Laura slid the top drawer of Doug's dresser open, lifted up his sweaters, and looked at the gun.

It was an ugly thing. a Charter arms.32 automatic, black metal with a black grip. Doug had shown her how it worked: the little metal thingamajig that held the seven bullets  -  the magazine clip, Doug had said  -  fit up into the grip, and you had to push the safety hickey with your thumb to engage the firing dololley. There was a box of extra clips, with the words Fast Loading and Rugged Construction on it. The gun was unloaded at the moment; a clip of bullets lay next to it. Laura touched the automatic's grainy grip. The gun smelted faintly of oil, and she worried that the oil would leak onto Doug's sweaters. She ran her fingers over the cool metal. It was a dangerous, evil-looking beast, and Laura saw how men could become fascinated by guns: there was power in it, waiting to be released.

She put her hand around the grip and picked the gun up. It wasn't as heavy as it looked, but it was still a handful. She held it at arm's length, her wrist already beginning to tremble, and she sighted along the gun at the wall. Her index finger found the trigger's seductive curve. She moved her arm to the right, and sighted at the framed wedding picture of her and Doug atop the dresser. She aimed at Doug's smiling face, and she said, "Bang."

The little murder done, Laura put the automatic back under Doug's sweaters and slid the drawer shut. She left the bedroom, going to the den, where her typewriter was set up on a desk in a sunny spot. Her review of Burn This Book was about half finished. She switched on the TV, turned it to the Cable News Network, and sat down to work, the swell of her belly against the desk's edge. She'd written a few more sentences when she heard the words "... was found in a wooded area outside atlanta on Sunday night..." and she turned around to watch.

It had been on the news all day, about the boy found shot to death in the woods near Mableton last night. Laura had seen the segment several times before: the sheet-covered corpse being put into the back of an ambulance, the blue lights flashing, a police captain named Ottinger talking about how the boy's father and neighbors had found the body around seven o'clock. There was a scene of reporters surging forward around a distraught-looking man in overalls and a Red Man cap, and a frail woman with curly hair and shocked, dark-hollowed eyes. The man  -  Lewis Peterson, the boy's father  -  waved the reporters away, and he and his wife went into their white frame house, the screen door banging shut behind them.

"... senseless killing," Ottinger was saying. "Right now we have no suspects and no motive, but we're going to do everything in our power to find this young boy's killer."

Laura turned away from the television and went back to work. In the light of all the crime in the atlanta area, having a gun made good sense. She would never have believed she could think that way, because she hated guns, but crime in the city was out of control. Well, it was out of control across the country, wasn't iti across the world, for that matter. Things had turned savage, and there were beasts on the prowl. Take the example of that boy, for instance. a senseless killing, the police captain had said. The boy lived near those woods, had probably been down in there a thousand times. But on that particular day he'd met someone who had put a bullet through his head for no reason. a beast on the prowl, hunting for bloody meat. On Sunday, the paths of the boy and the beast had crossed, and the beast had won.

She focused on her review again. Mark Treggs and the echoes of the sixties. Writing sloppy in places, keen in others. The death of J.F.K. as a foreshadowing of dark disease in america. Free love was now aIDS, acid tripping was now crack. Haight-ashbury, Patty Hearst, Timothy Leary, abbie Hoffman, the Weather Underground, Days of Rage, the Storm Front, Woodstock and altamont as the heaven and hell of the peace movement. Laura finished the review, judging Burn This Book as interesting but not necessarily incendiary, typed "30" at the end of it, and rolled the paper out of the Royal.

The telephone rang. after two rings, her own voice answered: "Hello, you've reached the residence of Douglas and Laura Clayborne. Please leave a message at the tone, and thank you for calling."

Beep. Click.

So much for that. Laura rolled another sheet of paper in, preparatory to doing her review of The address. She paused to listen to the weather report: more clouds rolling in, and colder temperatures. Then she began on the first line of the review, and the telephone rang again. She kept working as her voice invited the caller to leave a message.

Beep. "Laurai It's a friend."

Laura stopped typing. The voice was muffled. Disguised, she thought it must be.

"ask Doug who lives in Number 5-E at the Hillandale apartments." Click.

and that was all.

Laura sat there for a moment, stunned. She got up, went to the answering machine, and played the message back. a woman's voicei Someone speaking with a handkerchief pressed against the receiver, maybe. She hit the playback button again. Yes, a woman's voice, but she couldn't tell whose it was. Her hands were trembling and her knees felt weak. When she played the message back a third time, she wrote down 5-E, Hillandale apts on a piece of paper. Then she opened the telephone book and looked up the address of the apartment complex. It was across town to the east. Very close to the Canterbury Six theaters, she realized. Well.

Laura erased the message from the answering machine. a friend, indeed. Someone who worked with Dougi How many people knew about thisi She felt her heartbeat getting out of control, and David suddenly kicked in her belly. She forced herself to breathe slowly and deeply, one hand pressed to David's bulge. a moment of indecision: should she go to the bathroom to throw up, or would the nausea passi She waited, her eyes closed and cold sweat on her cheeks, and the sickness did pass. Then she opened her eyes again, and she stared at the address on the piece of paper in her hand. Her vision seemed to blur in and out, her temples squeezed by what felt like an iron vise, and she had to go sit down before she fell down.

She hadn't said anything to Doug about the ticket stubs, though she'd left them out in full view. He hadn't said anything, either. The next night, Doug had taken her to the Grotto, an Italian restaurant that she particularly enjoyed, but he'd seen a client at a nearby table there and ended up talking to the man for fifteen minutes while Laura ate cold minestrone. He'd made an effort at being attentive, but his eyes wandered and he was obviously uncomfortable. He knows I know, Laura thought. She had hoped beyond hope that none of it was true, that he would explain away the tickets and tell her that Eric had somehow jetted back from Charleston for the day. She might have accepted the least little attempt at explanation. But Doug fumbled with his silverware and avoided eye contact, and she knew he was having an affair.

anger and sadness warred within her as she sat in the den with the sunlight streaming through the Levolors. Maybe she would feel better if she got up and broke something, but she doubted it. Her mother and father were coming to atlanta as soon as the baby was born, and that would start out fine at first but eventually she and her mother would wear on each other and the sparks would start to fly. Her mother would be of no help in this situation, and her father would want to baby her. She tried to stand up from the chair, but she felt very tired and David's weight hobbled her; she stayed where she was, one hand gripping the apartment number and the other clenched hard on the armrest. Tears suddenly welled up in her eyes, burning them, and Laura gritted her teeth and said, "No, damn it. No. No. No." She couldn't will herself not to cry, though, and the tears streaked down her cheeks one after the other.

The inevitable questions came like hammerblows: Where did I faili What did I do wrongi What is he getting from a stranger than I can't give himi

No answers, only more questions. "The bastard," Laura said quietly when her crying was done. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. "Oh, the bastard." She lifted her hand and watched the sunlight glint off the two-carat diamond in her engagement ring, and her gold wedding band. They were worthless, she thought, because they meant nothing. They were empty symbols, like this house and the lives she and Doug had constructed. She could imagine the joke Carol would make about this: "So ol' Dougie went out and found a chick who doesn't have a cake baking in the oven, huhi See, like I told you: you can't trust men! They're from a different planet!" That might be so, but Doug was still part of her world, and he would be part of David's world, too. The real question was: where to go from herei

She knew the first step.

Laura stood up. She switched off the television and got her car keys. She found a map of the city, then judged the fastest way to get to the Hillandale apartments.

The apartment complex, about twenty minutes from Laura's house, had a tennis court and a pool draped with a black cover. Laura drove around, searching for the E building. She found it after a circuitous route, and she parked the BMW and got out to check the names on the mailboxes.

The box for 5-E had C. Jannsen written on the little name tag in Flair pen. It was a feminine signature full of curves and squiggles, and it ended with a flourish.

It was a young signature, Laura thought. Her heart felt squeezed in a brutal grip. She stood in front of the door that had 5-E on it in brown plastic, and she thought of Doug crossing the threshold. In the center of the door was a little peephole, where the canary could peer out at the cat. She glanced at the door buzzer, put her finger on it and...

... did nothing.

On the drive back, Laura reasoned that C. Jannsen probably wouldn't have been home, anyway. Not at three o'clock on a Monday afternoon. C. Jannsen must work somewhere, unless  -  a horrible thought  -  Doug was keeping her. Laura racked her brain, trying to think of a C. Jannsen she might know from Doug's office, but she knew no one with that name. Someone did know about the girl, though; someone who had taken pity on Laura and called with the information. The more Laura thought about it, the more she decided the voice could have belonged to Marcy Parker. She had to figure out what to do now: to hit Doug with what she knew, or wait until after the baby was born. Unpleasant scenes were not to her liking, and her level of stress was already up in the stratosphere; a confrontation would shoot her blood pressure up and possibly hurt David in some way, and Laura couldn't chance it.

after David was born, she would ask Doug who C. Jannsen was. Then they would go on from there to whatever destination lay ahead. It would be a rocky and dangerous path, she knew. There would be tears and angry words, a clash of egos that might destroy the fictioned fabric of their lives, but one thought was paramount in Laura's mind: Doug has someone to hold, and soon I'll have mine.

Her knuckles were white around the steering wheel. Halfway home, she had to pull into a gas station, and in the bathroom the tears burst from her eyes and she threw up until there was nothing in her mouth but bitter.