maria remained on the porch. I 
will to see Mrs. Agnes."
  "Yes, that's right. Please come in."
  She still hesitated. "For the English."
  "She has plenty of that. More than I can usually cope with."
  Maria frowned, not yet proficient enough in her new language to understand his joke.
  Afraid that she would think he was teasing or even mocking her, Joe gathered 
considerable earnestness into his voice. "Maria, please, come in. Mi casa es su casa."
  She glanced at him, then quickly looked away.
  Her timidity was only partly due to shyness. Another part of it was cultural. She was 
of that class, in Mexico, that never made direct eye contact with anyone who might be 
considered a patron.
  He wanted to tell her that this was America, where no one was required to bow to anyone 
else, where ones station at birth was not a prison, but an open door, a starting point. 
This was always the land of tomorrow.
  Considering Joe's great size, his rough face, and his tendency to glower when he 
encountered injustice or its effects, anything he said to Maria about her excessive 
self-effacement might seem to be argumentative. He didn't want to have to return to the