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With a steaming mug of chamomile, she curled up on the big red corduroy hassock by the window. The sun, streaming in through the tall ironbarred windows, cast a grid of shadows on the dhurrie carpet. She loved this room, with its warm daylight and hanging plants, fat cushions and scruffy furniture. With Annie frantically making chocolates night and day, Laurel had the place almost all to herself, which was a blessing. No interruptions, hassles, hardly any dishes to wash up; she could spend all the time she wanted drawing.

Clumsily, she knelt and pulled her sketch pad from the bottom shelf of the old oak glass-front bookcase. She nipped through the pages, filled with rough sketches of bears. Weeks ago, she’d ridden a jammed subway car, standing up most of the way, to the Bronx Zoo, and sat on a bench opposite the polar-bear island, capturing the great beasts in various positions until her fingers had turned numb with the cold.

In the drawing she was working on, the bear was rearing up on his hind paws in fury, having just found out that his bride has unwittingly betrayed him. The drawing was mostly good … even she had to admit it was good. She’d gotten the bear’s enraged expression just right. But the bride, the way she just lay there, crouching in terror, she seemed all wrong. Wouldn’t she have jumped to her feet to beg his forgiveness and declare her love? Even her face was wrong, bland, vapid, abject. All in all, she was … oh, face it, a wimp.

Suddenly it came to Laurel how the bride should be. She grabbed an eraser and with a few swipes rubbed out an arm, a leg, half a face. Then she began to sketch. Her

f

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pencil flew. Her mind filled with visions of a frightened, but determined woman … determined to get her prince back.

She lost all track of time, and was only dimly aware of the contractions that came and went, rolling through her like mild ocean waves.

She tasted the tea, on the floor beside her, and found that it had turned cold.

The grid of sunlight crept to the edge of the carpet, then dissolved into shadow.

Laurel, concentrating on the bride, was seeing her vision take shape, a maiden who was … well, worthy of a prince. Or else how could any reader be expected to believe she would spend years searching the world for him? Laurel knew she was getting it now. Oh, yes! The terror in her eyes … the stubborn tilt of her chin. Already she was calculating how she would get back the man she loved. And when she did-A hard contraction, harder than any of the others, gripped Laurel so fiercely that she dropped her pencil. Shuddering from the pain, she realized she hadn’t just dropped the pencil. Somehow she had sent it flying into the wall opposite her, its lead point shattering, leaving a black squiggle on the baseboard. She hunched forward, clutching her belly. God, it hurt. This one really hurt.

She’d better call Dr. Epstein. No more fooling around.

She waited for the contraction to pass. It felt like an excruciating eternity. But when she tried to stand up, her legs collapsed underneath her like warm butter.

How long had she been sitting here? Long enough for her legs to have gone numb, she realized. She saw that the late morning sunshine had dimmed into afternoon shadows. She began to feel panicky. Now something was happening. Definitely.

The circulation in her legs gradually came back, but Laurel was still too shaky to stand up. She managed to get onto her knees, and began crawling toward the phone. She felt herself lumbering like a polar bear. No, heavier than

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a polar bear. Her bare toes caught at the carpet, dragging it up into little hillocks.

She could feel another contraction coming on, this one more racking than the last. Dear God … please no. It felt as if a rope was wrenched about her middle. Sweat was pouring down her face, and she never sweated.

She was scared. Wild thoughts of blood pouring out of her, of the baby somehow strangled by its cord, overwhelmed her. Help. She had to have help.

Annie? Would Annie be at the shop?

She was almost to the old school desk where the phone sat. She pulled herself up, and clutching the phone receiver in one hand, she paused to catch her breath. The desk’s surface, she saw, was gouged with decades of schoolroom graffiti, initials with lopsided hearts drawn around them, arithmetic sums, an outline of what might have been a penis or Washington’s monument.

As she began to dial, another contraction seized her. She crumpled in agony, and the phone pitched to the floor with a crazed jingling.

“Oh!” she cried, clutching herself and rocking back on her tailbone. Knives. It felt like knives in her back, and deep down in her groin.

Something had to be wrong, she thought. It was not supposed to hurt this much, not this soon.

The pain finally ebbed, but by then, Laurel was no longer thinking about calling Dr. Epstein. Or Annie. There was one person, only one, she wanted now. Needed. She dialed a number that she knew by heart, and waited in sweaty panic while it rang and rang and rang.

Please, God, let him be there. Oh, please.

“Joe’s Place,” announced a harried-sounding voice, his voice.

She felt a sob rising in her, then remembered the pathetic bride in her drawing, and held it in. She squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to take a slow, even breath. When she spoke finally, she made herself sound no more desperate than if she’d been calling from a phone booth with only a minute or two before she had to catch a train.

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“Joe? It’s me, Laurey,” she said. “Listen, I think I’m just about to have this baby.”

A he front door, Joe saw, was unlocked and slightly ajar. With a swift, backhand stroke, he knocked it wide open. “Laurey!”

No answer. His heart dropped in his chest. He was suddenly imagining that he’d come too late. It felt so much like that hellish night he’d raced to Caryn’s. In his dreams, every time he ran to her, he almost made it, but then just as he got there, the razor would slice down, and the blood begin to spill from her pale wrists. Christ.

“Laurey!” he called again. This time he thought he heard a muffled reply.

He shot glances about the shadowed living room, and his gaze fell on the sketch pad lying open on the carpet. The detailed drawing caught his eye: a great white bear rearing up on its hind legs, looking as if it were on the verge of devouring the girl who faced him defiantly, arms wide, the full sleeves of her flowing gown falling back to her elbows. It was good … and incredibly lifelike as well. But what struck him was the girl’s uncanny resemblance to Laurel herself. Was that how she saw herself-about to be eaten alive?

For a moment, the drawing had him mesmerized. Then it hit him again why he’d come … why, when he couldn’t find a cab in the rush-hour chaos, he’d raced here on foot through a drizzling rain, almost a mile, then up four flights without stopping. Now he stood dripping on the rug in an old army-green canvas anorak soaked through from the inside with his sweat. He was breathing so hard his ribs hurt, and steam clouded his glasses, making the room seem wreathed in ominous fog.

Christ, what was he doing? Why, before he headed out like a chicken with its head cut off, hadn’t he called an ambulance? Suppose she was really in trouble?

“Joe?” From the other end of the small apartment came her faint, but distinct reply.

Joe had always thought the bedroom had the look

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of marking time, as if the people who occupied it were here only until something better came along—two travellers caught overnight in the same Greyhound terminal, with two different destinations in mind. Looking around at Annie’s and Laurel’s things, it struck him then how different these two sisters were … and how unaccountable it was that he should love them both.

Laurel lay curled on her side on the bed. She was wearing an old chenille robe that had somehow gotten all twisted and bunched up underneath her. Her long hair hung in damp tatters over the edge of the mattress. Her face was very white. It looked polished somehow. Then he realized with a jolt it was because she was sweating. He’d never seen Laurel sweat before. She made him think of a Raphael Madonna in the throes of some morbid ecstasy.

Joe crouched at her side. He felt his heart lumbering in his chest.

“Laurey, I’m here. It’s going to be okay.” He struggled to clear away the panic that cobwebbed his mind, and to remember all the training in their Lamaze classes. “When did it start? How far apart are the pains?”

Laurel shook her head, forcing her words through gritted teeth. “All … together.”

No intervals at all between the pains. That meant she was in the final stage of her labor. Christ. Why hadn’t she called him sooner?

Joe felt a low swell of resentment. Why the hell did she have to call him at all? How had he gotten into this? Why, when she asked him to be her Lamaze coach, hadn’t he turned her down? Or at the very least, couldn’t he have had the guts to admit that the main reason he’d ever agreed to it was to hurt Annie?

Hey, it wasn’t Laurel who got y ou into this. All right, he had been concerned about Laurel. He still was. But mostly he was so pissed off at himself he could barely concentrate.

And when you got right down to it, what right did he have to be mad at Annie for accusing him when—Go on, admit it, asshole—it could so easily have been his baby?

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He thought back to that night when Laurel had kissed him, and how part of him had wanted to carry her off to bed right then and there. And since then, watching her bloom with pregnancy, hadn’t he felt it again and again-that deep-down tug? His admiration for her had grown, too. The way she’d handled all this, not whining or trying to shove the responsibility onto anyone else, just quietly accepting it. Even the decision to give up the baby, she’d made it on her own, no moaning or crying on anyone’s shoulder.

Ashamed now of wanting to run away, Joe frantically shucked off his anorak, then reached out to place a hand on Laurel’s round belly. He could feel it moving, the muscles actually heaving beneath his palm, and was startled. He thought of an earthquake, primal, uncontrollable. He felt as helpless as if it were an earthquake. What could he do? He was no doctor, dammit.

Where the hell was Epstein, anyway … had Laurel called him?

Something was pinching his arm, a claw biting into his flesh. He looked over and saw Laurel gripping his forearm with all her might, her fingers looking bloodless, almost transparent, as if an X ray were revealing the fine bones underneath.

“Joe … I’m scared,” she gasped.

Me too, kiddo. I’m scared shitless.

“What did the doctor say?” he asked.

“I … I haven’t talked to him. After I called you … I had to … to lie down. Oh God, it hurts so much!” She hugged herself tighter, her face crumpling into an agonized grimace.

“Where’s his number?”

“In … the … the little blue book inside the desk … under the phone.”

“I’ll be right back. Hang on, Laurey.”

He found the blue address book just where Laurel had said it would be, in the slot under the desk where school kids had once kept their Dick and Jane readers and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. He looked up Dr. Epstein’s number, but his hand was shaking so badly he mis-

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dialed twice before he finally got it. A bored-sounding woman at the answering service asked if he would like to leave a message, or was this an emergency?

“Shit, yes, it’s an emergency!” he barked.

A minute later, the doctor called back and told him what he already knew: get Laurel to St. Vincent’s, pronto. Epstein said he’d phone for an ambulance-it shouldn’t be more than five minutes. Next, Joe tried the number at Annie’s shop. A girl who sounded young enough to be selling Girl Scout cookies informed him that Annie was out. He left a message saying that he was on his way to the hospital with Laurel, and the girl breathlessly promised to do her best to reach Annie.

Waiting for the ambulance to arrive, Joe remembered a bet with his best friend in grammar school. Teddy Plowright’s betting him a dollar that he couldn’t stand on his head for five minutes; and know-it-all Joey taking him up on it, thinking, hey, no big deal. Five minutes? Hell, he’d do ten, that’d show dinkweed Teddy. But then, feet up high, his blood slugging into his head like a truckload of sand, his ears roaring, eyes bulging, he’d found out that five minutes could seem longer than a year.

Which was how he felt now, as if for five interminable minutes he’d been standing on his head … and he still had five more to go.

He found Laurel on her back, clutching a knee in each hand, the great white moon of her belly rising from the twisted folds of her robe. He stood at the foot of the bed, feeling suddenly as if he didn’t belong here … as if Laurel were engaged in some atavistic ritual prohibited to men.

Everything was still, as if the earth somehow had stopped turning, and was simply suspended in space. Feeling hot, and realizing he was still wearing his sweatshirt, Joe shucked it off, half expecting to see it float above the carpet as if gravity had taken a vacation.

“The ambulance’ll be here any minute,” he told her. “And Dr. Epstein will be waiting for you at the hospital.”

“I … don’t think … I can … oh God”.

Joe strained to remember the breathing exercises

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they’d practiced in Lamaze. Fine coach he was turning out to be.

“Pant,” he urged, leaning close so that their mouths were almost touching. He could almost taste her breath, sweet, with a trace of metallic panic. “Shallow breaths. That’s it. Go with the pain. Roll with it. Great, that’s great. You’re doing great.”

Laurel kept up the panting for another minute or so, then fell back, clutching at his shirtfront like someone drowning. He glanced down and saw the red and blue flannel of his shirt blooming from each of her fists like some surreal bouquet.

“No!” she screamed. “I can’t do this … oh God … please don’t make me do this.”