Ryan backed barefoot off the deck and through the open door. He turned and hurried out of the kitchen, across the front room.


In the bedroom, he stripped off his khakis. He draped them over the arm of a chair, as they had been, and returned to bed.


Under the covers, he realized that he had not thought through this retreat, but had instinctively chosen to avoid confrontation. In retrospect, he was not sure that he had taken the wisest course.


Feigning sleep, he heard Samantha enter the bedroom, and heard the silken rustle of her robe discarded.


Under the covers once more, she said softly, “Ryan?” When he did not reply, she repeated his name.


If she believed that he was faking sleep, she might suspect that he had seen or heard something of the assignation under the pepper tree. Therefore, he said sleepily, “Hmmmm?”


She slid against him and took hold of what she wanted.


Under the circumstances, he did not believe that he could rise to the occasion. He was surprised-and dismayed-to discover desire trumped his concern that she was guilty of dissimulation if not duplicity.


The qualities he found most erotic in a woman were intelligence, wit, affection, and tenderness. Sam had all four and could not fake the first two, though Ryan now worried that her intelligence was of a kind that facilitated manipulation and fostered cunning. He wondered if in fact she loved him and wanted the best for him, or had all along been disingenuous.


Never before had he made love when his heart was a cauldron of such wretched feelings, when physical passion was detached from all of the gentler emotions. In fact, love might have had nothing to do with it.


When the moment had passed, Samantha kissed his brow, his chin, his throat. She whispered, “Good night, Winky,” and turned away from him, onto her side.


Soon her open-mouthed breathing indicated that she slept. Or pretended to sleep.


Ryan pressed two fingers to his throat to time his pulse. He marveled at the slow steady throb, which seemed to be yet another deception, the most intimate one so far: his body pretending to be in good health when actually it was in the process of failing him.


For an hour, he stared at the ceiling but in fact examined, with memory’s eye, a year of loving Samantha. He sought to recall any incident that, from his new perspective, suggested she had darker intentions than those he had attributed to her at the time.


Initially, none of her actions through the months seemed in the least deceitful. When Ryan considered those same moments a second time, however, shadows fell where shadows had not been before, and every memory was infused with an impression of hidden motives and of secret conspirators lurking just offstage.


No specific deceit occurred to him, no example of her possible duplicity prior to the last few days, yet a cold current of suspicion crawled along his nerves.


The tendency to paranoia that infected contemporary culture had always disquieted him. He was ashamed to be indulging in the self-delusion that troubled him in others. He had a few disturbing facts; but he was trying to manufacture others out of fevered fantasies.


Ryan rose quietly from bed, and Samantha did not stir.


A window invited moonlight, which fell so lightly in this space that he could not have perceived the positions of the furniture if he had not been familiar with the room.


More than half blind, but with a blind man’s intuition, he found his clothes, dressed, and silently navigated the bedroom. Without a sound, he closed the door behind him.


Familiarity with the floor plan and dark-adapted eyes allowed him to reach the kitchen without a misstep or collision. He switched on the light above the sink.


On the notepad by the telephone, he left her a message: Sam, manic insomnia strikes again. Too jittery to lie still. Call you tomorrow. Love, Winky.


He drove home, where he packed a suitcase.


The great house was as silent as the vacuum between planets. Although he made only a few small noises, each seemed as loud as thunder.


He drove to a hotel, where no one on his house staff or in his private life would think to look for him.


In an anonymous room, on a too-soft bed, he slept so soundly for six hours that he did not dream. When he woke Saturday morning, he was in the fetal position in which he had gone to sleep.


His hands ached. Evidently, he had closed them into fists through most of the night.


Before ordering a room-service breakfast, Ryan made two phone calls. The first was to Wilson Mott, the detective. The second was to arrange to have one of Be2Do’s corporate jets fly him to Las Vegas.