rival—then the papers on Constantine's desk could shriek, rise up like birds, and fly around the room. The coffeepot could explode, the walls could crack. Mary stood through the moment as Magda stared at her with the furious satisfaction of a gorging bear and Constantine looked up pleadingly, guiltily, while he argued into the telephone.
Mary did the only thing she knew how to do. She said, in a pleasant voice, “See you later.” She touched her earring. And she left.
She found that she couldn't be in her house, even after she'd taken a pill. The rooms felt infected, filled with a silence so dreadful it seemed weighted, as if a lethal, invisible gas were seeping in through the walls. It occurred to Mary that her breathing trouble might come from something in the house, some vapor floating up through the earth that was poisoning only her because she spent more time there than anyone else. Of course, that was ridiculous. She'd had these fits of breathlessness most of her adult life. Still, she couldn't be in the house right now. She couldn't breathe there. She couldn't stay at home. She couldn't go shopping. She couldn't visit a friend because all her friendships were formal ones, related either to Constantine's business or to her own charities. The women she liked best, the calm well-bred women who chaired the committees and gave the luncheons, had never offered her more than the outer edge of their affectionate attention. While she'd subsisted on that for years she could not have it now; she couldn't possibly pay an unannounced call on someone who would cordially tolerate her presence. Assuming she was received, accepted into a living room and given a glass of iced tea, she was too afraid she'd break down. And if she broke down in front of any of those cool assured women she'd be little more than an immigrant, full of an immigrant's hysterical, bottomless trouble—gesticulating, babbling, keening at the white ship as it sailed away. She knew they'd treat her kindly but she knew as well that they'd think her pathetic, and she knew she could not survive that.
She drove, instead, to New York and took a room at the Plaza.
The Plaza calmed her a little. In the ornate golden hush of its lobby she felt, once again, like a woman who could handle herself, a woman of power and means who could do whatever must be done. She let herself be shown to her room, murmured something to the bellhop about her bags arriving later, and when she was alone she turned the air-conditioning on as high as it would go and lay down on the double bed. Her room faced south, which was not as she'd wanted it, but there'd been none available overlooking the park, at least none available to a woman arriving alone, without luggage or a reservation. Outside the window, New York lay bleached and roiling in the heat. It didn't stop, not even on a day like this. Taxis still bellowed down Fifth Avenue, and across the street, in Bergdorf' s, saleswomen still moved with swift, icy assurance among the racks. Heat didn't stall this striving, this wide-ranging quest for perfection, the slipper or the jewel or the glass of wine; the golden egg you could hold in your hand and say, Yes, here it is, this, right now. New York was the opposite of Garden City. There time altered itself to match your mood and there, if you let yourself fall into torpor or futility, the world seemed to share your lapse of faith, which it demonstrated by showing you empty rooms full of furniture, the bird feeder standing unused as old Mrs. Ramble across the street came out in her coat and scarf to remove a scrap of paper that had blown onto her lawn. New York carried on, it didn't mind about you, and for nearly ten minutes Mary was able to lie on the bed in a state of relative peace, breathing, surrounded by muffled street noise and the immaculate gelid luxury of her room, the roses on the wallpaper, the basket of expensive toiletries she knew would be waiting beside the sink.
Then she thought of the girl again, with her sated expression and the row of pearlized plastic buttons shining on her synthetic, apricot-colored blouse. Touching her husband's shoulder. The girl Constantine had chosen.
Mary sat up and dialed the telephone. She wanted, suddenly, to talk to her children. Not, certainly,