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But now, almost four years later, Laurie felt that she'd reached her limit. After all, she had needs, too.

The buzz of Jack's alarm shattered the silence. Jack's arm shot out and swatted the snooze button, then retracted back into the warmth of the covers. For five minutes, peacefulness returned to the room, and Jack's breathing regained its slow, deep, sleeping rhythm. This was part of the morning routine that Laurie never saw, because Jack invariably was up before she was. Laurie was a night person who loved to read before turning out the light, often staying up longer than she should. Almost from day one of their cohabitation, Laurie had learned to sleep through the alarm, knowing Jack would get it.

When the alarm went off the second time, Jack turned it off, threw back the covers, sat up, and put his feet on the floor, facing away from Laurie. She watched him stretch and could hear him yawn as he rubbed his eyes. He stood up and padded into the bathroom, heedless of his nakedness. Laurie put her hands behind her head and watched him, and despite her aggravation, it was a pleasant sight. She could hear him use the toilet and then flush. When he reappeared, he was again rubbing his eyes as he came around to Laurie's side of the bed to wake her.

Jack reached out to give Laurie's shoulder a shake as per usual, and then gave a start when he saw her eyes open, trained on him, her mouth set in an expression of irritated determination.

"You're awake!" Jack said, his eyebrows arching questioningly. He knew instantly that something was amiss.

"I haven't been back to sleep since our middle-of-the-night tryst."

"It was that good, huh?" Jack said, in hopes that humor could defuse her apparent pique.

"Jack, we have to talk," Laurie said flatly, sitting up and clutching the blanket to her chest. Defiantly she locked eyes with him.

"Isn't that what we're already doing?" Jack questioned. He immediately guessed where Laurie was coming from, and he couldn't keep sarcasm out of his voice. Although he knew his tone was counterproductive, he couldn't help himself. Sarcasm was a protective mannerism he'd developed over the last decade.

Laurie started to respond, but Jack held up his hand. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to sound insensitive, but I have a sneaking suspicion where this conversation is headed, and it's not the time. I'm sorry, Laurie, but we have to be at the morgue in an hour, and neither of us has showered, dressed, or eaten."

"Jack, it's never the time."

"Well, then let's put it this way: This might be the worst possible time for some kind of serious, emotional discussion. It's six-thirty on a Monday morning after a great weekend, and we have to get to work. If it had been on your mind, there'd have been a dozen other times during the last couple of days when you could have brought it up, and I would have been happy to discuss it."

"Oh, bull! Let's face it, you never want to talk about it. Jack, I'm going to be forty-three on Thursday. Forty-three! I don't have the luxury of being patient. I can't wait for you to decide what you want to do. I'll be postmenopausal."

For several beats, Jack stared into Laurie's blue-green eyes. It was clear that she wasn't going to be placated easily. "All right," he said, exhaling noisily as if he was conceding.

He averted his gaze down to his bare feet. "We'll talk about it tonight over dinner."

"I need to talk about it now!" Laurie said emphatically. She reached out and lifted Jack's chin to lock eyes again. "I've been agonizing over our situation while you've been sleeping. Putting it off is not an option."

"Laurie, I'm going to go in and take a shower. I'm telling you, there's no time for this at the moment."

"I love you, Jack," Laurie said after grabbing his arm to restrain him. "But I need more.

I want to be married and have a family. I want to live someplace better than this." She let go of Jack's arm and swept her hand around the room to point out the peeling paint, the bare lightbulb, the bed with no headboard, the two night tables that were empty wooden wine cases set on end, and the single bureau. "It doesn't have to be the Taj Mahal, but this is ridiculous."

"All this time, I thought four stars was adequate for you."

"Save the sarcasm," Laurie snapped. "A little luxury wouldn't hurt for as hard as we work. But that's not the issue. It's the relationship, which seems fine for you but isn't enough for me. That's the bottom line."

"I'm taking a shower," Jack said.

Laurie gave him a crooked half-smile. "Fine. You take a shower."

Jack nodded and started to say something, then changed his mind. He turned and disappeared into the bathroom, leaving the door ajar. A moment later, Laurie heard the shower start and the sound of the shower curtain rings scraping across the shower rod.

Laurie exhaled. She was trembling from a combination of fatigue and emotional stress, but she was proud of herself for not shedding any tears. She hated when she cried in emotional situations. How she had avoided it at the moment she had no idea, but she was pleased. Tears never helped, and frequently put her at a disadvantage.

After slipping on her robe, Laurie went into the closet for her suitcase. The confrontation with Jack actually made her feel relieved. By responding just as she'd anticipated, Jack justified what she had decided to do even before he had awakened.

Opening up her allotted bureau drawers, she took out her things and began packing.

With the task almost complete, she heard the shower stop, and a minute later Jack appeared in the doorway, briskly toweling off his head. When he caught sight of Laurie and the suitcase, he stopped abruptly.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"I think it's perfectly clear what I'm doing," Laurie answered.

For a minute Jack didn't say anything, merely watching as Laurie continued her packing. "You're carrying this too far," he said finally. "You don't have to leave."

"I think I do," Laurie responded without looking up.

"Fine!" Jack said after a beat, an edge to his voice. He ducked back through the door to finish toweling off.

When Jack came out of the bathroom, Laurie went in, carrying the day's outfit. She made a point of closing the door, although on normal mornings, it remained open. By the time Laurie emerged, fully dressed, Jack was in the kitchen. Laurie joined him for a breakfast of cold cereal and fruit. Neither took the time to sit at the tiny vinyl dinette set.

Both were polite, and the only conversation was "excuse me" or "sorry" as they danced around each other to get in and out of the refrigerator. Thanks to the narrowness of the room, it was impossible to move without touching.

By seven, they were ready to leave. Laurie squeezed her cosmetics into her suitcase and closed the lid. When she rolled it out into the living room, she saw Jack lifting his mountain bike from its wall rack.

"You're not riding that thing to work, are you?" Laurie asked. Prior to their living together, Jack had used the bike to commute, as well as to run errands around the city. It had always terrified Laurie, who constantly worried that he was going to arrive one day at the morgue "feet first." When they had begun to commute together, Jack had given up riding the bike, since there was no way Laurie would consent to doing the same.

"Well, it looks like I'll be on my own coming back to my palace."

"It's raining, for God's sake!"

"Rain makes it more interesting."

"You know, Jack, since I'm being honest this morning, I think I should tell you that I find this kind of juvenile risk-taking of yours is not only inappropriate but also selfish, like you're thumbing your nose at my feelings."

"That's interesting," Jack said with a smirk. "Well, let me tell you something: Riding my bike has nothing to do with your feelings. And to be honest with you, your feeling that it does seems pretty selfish to me."

Outside on 106th Street, Laurie walked west to Columbus Avenue to catch a cab. Jack pedaled east toward Central Park. Neither turned to wave at the other.

TWO

JACK HAD FORGOTTEN THE exhilaration of riding his dark purple Cannondale mountain bike, but it came back to him in a rush as he coasted down one of the hills after entering Central Park near 106th Street. Since the park was nearly deserted save for the rare jogger, Jack had let himself go, and both the city and his suppressed anxieties miraculously disappeared in the misty city-bound forest. With the wind whistling in his ears, he could remember as if it were yesterday sailing down Dead Man's Hill in South Bend, Indiana, on his beloved red-and-gold, wide-tired Schwinn. He'd gotten the bike on his tenth birthday after having seen it advertised on the back of a comic book.

Mythologized as a symbol of his happy and carefree childhood, he'd convinced his mother to save it, and it continued to gather dust back in the garage of his family's home.

Rain was still falling, but not hard enough to dampen Jack's experience, despite his hearing droplets splattering against the brow of his bicycle helmet. His biggest problem was trying to see through the moisture-streaked lenses of his aerodynamic bicycling sunglasses. To keep the rest of himself reasonably dry, he wore his waterproof bicycle poncho, which featured ingenious little hooks for his thumbs. When he learned forward with his hands grasping the handlebars, the poncho created a tentlike covering. For the most part, he avoided puddles, and when he couldn't, he lifted his feet off the pedals to coast until he reached drier pavement.

At the southeast corner of Central Park, Jack entered the Mid-town city streets, already clogged with morning rush-hour traffic. There had been a time when he loved to challenge the traffic, but that was when he was, in his words, a bit crazier. It was also when he was in significantly better shape. Since he hadn't been riding much over the last few years, he didn't have nearly the same stamina anymore. His frequent basketball playing helped, but basketball didn't involve quite the same sustained aerobics that bicycling demanded. Yet he didn't slow down, and by the time he coasted down the ramp into the 30th Street receiving dock at the medical examiner's office, his quadriceps were complaining. After dismounting, he stood for a moment, leaning onto his handlebars to let his circulation catch up with the oxygen demand in his leg muscles.

When the hypoxic aching of his thighs had been mollified, Jack hefted his bike on his shoulder and started up the steps to the receiving dock. His legs were still rubbery, but he was eager to find out what was going on at the morgue. When he'd passed the front of the building, he'd seen a number of TV satellite trucks parked at the curb with their generators cranking and their antennae extended. He also had caught sight of a press of people within the reception area just beyond the front doors. Something was brewing.

Jack waved a greeting to Robert Harper through the window of the security office.

The uniformed officer popped out of his chair and stuck his head around the jamb of the open door.

"Back to your old tricks, Dr. Stapleton?" Robert called out. "I haven't seen that bike of yours for years."

Jack waved over his shoulder as he carried his bike into the depths of the morgue's basement. He passed the small autopsy room used for examining decomposing corpses and turned left just before the central mass of drawer-shaped refrigerated compartments where bodies were stored prior to being autopsied. He had to clear a space for his bike in the area reserved for the Potter's Field pine coffins, used for the unidentified and unwanted dead. After stowing his coat and bicycle paraphernalia in his locker in the changing room, Jack headed for the stairs. He passed Mike Passano, the graveyard-shift mortuary tech, who was busy finishing up his paperwork in the mortuary office. Jack waved, but Mike was too engrossed to notice him.

As Jack emerged into the central corridor on the first floor, he caught another glimpse of the crowded front reception area. Even from the back of the building, he could hear the murmur of excited conversation. Something was up, and his curiosity was piqued.

One of the most exciting aspects of being a medical examiner was that he never knew from one day to the next what was in store. Coming to work was stimulating, even exciting, which was a far cry from how Jack had felt in his former life as an ophthalmologist, when each day had been comfortable but utterly predictable.

Jack's ophthalmology career had ended abruptly in 1990, when his practice had been gobbled up by the aggressively expanding managed-care giant AmeriCare. AmeriCare's offer to hire Jack as an employee was another slap in the face. The experience forced Jack to recognize that old-school, fee-for-service medicine based on close doctor-patient relationships, where decisions were based solely on patients' needs, was rapidly disappearing. That epiphany led to his decision to retrain as a forensic pathologist, hopefully freeing himself from managed care, which he felt was more of a euphemism for "denial of care." The final irony was that AmeriCare had resurfaced to haunt Jack despite his efforts to distance himself. Thanks to a low bid for its premiums, AmeriCare had recently won a competitive contract for city employees. Jack and his colleagues now had to look to AmeriCare for their own healthcare needs.

Wishing to avoid the throng of media, Jack set off on the back route to the ID office, where the morgue's workday began. On a rotating basis, one of the more senior medical examiners arrived early to review the cases that had come in during the night, decide which ones needed to be autopsied, and make the assignments. It was Jack's habit to get to work early as well, even if it wasn't his turn to be the scheduler, so he could snoop through the cases and get the most challenging ones assigned to him. Jack had always wondered why other docs didn't do the same thing until he realized that the majority of the others were more interested in avoidance. Jack's curiosity invariably caused him to end up with the largest caseload. But he didn't mind; work was Jack's opiate for taming his demons. While he and Laurie had been practically living together, he'd gotten her to come in early with him, which had been no mean feat, considering how hard it was for her to get up in the morning. The thought made Jack smile. It also made him wonder if she had already arrived.