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"That's great, Walt," Garp said.

"It's not my fault," Walt complained.

"Of course it isn't," Garp said.

"Yes, it is," Duncan said. "Walt spends half his life in puddles."

"I do not!" Walt said.

"Look for a movie that looks interesting, Duncan," Garp said.

"I can't see unless I kneel between the seats," Duncan said.

They drove around. The movie houses were all on the same block but they had to drive past them a few times to decide upon which movie, and then they had to drive by them a few more times before they found a place to park.

The children chose to see the only film that had a line waiting to see it, extending out from under the cinema marquee along the sidewalk, streaked now with a freezing rain. Garp put his own jacket over Walt's head, so that very quickly Walt resembled some ill-clothed street beggar--a damp dwarf seeking sympathy in bad weather. He promptly stepped in a puddle and soaked his feet; Garp then picked him up and listened to his chest. It was almost as if Garp thought the water in Walt's wet shoes dripped immediately into his little lungs.

"You're so weird, Dad," Duncan said.

Walt saw a strange car and pointed it out. The car moved quickly down the soaked street; splashing through the garish puddles, it threw the reflected neon upon itself--a big dark car, the color of clotted blood; it had wooden slats on its sides, and the blond wood glowed in the streetlights. The slats looked like the ribs of the long, lit skeleton of a great fish gliding through moonlight. "Look at that car!" Walt cried.

"Wow, it's a hearse," Duncan said.

"No, Duncan

," Garp said. "It's an old Buick. Before your time."

The Buick that Duncan mistook for a hearse was on its way to Garp's house, although Helen had done all she could to discourage Michael Milton from coming.

"I can't see you," Helen told him when she called. "It's as simple as that. It's over, just the way I said it would be if he ever found out. I won't hurt him any more than I already have."

"What about me?" Michael Milton said.

"I'm sorry," Helen told him. "But you knew. We both knew."

"I want to see you," he said. "Maybe tomorrow?"

But she told him that Garp had taken the kids to a movie for the sole purpose that she finish it tonight.

"I'm coming over," he told her.

"Not here, no," she said.

"We'll go for a drive," he told her.

"I can't go out, either," she said.

"I'm coming," Michael Milton said, and he hung up.

Helen checked the time. It would be all right, she supposed, if she could get him to leave quickly. Movies were at least an hour and a half long. She decided she wouldn't let him in the house--not under any circumstances. She watched for the headlights to come up the driveway, and when the Buick stopped--just in front of the garage, like a big ship docking at a dark pier--she ran out of the house and pushed herself against the driver's-side door before Michael Milton could open it.

The rain was turning to a semisoft slush at her feet, and the icy drops were hardening as they fell--they had some sting as they struck her bare neck, when she bent over to speak to him through the rolled-down window.

He immediately kissed her. She tried to lightly peck his cheek but he turned her face and forced his tongue into her mouth. All over again she saw the corny bedroom of his apartment: the poster-sized print above his bed--Paul Klee's Sinbad the Sailor. She supposed this was how he saw himself: a colorful adventurer, but sensitive to the beauty of Europe.

Helen pulled back from him and felt the cold rain soak her blouse.

"We can't just stop," he said, miserably. Helen couldn't tell if it was the rain through the open window or tears that streaked his face. To her surprise, he had shaved his mustache off, and his upper lip looked slightly like the puckered, undeveloped lip of a child--like Walt's little lip, which looked lovely on Walt, Helen thought; but it wasn't her idea of the lip for a lover.