winging long brown hair and beautiful eyes, as any man's lover is described. In conflict with his neat, quiet, staid and conservative wife. When does one become the other? Is it some strange magic of the marriage bed whereby the metamorphosis is completed by sunrise and desire slowly begins to ebb between the couple? Never to be known, and so we should continue.

Carolina was one of many, and yet to his eyes she stood a little apart, perhaps a little taller, the way she laughed at what he said, the way her eyes would fold downwards shy, coy and teasing. Whether it was the time in his life that she first passed by his office door, the dissatisfaction with whatever the paper passing across his desk achieved, his marital loneliness and pretended domestic bliss, it's hard to say. Even in retrospect, there are no words that will unmake the rumpled bed that they shared, first only now and again, then more and more.

His lies grew, and his wife's silent pleas for his avowed promises to be fulfilled were never heard. The front door of his own home became a stranger to him, demanding more of him than he could deliver, and he hoped against hope that the mistress of her empty castle would be sleeping before he arrived home. Wordlessness and matter of need meant she pretended she slumbered soundly, not wanting to see the way his eyes danced away from hers, the deceit dripping from his lips like ugly black tar.

Carolina would lie in her bed, naked and spent, and beg him to stay with her the night, just the night, just tonight. But he left her again and again until the torture of it pained on her empty arms and left her unfulfilled and lost in the world of love that could only come alive in her mind. She never thought that he didn't love her enough to leave that silent, ghostly marriage that manacled him to panic whenever he glanced at the clock.

One night, late, but no later than usual (for his habit had grown past weekly to often), he found his wife sitting up, waiting in the lounge, the mute television's light flickering on her ghostly face, her eyes wide, clear and frightening. He stopped at the sight of her, but could not speak. The silence was old and deep between them, hard to break.

"I went to the doctor today," she said, her voice small, like a child's in the empty room.

He did not understand her words. He simply stared at her as if it was the first time he had seen her perhaps since the day she had answered, foolishly, yes; was seeing the moments of warmth between them, twisted through overlaid memory's eyes to tiny drops in a sea of pressure and pain.

"I'm pregnant." She spat the word at him, her mouth twisted into a sneer, and the hand lying across her belly took on a whole new meaning as he looked at the thinness of her boned fingers, grown old under his cruelty.

He still stood, but loosed his tie about his collar, brief case in hanging hand, unable to speak, unable to think, blinded and deafened by the sight of her suddenly in front of him. Demanding his attention.

He moved his head, dropped his eyes to one side, still not seeing, overwhelmed again with the scents of love-making and filled with guilt. Then he breathed a little, surprising himself with the action.

She stared at him, considering her mistake, her misplaced trust of him, the love that once bloomed for him quashed now by sleeplessness and lone rantings of hatred. He became nothing to her heart as he stood. The silence had clasped its long fingers around him and squeezed him until he had to make a sound, speak a word, form the first moment of reconciliation or run like the wind.

"Pregnant...," he said, his voice feeling foreign in his throat, not feeling the meaning of the word. "But how?" His eyes grasped hers again, looking for a way out, an escape from his trauma.

"Perhaps it was that wonderful facade of a birthday you gave me," she said caustically, suddenly, her neatness ruffled, her eyes afire.

"It's mine?" The words were out before he had thought them.

She stood and left the room, unable to give vent to her fury until it was fully grown. As her temper exploded within her, she slammed the bedroom door behind her, the soft carpet poison between her toes.

Still, he didn't move. Her absence from the room changed nothing. He felt his hand move to the knot at his throat, tugging, loosening, but bringing no relief. Silence still. His eyes turned to the muted television. Late night actors danced surreal across his mind. He was transfixed by them, and the numbness the cathode brought a welcome relief in his weakness.

The hand clasped around the handle of his briefcase loosened and he was suddenly relieved of the weight of his day. The case hit the floor with a thud, spilling its old paper guts across the floor. A flicker of concern knocked on his consciousness, but he turned his attention away.

He ran his hand through his hair, feeling the ridiculous vanity of gel. It was for Carolina that he used it. It made him feel younger, more decisive. To slick back his hair in the mirror gave him the life of a gangster for just a moment.

As he brought his hand from his head, he looked at it in disbelief, as if only then, at that moment, he had found where he was. He saw the man's hand that had replaced the child's hand he once had. He saw the wedding band that he had so willingly ignored, and was mesmerized by its solidity, its goldeness.

pstairs she cradled her belly. A child! What a strange, unfathomable thing had come to her. As she quieted her sobs, she listened for sounds downstairs, wondering what he would do. Wondering if he was indeed still in the house at all. She heard the sound of his case hit the floor and sharpened her ears for more, sardonically pleased that they finally had something to talk about.

Unconsciously, her hand moved across her belly, tracing ellipses across the rounded dome, feeling the smooth texture of the warm skin, already soothing the life that had begun, uninvited and unlikely, in her blood.

Steve slumped on the couch, feeling but not feeling, digesting the knowledge that had been slapped across his face. He would let Carolina go. He knew the breath of change, and could feel it in his face. Breathing in he called her, talking so that his quieted wife upstairs would be listening.

"Hello?"

She answered and breathed the love they enjoyed through the wires to him again. The sweetness of her voice tore at his heart, and her desire for him gutted him to the very core.

"Look, umm.... I can't do this anymore," he said, sounding weak and undecided, almost believing that he could continue with her.

"My wife is having... my wife and I...," he said as both women listened in breathless silence. "We ... well, we are having a baby."

The finality of the words sliced through the air, outside down the shining wire, cutting across quiet city blocks with terrible certainty, under the feet of sleeping birds who did not listen, but minded their own affairs instead, and landed in Carolina's ear.

"I love you," he whispered to her. "I love you." And as a bubble of tears rose in her throat, he broke the connection.

he child came soon and healthy, and the bond that it brought to the house was a gusting change that swept so much away. Neither parent had time to think, and for a year the baby demanded attention, grew, gurgled and blossomed.

It was only at first in the hospital, standing by the bedside with father's pride in hand, that the specter of his beautiful lover managed to cross the barrier of the new family he had found.

"It's a girl," they had said. And, after thinking for but a little while, his wife looked at him with eyes dissolved in softness and delight and said "Can we call her Carolina?"

As his knees weakened beneath him, he could do nothing but nod.