It would be the collapse of her marriage. Wes would win custody of the children.

  All of Far Hills would know, and despise her.

  She wonders: Had he drugged her? She’d drunk wine with him. He’d poured wine into her glass. Each time, she’d lost control, had had no idea how much time was passing, like one trapped in a dream.

  But she does remember waking in the pigsty of the bed, naked, very groggy, as helpless as a sea creature lacking a spine, prized out of its shell and vulnerable to any predator.

  Better if he’d killed her. Extinguished her. The pillow over her face, fingers tightening around her throat. The pleasure this man whom she scarcely knew has given her has been indistinguishable from the most excruciating pain, a part of her had hated it, yet she’d been haunted by the memory of what he’d made her feel, mesmerized.

  Hannah obliterated, utterly. Was that her deepest desire, to not be?

  She feels a despairing sort of desire for Y.K., even now. If he were here. If he lowered his weight upon her, forcing himself into her, laughing at her distress.

  You like this. You know you do: this.

  But no! Hannah is appalled by the adulterous acts she’d committed, so recklessly.

  Appalled by her body, that betrays her. For Hannah’s body is not her.

  A solution would be: death.

  … sees herself wraithlike removing the gun from the bedside table drawer so quietly that Wes, sleeping a few inches away, is not disturbed and in utter silence in the most courageous and selfless gesture of her life positioning the snub-nose barrel against her head touching the tremulous blue vein at the right temple, shutting her eyes as a child might do as she summons the strength to pull the trigger …

  Her eyes spring open, she has fallen asleep. Thinking: What of Katya and Conor? Their lives would be ruined if their mother killed herself and especially in such a way—blood, brain matter, bits of bone splattered against a wall in a lurid pattern of self-display.

  Better mortification, shame, the loss of the children, than the children’s lives ruined because of their mother.

  Better the contempt of her husband and of all of Far Hills, than ruining the children’s lives.

  Through the interminable night as Wes sleeps beside her in the massive bed, his back to her as if in another dimension, as distant as another galaxy. Hannah’s thoughts race like tires spinning in mud. Not an inch’s progress, no matter how the tires spin, yet she is exhausted.

  At dawn slipping from the bed to descend the stairs in the still-darkened house, to locate the strange thing, the mysterious negative, where Wes had tossed it on a kitchen counter out of annoyance the night before, and finally boredom.

  In the unnatural silence of the sleeping house Hannah examines the negative another time, hoping she will see that she’d been mistaken, there is no ghostly figure hidden inside the swirls and smudges, but indeed yes, the outline of the slovenly female body leaps at once to her eye, unmistakable.

  What a joke! But so ugly, this revelation of sexual squalor, idiocy.

  Her heart beats weakly as if it might cease. Oh, such a fool! And yet, such (lost) happiness.

  For there is no denying: Y.K., deceiving Hannah, intent upon exploiting her, blackmailing her, nonetheless had made her deliriously happy. Given her a reason to be.

  That is the final, unspeakable shame, she can never share with another living being. That, in spite of all she knows of her lover now, she recalls him with that sensation of sick, sinking helplessness that is the most profound experience of her emotional life.

  And now, she must find another reason to live. To continue to live. A mission. To save herself, and the children. To save the life of her husband who has ceased loving her.

  She takes the negative away with her, upstairs. As if it were a precious document. How fortunate that Wes lost interest in it and won’t miss it, has likely forgotten it as if indeed it had been tossed out negligently with the trash.

  • • •

  Phone ringing at the other end, in an empty room.

  Hannah faint with dread, gripping the receiver against her ear.

  Later in the day, late midmorning. Hannah is (blessedly, briefly) alone in the house. No one to overhear! Ismelda has gone shopping and won’t return for ninety minutes at the earliest.

  When it seems that the ringing will cease, a recording will switch on, the phone is brusquely answered: “Yes?”

  Hannah has drawn breath to speak but cannot. She hears herself trying not to sob, choking.

  “This is you? Mrs. Jar-rett?”

  To her surprise Y.K. is sounding bemused, sardonic, not furious as Hannah has feared.

  The intonation of Mrs. Jar-rett is almost playful, teasing.

  He tells her that it’s good that she has called him, she had better not try to cut him out of her life ever again.

  “You understand what a mistake that would be, Hannah? Yes?”

  “I—I don’t know …”

  “Yes, you know. You’ve seen the evidence. That’s an example of what I can provide your husband. If you doubt me, I’ll send him another negative, he won’t have trouble identifying.”

  Hannah listens, helpless. She should beg Y.K. for mercy but will not.

  “I want to see you tomorrow. That’s not negotiable. If you have an ‘appointment,’ break it. I want a first installment. Let’s say just under ten thousand dollars. Nine thousand, nine hundred, ninety-nine dollars. That’s chump change for the Jarretts. We’ll take it from there. We’ll see how it works out. Marriage isn’t out of the question. We’ll see.”

  Nine thousand, nine hundred, ninety-nine dollars? Marriage? Hannah listens appalled.

  In his bemused voice instructing her: She will come to the hotel room the next day at four, she will bring ten thousand dollars less one dollar in cash, predominantly hundred-dollar bills.

  Adding he isn’t asking for ten thousand dollars because if she withdraws ten thousand from a savings account, the bank will have to report it to the feds. But she can withdraw nine thousand, nine hundred, ninety-nine dollars. No problem.

  But she can’t, Hannah says. Without Wes knowing …

  “Not my problem,” Y.K. says. “Find a way.”

  Hannah protests: But he is blackmailing her!

  Y.K. laughs. “Call it what you will, darling. Could be, you owe me.”

  Hannah is weeping, helpless.

  Y.K. says: “I’m hanging up now.”

  Unbelievably, the connection is broken. And when Hannah calls back the phone rings, rings.

  Tormenting her, not answering the phone until the fifth or sixth ring and then lifting the receiver, in mocking silence.

  Plaintively Hannah asks how can she give him ten thousand dollars in cash without Wes knowing about it … At the end of the month, when the bank sends a statement to him, he will know.

  “Fuck that,” Y.K. says. “You’ve got money of your own.”

  Hannah tries to think: Does she have money of her own? Investments?

  Joint investments with Wes, but nothing of her own. She is sure.

  “Sell the pearls.”

  The pearls?

  “Sell the pearls, the pink pearls you were showing off the other day. Bring me the money.”

  Hannah stammers she wouldn’t know where to sell her pearls …

  Y.K. gives her an address on Gratiot. Downtown. Tells her just go there. He’ll call the jeweler, say she’ll be there in the morning. He will take a commission—“What the pearls are worth, he’ll give you half.”

  She can’t sell her grandmother’s pearls!—Hannah protests but Y.K. laughs, saying sure she can sell the pearls, she can sell anything she owns, if somebody is willing to buy it. As long as she turns up with ten thousand dollars minus one dollar.

  Anyway, Y.K. asks, cruelly, why’d she wear the pearls to show him, what was the point?

  Hannah tries to recall. Why had she worn her grandmother’s pink-toned pearls to meet her lover at Lone Lake Park …

  To make myself beautiful to you. To make you love me more.

  Y.K. says, sneering: “You wore the pearls for me, darling. You wanted me to want the pearls, because the pearls are you. So now I want them. Sell them.”

  Hannah tries to explain that the pearls aren’t real pearls, only just cultured pearls, she has no idea what they are worth …

  “So find out. That’s up to you.” Adding, “They looked like good quality to me. A pearl necklace could be thirty thousand or more, depending.”

  Thirty thousand! Hannah doesn’t think this can be possible.

  But Y.K. is sounding bored with the subject. Telling Hannah to find out for herself. Bring him the money. Tomorrow at four. He’s hanging up now.

  Hannah cries: “Wait! Don’t hang up …”

  She pleads with him: Let her bring the pearls to him, he can have them. She will just give the necklace to him.

  Y.K. says, “No! I don’t want the fucking pearls, I want the money. The first installment. Ten thousand is a bargain. If you miss the deadline tomorrow it’s fifteen thousand the next day. I don’t have proof of ownership, I can’t sell the pearls. It’s up to you to sell them. Fuck I’m going to get fingerprinted to sell your necklace, you could call the police saying they were stolen.”

  Y.K. is becoming more exasperated as he speaks. His earlier sardonic poise drops away like a mask. Telling Hannah that she should think also about the plans they’d been making. Maybe she’s forgotten, he hasn’t.

  She’d brought her children to him. She’d wanted him to meet her children, she’d boasted of her beautiful children, Christ!—she’d wanted him to want her children.

  So now, he wants her children.

  But more immediately: Hannah needs to look into increasing her husband’s life insurance. She needs Wes’s signature, it can’t be done without the signature. He could maybe sign the signature, if she provides some samples.

  So when she comes to the hotel tomorrow with the ten thousand dollars she should bring the life insurance policy. So that he can look it over. However much the policy is for, say it’s five hundred thousand, she will have to produce a plausible argument for raising it. Eight hundred thousand, that’s a first step.

  Hannah is too shocked to reply. Y.K. laughs: “No. That will be the second step, darling. The first step is the pearls.”

  Hannah begins to sob uncontrollably. Telling him she’d loved him. She’d loved him, and believed him …

  “Jesus!”—Y.K. laughs. “How stupid can you be, to imagine that I’d loved you.”

  There’s no woman he gives a fuck about, he tells her, and if there was, not likely it would be her.

  “But—I believed you … I loved you.”

  A plaintive piteous voice: Hannah has lost all control, all dignity, weeping like a child whose heart is broken, for whom there is no hope.

  Should’ve thought of that before she betrayed him, Y.K. says disdainfully—“That was the mistake.”

  Hannah hears the dial tone, he has hung up a second time.

  Zink Jewelers Estate & Loan

  You make your own luck. It isn’t handed to you on a silver platter, kids.

  Joker Daddy laughs, winks. His voice is a caress that chills like melting ice in a trickle inside your clothes where no one can see it.

  Late morning, Hannah drives into Detroit, to search out Zink Jewelers Estate & Loan at 2997 Gratiot near Huron.

  Difficult to find a parking place on Gratiot Avenue. This part of Detroit, far downtown on the east side, is old, rundown, not familiar to Hannah who is forced to circle the block, rerouted onto narrow one-way streets, thwarted by double-parked delivery trucks. Waiting at an intersection for a very long light, Hannah nervously locks all the doors of the gleaming-white Buick Riviera sedan that draws eyes to it, if but fleetingly.

  How like a foreign country here, near the Eastern Market. African American Detroit bordering East Asian Detroit. Walking hurriedly along Gratiot, Hannah sees only dark-skinned pedestrians, thinks they may be Indian, Pakistani, Lebanese, hears fragments of indecipherable speech.

  She has become invisible: almost literally, no one sees her. For these others know, by the color of her skin, that Hannah is no one of their acquaintance, no one who could possibly matter to them.

  True, some of the men glance casually at her. She dreads to see scorn but sees instead carefully composed impassive faces.

  Oh but why do they not care? Hannah is beautifully dressed: for beauty is armor. Black cashmere coat, new lizard-skin shoes, and about her head a Dior silk scarf to keep her hair from whipping in the wind.

  But why was Mrs. Jarrett there, on Gratiot Avenue, at Huron? At that hour of the day?

  Not where she died but where the body was found. That is the mystery.

  Zink Jewelers is one of very few businesses still open along this block of Gratiot, near Huron; a much smaller establishment than Hannah has expected, heavily fortified with an iron grating across its front window and a door similarly barricaded, which seems to be locked.

  Hannah tugs at the door. She is close to tears, she has come so far.

  “Hello? Is anyone here?”—her voice is plaintive, querulous.

  All that she can see inside is shadowy, cave-like. At the rear, a light—but no visible human presence.

  Glittery merchandise in the front window, heaped like cheap baubles—jewelry, wristwatches, silver trays, trophies. A double strand of white pearls … Hannah feels a wave of despair, futility.

  How easily she might have saved herself. But how blind she was!

  Hannah is sure that Y.K. said he’d call the jeweler on her behalf. He can’t have failed to do this, he wants money from her …

  About to turn away in defeat Hannah sees a figure materializing out of the interior gloom like ectoplasm: a stout anemone-like shape, bulbous torso and fattish ferret face, eyes behind harlequin glasses flat-glaring like reflectors. A finger, a hand, floating as if bodiless, jabs impatiently as if to signal Hannah—to what, she isn’t sure.

  Only now, Hannah notices a small sign beside the door: RING TO ENTER.

  Abashed, Hannah rings the doorbell.

  A loud buzzer, a click, and the door is unlocked. Still, the door is so heavy that Hannah can hardly pull it open.

  No one comes to her assistance. The figure in the harlequin glasses has vanished. How rude! Hannah steps inside the barely lit store.

  This isn’t a jewelry store as Hannah understands jewelry stores. Indeed it is also, or primarily, a pawnshop. The cluttered interior is not elegant, nor even very clean. There are too many display cases, oddly positioned at right angles to one another, as in a warehouse. Surfaces are layered in dust. The linoleum floor is sticky beneath the smooth soles of her high-heeled shoes.

  The lighting is fluorescent, high overhead against a hammered-tin ceiling. No windows except the fortified front window through which a suety light is emitted. The air smells befouled, with cigarette smoke, dust, sorrow.

  A mistake. It isn’t too late: leave.

  But Hannah has found her way here, she cannot turn back.

  “Mrs. Jar-rett”—the name is uttered. Not a question but a statement in a flat incurious hoarse-husky voice.

  So, Y.K. did call on her behalf! Her name is known here, at least.

  Grateful, Hannah makes her way to a glass-topped cashier’s counter, behind which a woman in harlequin glasses, with a fattish ferret face, is seated on a stool, cigarette in hand.

  Hannah smiles, foolishly. She hadn’t expected she would be waited on by a woman.

  “Show me what you’ve got.”

  Not a smile of greeting. No small talk. Husky smoker’s voice.

  Self-consciously, reluctantly, like one disrobing before an impassive stranger Hannah removes the pearl necklace from a soft fabric bag, and spreads it open on the glass-topped counter which is as badly scratched as a much-used skating rink.

  How beautiful the necklace is!—Hannah feels a twinge of guilt, and grief, that she must sell it.

  A precious memento of her old, lost life as a girl. Though (in fact) Hannah has rarely given the necklace a thought in twenty years.

  The woman in the harlequin glasses grunts a minimal sort of interest, somewhere below admiration or enthusiasm. Eagerly Hannah explains: These are antique pearls given to her by her grandmother …

  Antique! Grandmother! Hannah can hear Y.K.’s jeering laughter.

  The woman examines the pearls, frowning. Hannah is concerned, the woman is handling the pearls so roughly.

  In a plastic ashtray at her elbow is a cigarette emitting a stream of smoke that makes Hannah’s eyes water.

  “ID with your picture, please.”

  Hannah provides a Michigan driver’s license with a miniature photo of herself taken several years ago. The woman examines it, glancing from the photo to Hannah, and back again, as if in doubt.

  Hannah laughs nervously. “I’m under some strain right now, I don’t look like myself …”

  There is a pause. Hannah expects the woman to respond sympathetically but she says only: “Hands. Here.”

  Brusquely Hannah is fingerprinted, each of her fingers and both of her thumbs, pressed on an inkpad, then on stiff white paper, with surprising strength by the woman.

  “But these are my pearls,” Hannah protests, “do you think that I’ve stolen them? They were my grandmother’s.”

  “State law.”

  Hannah stares at her ink-stained hands, dismayed. The woman in the harlequin glasses nudges a box of tissues in her direction.

  Without a word of explanation the woman takes Hannah’s necklace away, deeper into the interior of the store, to a heavyset figure at a worktable in the rear, presumably the appraiser.

  Amid the general gloom of the store the appraiser’s worktable is lit with a concentrated light from a crook-necked lamp.

  An older, obese person: Zink?

  But why does this person not at least glance in her direction, Hannah wonders. Why are he and the woman both so incurious, so rude. Hannah has journeyed so far.

  In Far Hills, Hannah wouldn’t be treated with such indifference. A mile away at the Renaissance Plaza, in any of the boutique stores, in the Renaissance Grand Hotel, Hannah Jarrett would be treated with respect.