FOR A WHILE I just stood there. Popeye, my new dinner partner, purred against my leg.

I guess, like some spurned high school kid, I was hoping that Ellen might have second thoughts and come back. I had this feeling that the weight of our relationship was suddenly hinging on a hope no stronger than that.

But there was no sound on the stairs. No saving key in the door. I was thirty-eight, head of a major anticrime task force, a big shot in the FBI, and here I was scooping out a container of pasta meant for two-a stranger in my own home.

The silence was suddenly orchestral.

I went into the bedroom and took off my tie and jacket, then checked in the study for a fax. There was a long brick wall covered with bookshelves. Most of the books were from my days at school, and there were a few of Ellen's medical texts. The desk was piled high with briefs from Cavello's trial. On the wall there was a large framed black-and-orange banner:

PRINCETON 1989 IVY LEAGUE FOOTBALL CHAMPS

I had bones that still ached just thinking of those days.

I took the pasta and some wine into the living room and sat there with my feet propped up on an old steamer trunk that acted as a coffee table. I picked up the book I'd been reading, Clinton'sMy Life, and found the page where I'd left off, on the Camp David Middle East peace talks. I thought about turning on the Knicks game. After a few minutes I lifted my eyes without reading a single page.

Did I love her? Was this going to work? Ellen was terrific, but right now we were just going in different directions. And this trial wasn't going to help.

Are you going to fight for this, Nicky?

I reached for Popeye."C'mon, you look like you could use a date."

I grabbed my old college alto sax from the corner and, with Popeye in hand, went up to the roof. This was where I worked it out sometimes.

It was a cold, clear night. The stars were out over Manhattan. The Empire State Building was lit up red, white, and blue. Across the river, Jersey City might've been Paris, it so dazzled with lights. So I sat there, a few days before the most important trial of my life, Ellen's cat purring at my feet, and played.