Ada walked in, leaving the door to her husband's office open.

He pointed at a chair and spoke into the phone. "You're on the way?... Okay." He nodded. "I'll be here." He hung up. "You never come to the office," he said.

She kissed him, then sat in the chair he had indicated. "I never come because you're never here, you're always out, but I had a wild impulse. I kidnapped Sarah and took her to that French restaurant on the Plaza. She's been working too hard. The exhibit opens tonight. After that, I decided to visit you."

"The opening's tonight?"

"Don't try to get out of it. I told you weeks ago."

"I'll have to call and cancel something else."

She ignored it. "Is that your new secretary?" She nodded past the door. A blond in her mid-twenties sat at a desk.

"Not exactly new. She's been here -- what? -- three months?"

"She's very pretty. Too pretty."

"I'm not going to fire her, so don't ask. Mary remembers everyone's name, she never misfiles anything, she's a good typist, and she has a pleasant phone voice."

"Yes, but -- "

"Also, she's married. Very married. Catholic."

"Ah. All right then."

"What do you want?"

"Is that any way to greet your wife?"

"Um."

"I wanted to show you some things I bought. Some clothes."

"Where are they? Go get them."

"I'm wearing them."

"Nice dress. New shoes?"

"Not them. They're not new." She crossed her legs. "You can't see them." When he didn't react, she said, "They're underneath the dress." She waited. "Don't look so surprised. Everyone has other sides."

"It's news to me."

"I was browsing at Whistler's and they had a book about how to keep the excitement in your marriage and I thought I'd try it." She walked behind the desk and sat on his lap.

"Ada. Mary can see us."

"So what? We're married." She kissed him on the lips.

"You've been drinking!"

"Half a bottle of wine. I'm feeling a little loose." She laughed. "A loose woman. Doesn't every man want a loose woman once in a while?" She kissed him on the chin. "You've been working too hard, just like Sarah. You and me and her. We're all just a bunch of workaholics. I'm going to kidnap you, too, but not for lunch. We leave right now and go home. I show you my new underwear. You act suitably admiring, and who knows? It might lead to something interesting."

"I wish I could. I have an appointment."

"Cancel it."

"I can't."

She kissed him on the cheek. "Are you sure?" She kissed him on the jaw, then on the earlobe, then the side of the neck. "Are you absolutely certain? Isn't this better?"

"Yes, but that was him on the phone. He just flew in from Atlanta. He was catching a limo at the airport. He's on the way here."

"And I was going to tell you how to get rid of him. Remember that James Bond movie we saw? Where Sean Connery says, 'Something big just came up'?" She toyed with his fly.

He laughed. "I'll have to remember that. I'll take a rain check."

"No need." She walked to the door and closed it. "I could show you right here."

"No. Show me later. I don't trust myself. How would I explain it if we fucked on the desk and Mary heard us?"

"Men. They're so timid." She blew him a kiss. "I'll be waiting."

It was a long wait. She grew bored and spent the afternoon in the garden. He wasn't home until well past seven.

"Sorry it took so long." He was standing over her, his suit coat in one hand. "It was a very important appointment."

She was on her hands and knees, pulling weeds, dressed in torn jeans and an old, paint-splattered long-sleeved tee shirt. She brushed the hair from her forehead with the back of her wrist and sat on her heels and looked pensive. "I don't know what got into me this afternoon."

"Whatever. I hope it gets into you more often."

She stood. "Don't touch. I'm covered in mud."

She took her time in the shower, scrubbing herself thoroughly everywhere, washing her hair, trying to relax under the hot water. She gave up. At least she was clean. She wiped the steam from the mirror and examined herself. Too thin. Her body looked like a young girl's, unripe, not opened out. She wanted breasts and hips and a round rear end, and ribs that didn't show. She wanted to look like a woman, one her husband could sport with, who wouldn't bruise if he got carried away in bed, one he could rest himself on, throw himself on, grab. The kind of figure that would look good in a low-cut evening gown, or a bikini. Bigger numbers for her measurements, and a bigger difference between her waist and hips.

She wrapped her body in a beach towel and made a turban for her hair from another towel and opened the door and stepped into the bedroom. He was in bed, leaning against the headboard, the sheets turned down to his waist. He was naked above the waist, and probably below. He pointed the remote control at the television and turned it off.

"Why don't you model that lingerie you were telling me about?"

She sat on the edge of the bed. "I lost my momentum when the wine wore off. Whenever I drink that much wine I surprise myself." She lay on her side on top of the sheets, next to him and facing him.

"My shy girl," he said. "Take that off and get in here with me."

"My hair is wet." She removed the towel from her head and showed him. "I'm not very sexy. Look at me. My hair, my skin. I'm still damp."

"Damp is good. I like you damp. Wet is even better."

"You nasty man."

"Kidding," he said gently. "Come on. Get in here."

She unwrapped the towel and slid between the sheets. "Don't move," she said. "I'll do the work. On your back." She straddled one of his legs, her own on either side of it and rubbing herself against it while she kissed his upper body. He put one finger in her vagina. "What are you doing?" she asked. "I told you not to move."

"Yes, ma'am," he said. "You're the boss."

"Don't forget that, you." She began to stroke his cock. It always looked big with her fingers around it, as if it shouldn't fit -- her hand was as small as her measurements -- but somehow the size was right and fit in her fist. Maybe she should give his thing a name. Have a little ceremony and christen it. That would be fun.

"Tell me if you get close," she said. "No more 'accidents'. I don't want that salty stuff in my mouth." She closed her lips over the tip of the penis. He groaned. She loved it when he sounded helpless. She moved her lips halfway down. She felt his hand rest on top of her head. She moved her lips back to the glans and opened her eyes and looked up at him. His face was contorted. "Did I hurt you?"

"God, no. It's perfect. Don't stop."

"Now, about that new car..."

He laughed.

She had forgotten her earlier awkwardness. Her sex was expanding and moistening, and she began to play with it. She kept her mouth on Owen's knob, sucking, while she wetted her fingers on herself. She smeared his shaft with her juice and stroked him up and down with her hand as she sucked.

He said, "Stop." She ignored him, but with his hands against her cheeks he raised her from his penis and pushed her onto her back and put his face between her legs and returned the favor.

"Oh, Owen. Sometimes I think you were born knowing how to do this. You do it -- you do it -- "

"Yes?"

She didn't answer. Her head lay at an angle. One arm was thrown over her eyes. She didn't move. When she had come, crying out as if in pain, he stopped. She sighed, eyes still closed. He tried to enter her, but she pushed him away. He lay back. In a moment she straddled him, her legs around his hips, but not mounted, their sexes pressed together but not joined. She swivelled for a while, then lifted up, tilted left, and grasped the penis and guided it in.

"I want this to last," she said.

Every time he said he was getting close, she stopped and waited. She rode him slowly and steadily, off and then on again, for nearly an hour. Whenever she felt an orgasm of her own coming, she stopped as well, because sometimes they made her lose interest and start pumping him to his finish. Her hips and thighs were sore from straddling for so long; his body was too wide for hers. In the end, he came without warning her, undramatically, calmly. She stopped moving and looked down at him. His eyes were closed, his face as empty as a dead man's. She leaned down and wrapped her arms around him and fell asleep on his chest. He shook her awake and she rolled off him and curled up and fell back to sleep.

When she woke, she looked at the clock on the nightstand. 9:47.

"Oh, no! The opening!"

"What?"

"Sarah's show." She threw on some clothes and piled into the car. She worried that she was forgetting something; she often did, when she hurried. Owen stayed home, the lateness of the hour his excuse.

"What happened?" Sarah asked.

"Something big came up." She laughed.

"You just missed Dougal and Wyatt. They went out to eat. They're going to the Mutual Musicians Foundation after." Sarah turned to greet someone.

Ada said as unobtrusively as she could, "I'll just look at the photographs," and walked away. The gallery was a loft near the Farmer's Market. Ada inspected the free-standing sections in the center of the room. Sarah's eclectic hodgepodge: children, families, street scenes, exterior and interior shots, everything but landscapes. The emphasis was always on people: their faces, their postures, their place in their surroundings. The photographs were grouped by subject. She went to the back of the room and studied the direction most of the people were moving, and followed the exhibit clockwise around the outer walls. One wall was devoted to a number of photographs of what looked like hoboes. When she had circled the room and returned to the back, she was in front of an open doorway. A sign with an arrow said "More" and pointed to the right. She followed the arrow to the other side of the building -- two flats connected into one gallery.

There were fewer people on the other side, and the space had been broken up by dividers that didn't quite reach the ceiling. Sarah's photographs were hung at slightly above eye level, and slightly below, in a double row. Ada wandered into an alcove and was startled to see two dozen pictures of herself. Some of the photographs she detested were on display: the anachronistic pictures, and the only nude she had been brave enough to pose for. She counted the red "sold" stickers. Half the photographs were spoken for. She went back to the other room. Sarah was talking to someone.

"Could I speak to you?" Ada asked. "In private?"

She led her back to the photographs. "What did you mean by this? I never gave you permission to show these."

"But you did. You signed a model release when you started posing."

"I thought that was a formality."

"No. I can show these. They're my property, not yours. You have to stop hiding yourself. You belong to other people. We all do. You have something special. Let them see it. They bought these because the way you look says something, it speaks to them. You need to get over that obsession with privacy."

"No I do not. I belong to me, and no one else. No one. I choose who I give myself to. I choose who sees me."

"I'm sorry. You're wrong. People see you everywhere, on the street, in your house, at school. This is only the way you look. You don't lose anything when people see you in a photograph. You're being superstitious."

"Who bought these pictures?"

"I'd have to look up the names. Wyatt bought a few."

"Wyatt," she repeated. "Wyatt," she said again, and paused, and pressed her palms together. "Well, I know one thing," she said. "I'm never posing for you again. I trusted you." She took down the picture she hated most, of herself curled up nude in an armchair, and turned to leave.

Sarah stepped in front of her. "That's already sold," she said. "You can't have it."

"I don't want anyone else to have it. I'll buy it."

"It's already sold. Besides, I'd only have to print another one." Sarah took it from Ada's hands and hung it in its place. "You can have a copy."

Ada had never felt so ineffectual, and rarely so naive. She went down the stairs and out the building and turned left, but she couldn't remember where she'd parked. She never paid attention, and the streets were unfamiliar. She walked to the end of the block. The Missouri River glinted through the trees, the water flowing past, the moon shining on it. She had never seen it this near, only from the bridges and hills of the city. It looked enormous, and quick. From here, there was no sound. All that stood between her and it was a band of trees. She stepped in. The light dimmed, and she waited for her eyes to adjust. She walked slowly, feeling with her feet so she wouldn't fall into a hole. A spiderweb broke against her face, and she picked it from her skin. She picked up a long stick and held it in front of her, to break any webs she might encounter. Holding it up and at arm's length, she advanced slowly, feeling with her feet.

At the edge of the trees she stood just inside, and watched the river. In the dim light, she couldn't tell what the color was; though she knew it was brown in the day, at night it was indeterminate. The water made a liquid sound, much quieter than a mountain stream. It rushed without babbling. Underneath that sound was another she couldn't categorize for a moment: a voice. Without moving her body, she turned her head, and saw a fire fifty feet to her right. Three men sat looking into it, plastic bags and debris strewn around them, and a large wooden crate intermittently visible in the light of the fire. One of the men sat on a huge tire. The other two sat on rocks. The man sitting on the tire with his back to her had long dark hair and was saying something to the others. Ada couldn't hear the words, only a tone of mild, resigned complaint. The other two stared into the fire without seeming to listen. The dark-haired man fell silent. All three had long beards. One of them, the man with a hat and a ponytail, smoked a cigarette. Hoboes. Ada recognized the wooden crate and the tire from the photographs in Sarah's exhibit. She knew she was being a voyeur; these men had no idea she was watching. She should leave, but the sight of them compelled her. They might be some of the homeless ones who came to the City Union Mission, especially in bitter weather. She wanted to know whether she had ever seen them, but the light was too dim and she couldn't see their features. She turned and started to raise her right foot, to close some of the distance, and changed her mind and set it back down.

The dark-haired man stood and walked to the river and urinated. Ada saw the end of the stream of urine, falling into a patch of weeds on the bank. He was turned slightly away from her. She saw him hunch, tuck himself back in, turn around and zip up his pants and walk back, to sit on the tire again. When he had settled, the tableau was as it had been before he got up.

She stood and watched them for so long that her legs grew tired, and then she turned and felt her way quietly back, again holding the stick up and in front of her. When she was on pavement again, she walked to the other end of the block and recognized the cross street as the one she had parked on. Her car was where she had left it, and she unlocked the door and drove the Trafficway and went in Nichol's Lunch and ordered coffee. Some new notion was speaking at the back of her mind and she listened, but it was barely audible. Not her gratitude at having what those men lacked -- a home, and food, and a mate, and more comforts than she could keep track of -- but something else, something about the timelessness of the way those men had looked, a scene that could have been from prehistory if you subtracted the plastic bags and other modern trappings. She stared at the surface of the coffee, and the thin layer of vapor on it, that flowed and shifted from one place to another on the black liquid. Those men had nothing, and in the end, neither would she. All the things she owned were only a cover for the void that yawned behind her life, and she remembered a verse she had seen somewhere: Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed, that is human. Everything would be lost. She wanted to call everyone she knew and tell them that she loved them. There was nothing worth hurting anyone for. In the morning she would call Sarah and mend their fences. In the meantime, there was something more important. She threw two dollars on the counter and left her coffee untouched and hurried out, to go home and wake her husband and make love again.