The Four Temperaments Read Online Free Page A

starfish. Even in sleep, she was immoderate, expansive and enticing. Very carefully, Oscar raised himself from his prone position. But she opened her eyes, instantly alert.
    â€œGood morning,” she said, holding out her arms. Afterward, he drifted off to sleep, and when he woke again, she was gone. There was a note on the pillow: “See you at the theater. Love & XXX G.”
    Oscar reached for his robe and, when he had put it on, took the note into the kitchen, where he read it one last time before setting it on fire in the sink. He longed to save it—love, she had written
love—
but he knew his own carelessness all too well. One day, Ruth would find it and then what? Better to let it remain in memory's private, sanctified eye. The note burned quickly and the ashes washed easily down the drain. Then he went into the bathroom for a long, hot shower. As he lathered himself, he marveled at how her impossibly young touch had made his old bones feel quite new.
    But euphoria evaporated quickly, to be replaced by a crushing sense of guilt and anxiety. How could he have betrayed Ruth? What would she do if she found out? Oscar gloomily predicted that she would find out, that the stink of guilt and deceit would rise up from his person and Ruth would wonder, wonder and recoil, at its rank smell. She would denounce him to his sons, leave him, and he would deserve it all. And, yet, he was sick with longing for the girl, scheming already about how he could meet her, touch her again.
    He called his lawyer and asked some discreet questions, for he still had some lingering worry about what Ginny had done in Mia McQuaid's apartment the night before. Warren Greenberg, his attorney of some twenty years, was not terribly helpful and Oscar felt no better as he put down the receiver.
    He was even more unsettled when he went back into the bedroom and saw his violin sitting precariously on top of the bureau, with the neck end jutting way over the edge. Although still in its case, Oscar knew how easily it could have been knocked over and damaged, perhaps even beyond repair. He quickly put it on the top shelf of the closet, in the spot where he always kept it when not in use. He had never forgotten to put it away before. But he must have been so addled last night, when he brought Ginny home, that he had, for the first time in memory, imperiled his instrument.
    This was no small matter. Oscar had owned this violin for longer than he had been married. It had been crafted by a Milanese maker in the middle of the nineteenth century, and its graceful, symmetrical curves, stained with an amber brown varnish, had become—when he played—a part of his own body. It had cost several thousand dollars at the time, the kind of money Oscar didn't have but had paid out slowly, as if it had been a mortgage. Musicians talked of “dating” an instrument when they were considering its purchase; Oscar could still remember others—a French twentieth-century instrument made by Delanoy; another by the German maker Ernst Heinrich Roth—that he dated before settling on the Milanese. Now that he was more established and financially well off, he sometimes fantasized about an instrument crafted by a legendary maker. How he would love the light, bright and open tones of a Stradivarius or the darker, more somber sounds of a Guarneri. But, no, he was wed as surely to this instrument as he was to Ruth.
    Ruth. She returned home from San Francisco later that day, filled with stories about Gabriel, Penelope and the baby. The trip had done her good, he could see that. Was it simply the pleasure of seeing her son and his family, or was it being away from Oscar? He had never had such a thought before; he had always relied on Ruth's unswerving devotion. But then he had never been unfaithful to her before and that astounding act seemed to throw all of his former assumptions into an unfamiliar and frightening configuration. He realized that he had