What I Loved

doesn't even have a beer. She doesn't believe in it."
    As I nodded at the nobility of her abstinence, Mark volunteered information about their sex life, which I could have done without. "We haven't had intercourse yet," he said. "We both think it should be planned, you know, talked about before. It's a big thing, and you can't just rush into it"
    I didn't know what to say. "Rush" is a word that pretty much covered every initial sexual encounter I had ever had in my life, and the fact that these two young people felt it necessary to deliberate over sex made me feel a little sad. I have known women who withdrew from me at the last moment and women who regretted their passion the next morning, but a precoital committee meeting had never been a part of my experience.
    Mark continued to visit every Saturday and Sunday into the spring. He arrived punctually at eleven on Saturday and often accompanied me on my ritual errands, to the bank, to the grocery store and the wine shop. On Sundays he always returned for a good-bye. I was touched by Mark's loyalty and heartened by his news about school. He told me proudly about the 98s he was receiving on his vocabulary quizzes, a paper on The Scarlet Letter he had "aced," and more about Lisa, the ideal girl.
    In March, Violet called me late one afternoon and asked if she could come down and talk to me alone. Her request was so unusual that when she arrived, I said, "Are you all right? Has anything happened?"
    "I'm fine, Leo." Violet sat down at my table, motioned for me to sit opposite her, and said, "What do you think of Lisa?"
    "I like her very much," I said.
    "So do I." Violet looked down at the table. "Do you ever get the feeling that there's something wrong with it?"
    "With it? Lisa, you mean?"
    "No, with Mark and Lisa. With the whole thing."
    "I think she's really in love with Mark."
    "I do, too," she said.
    "Well?"
    Violet put her elbows on the table and leaned toward me. "Did you ever play that game when you were a kid: 'What's wrong with this picture?' You would look at a drawing of a room or a street scene or a house, and when you started to look at it closely, you would see that a lamp shade was upside down or a bird had fur instead of feathers or a candy cane was sticking out of an Easter display? Well, that's how I'm feeling about Mark and Lisa. They're the picture, and the longer I look at them, the more I feel like there's something out of whack, but I don't know what it is."
    "What does Bill think?"
    "I haven't said anything to him. He's had such a terrible time. He couldn't work after Mark's lie about the job, and now he's just coming back to himself. He's impressed with Mark's improvement, with Lisa, the therapy with Dr. Monk. I don't have the heart to mention something that's just a gut feeling."
    "It's very hard to trust someone who lied in such a spectacular way," I said. "But I haven't noticed any obvious lies, have you?"
    "No."
    "Then I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt."
    "I hoped you would say that. I've been so afraid that something's happening." Violet's eyes filled with tears. "At night I lie awake worrying about who he is. I think he hides so much of himself that it scares me. For a long time, Leo. I mean, since Mark was a kid ..." She didn't finish.
    "Tell me, Violet," I said. "Don't stop."
    "Every once in a while, not, not always, just now and then, I talk to him, and I get this weird feeling that..."
    "That..." I prompted.
    "That I'm talking to somebody else."
    I narrowed my eyes. Violet was hunched over the table. "It's made me awfully shaky, and Bill, well, Bill's had to fight his way out of a depression. He has great hopes for Mark, great hopes, and I don't want him to be disappointed." She let the tears fall, and she started to shake. I stood up, walked around the table, and put my hand on her shoulder. She shuddered once and stopped crying very suddenly. She thanked me in a whisper, and after that, she hugged me. For hours afterward, I felt her warm body against me and her wet face on my neck.
    On the third Saturday in May, I walked to the bank much earlier than usual. The end of the semester and the sunny weather lured me outside. The morning sun and the still-empty streets buoyed my spirits as I headed north toward the Citibank above Houston Street. There was no line at the bank, and I walked directly to the cash machine to take out my money for the week. When I removed my wallet from my pocket and opened it, I couldn't find my bank