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Katherine was back. She was inside Tricia, that was true, but even that fact – at first so queer and frightening – had advantages. The things he disliked about Tricia – her stupidity and shallowness – had been washed away in her technological baptism. Instead, Katherine – his wife of twenty years, the woman he loved – had replaced her. Somehow, thanks to the advances of Dr. Ho and Amber Corp., the woman that slept beside Timothy was now twenty-three years old, in perfect health, beautiful – and, most important – was really his wife.

There was of course the matter of sex. Those next few days they made love every night, and most mornings too. It was still the same Katherine – still unadventurous, never initiating, always face-forward-and-underneath. But even the quiet sex was better with her now, and – whereas two months earlier it had been ambitious to make love once a week – now he would push her to the bed and climb on top of her at any excuse. Her new body – the full breasts that rolled down over her rib cage when she lay on her back, the taut buttocks, the smooth thighs, which he explored when he raised her ankles into the air, her neck as soft as satin – was an adventure for him, and he could not get enough of it, of the novelty, the excitement, this new woman in his house.

On Sunday morning, after they'd had sex, the doorbell rang.

‘Don't answer it,' Tricia said.

‘Maybe it's important,' he said, thinking that the black woman with the cornrows had returned to deliver another summons. He rose and put on his bathrobe.

But it was not important. It was Ann Beatty, Katherine's friend from down the street, bearing a paper bag that smelled like hot garlic and dough.

‘Good morning,' she chirped. ‘I brought you some bagels. I hope I'm not too early.'

‘No, of course not,' Timothy said, even though she was in fact too early. ‘Come in. I was just going to eat.'

He took the bagels from her and led her to the kitchen. She sat at the table in front of the patio doors. Behind her, sunshine filled the backyard, and the ornamental grasses along the patio swayed in the morning breeze.

‘I thought maybe you could use some company,' Ann said. ‘I know when Mark and I divorced, weekends were the hardest. So lonely, without anything to fill your day.'

‘Would you like some coffee?' Timothy asked.

‘If you're having.'

Timothy banged around the cupboards, looking for the coffee beans. Where had she put them? Ann continued: ‘I can only imagine what you're going through. I know it's only been a few weeks. Things are still raw.' She touched her fingers to her short black hair, obviously dyed, and stroked the back of her head thoughtfully. ‘Katherine was a wonderful woman.'

‘Yes,' Timothy said, into the cupboard. Then he heard slippered footsteps approach the kitchen. He turned to see Tricia standing in the doorway in a skimpy T-shirt, her nipples bulging beneath the cotton, and a pair of boxer shorts.

‘Hello,' Tricia said.

‘Oh—' Ann looked mortified. ‘I'm so sorry. I didn't know you had … company.'

Tricia walked to Ann, held out her hand. ‘Tricia Fountain,' she said.

Ann seemed uncertain. She didn't know where to look: at the young girl's face? At her breasts? Her exposed thighs? She looked
past Tricia to Timothy. She took Tricia's offered hand, shook it perfunctorily, and said, ‘Ann Beatty.'

‘Timothy has told me a lot about you.'

Now Anne regarded her carefully. Of course it was preposterous that Timothy would tell this young girl, twenty years younger than Katherine, all about his dead wife's friend, the old neighbor down the street.

‘Maybe I should be going,' Ann said. ‘I'm so sorry to intrude.' She started to rise.

‘Please,' Tricia said. ‘Stay.'

Timothy did not want Ann to stay. In fact, after seeing Tricia appear, with her nipples showing under her T-shirt, in the same room as Ann Beatty, the icy old nun, he was turned on. He felt an erection under his bathrobe. What he wanted was that Ann should leave, so that he could make love to Tricia again, right there in the kitchen. Maybe even on the oak table.

‘Yes,' Timothy said, ‘stay.'

Another moment of hesitation as Ann hovered at the table, neither fully standing nor sitting.

‘You brought bagels?' Tricia said, spotting the bag. ‘Have breakfast with us.'

Ann hesitated. ‘All right,' she said finally, relieved that this young girl, despite the intrusion, was friendly after all. She folded back into her chair.

Seeing Timothy standing beside the coffee machine, helpless, Tricia said: ‘Let me help you with that. You couldn't operate that machine if your life depended on it.'

‘That's true,' Ann said. She smiled knowingly. ‘That's exactly what—' She stopped herself.

‘What?' Tricia asked.

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence.

Timothy finished Ann's sentence. ‘That's exactly what my wife used to say. Ann has been here for many a breakfast and has observed my incompetence first hand.'

Ann said, ‘I'm sorry. That was thoughtless.'

‘No,' Tricia said. She pretended to make a pained smile. Or maybe, Timothy thought, it really was a pained smile. Katherine
was wily, after all. ‘It's okay. I understand.'

Tricia turned and began to make the coffee. Timothy sat down at the table across from Ann. There was nothing else to say, so they watched Tricia fit the paper filter into the machine and start measuring the beans.

Finally, Timothy said softly to Ann: ‘I know this must seem a little strange.' He stared at the back of Tricia's soft thin white neck. ‘But sometimes love appears in the damnedest places, at the damnedest times.'

Ann nodded.

Now Timothy was glad Ann was here, that he could begin the process of creating the story, of integrating Tricia into his life. He knew that once Ann left his house, the phone calls would begin, to other neighbors first, and then to mutual friends, old girlfriends of Katherine, tennis partners, church members, Palo Alto grandees. The headline would circulate: Timothy Van Bender Sleeps with Young Girl Just Weeks After Wife's Suicide.

Timothy said: ‘I met Tricia at work. She's my secretary.'

Correction. This just in: Timothy Van Bender Sleeps With Young Secretary Weeks After Wife's Suicide.

‘Really?' Ann said, but it sounded as if she did not want to hear too much more.

‘Yes,' Timothy said. ‘Funny how life works. One door closes and another opens.'

‘I suppose,' Ann said.

Tricia joined them at the table with the plate of bagels. ‘Let me get some cream cheese.' She laid the bagels on the table, and disappeared into the refrigerator.

‘She seems to know her way around,' Ann said. It was equally a compliment and an accusation.

‘We've spent a lot of time together,' Timothy said. ‘Things are really good.' He smiled at Ann, who – although it clearly pained her – smiled back.

Later that afternoon Tricia said, ‘I think we should get married.'

They were in the living room, lying on opposite sides of the couch. He was watching golf on television, drinking a beer. She
sat facing him, her legs in his lap, as she worked on the Sunday crossword puzzle.

He looked up at her when she said it. Her face was down, buried in the crossword. She had folded the paper in half to make a surface, and held a pencil in the air, ready to jab the point into the pulp.

He said, ‘Really?'

‘Well,' she said to the newspaper, ‘I am your wife. It's just a matter of formalizing for the rest of the world what we already know.'

‘But, Tricia,' he said, stressing the name, dripping it with honeyed sarcasm, because it always felt good and strange to call her that. ‘We've only been dating for a week.'

She looked up at him. ‘We probably had an affair before your wife died.' She paused and then added: ‘That's what everyone will think, anyway.'

‘But I didn't,' Timothy said evenly.

‘If you say so.' She went back to her crossword and jotted an answer into the boxes. Thinking the conversation was over, he returned to the golf game on television.

‘The point is,' Tricia said, ‘it won't seem strange to anyone if we get married. We really should. Not just for outward appearances, but for us. I mean, I love you.'

She rubbed her foot against his crotch, and there it was again, an erection. Timothy was now at an age when he counted his erections, noted them the way a meteorologist might scan the horizon and note nimbus clouds. In the last week he had experienced more erections than he had the entire six months before. God, she turned him on.

‘Oh yeah?' he said. ‘I love you, too, Katherine.'

She dropped the newspaper and pencil to the floor, and the pencil rolled under the couch. She scrambled toward him over the cushions. ‘I thought we agreed,' she said, her breath hot and wet in his ear, ‘that you wouldn't call me that anymore.'

‘Okay, Tricia.'

She kissed his ear gently. ‘If you marry me,' she said, ‘I'll make it worth your while.'

‘How will you do that?'

‘Watch,' she said. She slid her face down his chest, unbuttoning his shirt as she went. She kissed his chest, licking his hair. She worked her way down to his pants buckle. She unfastened it, expertly, and kissed his soft doughy abdomen. She lifted the elastic band of his briefs, and tongued the skin beneath.

‘Oh,' he said, ‘I guess I really should propose.'

‘You really should,' she agreed.

32

The next week, Tricia quit working at Osiris without saying goodbye to the Kid. One day she simply did not appear at work, and Timothy off-handedly told him that Tricia had decided to ‘move on.' From the look on his face, it seemed the Kid knew exactly where Tricia had moved on to – specifically, Timothy's house and bedroom.

Timothy called a temp agency and asked for a replacement secretary, who appeared the same day: an overweight Russian woman who smelled like cigarette smoke and cheese blintzes.

Meanwhile activity at Osiris ground to a halt. After Barclays liquidated the yen position, Citigroup did the same the following day. Now the entire yen trade had been closed out at a staggering loss of fifty million dollars. Over half of Osiris' capital had vaporized in less than a month.

All that was left at this point was to wind down the firm, to calculate the final losses, send the last financial results to investors, and return their remaining money. There was the small issue of the CFTC subpoena, and of Pinky Dewer's lawsuit. Throwing in the towel, Timothy sent a check to Pinky for a bit less than half the amount Pinky had originally invested, lamely enclosing a handwritten note that apologized for the delay and for ‘the unexpected loss of capital.' It was the best he could do. He hoped for a miracle, that Pinky would then drop the lawsuit against him personally, but – not surprisingly – the lawsuit remained and Pinky refused to take his calls. The loss of sixteen million dollars, Timothy understood, tends to make people prickly.

There remained thirty-four million dollars of cash in Osiris' various brokerage accounts. But soon, Timothy knew, that
money would be returned to investors, and he would be left with nothing, except an expensive three-year lease on prime Palo Alto real estate, at least one lawsuit – possibly more – and a potential indictment on conspiracy and fraud charges.

And yet Timothy felt unburdened.

What was happening in his professional life was unpleasant but manageable. He could walk away from his career as a hedge fund manager. He never really enjoyed it anyway. For years, he had been able to make money, but he knew, secretly, that he was intellectually outgunned, in over his head – just lucky. When he'd started twenty years earlier, finance was a business about connections, about whom you knew, and who your friends were. To be successful required only that you had rich acquaintances and a pleasant manner, that you could call a Yale classmate on the phone, reminisce about the old days for a few minutes, and then ask for a five-million-dollar check. But, recently, the world had changed. The finance industry had opened its doors. Talent and intellect mattered. There were Indians now, people with strange exotic names, Chinese men who had never attended the Ivy League, and it wasn't uncommon to brush shoulders with men from Bangalore who held PhDs from schools Timothy had never heard of. The old world – of investing with your gut, of relying on the word of people you trusted, of cashing in on inside knowledge, of doing deals on a handshake – was being replaced by a world of spreadsheets and Monte Carlo simulations and black boxes and quants. It was time for men like Timothy to move on.

It didn't matter, anyway. Timothy's net worth was still tens of millions of dollars. His house in Palo Alto was worth three million dollars. He never needed to work again. Frank Arnheim was confident that Pinky Dewer's lawsuit was beatable, or at least could be quickly settled. Even the CFTC charges could be defeated, since the blow-up at Osiris was caused more by incompetence than by fraud – or at least that was the case that could legitimately be made, if only the Kid agreed to stay quiet.

So Timothy regarded his travails with equanimity. He thought of them as the price he was paying for getting Katherine back – a
kind of Conservation of Happiness principle. For every happiness in life there is an equal and opposite unhappiness. He had magically been given one more chance with Katherine. Ergo: his professional life would be destroyed. But it seemed like a fair price to pay for the woman he loved.

There was only one problem: the Kid.

He could make or break Timothy. If he said the right thing when he testified at the CFTC in Chicago, if he explained that Timothy had in fact followed all the rules, but had simply guessed wrong on the direction of the yen – an occupational hazard, after all – then Timothy would walk away unscathed. If, instead, he told the Commission that Timothy had ordered him to lie to investors and withhold financial statements, that he had issued blasé pronouncements about the state of Osiris while aware that it was losing money, he would seal Timothy's doom.