Your Heart Belongs to Me

important, this mattered to him because in those depths of the tale, he sensed a waiting revelation that could explain why they remained apart although they loved each other. Why she had not at once accepted his proposal of marriage. And why she might never accept it.
    The revelation was so elusive, however, that he might as well have been a fisherman casting a line without either a hook or bait, seeking a fish that never needed to eat.
    Eventually he put the book aside and watched the muted TV, which he’d never turned off. Horsemen raced across desert plains, through purple sage, past weather-carved red rocks, under a vastness of sky, furiously firing guns, but without the clatter of hooves or the crack of shots, without a single savage human cry.
    He listened to the house, waiting for a footfall, for the rustle of a garment, for the snick of his stolen pistol being cocked, for his name whispered by a voice that he would not recognize but that his heart would know.
    He had lived too long with the fear of death to be kept awake by that alone. Eventually he grew sleepy.
    He hoped to dream. He had not dreamed in a year. He welcomed even the bad dreams that had plagued him, for the texture they would give to sleep.
     

 
    THIRTY-EIGHT

    T he poster in the bookstore window featured a photo of Samantha and the jacket of her novel. A headline announced that she would be signing copies from noon until two o’clock, this date.
    Ryan had noticed the sign days ago. On seeing it, he thought he should not come here, but he knew he would.
    Now he carried with him the copy that he purchased on the day the novel first appeared on store shelves. He wanted more than a signature.
    Since he’d been here the last time, a smaller poster had been added beside the first: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
    He had not known that the book was such a success.
    A sudden set of emotions swelled through him, not one after another, but every wave at once. He was proud of her, so proud he felt like buttonholing passersby to assure them that she was unique and kind and worthy of success, but also pierced by regret that he had not been with her when she heard the news or when she got her first good review, and twisted by a guilt that he could not name, yet he also caught a wave that seemed more like happiness than anything he had felt in a long time.
    Under the bestseller announcement, the smaller poster featured a reproduction of the most recent Sunday’s New York Times Book Review hardcover bestseller list. Among fifteen titles, the ninth had been circled in red. In Sam’s debut appearance on the list, she cracked the top ten.
    “Sonofabitch,” he said, “way to go,” and he was grinning. “Way to go, you did it.”
    Excitement effervesced in Ryan, and he tried to think of a way—the best way—to memorialize this moment, this triumph. But then he realized that the bestseller list would not be news to Sam, as it was to him, that she had already celebrated this success and no doubt others.
    He had come ten minutes before the scheduled conclusion of her signing. Through the store window, he saw a line of people waiting to get to the table at which Samantha sat, and he knew she would stay late, until she signed all their copies.
    Even from a distance, the sight of Sam proved that his new heart possessed all the capacity of the old one.
    Suddenly concerned that she would glance up and see him with his face pressed to the window, that he would appear pathetic, he turned away from the bookstore.
    He considered retreating to his car in the mall parking lot and waiting half an hour before returning. He worried he would miss her.
    Here and there on the open-air promenade, benches provided weary shoppers with places to rest between bouts of spending. Enormous terra-cotta pots overflowing with red ivy geraniums flanked the bench on which Ryan sat.
    For a few minutes, he tried to read Samantha’s book, but with the prospect of meeting her, he grew too nervous to concentrate. And he had too much respect for her work, even on the third reading—especially because it deserved a third reading—to give it less than his full attention.
    Here in the middle of California’s four-month rainy season, with a new storm predicted to move in overnight, a temporary reprieve from miserable weather had been granted. A transparent sky, as bright and smooth as glass, cast reflections of silver sunshine on the southern coast.
    Ryan watched small birds policing a