Needy, hungry for Mommy’s love. Insatiable, exhausting. You wonder if any mother, any breast would do, to satisfy a child’s hunger.

  And a man’s hunger: less personal and particular than in a woman. The curse of the female, to so badly need love.

  The curse of the female, to care.

  Mommy kiss-kiss! Mommy where are you going?

  For they can sense: Mommy is going on a long journey, there is the risk that Mommy will never see them again.

  No longer Mommy in the corduroy car coat but in a coat of soft black cashmere falling in loose folds about her legs. No longer the lace-up canvas shoes as comfortable as bedroom slippers but elegant impractical stilettos by Saint Laurent.

  I would so value you as a friend. Someone in whom …

  Must not seem to be pleading with him. If you plead with a man you have already lost.

  How Hannah would cherish this man who is a few years older than Wes, and so much more interesting than Wes, as a friend!—Whom I trust and can confide in.

  For she has no one. No one in her present life. Her friends in Far Hills are not intimate friends, no one whom Hannah could trust not to talk about her unsympathetically.

  And Wes is not her friend. A husband cannot be a wife’s friend.

  Nor has Wes been faithful to her. Hannah is (almost) sure.

  Look, you know you’re coming. To me.

  Bullshit your husband has anything to do with it.

  Now the descent is more evident: tilting toward the river.

  Exits rush past as in a dream. Street names cited often in local crime news—John R., Cass, Vernor, Fort, Freud, Brush, Gratiot.

  Why hadn’t she left home earlier! She will be late arriving at the hotel.

  Her (female) pride in not having left earlier. Unable to decide what to wear. Changing her clothes (again). Pale rose silk shirt, impulsively she thinks—Yes! This.

  And then precious minutes lost as she’d stood staring at a clock in the bedroom, mesmerized.

  Must not let him guess how eager you are. How hungry, yearning.

  No man wants a woman who wants him. Not in that way.

  No man wants a woman who wants. That’s the bottom line.

  This bitter wisdom, Hannah’s mother has imparted to her. Not in so many words, perhaps.

  And now Hannah, poised on a precipice: thirty-nine years old.

  Not old. Among their circle of Far Hills friends.

  Still, it leaves Hannah just a bit breathless. And in a few months she will be even older: forty.

  And how strange and unexpected, Hannah isn’t much different from the person she’d been at twenty-six, nineteen, thirteen. The child self. The waif. Who this person is, she must keep secret from others.

  This is new to her, this obsession with a stranger. Her conviction that, somehow, in a way that will become clear to her, Y.K. is not really a stranger.

  If a woman is not desired, a woman does not exist. Help me to exist.

  CITY CENTER

  LAST EXIT BEFORE TUNNEL TO CANADA

  For a panicked moment Hannah misreads this crucial sign, the very sign for which she has been waiting, then realizes that this is her exit.

  A relief, to leave the thunderous expressway. She has been spared a spectacular collision, instant death.

  And now, stuck in slow-moving traffic. Delivery vans, one-way streets. A maze of one-way streets.

  The fabled inner city. Dreaded by (suburban) (white) citizens forced to drive through these blocks to the Renaissance Plaza at the river.

  And all for him. Risking so much for him.

  An impatient driver behind Hannah sounds his horn. At Lared and Fort the traffic light has turned from red to green, Hannah hasn’t responded quickly enough.

  Turning onto Lared, headed south into a dismal derelict block. Thinking this must be a wrong turn but then seeing, a quarter of a mile away, the towering Renaissance Grand.

  Dazzling rows of windows rising seventy floors. Soft explosion of sunlight as filmy clouds part.

  How thrilled Hannah is, to be here.

  Out of her mounting anxiety, a sudden rush of joy.

  Out of the ruins of the old Detroit, the new.

  Very little remains of historic Detroit, demolished since the “riot” of July 1967. Wes’s family had lived in Detroit for generations, in the exclusive residential neighborhood called Palmer Woods, now no longer, all have abandoned the city. Hannah has seen photographs of Detroit taken before 1967, rapidly receding into a sepia-tinged past.

  Renaissance Plaza is the “new” Detroit: luxury hotels, spectacular new office buildings, high-rise apartments and condos, upscale restaurants and boutiques, a prestigious medical suite (specialty: cosmetic surgery), a theater/symphony hall seating two thousand people. Straight ahead, across the river, the merely utilitarian skyline of Windsor, Ontario.

  Inner-city renewal, gentrification. Civic-minded corporate development.

  Hope for Detroit’s future!

  Hope for the doomed city.

  Hannah knows that Wes is among the investors in the Renaissance Plaza project but she has no clear idea how much money he has invested, nor even whose money it is, exactly—his exclusively, or his and Hannah’s.

  The project is (it’s said) millions of dollars in debt and yet there has been some profit for investors. The vagueness of “some” profit is surely purposeful.

  Hannah has only a vague idea of what bankruptcy is. In personal terms, yes; in corporate terms, no.

  Her father had declared bankruptcy, in fact more than once. As a child she’d known nothing.

  Wes has seemed bemused, explaining bankruptcy law to Hannah. For everything is a matter of “tax law”: When it comes down to it, everything is a matter of “tax lawyers.”

  However, laws governing real estate differ from tax laws governing other sorts of businesses. It’s possible—probable?—that investors in the Renaissance Plaza project pay no property taxes for it though the buildings have been built on the most expensive property in the state of Michigan.

  Hannah had expressed bewilderment to Wes: Shouldn’t they be worried about losing their investment? Isn’t it a risk? And Wes had touched her wrist to comfort her, as one might comfort a fretful child. Saying, with a shrug, If you know what you’re doing, there is no risk.

  • • •

  Hannah has reached her destination: the beautiful gated city within a city elevated ten feet above the street.

  High smooth concrete walls, few entrances and none easily navigated by pedestrians; indeed, pedestrians are discouraged in this part of the city. Traffic entering the plaza is funneled into looping driveways where town cars and limousines, airport shuttle buses, private vehicles move slowly forward to be checked and greeted by security guards and uniformed parking attendants.

  At once, Hannah feels at home. A relief to leave street-level Detroit and ascend to the gated city where she is recognized: rich (white) man’s wife.

  Uniformed staff are a comfort within the gated city. For what is provided is security: protection. Parking attendants, doormen, bellboys, a chorus of warm greetings for Hannah in the gleaming white Buick—Welcome to the Renaissance Grand, ma’am!

  The Buick is taken from Hannah, gratefully she hands over the key to the ignition. Parking her car is a chore Hannah dislikes as she would dislike servicing or cleaning the car, vacuuming her house, scrubbing sinks and toilets, such tasks fall to persons who have been trained to execute them skillfully.

  And how are you today, ma’am?

  Is this your first time visiting us, ma’am?

  Hannah is very well, thank you! And no, this is not her first time at the Renaissance Plaza.

  Smiling at such greetings determined not to see that the uniformed staff despises her, of course (telling herself) they don’t despise her, they have mistaken her for another (rich) (white) woman who may resemble her. In fact, the hotel workers must be grateful for Hannah Jarrett as for any visitor to the gated city in the very heart of the doomed city forestalling the inevitable day when the staff is given notice that the luxury hotel has declared bankruptcy.

  Until that time, Hannah smiles upon the uniformed staff persons equally, when it’s appropriate she tips them equally.

  Always a cache of five-dollar bills in her wallet, to hand out like blessings.

  Though ma’am is annoying to her, frankly.

  Trying to smile through ma’am, with gritted teeth.

  Impossible not to think of ma’am as a rebuke.

  Rich (white) man’s wife: ma’am.

  Taking the parking stub from the uniformed attendant as if this has not happened already. How many times. That flash of teeth, staring eyes through the eyeholes of the smiling-mask face, of course they call her ma’am, in that other lifetime they’d slashed the throat of ma’am nearly decapitating the blond head.

  You endured this once. All that lies ahead, you can’t prevent.

  Many times, again. For the first time.

  First Touch

  First touch felt like an accident. She would wish to think.

  A stranger’s fingers brushing against her wrist, claiming her attention. Sudden, surreptitious, a distinct sexual thrill.

  As if underwater, unseen. Only just felt.

  A predator seeking prey, perhaps. A shark propelling itself skillfully through shallow waters.

  For this was a festive occasion, a gathering of several hundred guests in an opulent setting (Riverview Ballroom, Renaissance Grand Hotel, Detroit), an annual fundraiser (March Madness Gala) to benefit the chronically underfinanced Detroit Institute of Arts and so a kind of aqueous environment in which life-forms swim eagerly seeking other life-forms.

  Without thinking she turned to whoever it was who’d touched her wrist, bright blind smile uplifted toward his face (he was tall, he loomed above her), the smile of a woman assured that in this environment she could make no fatal blunder for this was after all her environment—to enter the ballroom for the March Madness Gala you had to have a ticket, and each ticket cost six hundred dollars, and Hannah was herself one of several cochairs for the evening; and so Hannah turned expecting to see a familiar face, but no, this was a not-familiar face, a stranger’s face, heavy-lidded eyes, prominent ridge of bone above the eyes, not a handsome face, not a face to give comfort, a singular face as if carved out of stone, yet—was the man smiling?—at her? Not in proper attire for the evening—not black tie but a necktie of some silvery-silky material, a lightweight woolen suit of dark pinstripes, white linen shirt with onyx cuff links. His hair was thick and pelt-like, black, threaded with gray, brushed back stiffly from his forehead and beginning to recede at the temples. Close-up his eyes were shinily black like marbles, the whites very finely veined; the heavy lids reminded her of the eyelids of hawks, or eagles—predator birds …

  By this time the fingers had dared to encircle her wrist, seize and secure her wrist, as if indeed to give comfort, to assure, and firmly, out of sight of anyone who might be observing them; and whatever it was this person was saying to Hannah as he leaned confidingly close to her, bemused, ironic, inviting her to laugh with him, still smiling the blind bright smile Hannah strained to hear but could not hear, not clearly, though she heard herself laugh, with a kind of visceral shock, as if something protoplasmic, bacterial had been released into her bloodstream.

  Which one are you?—she would recall him asking, though unsure if perhaps he’d asked Which one of you? or even Which of you?, possibilities that had seemed funny to Hannah, hilariously funny though (perhaps) none of it was funny but instead aggressive and insolent and in the exigency of the moment warmed by a single glass of white wine too quickly drunk, as by the excitement of the occasion for which she’d helped prepare for so many weeks, and would be publicly thanked for this effort from the dais and invited to stand with other volunteers to be applauded, Hannah Jarrett had been taken by surprise hearing her own startled laughter like the sound of a prairie bird’s wild-fluttering wings as in panic it rises out of the protective cover of prairie grass into the air desperate to escape the hunters and the hunters’ dogs bent on killing it.

  But no. He was her friend. He would be her friend. Her friend.

  Not laughing at her but in sympathy with her. As if indeed he knew her. In his manner a coercive tenderness such as an elder might feel for a child. As if they were old friends meeting by extraordinary chance amid a noisy throng of strangers.

  Friends whose intimate connection is immediately resumed after years apart, that must be kept secret from others.

  It might have been a scene in a film in which an intimate/erotic/fateful connection is immediately established in the way the woman taken by surprise and the man who’d taken the woman by surprise regard each other: disequilibrium, wonder, and unease in the woman; sexual swagger, certainty in the man.

  As in a film there was music in the background, jagged, occluded music: a jazz quintet playing an unidentifiable melody, musical notes like bright-flashing bits of glass whose primary effect was to make conversation, in the high-ceilinged ballroom with its hard polished uncarpeted floor, virtually impossible.

  Difficult for Hannah to know what was being said to/asked of her.

  Hears herself speaking lightly, brilliantly. Playful, capricious, witty, elusive—though providing, as she will recall later, her name, her identity, with a naïve sort of wifely pride or vanity, her husband’s name, to the avidly listening stranger; nor could Hannah resist identifying herself as “one of the cochairs” of the evening.

  His name was just initials: Y.K.

  Enough for Hannah to know, for now.

  She’d protested, faintly. Laughing—“But why? Does no one here know your name?”

  Though seeing how he did not like to be interrogated. One of those men who gave up information about himself as if grudgingly, piecemeal.

  Y.K. volunteered: He’d come to the fundraiser because someone had given him a ticket.

  But also—he cared for the museum. For all museums. For art.

  Also, he was staying in the hotel. His favorite hotel in Detroit, his usual suite on an upper floor.

  He visited Detroit frequently on business. He stayed at the Renaissance Grand where there was a heliport. From Detroit he could be flown via helicopter to East Lansing.

  Or the governor of the state might fly to Detroit, they saw each other for dinner sometimes, they had old connections. They’d been cadets together out in Colorado.

  What did that mean, Hannah wondered—cadets, Colorado?

  Later Hannah would realize that Y.K. must have meant the Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs.

  She would calculate, if Y.K. was in his early forties (as he appeared to be), likely he’d been a pilot in Vietnam.

  That bemused gaze, a look of distance. The pilot’s gaze as he calculates when to release his bombs.

  In a swooning sensation Hannah envisioned the man’s body inside his evening clothes, ridged and riddled with scars. And a woman’s hands, reading the scars like braille. Outspread fingers clutching at his sides, his muscled back.

  The vision overcame her. And this, too, cinematic, in a flash.

  Yet, strangely, not a vision so much as a memory.

  All this while as they spoke—tried to speak, over the din—his fingers were gripping her wrist, at the level of her thigh. And pressing against her thigh. As if their speaking voices were disengaged from this strange intimacy established between them, an intimacy that preluded and occluded speech.

  This is all that matters, this is real.

  Don’t expect me to flatter you.

  All that in your life has been fraud, hypocrisy—the lies you’ve told yourself—ends now.

  There is only one question: Of what am I capable?

  Not one of these words was uttered aloud. Yet, Hannah understood perfectly. A flush rose into her face of excitement, unease.

  She was standing very still, upright. How pleasurable, the rush of blood to her heart!

  It would appear that they were speaking together, casually. Indistinguishable from the others. So many others, in the subaqueous setting. The din was deafening yet mouths moved without sound. Faces were contorted, grimacing as if drowning.

  Hannah glanced about, would someone recognize her? Rescue her? She had many friends here, she had forgotten their names. A husband?

  Glancing about, cannot see a familiar face. Where is the husband?

  In secret Y.K. continued to grip Hannah’s wrist. His knuckles pressing into her thigh.

  From what he was saying, or implying, it appeared that Y.K. had money. Or was one of those who swam in the swift currents that money provides. If there is a distinction between a businessman and an operator in business, perhaps Y.K. was the latter, elusive and indefinable. Hannah would ask Wes if he knew him.

  No, Hannah would not ask Wes if he knew Y.K. No way for Hannah to raise the subject without blushing, arousing suspicion.

  Y.K. was saying that next time he was in Detroit possibly they could meet.

  Have a drink, here in this hotel, would you like that?—Hannah laughed nervously, alarmed by the question, so blunt, yet (certainly) a casual and even harmless question. Not knowing how to reply yet unable to say No.

  Was this a sexual proposition?—Hannah was stunned.

  Or was it not? As Y.K. seemed to be laughing at Hannah’s distress asking if there was a number with which he might contact her Hannah’s mind went blank for a long moment as if her heart had ceased beating and in that moment her brain had ceased its functioning but then in the next instant she was fully in control again, of course she could remember her own telephone number, which was the household number, the family phone, adding, with naïve emphasis—“It’s unlisted.”

  Unlisted—this struck Y.K. as funny.

  Leaning close to her, laughing in her ear: “Hannah! There are no ‘unlisted’ numbers.”

  Ridiculing her, yet speaking her name.

  Hannah!—the sound of his voice unnerving to her, so close in her ear.

  Aggressively familiar, intimate. Pronounced with an equal emphasis on both syllables to make of it a dactyl—Han-nah. As a foreign-born speaker might enunciate the name, and not a native speaker of English.