I think—we have to stop this. Whatever this is, it must cease.

Don’t ruin my life, Juliana. Please.

If you love me—you’ve said—and yes, I love you—but—if you ruin my life—there will be no love …

Juliana has not intended to speak, only just to listen, to hear the voice of the man she adores. To hear him admit how he has wronged her, to apologize. She intended to listen to him in silence, in dignity, perhaps she would forgive him, but these words are not the words she wishes to hear, these are words that inflame, goad. She hears herself cry—Your life? Goddamn you, what about my life? My life is in ruins.

Breaking the connection, furious.

Following this, much seemed to happen.

Ever more swiftly, like the swirling of water into a drain.

Another night, waiting in a car borrowed from a lawyer friend, allegedly for a work-related errand.

Cannily, not in front of the Spire house (of course), but two houses away. Headlights off. Ignition still on. At midnight seeing a light in her lover’s house upstairs. A single, weaker light downstairs. Like wildfire, elation overcame her. Flames licking at her hair, her fingertips. She’d brought a bottle of vodka with her. With defiant fingers she lifted the bottle, drank. Consoling herself—None of this is real. This is just a test. I can stop anytime. I will stop.

It was within Juliana’s rights as the beloved of the man who lived in that house to approach the front door, to ring the bell. The lover’s poetry often spoke of risk, daring. To gain life one must be willing to risk life.

Soon then, the upstairs light went out. The downstairs light remained.

Juliana thought—He would come to me if he knew. He wouldn’t let me suffer like this.

Waiting for him to come to her, but he did not come, and so finally, feeling very tired, she decided to drive away.

Thinking that in a sense she’d triumphed over Ned Spires. He’d been reduced to begging her not to ruin his life, a coward’s life. As Juliana’s lover, he’d been ardent, ecstatic. He hadn’t had a mind for his unhappy wife, then. And so now Juliana cared nothing for him. She pitied the man, a weak man finally, like Gordon Kechel, who’d given her up without a fight—who’d simply repudiated her without ever seeing or even speaking with her again.

How could Juliana have loved Ned Spires!—the acne-roughened face, shadowed eyes. The pathos of his poetry, about which (though he tried to disguise it) he was so vain.

Mere scribbled words, publications in magazines in which a poem was merely decorative amid a page of prose bounded by advertisements, a poetry prize or two—did the deluded man think such meager achievements would make him immortal?

He would beg Juliana to relent, eventually. He would beg her to forgive him and to love him again. She knew. A drinker will always return.