“Marry me?”

“Why not? I think that deep down inside what you really want is a child of your own. I can give you one. And maybe she’ll grow up to be like Annamay and you can build her a playhouse. And if you want to call it a palace, that’s okay with me.”

“Out,” he said. “Get out of the car.”

“Why? I thought we’d sit here and have a nice little talk.”

“This nice little talk is heap big crap.”

“I only wanted to cheer you up.”

“I am not cheered by references to marriage and related subjects. You know nothing, understand nothing. So shut up. I’ll pay you fifty bucks for the shoes.”

“I won’t take it.”

“Why not? It’s what you asked for to begin with.”

“I didn’t pick them up at a garage sale like you said but I bought them at that discount store on lower State Street for fourteen ninety-five.”

“All right, I’ll pay you fourteen ninety-five.”

“Plus tax.”

“Plus tax.”

“I never cheated anyone in my life. Since you lost my shoes it’s only fair you should pay for them but no more than I did.”

“Will you shut up about those goddam shoes?”

“Sure I will,” she said. For now.

The now didn’t last long.

Three days later she found herself at the Hyatts’ front door.

Kay opened the door herself. It was the first time Quinn had seen her except for a news photo taken as she came out of the coroner’s inquest. Quinn had found the picture among a sheaf of newspaper clippings in the bottom drawer of Ben’s bureau. It showed a woman with her head partly turned away from the camera, one hand shielding her eyes from flashbulbs. That there were other pictures of Kay in Ben’s possession Quinn was certain but she had never been able to locate them, and when she asked questions his answers were either evasive or deliberately provocative: Kay was beautiful, stunning, mysterious, anything he could think of to make her jealous.

Kay Hyatt didn’t fit any of those descriptions. She was a small slim woman with rather drab blond hair and a tan that was beginning to fade with the approach of winter. She wore a plain brown wool suit and no jewelry except a gold wedding band. Her green eyes looked at Quinn with a penetrating directness as if they were seeing things that weren’t supposed to be visible. She didn’t speak.

After a time Quinn said in a thin tight voice that was too small for her:

“I’m Quinn.”

“Yes.”

“We talked on the phone.”

“Yes.”

Quinn gave a nervous little laugh. “You must think I’m pretty brassy to come charging over like this.”

“I haven’t known you long enough to form an opinion.”

“Doesn’t Ben tell you about me?”

“No.”

“Not anything? Ever?”

“No. Come inside,” Kay said. “It’s too cold to talk out here.”

Quinn went in, keeping her hands hidden under the poncho so Kay wouldn’t see she was trembling with anxiety and indecision.

Once the door closed behind her, all outside noises were shut out and inside noises were absorbed by the spongy material that covered the floor and walls. To Quinn, accustomed to the continual sounds of the harbor and beachfront traffic, the silence was disturbing. She wanted to hear footsteps, voices, the sounds of life. But there was only this empty air, like a hole waiting to be filled. Quinn tried to fill it by talking loudly and rapidly as she followed Kay across the hall to the living room.

“He should have told you about me. We’ve been living together for three and a half months and we’re going to be married. At least we were going to be married until lately when he began taking you to concerts and stuff. Want to hear the truth? Ben don’t — doesn’t know beans about music. He told me one night when he was drunk. He just sits there pretending to listen while he thinks about other things like what he’s going to have for dinner. All he really knows is how to pronounce composers’ names right, like Wagner for example. Vogner treated his varicose veins with vodka.”

“Indeed? Was the treatment successful?”

“No no, it’s not really true, it’s how I’m supposed to remember about v’s and w’s. Which I do, but it doesn’t make sense to me. A v is a v and a w is a w.”

“I hope you don’t have to go through the whole alphabet to come to the point.”

“I already came to it. Ben and I would be married next month or week, maybe even tomorrow, if you weren’t in the picture.”

“Is that your idea or his?”

“Every man needs a nudge to get married. So I nudge.”

“I was referring,” Kay said, “to the part about me. How do I fit into what you call the picture?”

Quinn hesitated for a moment, squinting in concentration. “Ben has this thing about you. It’s not ordinary love, I could handle that easy. But this other, it’s queer, and in some way Annamay is — was a part of it.”

“Ben is a friend of the family.”

“That’s not enough for him. He wants to be in the family, to be a member of it, to live in this house and play in the palace like Annamay. It’s funny how grown-up he is in some ways, if you know what I mean. But in other ways he’s a little boy, pretending crazy stuff like he’s of royal blood because his last name happens to be York. After he’s had a few drinks and we’re in bed, he tells me a lot of things like that, especially if he thinks I’m sleeping, or just as drunk as he is.”

“I have never seen Ben drunk.”

“Around you he’d be careful,” Quinn said. “Around me he figures, what’s he got to lose?”

“Does he often drink too much?”

“No oftener than a dozen other guys I’ve — I know. Usually he’s fun after a few drinks and he pulls silly stunts like the other night when he brought me to the palace. It started out to be fun, anyway.”

“He brought you here, to Annamay’s palace?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Well, like I said, it started out as fun, a fun thing to do. Then it kind of got out of hand. He went a little crazy. He put on my sandals and began dancing around the room with the two dolls in his arms, getting more and more excited. It scared me. I mean, I hardly knew who he was, what he was.”

“Is this what you came here to tell me?”

“Some of it. There’s more.”

“I’ve heard enough.”

“Plenty more. Oh, he puts on a great front for you, pretending to be so highbrow and classy. He’s no classier than I am. Which is maybe why I understand him. I don’t expect a guy to act one hundred percent normal all the time. Let Ben have his freaky times.”

“I want you to leave, Miss Quinn.”

“But—”

“Now.”

“Okay,” Quinn said. “Sure.”

The two women walked in silence out into the hall to the front door. When the door opened the cold moist air of late afternoon drifted in, carrying the sounds of a live world into the dead hall.

Quinn took a long deep breath. “I only told you what you ought to know.”

“That a family friend had unnatural feelings about me and my daughter?”

“All I meant was, he has freaky times.”

“And in one of those freaky times he might have done something improper, may even have killed her. Is this what you’re suggesting?”

“No, no. I didn’t… I never said… my God, he adored her. All his violence was directed against me. This bruise on my cheek, that was when he tried to stop me from coming here today. But I don’t stop easy, not when the stakes are high. I want to marry Ben. I want to live in a house like this some day, only noisier, you know, kids and stuff. Ben needs a family of his own, maybe a little girl like Annamay, I can give it to him.”