

### Before the Mellowing Year

### Book One, Part I

### by

### Jeffrey Anderson

Copyright 2017 by Jeffrey Anderson

Smashwords Edition

This story is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Though this e-book is being distributed for free, it remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be reprinted or reproduced without the permission of the author. If you like this book, please encourage your friends to download a copy at Smashwords.

Yet once more, O ye Laurels, and once more

Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never sere,

I come to pluck your Berries harsh and crude,

And with forc'd fingers rude,

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.

"Lycidas" vv. 1 – 5

John Milton

9 January 2012

My darling Shannon—

Hugs and kisses from this dear old and far off dad.

It has not escaped my notice (as I'm sure it has not escaped yours!) that you are fast approaching the midpoint of your third decade of life. At this somewhat auspicious juncture, I am reminded that I have long since ceased to be able to protect you physically, and that my ability to shield you from emotional harm is fast fading. You are, as I am almost daily reminded in my frequent thoughts of you, very much on your own.

This realization is made all the more pointed when one considers that, in early 21st century America, the mid-twenties are the age at which most people stand on the threshold of adulthood, a period when choices made and actions taken will impact the rest of your life and will set you, for better or worse, on the path of your future. It is an interesting aside to note that, in America at least, the age of entrance into adulthood has steadily risen in recent generations, as rising life expectancy and wealth has allowed young persons (and their doting/coddling parents) to prolong adolescence, and forestall adulthood and its permanent responsibilities and contingencies.

So it is acutely frustrating to this doting dad that he cannot protect or meaningfully direct his only daughter as she begins this inevitable, and ultimately healthy and enriching, process of determining her future. How could I hope to? And, even if I could, I wouldn't want to (or, at least, shouldn't want to!).

But, but—

The simple truth of the matter is that I've never had much ability to influence your destiny or dictate your choices. Even before your birth and in all the years since, I've well known that the factors and people and fates in your life that lay outside my control far overwhelmed those few that might bend to my shaping. I have no shortage of will; but I knew from the start that all my gathered strength of intention would be helpless to guarantee your safety or success.

So how then, you might reasonably ask, have I managed to endure this realization of helplessness in the face of my most significant duty? Well, quite simply, I've given you all I had to offer and trusted God to make it be enough. And all I had to offer was my undiluted knowledge of how the world worked and how to survive within those parameters. I told you all I knew and showed you all I knew, as occasions and questions arose, and often times before those occasions and questions arose. Many would say—and did say—that I was giving you information before you were ready to understand it. Many would say—and did say—that I gave you responsibilities and freedoms before you were ready to accept or balance them. And I admit, from this safe side of such wholesale sharing, that I was well aware of the risk of my approach. But the way I saw it, I had no choice. To hold back would've been to accept a greater danger—the danger of denying you the knowledge and strength to find your way and make good choices during all those times you were beyond my safeguard.

—which brings me to my last and maybe greatest risk in sharing with you all I know about the world. When I was a couple years younger than you are now (recall my comment that the age of entry into adulthood rises with each generation), I initiated, or had bestowed upon me, a series of choices and actions that affected everything in my life that followed. And virtually all of these actions and choices centered around, and were influenced by, two people I fell in love with—within a few months of each other—at that time. One of those two you know well—his almost daily presence for thirty-three years touched and shaped every aspect of my life, is still shaping it even though he's been dead nearly a year. The other love you know nothing about. In fact, no one now living knows how profoundly this love shaped me and all in my life that came after.

So it is the story of these two people, and how they intersected with me at a propitious time in my life, that truly explains who I am, that tells the story of how I was set in the channel of my future—a future that one day came to include you. It is this story that is the last installment of what I have to give to help guide your life. I offer it now in the same clear knowledge as my other reckless offerings—that the potential benefits of this honesty are nearly matched by the risks, in this case risks of disillusionment, misunderstanding, confusion. And my answer is the same as it has been since the day you were born—I'll take my chance with imparting whole truth and let God figure out the rest.

So here it is: my last story.

Love you always—

Dad

P.S. Like a lot of stories, this one starts awhile before the real story. In this case, it starts about two years before the real story, at a time when I thought I was making adult choices but still had the mind and maturity of an adolescent. Consequently, those choices were adolescent choices disguised as adult choices. The adult choices, and all their demands and rewards and permanent scars, still lay some ways in the future. But I'll get to them, eventually, if you follow that far.

### Book One, Part I

Wyoming

Thirty-two hours on the road with only five short stops for gas, take-out food, and bladder relief didn't keep Zachary Sandstrom from bolting upright in the motel bed just two hours into a sound sleep that should've lasted at least ten. All his senses instantly on edge, he struggled to figure out where he was and what had waked him. Pale light leaked in around curtains and gradually revealed a room perhaps twelve feet square with a door to his right beside the curtains and another to his left. Straight ahead, a dark hole in the slightly lighter wall resolved itself into a T.V. screen atop a dresser. This slow unmasking of his surroundings did little to assuage Zach's fear, as everything he saw in the dim light seemed charged with threat, or at least a possible hiding place for it.

Then he noticed the pale white shape resting at the foot of the bed and instantly knew it was Gina, his five-year-old Brittany spaniel in her normal nocturnal spot even if this wasn't their normal bed or room. Then he saw the dark silhouette of a body beside him and realized with sudden calm, as if this knowledge were the single most important piece of information he'd ever gained or ever would know, that this was his wife of just over two days—Allison Mayes, now (he reminded himself) Allison Sandstrom. He leaned over and inhaled the herbal fragrance of her freshly washed hair and the earthier scent of her skin. He knew both scents well, felt like he'd known them all his life. In fact, he'd known Allison almost four years, since they'd begun dating when he was a junior in high school and she a freshman. But he'd never awakened in bed beside her. Last night, they'd been on the road in Pennsylvania and Ohio; two nights ago, their first as a married couple, they'd slept apart in their old beds in the their old rooms, separated by five miles of country roads he'd nearly worn out with his frequent trips back and forth in courtship and betrothal.

But he'd never known her as wife, never waked beside her free to extend a hand unimpeded by the old sexual mores (however much they'd ignored them over the years) and claim her skin as his own, make for themselves one flesh in a manner practiced but now suddenly and strangely new. Yet Zach did not extend that hand, did not claim that chance now offered for the first time—he did not know why. If asked, he would've replied casually—let her sleep; she's earned her rest. But that wasn't the reason at all. The real reason lay far, far away and buried deep—farther away than Zach had ever been, buried deeper than he could or would dig: a treasure waiting a map.

So instead he reached out and touched his dog, found unerring the soft spot behind her floppy ears. Gina, perhaps every bit as deserving of her rest as Allison, still managed to rouse in the old familiar way, returning the press of his hand with a slow tilt of her head and a quiver of her stub tail he could feel from beneath the sheets.

He rose from the bed and in the dim light pulled on his jeans and T-shirt from where they lay across the chair's arm. He hooked Gina's leash to her collar and gently lifted her off the bed so she wouldn't have to jump into the unfamiliar dark. Then he silently opened the door and led her outside. She'd have to pee sometime during the night—might as well be now, since he was awake anyway.

He stood on the walk and looked across the well-lit parking lot. Their beat-up Chevy carryall van was parked directly in front of their room. A few other cars anchored slots in front of other doors. On the far side of the lot, a couple tractor trailer rigs consumed whole rows of spaces with their length and girth. It hardly mattered, though; empty parking spaces abounded despite those sacrificed to the rigs. Beyond the broad parking lot, the Omaha skyline lurked in mostly shadow. The rare lit window in one of the office buildings ringing the horizon only accentuated the prevailing darkness. Clearly Omaha slept after dusk, its residents still governed by the diurnal cycles that prevailed in the surrounding plains. Zach felt a brief shiver start at his bare feet and move up and over his calves and thighs and torso and neck and head. The shiver arose not from cool air, for it was a warm and humid night, but from a combination of the foreboding he'd felt on waking and the loneliness he felt now in this dark and dormant city. Yet, on the flip side of this foreboding and loneliness, perhaps as much a cause of the shiver as these, he felt a sudden and unprecedented excitement. The world within this ring of darkened buildings and, most emphatically, the world beyond was now finally and fully his to explore, to engage, to know.

Gina strained against the leash and led him down the walkway to the right. He trailed her lead past empty rooms with curtains opened, occupied rooms with curtains drawn. He couldn't help but wonder who lay in the beds beyond those closed curtains, not five feet from his striding. Were they young or old, handsome or homely, thrilled as he by new environs or jaded by frequent travel? What would they tell you if you asked? What could you see if you looked? But in all the rooms with curtains drawn, only darkness framed the edges—no answers offered, no tales shared.

Gina found a patch of wilted weeds between the parking lot and a boarded-up gas station, and squatted to do her business. Zach looked around, then unzipped his pants and left his mark, thinking, "The adventure starts here." He finished, took one more look at the broad dark horizon, then turned to the motel. By then, Gina was tugging back toward the room and sleep.

2

Allison's Uncle Pete stood holding a metal tray with six large bowls of steaming chili and a basket of cornbread. His barrel-chest and thick arms made the tray look small and delicate despite the sizable bounty it carried. Zach and Allison were seated on one side of the table, Allison's Gramma Jane and cousin Amy across from them, and Aunt Ruth at the far end. Pete gave a sly grin, then said, "We've got hot, medium, and mild. What's your pleasure, Zach?" His words had a forcefulness that may or may not have been intended.

Zach shunned spicy food, but couldn't bring himself to request mild. "Medium sounds good," he answered.

Pete feigned surprise. "You're sure?"

Zach looked to the women for guidance but found only gently grinning faces.

"This is western chili, Zach. None of that east-coast pansy stuff."

Zach saw he was trapped now. "Medium's good." From the corner of his eye he saw Ruth stifle a chuckle.

Uncle Pete passed out bowls of chili to each of the women, then gave Zach his, and ended by setting a bowl at his own place at the head of the table. Once he set the tray on the kitchen counter and returned to sit down, Aunt Ruth said, "Mamma, would you please bless the food?"

Gramma Jane bowed her head and said with sharp annunciation and full volume, "God of life, give us the grace of your Son and the power of your Spirit along with these gifts of food and drink, that we might use them to meet the challenges ahead, till the day we find ourselves at your heavenly feast. Amen."

Pete said, "Let's eat."

Well, Zach's chili was hot—hotter than anything he'd ever tasted or dreamed of tasting, though the sensation of having his mouth on fire hardly qualified as tasting. Worse, the large glass of water he quickly downed didn't help relieve the fire; it only made it spread down his throat and into his stomach. The cornbread he wolfed to try to smother the fire didn't help either. He saw Pete watching him. He did his best not to show his discomfort. Beads of sweat appeared on his forehead; he wiped them away with his napkin, then grabbed another napkin, then another. He kept eating the chili. Eventually his mouth grew numb. After a while, he reached the bottom of the bowl.

Pete nodded approval from the head of the table. "Want more, Zach?"

Zach said, "Sure."

"Want to try the hot?"

"Medium's good. Need to work my way up to the hot."

Pete brought him back a bowl of chili that was not nearly as spicy as the first. Zach found himself almost missing the kick—almost.

After dinner, Allison and Zach lingered at the table with Ruth and Pete while Amy and Gramma washed dishes in the kitchen. Pete and Ruth had big mugs of steaming coffee in front of them; Ruth had found some teabags buried in the pantry for Allison's tea, and Zach stuck with water—his fourth glass. Pete said, "Now let me get this straight—you want to camp on the prairie?"

Zach looked to Allison, who was looking at her tea, gently pushing the teabag against the side of her cup with a spoon. He said, "That's the plan, yes."

"No shade from the sun during the day, near freezing overnight?"

Zach said, "We'll manage."

"Ticks, scorpions, rattlesnakes."

Allison looked up quickly, splashing a few drops of tea from her cup.

Ruth said, "Pete, stop."

Pete shrugged. "Just telling it like it is. Seems like a strange honeymoon to me, but what do I know?"

Ruth looked to Allison. "Hardly any snakes out there nowadays, Honey. Snakehunters got most of them."

Zach said, "We want to try it." What he didn't add was that he thought he wanted to be a homesteader, at least in a recurrent dream of his; and he'd imposed this dream on Allison who, six weeks out of high school, had no clearly defined goals to counter Zach's. So this camping venture would be a test for them both.

Pete looked at Allison. "And you, Sweety?"

Ruth said, "Pete!"

Allison said, "I'll try it," but with little conviction or enthusiasm.

Pete said, "O.K., then. In the morning I'll lead you to our camp by the river—best piece of land in our summer range. There used to be a sheepwagon down there, if hunters or the coyotes haven't torn it up."

"Sheepwagon?" Allison asked.

Ruth said, "A little like a modern-day Conestoga wagon—with rubber tires and a curved tin roof. Set up with a small woodstove for cooking and heat, and a raised platform across the back for a mattress: cozy, but functional. I kept house in one for a couple weeks, when Pete and I were first married and he had to cover for a herder in the hospital with appendicitis."

Zach said, "See."

Ruth smiled. "Never so glad to keep back to a real bed—with room to roll around!"

Zach said, "We have a mattress in the carryall. We can sleep there and use the sheepwagon for cooking and eating."

Pete nodded. "I'll come by Jane's in the morning to get you; 5:30."

Zach nodded. Allison looked at her empty cup.

3

With a pink dawn breaking over the sage desert and the mountains in the distance already showing snowy peaks, Zach thought he'd waked into the heaven of his oldest dream—wide-open spaces of beauty and rigor, no sign of human habitation or contamination (except for Pete's truck kicking up dust ahead on the twisting gravel road). Allison was curled into a ball on the passenger seat, her head on a pillow against the door. "Wake me when we get there," she'd said two minutes into the hour-long trip, though the twists and turns and ruts and potholes would pretty much guarantee she'd not be able to sleep. Gina sat between them, leaning eagerly into each turn and slope, her nose twitching excitedly at all the new smells.

Zach slowed a little to get out of Pete's dust and afford himself a better chance to survey the broad new landscape revealing itself in all directions. From the spine of hills they travelled along, he could look to the east at an endless plain of sage desert, glowing pale grayish-green in the dawn light. How could anything not the ocean stretch for that far? He could start walking into the sun and go for days without crossing a person or house. How could land be this big? And to the west, between these low hills and the lurking shadows of the Wind River Mountains in the far distance, the land took on shape and variety—two stark buttes thrust up from the valley floor like altars, twisting thin lines that must've been roads but looked like marks made by a child with a stick, a meandering stripe of dense green that must've been a river in the middle distance, then low beige hills undulating into a dim horizon claimed by the mighty mountains. This was a different planet from the close confines of his childhood in the Connecticut River valley, where every inch had been repeatedly marked by human touch or footprint, including his own. Here those marks, where they existed at all, were few and far between. Here was room for new marks, press of flesh against that which had only known the touch of God.

Pete's truck, now nearly a half-mile ahead, slowed then turned right onto a black asphalt highway. He stopped in the middle of the highway to wait till Zach had turned onto the pavement, then raced ahead at what seemed warp speed after the slow bouncing trip along the gravel road. The now familiar endless expanse of sage desert bounded the highway on both sides, and the only signs of human activity besides the asphalt were the long lines of barbed-wire fencing occasionally broken by entrances with cattle-guard grates. A few miles ahead, they passed a low diner and gas station to their left, then crossed a bridge over a narrow river with thick brush along its banks. A quarter mile farther, Pete turned left and crossed one of those cattle guards and began kicking up dust again on an even narrower and more deeply rutted track than the one earlier. They crossed a one-lane wooden bridge over what must've been the same river they'd crossed on the highway, curled over a low hill, then descended a long slope down toward an oasis of green in the midst of the gray desert. By then, they'd abandoned any hint of road and were simply driving across the desert, stirring up sagebrush and tumbleweeds as they went. Zach couldn't help but wonder what would happen to them and their van if heavy rain turned this dry firm desert into a quagmire. But he quickly forgot this fear as Pete circled around a clump of scraggly trees and pulled alongside a wagon with a tin roof glinting in the early sun.

Pete was out of his truck and checking out the wagon even before Zach pulled alongside the pick-up and cut the engine. He looked to Allison, whose head was buried deep in her pillow. "Wake up sleepyhead; we've arrived at our honeymoon paradise." Gina was jumping on his lap, sniffing out the open window and pawing at the handle. He opened the door and the two of them—dog and master—half-fell, half-stepped out into the desert morning.

Pete poked his head out the wagon door. His bulk filled the entire opening and he tilted his head to one side to keep from hitting it on the door jamb. "In better shape than I expected. Roof is tight, no mice nests, even got firewood." He gestured toward some sticks and small branches next to the pot-bellied stove with a rusty stovepipe sticking out the roof. He jumped to the ground, skipping the two narrow steps up into the wagon. "Tires are flat."

Zach looked at the cracked rubber tires on rusty rims—all four flat and sunk into the sandy soil.

"But then I don't guess you'll be going anywhere."

Zach smiled. "Nowhere else to go. Nowhere else to be."

Pete looked at him for a long moment. Zach wished he could see his eyes, but they were masked by his reflector sunglasses.

Allison appeared from behind the van, still clutching her pillow. She seemed a little wobbly in the brittle clear air.

"You O.K. Sweety? Look a little pale."

She smiled. "Still waking up, Uncle Pete. Not quite used to these frontier hours."

"You'll get used to it out here—no way to sleep past dawn, no way to stay awake past dark."

"Guess I will."

Zach said, "Look."

The others turned to see Gina locked tight as a statue, on point about fifty yards away beside a clump of low bushes.

Pete grinned. "Grouse."

Sure enough—a dozen pigeon-sized birds suddenly flushed from the bushes and flew off low and fast in all directions. Gina, her training still in place despite the strange environs, held her ground but looked around as if to ask, "What do I do now?"

Zach waved his arm, a signal that freed her to continue her hunt.

4

"Got to be here somewhere," Zach muttered as he hacked his way through some thick brush, swinging a bat-sized branch like a dull machete. He finally gave up trying to hack through the tangle of branches and turned around and pushed his way backwards into the thicket, determined to break through by brute force. He leaned into the tangle and pushed with all the strength in his legs. The wall suddenly gave way and he fell into a clearing with the sun beating down mercilessly.

Allison walked up and stood over him, shading him for the moment from the sun. "Maybe we should go back to Gramma's. We can come out here during the day."

He looked up at her while he caught his breath. Backlit by the sun, her face was a featureless silhouette. Gina ran over and licked his cheek and mouth. He rolled over and stood, brushed off his jeans and t-shirt. "We'll find it," he said, and dove back into the brush with Gina fast on his heels.

The "it" he was referring to was a spring Pete said lay somewhere between the sheepwagon and the river. It would be their source of drinking and cooking water; without it, they'd have to periodically return to civilization to replenish their water jugs. They'd already found their way to the river, running fast and shallow through its pebbly channel. Pete had said they could probably drink from it, but they might pick up a stray molecule of fecal matter from the livestock and wildlife that frequented its banks. That implicit prospect of having the trots out here with only a hole in the ground for a toilet guaranteed that they wouldn't be using the river for drinking water. They'd have to find the spring or return to the highway and beg or pay for water from the diner owner.

Allison shook her head and headed back for the van, where she'd try to find enough shade and cool to read or take a nap.

Zach broke through into a small clearing and discovered a bleached ram's skull hanging a few feet off the ground, the curl of its horns hopelessly tangled in the brush. With no sign of the rest of the skeleton, the skull hung there like a signpost, a totem that Zach couldn't help but read as warning. But warning of what? To steer clear of this thicket? This camp? This wilderness trial? Gina came around from behind and trotted ahead. She too saw the skull and ran forward to it, paused and stretched her neck to sniff the bleached bone. She then sniffed the ground below, suddenly threw herself on her side and rolled onto her back, thrashing in an almost ecstatic trance, her paws pointed to the sky. Then just as quickly she righted herself, shook vigorously, and ran ahead into the brush. Zach followed her lead, leaving the ram's skull where it hung.

He found the spring a few minutes later, in another small clearing, this one covered with thick, lush grass fed by the spring's run-off. He knelt beside the shallow depression and reached down into the pool. The shockingly cold water numbed his fingers. He cupped a little in his hand and raised it to his face. He sniffed it. It smelled clean and, he thought, almost soft (if water could smell soft), especially when compared to the brittle and sharp edges of everything else in this new land. He touched it to his chin, brushed it against his lips, finally licked it with the tip of his tongue. It tasted cold and clean and sweet. He nodded to himself, then to the sky above. He could dig out the spring with their camp shovel, line it with clean rocks, and use it for water long as they stayed.

Back at the camp, he opened the side door to the van and saw Allison lying on the mattress reading. "I found it," he said. She nodded but didn't look up from her magazine. He got the shovel from under the seat and returned to their new-found water source.

5

Who would've thought that fried Spam, cornbread griddlecakes, and pintos out of the can simmered with a little sidemeat, all served on a plastic plate, would taste like a meal fit for a king? But that's exactly how Zach felt as he sat in the prairie twilight in the lawn chair Pete had left them basking in the sated glow of that meal heavy on carbohydrates and not much else. At least part of his satisfaction derived from the frontier-style self-sufficiency that had produced the meal. He'd brought their drinking and cooking water up from the freshly cleared spring, made the fire in the cookstove, and managed to prepare the entire meal while only scorching the first two griddlecakes (which Gina was nonetheless happy to devour). So now, as that self-crowned king, he leaned back against the nylon chair strapping and gazed past the sheepwagon out over his new kingdom, across the broad plain of sage prairie to the snowy peaks beyond which the sun had just set. This was certainly a different and, in many ways, surreal world; but its prospects looked good.

"Is this a vacation, or something more?" Allison asked. She was sitting in the open doorway to the sheepwagon, her feet on the steps.

In the evening shadows, with the wagon backlit by that fading sunset, it was difficult for Zach to see her silhouette, and her face was totally obscured. He looked again at the distant mountains. Their peaks had already faded from pink to lavender—that fast. "This camp?"

"No, this state—Wyoming."

"Do we have to decide now?"

"We should've decided before we ever left home."

"Why?"

"Mom wants to know. Gramma and Aunt Ruth want to know."

"So what."

"Zach, I want to know."

"Because?"

"Because it matters. Because I want to know how long I'll be living out of two shoe boxes and a milk crate. Because I want to know when I'll have a shower and a toilet that flushes. Because I want to know if I'll have a bedroom where I can stand up or a kitchen bigger than a coat closet. Because I want to know—that's all."

The prairie had turned into an unbroken plain of charcoal sameness, the mountains obsidian teeth gnawing at the ink-blue sky. Stars had suddenly appeared—hundreds, thousands. Zach lunged forward out of his chair, closed the few yards between them in two long strides, found Allison's pale face out of the deeper dark of the doorway, and gently cradled her chin in his two warm hands. "Soon," he whispered, then kissed her forehead.

He found his way to the van in the new dark and opened the driver's side door, releasing the dome light's three watts on the potent night. He switched the ignition to accessory and pushed a Renaissance cartridge into the eight-track tape player. The plaintive instruments and haunting soprano of "Ocean Gypsy" blossomed into the stillness. Somewhere out there on the prairie the music would fade to silence; but right here, between the van and the wagon, these familiar notes were all the assurance Zach needed. He left the door open, its light on. He moved around to the back of the van to unhook Gina from her chain latched to the trailer hitch, then walked off with her into the shadows.

When they got back from their walk—a slow circuit at the outermost edges of the van's pale light—the music was off and Allison was in her pj shorts and tanktop sitting cross-legged under the covers playing solitaire by the light of a battery-powered camp lantern. Zach lifted Gina onto her bed on the front seat, then slid off his boots and stripped down to his boxer shorts while standing just outside the van's rear doors. The desert air had cooled quickly with the setting of the sun, and Zach started shivering uncontrollably. He opened the van's doors and leapt onto the mattress, slamming the doors behind him and pulling the sheet and blanket over his freezing body and all the way up over his head. In the process, he sent Allison's cards flying in all directions.

"Zach!"

He peeked out from under the covers, holding the two of clubs in his mouth like a prize bone, or peace offering.

"I would've won," she said, collecting the scattered cards. "Give me that," she added, grabbing the card out of his mouth.

He slid his hand under the covers and found the softness of her bare inner thigh. "I did win," he whispered, his shivering fading.

"You always do," she said as she set the cards on the wheel well and switched off the light.

How do bodies know? And what do they know? And what do they tell? Or keep secret?

All the parts were the same, the nerve endings too—smell and taste, purr and moan and request, light streaks just back of closed eyes, and the touch, oh the touch, luscious touch, again—familiar lips to lips, cheek, earlobe, eyelid brush, tongue to tongue, along teeth, hollow of neck, shoulder, breast, navel, gentle parting of already parted seas. All this the same.

Yet, different, a difference known first in the skin:

The place—threatening wilderness pressing in from all sides and above and below, past glass and steel, floorboards and mattress, past coarse woven wool and finely weaved pima, pressed up tight against joined and joining very skin.

And the distance—more than two thousand miles removed from the locus of all their previous unions, far as the moon, as Pluto lonely in interstellar orbit wander.

And, most different of all, their title—husband-wife, one entity in the eyes of the world, one flesh defined even before touching, even without touching.

But maybe not one flesh each before the other, maybe now for the first time since mating four years past, two fleshes—the cosmic puzzle pieces shifted, the interlocks not interlocking, no key to fit.

Not that any of these lethal challenges halted their gradual slow creep then staccato quickening lunge then ease back then slowly quickened then heart-bursting quickened ecstatic rush into blinding flash collapse, into the soft fall into the practiced familiar cushioned melting that was now irreversibly changed.

Yet their skin knew—right there in that wilderness blank, in the first union of their disuniting—what for the longest time their hearts and minds couldn't decipher.

6

The sun rose on fourteen hours of uninterrupted sunlight. Then again. Then again.

They fell into a comfortable daily rhythm defined, as Pete had predicted, by the clockless diurnal cycle of the wilderness. They would wake shortly after dawn (nothing else to do, with sun pouring through the windows like a searchlight), stumble clumsily and still half-asleep through their waking hygiene (Zach brushing his teeth with water from a tin cup while seated in his boxers on the wagon steps, launching a thin iridescent arc of toothpaste froth into the crisp dawn; Allison scrubbing her face with astringent-soaked cotton balls in the van; both with quick trips to the brush-screened frigid latrine hole with its inverted plastic bucket with the bottom cut out as a toilet seat), then Zach would feed Gina while Allison put together a light breakfast of Cheerios (Allison's swimming in evaporated milk from the can, Zach's dry) and Tang mixed with spring water in color-coded plastic cups (Allison's turquoise, Zach's gold).They'd wash their few dishes together, Allison scrubbing them in soapy cold water in a plastic dish pan and handing each piece to Zach, who dried it and set it on the wood shelf opposite the stove inside the wagon.

Breakfast completed, they'd head off into their mainly separate morning activities. Allison tended to stay near the van, sometimes dabbling in her water color paints, sometimes reading from her six-month reserve of teen magazines, sometimes writing letters to her school chums back home. Zach always went for a hike, sometimes with Gina for company, other times alone. His hikes always started in the direction of the river flowing shallow and fast a hundred yards or so beyond their camp, behind the screen of thick brush. Sometimes he'd head upstream, sometimes down. He could cross to the far side, where the underbrush was thinner and easier to navigate, by walking upstream to the wooden bridge they'd crossed on their way in, or by crossing the river at one of two shallow fords, taking off his boots and socks and shoving the socks deep into the boots and hanging the boots around his neck by the laces tied together and crossing with his pants rolled up and his bare feet and legs quickly turning blue and numb in the frigid clear water. Sometimes Zach would take the fishing pole Pete had left him and catch grasshoppers before the sun had warmed their wings and use them as bait to fish for the rainbow trout he could see pointed like darts into the current where the river curved and cut a deeper channel against the bank. He let most of the fish he caught go, but an especially big one swallowed the hook and after more than five minutes of a bloody struggle to remove it, he gave up and whacked the traumatized rainbow with a stick to put it out of its misery. He used the pocketknife Allison had given him last Christmas to slit open the fish's white belly and gutted the fish by pressing two fingers tight to the underside of the spine and jerking downward toward the tail. He tossed the guts into the river and saw several fish lunge for the bloody remains. He brought the fish back to the camp to eat for lunch. He lit a small fire in the stove, heated the cast-iron pan, coated the fish in cornmeal, and fried it in bacon fat. At first Allison scrunched up her nose at the prospect of trout for lunch; but by the time Zach had finished frying it crisp and golden brown in the bacon fat, she'd changed her mind. The fish was a tasty treat after all these meals out of a can or a box.

After lunch (where the fare, when not trout, included such delicacies as peanut-butter sandwiches or sliced corned beef—from a can—and mustard on bread turned to crisp toast by simply leaving it in the sun and bone-dry wind for two minutes), the two of them and Gina would do something together. This included hikes into the low hills away from the river. Out there they found narrow canyons cut by rivers from ages past, shallow caves hollowed out by those same bygone waters, caves with the bones and scat and other leavings of wild animals and half-wild humans. They discovered bits of jade and other possible semi-precious stones in a freshly opened cliff-side vein. They found the deep ruts of an old wagon trail, probably a spur from the original Oregon Trail, snaking along within sight of the river but not impeded by the river's thickets and brush.

Early in the afternoon of their fourth day in the wilderness, Pete dropped off a box of supplies—mostly more of the beloved canned meat and beans, along with a bag of fresh lemons. "Ruth said you could use the vitamin C," he said. "Guess she doesn't want you to get rickets." He also gave Allison three letters sent to her care of their Riverton address. He paused before getting in the truck and stared at them, then nodded. "I wondered how you kids would fare out here. It's a long way from New England. But looks like the desert agrees with you." He paused, then added, "But this place can turn on you. Don't stay out here too long." Then he smiled that big western smile—big as his barrel chest and broad-brimmed cowboy hat. "I'll see you in another three days, if not before." They waved from beside the wagon as his truck kicked up dust on its way back up the hill.

Allison trotted off to the van with her letters, closing the door gently behind her.

Zach unhooked Gina and grabbed the long forked cottonwood branch he'd found by the river, that he was slowly carving into a walking stick. They headed toward a dense thicket where Zach knew sharp-tailed grouse rested during the noonday heat. Sure enough, they weren't twenty yards into the thicket when Gina's tail started twitching rapidly as she kept her nose close to the ground and started running back and forth in ever shortening arcs before coming to a sudden stop, her whole body stone-still though quivering, her nose and head thrust forward, just a few inches from the ground. Zach slowly approached from behind. "That's it, girl," he cooed, barely a whisper. "That's my girl," he said as he drew alongside her frozen crouch. He could see her nostrils flaring out, then in; out, then in. Suddenly the whole thicket—sand, bush, sky—was awash in motion and noise. The nine birds that flushed were crowing in alarm, their furious wingbeats striking branches and each other as they fled this paired intrusion. Zach instantly raised the walking stick like an imaginary shotgun, picked out the two birds that were making the mistake of flying straight and high, above the brush, then clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth as he pulled the imaginary trigger, then, leaving that bird for dead, swung the stick on the other and clicked his tongue again. He exhaled slowly as he lowered the stick. By that time, all nine birds were well out of shotgun range. Three of them were out of sight below the brush line; the others were in their silent glide, no doubt following the line of the river to some safer hiding place. They'd each find a dense thicket and hunker down for twenty minutes or so, before tentatively rising and moving back toward a central meeting place, directed there by the low, nearly inaudible clucks of the rest of the flock as it slowly reconvened. Zach saw and heard all this in his mind, and nodded at the universal order implicit in this group behavior—fear and scatter, get back together when it's safe. He looked down at Gina. She'd not moved since locking on point, but her whole body was relaxed and she was looking up to him for instruction. She seemed a different animal from the taut coil of muscle and sinew she'd been a minute earlier. Zach set his stick on the ground and knelt beside her. "It'd be nice to be here in the fall, wouldn't it, girl?" He gently caressed her nose and scratched under her chin, in the triangular hollow framed by her jaw. "There'd be some good hunting." Gina's stub tail twitched from side to side. Zach stood slowly and turned back toward the camp.

He saw Allison through the van's window, lying on her side with her head buried in the pillow. He could tell she was pretending to be asleep. He opened one rear door and reached in and grabbed her nearest bare foot lying atop the covers. She groaned and rolled over slowly, looking at him but not rising from the pillow. He could see her eyes were red.

"Everything O.K. back home?" he asked.

She nodded. "Everything's fine at home."

Zach nodded. "You miss your mom?"

She shook her head. "I miss people, Zach."

Zach gazed down at her from the back of the van. She rolled her head back into the pillow.

He turned suddenly and scurried around the camp gathering various items from their meager holdings. He got a bottle of shampoo and a bar of soap from the front seat of the truck, he got a bath towel from the bed in the wagon and a plastic cup off the dish shelf, and he grabbed Pete's lawn chair and folded it up. He wrapped the soap, shampoo, and cup in the towel, then slid the rolled towel into the fold of the chair. He leaned the chair and its contents against the van, then opened both rear doors. He grabbed Allison's clogs from beside the mattress, slid them on her feet, then reached down and lifted her into a seated position.

She flopped around like a ragdoll, groaning. "Zach, what are you doing?"

He put one finger to her lips and said, "Trust me."

He reached under her arms and lifted her out of the van. She feigned collapse, but he wouldn't let her fall—not even a fake one. When he saw she was steady, he let her go. "Now close your eyes," he said.

"Zach, please."

"Do you trust me?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Sure, but—."

"No buts. Yes or no?"

She nodded. "O.K. Yes."

"Then close your eyes and keep them closed till I say so."

She nodded slowly. "O.K. But if you drop me off a cliff, my mother will hunt you down."

"I don't doubt that, but don't worry—no cliffs in your future."

He grabbed the folded chair and its supplies in one hand, and ringed her wrist with his other. Then he paused. "Don't move." He ran into the wagon and emerged with Ruth's mesh bag of lemons. He hooked the bag's string closer over one arm of the folded chair, then again took the chair in one hand and Allison's wrist in the other.

He led her away from the camp. "Eyes closed?"

"Tight as a drum."

"Good."

He led her along his favorite path to the river. It was a little longer than other paths but didn't involve plowing through brush or ducking under branches. Once on the sandy banks of the river, he let Allison's wrist go. "Don't move, and don't open your eyes."

"You're the boss."

He quickly took off his boots and socks, then peeled away his t-shirt, leaving only his jean shorts. He set the rolled towel and its contents on the sandy ground, then unfolded the chair and set it in a bubbling pool of water separated from the flowing river by ten feet of bank. The pool came to just below the seat of the chair, and was as warm as bath water—one of the numerous mineral springs in this part of Wyoming. He'd discovered it the day before.

He went back to Allison and took her hand. "Still closed?"

She nodded.

"Good. Follow me." He led her to the edge of the pool. "Slide off your clogs."

She slid them off.

He then slowly led her into the pool.

"Oh—that feels nice," she said as her feet touched the warm water. "Where'd you get the water heater?"

"God's own," he said as he led her around to the front of the chair. "Have a seat."

She slowly sat down, her legs and thighs now in the warm water.

"You can open your eyes."

She shook her head. "I don't want to; it might all disappear."

"Suit yourself. But can I take your shirt off?"

A brief frown crossed her face.

He laughed. "No peeping Toms for a hundred miles. Just you and me and that horny bull across the river."

"Zach!"

"Just kidding. But I think you'd like it better if I took your shirt off."

"O.K. But the bra stays on."

He laughed. "The bra stays on."

He lifted her pink t-shirt over her head. He tossed the shirt on the bank, retrieved the soap and the cup, and started to gently bathe his wife. He poured water on her shoulders and down over her back and chest, then took the bar of soap and rubbed it along her spine. He spread the sudsy water across her back and down over her arms and along the sides of her chest and reached around to her front and massaged along her waist and across her stomach and up to the line of her bra, then over her sides and across her shoulder blades to her neck. She leaned forward in the chair to give him full access to her back and neck. He massaged her shoulders, pressed his fingers and thumbs up under her long brown hair to where her neck merged into her head and behind the ears and up along the sides of her head. He massaged her temples, her forehead, her closed eyes and upper cheeks and the sides of her nose and gently across her lips and chin. He then took the bar of soap and moved around in front of her and soaped up her left leg then raised it and massaged slowly between her toes, across her arch and heel and ankle, massaging her calf, the back of her knee, her kneecap and thigh and hamstring. Then he set that leg in the water and soaped her right leg and massaged it with the same slow care as the left. By then her head was hanging limply, her hair covering her face—a happy ragdoll this time—and she was uttering a sound very much like a cat's purr. He then stepped out of the pool, opened the bag of lemons with his pocket knife, and cut four of them in half. He returned to the pool and squeezed the lemons' juice onto her shoulders and hair. The tangy scent, catalyzed by the sun and the water and the gentle breeze, seemed to fill the whole world. He massaged the juice into her scalp and neck and shoulders and cheeks, rubbing it gently into her pores. He then poured some water from the cup over her hair, squeezed shampoo along the line of her part, and washed her thick curls from behind, then moved around and washed her hair from in front, working the lather up between his fingers and the strands of hair, then slowly squeezing the lather out by squeezing her hair between his palms brought together as in prayer, the suds falling across her knees and down over his shorts and thighs. The mix of odors from the soap and lemons and shampoo and sage prairie in the warm pool and warm sun was just about heavenly. He poured cup after cup of water over her hair and scalp till the suds finally dissipated.

He sat down in the pool before her, pushed her wet hair back away from her face, tucked it behind her ears, dropped his hands to the water at his sides, and waited for her to open her eyes.

She finally did, maybe seconds, maybe minutes later, her eyes at first like one in a trance, but then focusing on his.

"Happy anniversary," he said.

She looked confused.

"One week."

She smiled. "What a week."

He nodded.

She leaned slowly forward till she fell out of the chair and into his arms. He in turn fell backward and they both were sprawled out and splashing in the pool. Their racket scared off two ducks that had been watching cautiously from the far bank of the river. They flew off with much loud quacking.

Zach sat up in the pool and Allison turned around and leaned back into his lap. "Disturbing the neighbors," he said.

She grinned, "Probably throw us out."

"Any day now."

They sat in new silence in the pool—Zach's arms draped over her shoulders, Allison's hands cradling his in her lap—for the longest time.

Finally rising, they collected their things from the bank and headed back to the camp. On the path in the lengthening shadows of the brush, Allison said over her shoulder, "Seven plus one." Her wet bra left a dark stripe across the middle of her shirt.

"What?"

"Since we were married. This is the eighth day."

Zach laughed. "A new creation."

7

Zach rose from a deep dreamless sleep into semi-waking in a seamless transition. He didn't know what had roused him and didn't care. He felt safe and at peace. He knew he was in the van, in the middle of the sage desert. He knew without checking the luminous dial of his watch that it was the dead center of the night—the moonless dark was absolute, no glimmer of lingering dusk to the west, no hint of dawn to the east. Without lifting his head off the pillow, he was able to scan three directions of the compass out the van's wrap-around windows. And in all directions he saw distant thunderheads flashing, no thunder audible, the sudden flares of their lightning so remote as to seem imagined, like someone striking a match in the dark tunnel of a dream—then again over here, then again over there: nature's silent full-surround light show. On previous nights he'd waked to see one or two remote thunderheads, and had marveled then at how massive and unimpeded the horizon was out here. But never had he seen so many storms, and so active—not out here, not anywhere. He slid back into a shallow peaceful rest.

Later, he couldn't say how long, he was awakened by the rumble of thunder. It was still fairly distant, but any sound in the desert's absolute quiet was startling and unsettling. Zach kept his eyes closed and waited for the next rumble. In the taut silence, he noticed other sounds so faint he'd missed them before. He heard the tinkle of the tags on Gina's collar as she lay panting on her bed on the front seat (she was terrified of thunderstorms). He heard a faint scurrying on metal and wondered if there was a mouse on the roof of the van. A flash of lightning cut through his closed eyelids. He began counting—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. The thunder rumbled, long and much louder than before.

Zach started to feel uneasy but chose to keep his eyes closed, trying to will the storm away or, failing that, will himself and by extension the van's other occupants to calm. He was acutely aware that the van was the tallest structure between the river and the hills, a metal magnet for the lightning's electricity. Then he recalled reading that tires acted as insulators from the lightning's path to ground, making a car in the middle of an open field one of the safest places to be during a lightning storm. He took a few seconds' consolation from that understanding, then heard Gina panting louder. He wondered if she'd jump over the seat to reach them. He listened for Allison's breathing, trying to determine if she was awake. He heard no sound coming from her side of the bed.

The lightning flashed again, much brighter this time. One, two, three, four, five, six—a loud crack of thunder like a gunshot, followed by an extended and raucous rumble that shook the van. In the brief silence that followed, Zach could hear the beginnings of the wind from the storm—a far off whisper at first, through the brush, steadily growing as it raced across the prairie. Bits of sand arrived ahead of the gale, peppering the doors and windows, then small twigs rattling, then tumbleweeds scurrying over and around the van like fleeing animals.

Another flash of lightning, this one so intense it was seared into Zach's retinas despite having his eyes closed. One, two, three—BOOM! It felt like the ground had opened beneath the van and was threatening to swallow it whole. Then the full force of the gale struck, rocking the van violently from side to side and. Gina whimpered and pawed at the seat and the doors. The wind slammed into the van in short-cycle gusts, then a single protracted gust that felt like it was lifting the van off its tires on one side.

Every cell in Zach's body was crying out to do something to save his dog, his wife, and himself from certain utter destruction out here in the wilderness. But in an instant's clarity, in a rush of calm fatalism and resignation that matched and, briefly, defused his fear, he knew there was nothing he could do. His fate, and the fate of the two living things in the world that he'd been given—had requested—responsibility for, was at the mercy of forces totally beyond his control. For just a millisecond, he felt peace at this brand new realization. He opened his eyes to look at his wife.

Then he remembered Gina's chain grounding the van, a perfect path for the lightning's deadly track.

A bolt so bright that it seemed to originate inside the van seared everything in brilliant white. In that instant he looked at Allison and saw two remarkable things—his wife's eyes so full of fear that he knew he'd never be able to eradicate it, no matter how long or how hard he tried; and a mouse scurrying through her hair, apparently as desperate to find safety as every other living thing in the vicinity. Zach shrieked, "Oh, my God."

Allison recalled campfire stories from her childhood that told how one's hair stood on end just before lightning struck to kill you. She'd wondered how anyone knew this fact, since the only witnesses to it were all dead. But she nonetheless accepted it as a fact. So when the lightning flashed and she felt her hair rise up, she knew that she would be dead in an instant. And in that instant before death, she was profoundly disappointed to be dying out here in the wilderness, so far from people and friends.

Except, she didn't die. No living thing in the area died in that lightning strike except the scraggly jackpine on the far side of the sheepwagon, where the bolt found its way to ground (and who knows, tough as that tree looked, it might manage to send a fresh shoot out of the char—next year, or maybe the year after).

Immediately after the simultaneous lightning strike and thunder clap, the wind died and the rain came. The deluge on the van's metal roof was deafening, and yet a relief after what had come before. The lightning and thunder continued but more distant, the pause between flash and rumble steadily growing longer.

The rain pounded the roof in waves, almost as if the ocean that had once lapped these shores had returned, dropped whole from the sky. Gina panted and whimpered and scratched at the seat and the dash. The mouse was gone, returned to some safer, more familiar hiding place. And Allison buried her face in Zach's chest and cried hysterically, inconsolably, for what seemed an eternity, her sobs continuing long after the storm had moved on and the rain had stopped and Gina had quit whimpering and silence had again laid claim to the land except for Allison's sobs and sniffles, which also faded in due time as the two of them finally fell into exhausted sleep, Allison's face lying on Zach's tear-drenched shirt.

8

The next day dawned brilliantly clear, dry, and windy—same as all the previous dawns. Zach and Allison rose and went about their waking routines as before. The only evidence of the storm was in the color of the sagebrush—a few shades closer to green, further from gray—and in the splintered pine tree some twenty yards from the camp. The prairie had already shrugged off the violent storm and torrential rain of just a few hours before, tossing it aside as a minor disturbance in a history peppered with upheavals of far greater violence and destruction.

After finishing his cereal, Zach paused in front of Allison on his way to rinsing his bowl. "Want to try one more day?"

She looked up and shook her head once, her eyes never leaving his.

He nodded, then turned from her stare. He was actually glad for her decisiveness and her decision, still deeply rattled himself—not only by the storm but also by his lack of preparation or awareness of danger.

They cleaned their dishes and gathered up their meager possessions and loaded them into the van. Zach used the small fireplace shovel to scoop the ashes out of the cookstove. He tossed them out the door and watched the wind carry them away. He reloaded the woodbox with branches and sticks he'd gathered from around the clearing the day before. Allison dusted the shelves and swept out the wagon. Zach filled in their potty hole with the shovel, then rinsed off their toilet-seat bucket with what remained of the soapy dish water. He left the bucket tucked under the front axle of the wagon, a token of civilization for the next occupants.

Allison waited in the passenger seat reading a magazine. Zach looked around the camp. He saw no obvious sign of their five-day stay. He didn't know if that was a good or a bad thing, then realized it was just the way it was out here. It would take a lot more than what he and Allison had wagered to leave a mark on this place. Maybe one day they'd return to try again.

He opened the door and let Gina jump in and take her seat beside Allison, then climbed in behind the wheel and shut the door. Out of the wind with these two beside him, the van felt like home again. He cranked the engine and started up the hill toward the road without an ounce of doubt or regret.

Boston

"I think he was a brain-dead bloated parody of himself and should've died fifteen years ago while he still had his looks and his moves and some shred of dignity." The handsome early-thirties broker in his hand-tailored pearl-gray suit and Italian-made wingtips gave a self-satisfied nod before taking a sip on his vodka-tonic and glancing across the room.

With that slight turn of his head, Allison could see that his stylist cut sandy hair was just starting to thin above his temples.

The broker turned back to her and asked, "So what do you think?"

Ann's studio apartment with no air conditioning or cross-ventilation had been warm before the guests had started arriving. Now, with the small room jammed and people overflowing out into the entry hall and foyer of the ground-floor apartment, the temperature of the room and the tone of the conversation were both growing warmer by the minute.

Allison smiled shyly up at the broker as she leaned away from his close proximity while somewhat trapped here, seated on the stool backed by the kitchen counter and surrounded on all other sides by standing guests. She wasn't sure if she should be flattered or frightened by the aggressive attentions of this married man nearly twice her age. She quickly glanced around for Zach but couldn't see him anywhere in the crowd.

She suddenly grew annoyed with her heavy reliance on Zach and her fear and uncertainty in the face of this stranger's friendliness. She'd surely misread his intentions, a misunderstanding that arose from her overly active imagination combined with the sense of culture shock at landing in this crowded party in this crowded city after descending on Zach's sister's apartment in Boston in the wee hours of this morning following a marathon dash from Wyoming via the Trans-Canadian highway, over twenty-five hundred miles in under three days with but one overnight stop in Lake of the Woods, Ontario. On top of that, in the few hours between their exhausted arrival and dawn light, their truck parked on the street had been broken into and their eight-track tape player and tapes, and some semi-precious stones—that her grandfather had found in the Wyoming hills and polished, and her grandmother had given her just before they'd left Wyoming—had been stolen. Under the circumstances, she could forgive her misinterpretations.

More to the current point, she could and should welcome this man's attentions as well-meaning and kind. "I never cared for his music but always loved the way he moved." The smile she offered up to the broker struck a perfect coquettish balance between innocence and coy suggestiveness, though she was aware of neither aspect. It was just her smile.

The broker laughed. "You mean his unh-unh on stage?" he asked as he thrust his hips and groin back and forth several times until he bumped into the arm of a nearby dancer clad in a flowing diaphanous lavender dress and caused her to spill her drink. "Sorry," he muttered to the dancer as he quickly stilled his undulating middle parts.

"No problem," the dancer said. "Help cool me off."

Allison laughed at her hapless new friend and his accident. "That's not what I meant at all," she said. "I hated watching him in concert, even before he grew fat and sweaty. If I wanted to see a bull humping, I could go to Zach's farm. I meant in his movies. He couldn't act worth a toot, but he could move with the best kind of ease."

The broker, suddenly on the defensive from multiple fronts (women always held the high-ground of grace and dignity, he was once again forced to acknowledge), reluctantly agreed. "He could move alright. Nothing can take that away from him."

"Not even death on a toilet," the dancer said as she wedged her body into their midst and herself into their conversation, a dual action that was easily accomplished in this cramped corner of the room.

The broker faced her. "We all got to die somewhere," he said with a detectable note of relief in his voice.

"But on the toilet?" the dancer asked.

The broker shrugged. "Home away from home."

And just like that, Allison was off the hook and free to watch the party shift and flow in front of her, excused from the demands of active engagement, seated on her stool in the far corner of the kitchen nook of the studio apartment, tucked safely behind the dancer and the broker getting cozy, his fingers gently brushing the woman's thin white forearm.

Beyond the crowded room and hallway and entry foyer, Zach was in the neighbor's apartment helping his sister prepare trays of appetizers for distribution among the guests. Ann knew there'd be no way to work in her kitchen once the guests started arriving, so she'd asked Martin, her mid-forties single neighbor on the ground floor, if she could use his kitchen as a base of operation once company arrived. Martin, a lifelong resident of Boston and now an executive with a clothing-design firm downtown, had adopted Ann as a sort of surrogate daughter when she'd moved in two years before (he'd never married and had no children) and was more than happy to help out with her party.

Ann pulled sheet of stuffed mushroom caps out of Martin's oven and slid the pan over to Zach across the butcher-block counter. Zach in turn transferred the sizzling appetizers onto a gold-painted metal serving tray, making little grunts with each touch of the hot caps.

"I don't know how you can handle those," Ann exclaimed with a shake of her head as she slid another pan of mushroom caps into the oven.

"Asbestos fingers," Zach said, briefly holding the tips of those heat-resistant fingers in the air before resuming his task.

"Tough guy," Martin admired from where he was slicing carrots for the vegetable tray.

"Farm-boy tough," Zach added.

"Takes the city," Martin said.

Ann turned from the oven and checked Zach's tray. She used her hand still in the oven mitt to compress the arrangement so the whole sheet's worth would fit on the tray. When Zach finished transferring all the caps, she took the pan and put it in the sink for later washing. "These can go on the dining table next to the stuffed clams."

Zach nodded. "I'll check on Gina first then take it. That'll give them a minute to cool." He wiped his hands on the towel hanging from the drawer handle below then turned and strode quickly down the hallway toward Martin's bedroom. Halfway there, he stopped in front of the closet door and opened it a crack. Gina was lying on her blanket in the middle of the closet's small floor, with the light on to keep her from getting scared or disoriented. Her eyes were closed and she looked so calm and peaceful, as if she were at home on Zach's bed and not in some stranger's hall closet in the middle of an unfamiliar city less than one day removed from a two-week cross country trip in a beat-up carryall truck. Zach marveled at the dog's equanimity and wondered if he could somehow learn that trait from her. He could foresee a time when he'd need it—like right now as he prepared to wade into the jostling crowd of well-dressed, socially adept urbanites. As if knowing his thoughts and his fears, Gina opened one eye and looked up at him without raising her head from the pillow of her paired forepaws. Then she closed that eye and exhaled audibly, as if in a sigh (but of resignation or peace? Zach wondered), and rolled her head to one side, deeper into the cradling paws. "You rest for both of us, girl," Zach whispered and closed the door.

He bumped into Martin as he turned in the narrow hallway, and practically jumped out of his skin.

"Is she doing O.K.?" Martin asked.

Zach slid to one side to get a few inches of space between him and the smiling man. He noticed for the first time the small bald spot on the top of Martin's head, and his neatly trimmed eyebrows. Zach nodded, "Doing better than me."

"Long day for you."

"Long month."

Martin smiled, fixing Zach in a stare. "Ahh," he sighed. "The times of our youth: 'Days of gladness; years of glee: like torrents of spring—they flee, they flee.'"

Zach turned away from his stare. "I'd better flee with those stuffed mushrooms, or Ann will toss us out." He slid past Martin and back to the kitchen. The cooling mushrooms all slid to one side as he picked up the tray, almost past the rim and onto the floor before Zach leveled the tray and carried it with two hands out through the crowd in the hall and into the apartment beyond.

After setting the tray on the table (minus a half dozen caps that were picked off by appreciative guests as he slid past), Zach spotted Allison by herself in the corner and slowly made his way over to her. In her peasant smock and worn jeans, she stood out amongst the boutique blouses and colorful skirts and sleek dresses of the other women. Her fair skin devoid of makeup and her shoulder-length slightly curly brown hair in a simple middle part and straight cut were also, to Zach at least, refreshingly natural in the midst of the highly sculpted skin and hair of the other women hiding behind their professional masks. Yet despite his instinctive approval, Zach couldn't help but feel a little embarrassed for his recent bride and her plain appearance. He'd never lived in a city and had only spent a few weekends in such environments with elder siblings, so he had no idea what to expect, no idea how their rural background might mesh with urban ways and demands. But at the moment he was intimidated and scared, more for Allison than for himself—or so he thought, as he finally broke through the last wall of bodies and reached the backside of the counter she was leaning against. He reached out and brushed her hair with the back of his hand. "You doing O.K.?"

She grinned and nodded. "Just fine."

"Anything I can get you?"

"No," she said, then added, "Might need that pee-bucket from the sheepwagon in a little while." She made a pouty face. "Can't imagine how I'd make my way to the bathroom, or how long the line would be once I got there."

"You can use the bathroom across the hall when nature calls—I'll part the human seas to get you there." He leaned over and whispered, "But be careful of Martin cornering you in the hallway."

Allison giggled. "I'm guessing that's more your problem than mine, Zach."

Her words took a minute to sink in. "Are you serious? No way!"

"Zach—hello! Single guy in his forties, never married, prissy little apartment in Boston." She shook her head. "What did you think?"

"I thought the only thing I've ever known—God made them male and female, end of story."

"Like on the farm?"

"Yes, like on the farm—bull and cow, stallion and filly, rooster and hen, gander and goose, ram and ewe." He gave her a satisfied nod. "I can go on if you like."

She shook her head. "No, I get your point." She paused just a second and looked around the room. "But what about when a cow goes into heat and all the other cows take turns sniffing her and jumping on her back till her back's a slathery mess? What about the big rooster grabbing the little rooster and doing his number on the poor guy?" She turned to him and smiled slyly. "Like on the farm."

Zach shivered in revulsion. "Animal instinct."

Allison nodded. "That about covers it."

"I'd better get back to helping Ann." He looked across the crowd toward the far away entry door, for the first time paying more attention to the appearance of the men than the women. The party and the whole unfamiliar city surrounding it suddenly seemed more treacherous than ever.

Allison said, "Watch out for Martin," and laughed toward his back as Zach waded into the revelers.

Later that night with the guests all departed and Ann's apartment cleaned and straightened up—at least as much as they could straighten up a studio apartment with a visiting couple and their dog and all their worldly possessions in residence—Ann finally settled down into her "bedroom" behind a pair of tall screens of opaque rice-paper in dark wooden frames, said good night over those screens, and turned out her bedside light. The apartment darkened only slightly as the Victorian gas street lantern just outside the studio's bay windows illumined the room despite the floral-print drapes hanging across those windows. Zach wondered what it would take to find true dark in the city, then thought of Gina's former bed-site in Martin's hall closet. But the appeal of that dark hiding place quickly passed with thoughts of Martin lingering outside the closet's door.

He snuggled up close to Allison on the futon in its wooden frame that had converted from an uncomfortable couch into an uncomfortable bed with the release of a couple pins. He twisted his legs around Gina's curled up body at the foot of the bed. That action in turn caused his knee to slide atop Allison's bare thigh beneath her loose cotton shorts. Despite all they'd been through that day—hell, they'd been skirting Montreal less that twenty-four hours earlier, a victim of larceny eighteen hours before—maybe because of all they'd been through together that day, Zach felt a strong urge to roll Allison flat onto her back (she was on her side, facing away from him), rise above her, and offer again his best expression of praise and love—and consolation: for him at least, he hoped for her also.

But that gift wasn't going to be offered this night (that was hardly night anyway, in all this diffuse light) with Ann mere yards away, her every shallow breath as clear in his ears as if she were lying there beside Gina.

So instead he left his leg partly atop her thigh and leaned over and placed his lips next to her ear. "I'm sorry about your grandfather's gemstones," he whispered as softly as he could manage.

She shrugged, her shoulder sliding against his chest.

"We should've unloaded the truck," he said. "Or maybe we shouldn't have tried to make it all the way without stopping."

Allison made no gesture.

"It's hard to think of everything," he said finally. "I'm sorry about that."

He let his upper body slide off her shoulder and his leg slide off her thigh, wedging itself with his other leg in the few inches of space between her and Gina. He left his arm draped loosely over her side, his hand clutching the sheet bunched at her waist. Then, despite the cramped quarters and the stuffy air and the hard slat pushing against his hip bone through the too thin lumpy mattress and the room near bright as on a cloudy day, Zach fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Beside him facing away, Allison gazed for a long time at the print on those curtains backlit by the gaslight. It seemed a whole world unto itself, those designs in those lazy folds suspended between what was near at-hand and what was out there, a world she could maybe live in if she could ever break free of herself. Her eyelids eventually drifted shut in front of those pupils gazing on those folds and patterns.

And beyond those curtains, mainly defined by the hum of night that was little different from the hum of day, the ever-present purr that was really its essence and soul—the accumulation of all its sounds of life and death, organic and inanimate, faint and loud, rhythmic and random—the city neither slept nor roused but simply loomed, massive and obdurate and adamantly indifferent to its two newest residents, asleep at last within its belly.

2

They'd arrived a couple weeks before the annual flood of students, so there was a good selection of apartments available in the vicinity of Ann's Back Bay apartment. While they'd not really talked about living in Boston (they'd not talked about their future prospects at all, beyond the now abandoned—at least for the moment—idea of homesteading in the Rocky Mountain wilderness), Boston seemed as good a place to try as any, and Ann's comfortable and convenient and still, in the late 70s, affordably priced neighborhood as good a neighborhood as any in Boston.

So they visited a handful of apartments that first weekend and rented a one bedroom, alley side, fourth floor walk-up on Comm. Ave., using a loan from Ann for the security deposit and first month's rent. The early twentieth century building was well-maintained, quiet, and functional; and the apartment had high ceilings, a working fireplace (which they never used), windows looking out on the alley four stories below and their neighbors' apartments across the way, and a "kitchen" that required you to turn sideways to squeeze past the fridge and gain access to the one-person galley. Though Ann repeatedly claimed otherwise, it was clear she was anxious to get her younger brother and sister-in-law out of her cramped quarters and into their own apartment. So within days of arriving in Boston, they were reloading the truck with their few boxes and suitcases and ferrying their meager possessions the block and a half to their new, and first, home.

They had their mattress from the truck, their eating utensils and cast-iron cookware (which the thieves had deemed not to take) from their excursion in the wilderness, and their clothes and linens. Ann donated a small breakfast table with two chairs, a butterfly chair, some throw pillows, and a floor lamp. They purchased a dresser from the Salvation Army store. And they found an unfinished furniture store in Cambridge that sold utilitarian pine furniture at very reasonable prices. Over the first month, they purchased a wood-framed couch and matching chair with slide-on canvas seating, a pair of end tables and matching coffee table, two bookcases, and a simple desk with three drawers on one side. Allison, who'd taken two years of woodworking in high school, spent her weekends and evenings sanding the pine furniture, staining it with a dark walnut stain, and applying two coats of clear varnish.

She had to do these tasks on nights and weekends because within a week she'd gotten a job as a records clerk in the recently completed Hancock Tower. Everybody always asked her what the view was like from inside that gleaming, angular glass skyscraper; and she always gave the same answer—like the view from anybody's basement: the files she maintained and updated were kept in rows upon rows of cabinets located in the building's sub-basement. What she didn't ever add was that after she got to know the maintenance guys she'd regularly zoom up with one or more of them in the high-speed elevators to the top floors before or after hours. And the views from up there were breath-taking, and unnerving once the glass panels—whole walls—began to periodically shatter into a million tiny tempered shards and fall to the plaza sixty stories below, leaving a gaping wound in the blue-glass skin and a wind-whipped opening from the interior gazing out on nothing but air and all that gravity-yanked space. She always stayed two strides or more back from the glass panels and would feel like throwing up every time one of the guys would run toward the glass walls, just tempting the panel to shatter and fall away.

Zach got a part-time job parking cars for an exclusive men's club, The Pequot, just a few doors away from their apartment building. Though this club claimed as members all of Boston's male elite (and some of its female elite, insofar as that nascent class existed then, as associate members) and had as its home one of the prime residential buildings in all of Back Bay, they owned no parking lot and refused to pay the steep price or rent to gain access to one. So the task of the club's parking attendants was to hunt down street parking on Comm. Ave. or one of the adjacent streets—spaces that were always scarce, and sometimes simply non-existent in the evenings or on the weekends when the areas' residents were home from work or travel. Zach would sometimes spend an entire shift cruising the nine-block region surrounding the The Pequot in a brand new Mercedes or Jaguar, never finding a space, pulling the car up to the club's entry two hours later and tossing the keys to its swaggering owner with his evening-gown clad wife or young mistress on his arm, no mention of the forty miles that had been added to the odometer. On the rare occasion when a member would notice the extra mileage and complain, Lonnie—the square-jawed, grizzled hair parking supervisor—would tell James—the balding, stoop-shouldered, deprecating doorman—who would tell Mr. Macintyre—the small club manager with the big voice and slicked-back dark hair—that if they didn't want the parkers putting miles on the cars looking for spaces they needed to either buy a lot or pay off the cops that wouldn't let them "double-stack" the cars in the travel lane in front of the club. And that was always the end of the complaint. If, as they say, "money talks," in this case money was loudly silent. (Except for one incident when a club member's vintage Rolls was used by an attendant to ferry his rock-and-roll groupie girlfriend—platform heels, fishnets, sequined mini-dress, big hair—to the VIP entrance at the Garden for a J. Geils concert. He might've gotten away with this little side excursion except that the police sergeant in charge of security at the concert recognized his uncle's car and radioed the club—they kept a police scanner-radio in Lee's nook to monitor traffic patrols—and the Rolls's owner was waiting with arms crossed and cops on each side when Matt returned. The auto-theft charge was eventually dropped—kind of hard to prove theft when you hand the thief your keys and he dutifully returns them an hour later—but Matt lost his job and, eventually, his girlfriend.)

So Zach and Allison, both employed and with furnishings slowly filling their modest first home, quickly settled into city life, or at least into a city routine. Zach, who worked mostly in the evenings, would plan their meals, do the shopping, and prepare the dinners (he'd always enjoyed cooking, dating to his assembly of gargantuan breakfasts for himself in the pre-dawn darkness before hunting outings). Allison would bring home the steady (and larger) paycheck, ideas for shows, bars, and restaurants, and, eventually, friends from work—both male and female—to share those evenings out. At first their offset schedules and natural division of labors seemed ideal. They rarely stepped on each other's toes or privacy in the small apartment, and they had ample time and space to develop personal interests and habits—essentially, time apart to grow up and out. It was only later that they realized that this freedom to grow up and out coincided with chances—some seized zealously, some fostered in ignorance—to grow apart.

3

Zach spent most of the torpid late-August afternoon preparing their first Sunday dinner in the new apartment. It didn't matter that most of their meager possessions were either still in boxes or stacked in a pile in the entry hall awaiting laundering at the coin-fed machines over on Newbury Street (with Gina asleep on her blanket behind that pile of laundry), or that the blank walls and empty floors looked more like a warehouse than a current home. What mattered (to Zach anyway—he hoped his enthusiasm might soon infect the somewhat quiet Allison reading Ayn Rand in Ann Sandstrom's former butterfly chair tucked in the corner beside the window of their living room) was that they had a fridge stocked with more food than he'd ever personally controlled, an oven that seemed to work, and a new life together in this new place—finally, their own life in their own home unencumbered by the demands and expectations of family and small-town minds: intoxicating freedom, a grand adventure! He discovered himself actually whistling some idle tune—the sound seemed from a person outside himself—as he unpacked the plates and wine glasses from the box labeled "dishes" and set them on the brown leatherette plastic placemats he'd already unpacked and put on Ann's table.

With the table all set (he'd even found a candle to twist into the cut-glass holder Allison had got with Green Stamps saved by her mother over the last few years), Zach turned his attention to preparing the meal. He had a jar of dried beef strips left over from the sheepwagon and decided to make creamed chipped beef. He'd eaten it often as a child (a cost-effective staple for their large family) but never made it or even seen it made (cooking being the province of the females in the household—except of course for his pre-dawn breakfasts). So he excavated their one paperback cookbook from the bottom of the crate holding books and magazines and used the recipe it contained. He made the roux (only slightly scorching the butter) then added the milk and stirred the mixture till thickened, then chopped the beef and stirred it into the sauce till blended. He set the pot on the back burner to simmer. He then made breadcups by molding slices of white bread into their cast-iron muffin pan, brushing the bread with melted butter, and sliding the pan into the oven for ten minutes. In the meantime he poured a can of cut green beans (also left from Wyoming) into the pot he'd used to melt the butter and started the beans heating on the front burner of the stove. He took the bag of frozen potato rounds from the small freezer and poured half on a cookie sheet. Once the breadcups were golden brown, he pulled that pan out, raised the temp of the oven, and slid in the sheet of potato rounds.

By then the tiny kitchen was hot and Zach was sweating. He wiped his brow with a paper towel, got a bottle of beer out of the fridge, checked the various pots and pans on and in the stove, concluded they were safe for a few minutes, then slid sideways past the fridge door and out into the living room.

Allison hadn't moved an inch since he'd seen her last and didn't look up at his approach. He squatted beside the butterfly chair. "Are you ready for this feast?"

She set the book on her knee and looked up at him with sleepy eyes. "What's the occasion?"

He raised his arms toward the ceiling, the sky beyond. "Us. Our new life." The brown beer bottle in his hand looked like a dark beacon uplifted like that.

Allison shrugged. "Same old us."

"No," Zach said firmly. "New home, new chances, new jobs." She started at The Hancock tomorrow—he wondered if maybe that was part of what was bothering her. "New us," he concluded, though with his enthusiasm fading.

Allison nodded finally. "New us," she said. "Sounds like a toast to me, but I don't have a glass."

"Got you covered," he said as he stood, reached the dinner table in two strides, and returned with a glass of sweet white wine.

Allison, still in the low-slung chair but sitting forward now, took the glass and tapped his beer bottle. "To the new us."

"In our new home."

"In this new life."

They drank their fill.

"What's for dinner?"

"It's a surprise."

"Hope it's not a burnt one," Allison said pointing toward the entry hall leading to the kitchen where a wisp of smoke was drifting past.

"Jesus," Zach exclaimed and ran to the kitchen.

Turned out it was a minor matter. The cookie sheet with the potato rounds had a thin layer of grease on it (from the seasoning of the pans Allison had decided to do earlier in the week at Ann's apartment, heating the oven and the studio on the hottest afternoon of the year), and that grease was smoking. But the potato rounds and all the other food survived unmarred. Zach poured off the liquid from the beans and added some sliced almonds and a little lemon pepper. He prepared two plates, each heaped high with two breadcups filled with creamed chipped beef, crispy potato rounds, and green beans almondine. He ran back out into the living room, lit the candle on the table, invited Allison to bring her wine and sit, then brought out the plates, set one before his wife and the other at his place and sat down.

Outside the dark clouds of an approaching thunderstorm dimmed the early evening and left the room in gray shadow broken only by the candle's flickering light. Zach smiled at Allison above that candle across the narrow table.

"Well," she said after several seconds passed. "Should we eat?"

Zach thought a moment. He'd invested so much time and care into preparing the meal that the idea of eating it seemed almost an anticlimax. He wondered if his mother and sisters ever felt this same letdown after setting out their prodigious spreads only to watch them consumed in a fraction of the time it took to prepare them. "We should give thanks."

"O.K." she said slowly. "You start."

"And you'll finish?"

"And you finish. You know I'm not much good at public speaking."

Zach laughed. "You're alone with me in our apartment—nothing public about this."

"You know what I mean—impromptu speeches and prayers and the like: just not my cup of tea."

"The nuns at St. Mary's would be disappointed."

"Not the first time."

Zach shrugged. "You win—I'll go," he said and bowed his head. "Dear Lord, we thank you for this food, this place, this life. We thank you for watching over us in all our recent travels. We ask you to watch over us in the days to come." He paused. Allison started to say amen when he blurted, "And I thank you for my wife. Amen."

He took a deep breath, then opened his eyes and looked up. He was surprised to see tears on the face of his new life.

Later that night Zach, clad only in his boxer shorts, knelt on the floor beside their mattress brought in from the truck, and peeled back the sheet to climb into bed. The mattress rested directly on the hardwood floor and seemed a long way down to go to bed. Allison already had a design in mind for a rudimentary and inexpensive platform made out of two-by-ten framing lumber and a sheet of plywood, but they'd either have to cut the wood on the farm or buy a circular saw and extension cord and find an area and a platform spacious enough to cut it up here. In the meantime, the mattress rested on the floor, and the floor was a long way from standing for Zach (and, he couldn't help but recall, even further to rise in the morning). He finally managed to slide between the sheets with only a few minor knee scrapes and twisted muscles.

Allison was already in bed with her head raised atop Ann's donated throw pillows, reading her novel in the pale light of their battery-powered camp lantern.

"You'll ruin your eyes," Zach said.

"I'm fine," she said. "I got used to it in Wyoming."

"I'll look for a table lamp tomorrow."

"Don't bother, Zach. We can get some from home—I know of two my parents don't need anymore. And your mom probably has some old ones she'd give you." She set her book on the floor beside the mattress and switched off the light. "We've got to watch our money till I get my first paycheck."

"When's that?"

"Either three weeks or four—depends on if the biweekly pay period is this Friday or next, then two weeks after that."

Zach nodded in the new dark that, like all city dark he'd seen thus far, wasn't really dark at all—just a kind of persistent half-light that came on an hour or so after dusk and lingered till shortly before dawn. "Got the alarm set?"

"For 6:30."

"That early enough?"

"Should be—twenty minutes to get dressed, twenty minutes to eat breakfast, ten minutes to make my lunch, and a half hour to walk. Should still get there ten or fifteen minutes before 8:00."

"I can make your lunch, if that saves you a little time."

"That'd be nice."

Zach stared up at the ceiling that should've been a long ways away but appeared very close at hand. He considered reaching out to touch it but didn't dare.

He wondered what Allison was feeling. This was her first job of any sort. Zach couldn't imagine what that would feel like—your first job at eighteen. He'd been working, quite literally, as long as he could remember—farm chores of course, soon as he could pick up a pail, but also paper routes, snow shoveling, and pedaling produce door-to-door as a child, babysitting, yard work, firewood delivery, and janitorial work at his mom's bank as a teenager, and the last few years work-study dishwashing in the dining hall and clerical work at the Forestry School for Yale. There'd never been a time in his life when he wasn't working. That said, he'd never held a regular full-time job—nine to five (or, in Allison's case, eight to five with an hour for lunch) five days a week, fifty weeks a year with two weeks paid vacation. He'd never been so constrained, his life so rigidly defined by a job; and he wondered if he ever could do that. His part-time, irregular hours car-parking job (he'd start the day after Labor Day) would certainly not assert those demands. Would he ever surrender to the system to that extent? And what might that structure do to Allison, or for her? "Are you nervous?" he asked the ceiling.

She rolled her head to face him. "A little. But a little excited too. I feel like before the first day of school—it's that time of year. Only this time I'll be getting paid."

"Sort of like your first day of high school—the big league."

"Yeah. A lot like that."

"Remember your first day in high school?"

She giggled. "When I ran up to the upperclassman basketball star and cutest guy in the school before the first bell and looked him in the eye and said 'Hello' then turned without waiting for a response and walked away?"

"That's the one."

"What in the world did you think?"

"That you were either crazy or the most self-assertive freshman in the history of the world." She was neither. Her best friend at the time claimed to be having a secret affair with Zach—a total fabrication—and that she'd told Zach all about Allison. This friend, with her fantasy affair, had never guessed that Allison might act on this secret and false information.

"Would you have ever noticed me if I hadn't been so bold?"

"You mean then and all the times after?" Allison had continued to pester Zach till one day he asked her out—and they discovered the fabrication. They'd not been apart since.

"Yes. Would you have even seen me, a little punk freshman, let alone spoken to me or asked me out?"

"Probably not."

"Are you sorry you did?"

"What kind of question is that?" Zach asked, genuinely shocked. They'd had some bumps in the road of their courtship, but nothing that would give rise to such a doubt.

"The kind of question you ask in the dark at the start of a new life."

"You said earlier it's the old us."

"I lied."

"Why?"

"Because maybe I didn't want to think about it; maybe I'm scared."

"For you?"

"More for us."

"Why?"

"I don't know, Zach. It is all new. There's so much we don't know."

"We'll figure it out."

"I hope."

"We will."

She was silent.

He rolled over and tried to ease toward sleep.

"So are you?" she asked out of the dark that wasn't really dark.

"What?"

"Sorry that on her first day of high school that little punk freshman ran up to the cool junior basketball star that was supposed to know her but didn't and said 'Hello'?"

"Not for one minute in four years." And though he meant every word from the depths of his heart, he never thought to reach out and affirm the vow with his hands and lips and skin.

And she would never know if that affirmation at that moment would've made a difference.

Some hours later Zach waked to Gina licking his face and whimpering in his ear. He'd taken her out shortly before going to bed and didn't understand why she needed to go out again so soon. But he wasn't about to argue with her from his bed there on the floor (where she held all the advantages). So he dragged himself upright, slid on some shorts and a T-shirt and his flip-flops, and hooked her to her leash. Together they stumbled down the four flights of stairs arranged in a square with an open square in the middle (he stumbled, Gina pranced with her normal light-footed ease and energy), through the first door and into the tiled entry with its mail cubbies built into the wall and side table collecting fliers and free papers, then through the second unlocked door and into the night.

Zach stood a moment on the broad stone landing at the top of the stone steps, holding back Gina as she strained against the leash. This city and this particular spot in its midst were still brand new, and one might think that Zach was simply getting his bearings in the middle of the night in a new environment. But in fact this momentary orientation and assessment on entering any new space was second nature to Zach, regardless how familiar or new the setting. He'd never analyzed this trait; but if he had, he would've found at least two motivations to such pauses—a desire to detect surprises or threats and a wish to show respect to the place and any people there present.

There were no people visibly present here tonight, not as far as he could see in either direction along this side of Comm. Ave. or in the wide middle walking mall or along the street and sidewalk on the far side, thus removing that prospect of threat or demand for respect. The air had cooled and dried following the storm at dusk, and he could even make out a few of the brightest stars in the sky beyond the glow. A light breeze kicked up a scrap of paper from the stoop and sent it floating down into the stair well to the basement apartment. Zach shivered slightly. The city was present, pulsing about him. He nodded to the city from his perch on the stoop then surrendered to Gina's straining and jogged down the steps and across the sidewalk, between the two cars parked directly ahead, across the two empty travel lanes, and out into the splotchy grass of the common.

There under the trees still in the full-leaf of summer even as the cooler air intimated a new season's approach, with Gina sniffing around and finally squatting, Zach thought of a similar late-night confrontation with a deserted but still potent urban landscape: in Omaha several weeks earlier. He wanted this night—this new moment in this new city—to resonate inside him as that one had, the city calling him forth and the world beyond beckoning, redolent with hope and unbounded opportunity. But something was different and he knew it, however much he might wish to deny it. Maybe this difference simply derived from these trees overhead, or maybe it was this city's geographic location—wedged against the water sea where the other had been poised beside the earth sea—or maybe it was the air here, laden with pollutants and moisture despite the freshening breeze. Whatever it was, the feeling was different this time. Whatever its source, Zach had to acknowledge—deep within himself, at the furthest recesses of awareness—the first hints of constraint.

But Gina knew of none of this, was still the same—pulling him onward, this time in the direction of her bed behind the mound of laundry that would be his chore for tomorrow while Allison worked.

4

This sleeping on the floor thing was starting to grow on Zach. This time there wasn't even a thin foam mattress between his bony body and the hardwood, only two doubled-up wool blankets atop an oval-shaped braided rug his mom had made and placed atop the slick smooth hand-waxed floor. They were all three in his small room in his parents' house on the farm in Dover. They'd tried sleeping together in the extra-long twin bed, but Zach had finally given up trying to get comfortable and surrendered the bed to the two girls in his life—Gina and Allison—and prepared a pallet for himself on the floor using the two extra blankets stored in the closet and a light-weight summer season throw from the foot of the bed to put over his feet and legs. It was a warm night with the windows open on the cicadas purring and the bullfrogs in the swamp croaking, and he didn't need even that light comforter to keep him warm but pulled it over his lower body more out of residual modesty—should Allison wake before him—than anything else. He reached up and grabbed his old pillow from off the bed and settled down to sleep, pleased that he'd made up the entire pallet in the pitch black room—real dark, from out of real small-town night—without switching on a light or once fumbling or making any sound sufficient to wake his girls snoring faintly in duet.

They were back in Dover on this early-September weekend to drop off Gina—who, no matter how devoted she was to Zach and Zach to her, was miserable in the city, always constrained by the walls of the apartment or the length of the leash, never free to air out her lungs and stretch her legs in pursuit of the hidden smells and delights of the farm's fields and woods—and to pick up whatever donations and hand-me-downs might help them furnish their new apartment. Allison also planned to purchase and cut the wood for their bed's platform, with Zach's assistance of course as she didn't have a driver's license and in any case couldn't manage the heavy framing lumber or unwieldy plywood alone. And Zach looked forward to a couple days' worth of fieldwork, helping out his dad and younger brother Justin who together now ran the medium-sized dairy farm. In the days prior to driving down from Boston, they both surprised themselves with how excited they were about returning to their home town—the only home either of them had known and the one they were adamant about leaving for good the minute (well, the day after) they were married.

The kitchen they entered together (Zach actually holding Allison's hand—a rarity anywhere but especially in this house) shortly after eight was already a-buzz with activity, the day "half-gone" by the farmer's clock that measured time hereabouts. Justin and his dad were nowhere to be seen—up in the barn wrapping up morning milking—but Zach's mom was at the stove frying bacon, flipping pancakes, and watching over the raspberry muffins baking in the larger of the two ovens. Two of Justin's former classmates who were now part-time employees—the scrawny Phillip that everyone called "Atlas" and the lanky boy with a pink burn scar covering half his face and neck who was named John but had been labeled by Justin the cruelly descriptive "Scarecrow"—were finishing their breakfasts at the large table in the center of the room. At the sink was Zach's youngest brother Mark furiously stirring a tall glass of powdered orange drink. And trailing just behind Zach and Allison, all but pushing them into the kitchen, were Zach's youngest sister Sandy and her best friend Morgan who had slept over last night. Sandy and Morgan were late for cheerleading practice and Sandy shouted for Mark to please hurry up since he had to drive them to the high school since they were still too young to drive. Mark, who had seemed to be in a rush before Sandy yelled at him, suddenly slowed down, sipping his orange drink and staring out the window over the sink toward the fields leading down to the broad Connecticut River rolling lazily toward Long Island Sound on this bright late-summer morning.

"Mark!" Sandy yelled from beside the back door.

Mark kept his back turned to his sister. "Looks like the Wesleyan Crew is practicing early today," he said idly to no one in particular.

"Ohhh," Sandy shrieked and stormed out the door, dragging Morgan behind.

Scarecrow said, "I can drive them if you're busy."

Mark turned and smiled. "I'm sure they'd love that."

Scarecrow shrugged. He was used to being shunned, preferred the way Justin and Mark openly acknowledged his disfigurement to the unspoken pity and avoidance common from most others. "Better than walking."

Mark nodded. "Thanks, but I'll take them. Just wanted Sandy to stew a bit." He drained the glass of juice, added a little tap water and swirled it around to dissolve the remaining sugar at the bottom, gulped that down, then set the glass in the sink. He headed for the door and nodded to Zach and Allison as he passed. "Like you never left," he said, not waiting for a response as he rushed out the door.

It was, and it wasn't.

After breakfast, Zach drove the best of their three oil-leaking, jump-the-battery, rust holes in the floorboards dump trucks behind Justin as he drove the big Ford tractor with the PTO-powered corn chopper while they opened up first the Cheney lot then the Abby Meadow. Though this year the lots were dry and the field corn tall and straight (unlike some years when the lots were mudholes or the corn flattened by wind storms or hail or kids joy-riding through the fields), opening up a lot was still a tedious and risky process as the tractor man had to guide the chopper two rows in then reverse direction and cut out the two outermost rows, and the truck driver had to follow behind the chopper (not safely alongside as once the field was opened up) close enough for the silage being blown out the chute to reach the bed of the truck. That meant that there were mere inches between the truck's vulnerable radiator and the chopper's tow hitch, and the drivers of both tractor and truck needed to be familiar with each other and trust each other to avoid an equipment mash-up.

While Zach was driving truck, Allison got picked up by school chums Ellen and Lori and they rode out to Allison's house. After exchanging five minutes' clipped-answer responses to questions from Allison's mom, the three traipsed upstairs to Allison's old room—totally unaltered since her departure five weeks before, even the sheets unchanged—and closed the door and all three sat on the bed and listened to Renaissance and Neil Young and talked about all their old friends and who was dating whom and who had broken up with whom. Ellen was living at home and had just started classes at the community college. Lori would be leaving the next day to begin nursing school at the state university. Both friends peppered Allison with questions about married life, about city life, about her new job. Allison answered nonchalantly that nothing was all that different—that the husband Zach was little different from the boyfriend Zach, that their apartment was little different from this room, that her job was little different from school. And both Lori and Ellen nodded, seeming reassured even if their romantic illusions about marriage and exciting opportunities in the world beyond Dover were being methodically undermined.

But while the world they'd returned to gave every appearance of being unchanged, and the two returning made every effort to match that unaltered appearance, both Zach and Allison were almost immediately aware that much had changed, and all of it inside themselves.

For Zach, everything around him was familiar, even in its anomalies. The truck's carburetor was still starved for fuel, so you had to keep the choke knob halfway open to keep it from stalling. The rocks in each field were in the same locations, such that he could brace for each sudden lurch before it happened. Even Justin's exaggerated hand signals—a grandiose swirling of the arm to crank up the chopper, a hand thrown forward with two fingers pointing ahead to signal a start, a fist pumped at the sky to signal a stop, a disturbingly animated slicing of his throat to signal a shutdown—seemed as old and familiar as well-worn shoes or the bedroom closet yielding forth its blankets last night. But Zach's former relaxed and taken for granted place within those familiarities was gone. He felt ill at ease, kept thinking about Allison, about things he needed to do for their apartment—groceries to buy, pictures to hang. And he felt that this land, the old familiar farm fields and hunting trails and cow paths, resented his divided attention, had decided to reject him before he had a chance to reject it. He knew this also to be from within, not from without, but was still deeply troubled by the sense of estrangement, the withdrawal of welcome and refuge. He found himself longing for Allison's presence and couldn't wait to get back to her.

Allison also experienced a sense of estrangement, only from people rather than the land. While her friends were the same—and the bed they sat on the same, the room the same, the music and the tape player and the speakers the same—she felt herself being flung outward into a vast unknown, leaving these friends behind for good. She knew it was all inside her. Best she could tell, Lori and Ellen (and her mom and dad and sister and brother and Janet and Stephanie and Tess and all the other faces from this hometown that was now of her past) were the same as they'd always been. Why wouldn't they be? They're here, same as before. But she no longer was. This realization was not particularly painful or frightening to her—she knew they'd all be O.K., and so would she. But the realization was absolute, and its implication clear. She had to find new friends. She had to make a new life to replace the departed one. What's more, she was sure she would.

This was the weekend of the Dover Agricultural Fair—first weekend after Labor Day, far back as anyone cared to recall. Zach and Allison declined several dinner invitations so that they'd be free to attend the fair, eat its junk-food offerings as their dinner, and partake fully of all its familiar sights and rituals. Lori and Ellen were also going to the fair that night, as were most of Allison's old friends; but they didn't even bother to ask Allison to come along. They knew Saturday night at the Fair was assigned to Zach, back all the way through high school, surely all the more so now they were married. That's just the way it was, and probably the way it would always be—far out as always went in this ever-changing world.

Zach swung his truck into the spot where Billy Crumpton—town-maintenance employee and volunteer fireman—directed him with a waving flashlight (though it wasn't yet dark) and disjointed hand signals. The spot was in the middle of his dad's fresh-mown hayfield that was, one weekend a year, the Fair's parking lot, just a couple fields over from the cornfields where Zach had been driving truck earlier, and in the midst of the section of town called The Meadows—low and flat cropland along the river that would be submerged under several feet of water during the spring floods but yielded forth generous bounties of corn and hay and, this one weekend annually, fairgoers.

Zach, with Allison close by and silent on the seat, sat in the truck for several minutes to let the trailing cars fill in beside them and move farther down the row. He didn't feel like exchanging small talk with Billy or any of the other attendants littering the lot, all of whom he knew and most of whom he didn't care for with their boisterous shouts and back-slapping and suggestive winks accompanying lewd innuendo. Once the line of cars had started filling the next row, he opened his door and stepped out and offered Allison his hand to help her out.

It was a gorgeous evening, the kind of night that in just a few minutes of perfect balance between cold and hot, dry and moist, calm and breezy, bright and dark makes up for all those sultry summer nights and bitter winter days and main force battles with the New England elements. The sun had set twenty minutes earlier but still painted the western horizon in pastel stripes that passed from silver to yellow to pink to rose to turquoise to lavender to blue. To the east, toward the fairgrounds, the stars were already out in full array against a black background. Straight overhead in the cloudless sky the stars were gradually appearing, seemed to emerge from the blue dome while you watched. Two-thirds of the way down the sky to the west, a thin sliver of moon hung suspended between the looming night above and the poignant recall of the gone day below.

Then, just like that, even those fleeting memories of day were gone, the western sky claimed by blue twilight, the late-summer night with just a hint of fall in the air now in full command. Zach and Allison weaved their way through the rows of cars toward the lights and noise of the Fair. It was rare—all but unprecedented—for Zach to be lured away from natural order and beauty by man-made attractions and illusions. But tonight was such an occasion, as he turned his back on the fields of his former home for the glittering shine and siren song of a fantasy world wherein one might, just might, find the balance between what one had known and what one has to come.

They surrendered their admission, getting change back in wrinkled well-worn one-dollar bills, and took their place in the crowd moving lazily in a counter-clockwise direction around the large square that included the rides, the games, and the food booths. Off in the distance, beyond the Ferris wheel, Zach could just make out the tops of the exhibit and livestock tents. But they'd have to bide their time till the meandering crowd carried them close enough to those tents to peel away and lose themselves in the after-hours peacefulness of teenagers sleeping in the hay with their heifers, ribbons fluttering beneath shiny prize-winning vegetables, and appetizing pies and cakes luring with just a morsel missing, their perfection ceded to the judges' tasting.

While they both recognized many of the people meandering along with them, they rarely made eye contact with any of these familiar faces, and even more rarely waved. While such stoicism was a well-known New England trait, Zach and Allison had fostered it beyond regional norms throughout their years of courtship in this ever nosy small town. By so doing they'd made a silent plea for privacy and, at least to some indignant townsfolk, showed their backs as it were to the place they longed to leave. Now having left it, if only for a few weeks, they had no inclination to reverse this long-established habit and begin greeting these peripheral acquaintances like long-lost friends.

Allison dragged Zach out of the crowd and into line at the most popular of the food booths—the one selling fried dough and hand-cut grease-sodden French fries. Allison pointed to the biggest fried dough on the serving table coated with waxed paper, and Zach got a large order of French fries delivered in a tall, funnel-shaped, grease-spotted paper container. Allison peppered her fried dough with a generous helping of confectioner's sugar, and Zach coated his French fries with lots of ketchup, salt, and vinegar—the latter a French fry condiment he'd only ever tasted at the Fair. And these treats instantly summoned all the memories of past fairs—while together and before—through their taste buds. And in those flavors, those memories, those fatty snacks that were this night's supper, they passed close to a momentary sense of place and belonging to a larger scheme of things.

Their dinner finished while strolling along inside the crowd, Allison again silently pulled Zach out of the ever shifting wandering troop and into the snaking line to ride the Ferris wheel. They waited their turn then jogged up the creaking ramp at the behest of the weathered carny with the disturbing dent in the side of his head who latched the safety bar firmly even before they were fully seated and pulled on his long-armed lever to move the wheel one seat further along, exit those riders, entrap the next pair. And in seat-swaying starts and stops, they climbed from earth-bound to skyward, starward, the night the only reality above the flashing lights. They came to their last rocking stop at the peak of the wheel, this one a particularly long pause as the carny had to settle a young couple and two toddlers safely into their seat. And Zach and Allison rocked gently there above the fair in silent reverie, never looking at each other but acutely aware of their desperate reliance on that other's presence. The white paint-chipped seat creaked lightly in its pivots; Zach tested the rail to be sure it was locked.

Then the operator threw his lever all the way forward and the diesel engine roared and belched smoke into the night to mix with the grease and smoke exhausts of the other engines arrayed around the lot, and the wheel began its uninterrupted whirl—down then up, down then up, into the brilliance then out, the racket then the quiet, the smells then the pristine, all of a motion, all of an instant paused in their minds if not in reality: their reward for this night, this weekend, this six weeks' hazards survived intact.

Zach pulled the truck into the gravel turnout off Langford Road and parked in their old make-out spot between the now-defunct railroad bed and Lawton Cemetery with its eight tombstones almost luminescent in the deep dark. It was only after switching off the truck (he'd switched off the lights back at the road and made his way to the end of the drive by memory), that he realized he and Allison hadn't spoken since getting out of the truck back before entering the Fair. Could that be true? And if it were true, was their silence representative of lock-step understanding or emerging distance? What's more, he couldn't speak now, with Allison silent beside him and staring ahead at the grave markers. So he turned to her from his seat behind the wheel and laid his one hand tentatively on her knee, his other on her shoulder.

"Do you suppose they mind?" she said while staring straight ahead.

"Who?"

"The Lawtons, or whoever it is that's buried in Lawton Cemetery."

"Mind what?"

"That people look on their last resting place while making out."

"Those making out aren't looking, or at least they're not supposed to be. They're supposed to have their eyes closed."

"You know what I mean—before and in between and after."

"Those Lawtons are way past caring. Their living kin might care, if they knew. But I think they've all long since moved on."

"So no one cares."

"Why should they?"

"Because it's irreverent."

"What is?"

"Groping and pawing in sight of those graves."

"Never bothered you before."

"The thought of it bothers me now. And maybe it bothered me before and I just didn't think about it."

"It's not groping and pawing, Allison. It's loving and caring." Despite his statement, Zach let his hands slide off Allison's knee and shoulder.

"In the front or back seat of a car?"

"Wherever it happens, if it derives from love."

"And who decides that?"

"I didn't know it was a decision. I thought it was a feeling."

She finally faced Zach. "I'm sorry. For some reason I see this place in a different light tonight—see all the mistakes and lies."

Zach saw the holes of her eyes in the pale skin of her face. "Love?"

"No, groping in sight of graves."

"Maybe they'd appreciate the excitement."

"Who?"

"The Lawtons."

"The living ones or the dead?"

"Both," Zach said as he cranked the truck and shined the headlights on those now tainted graves.

5

Ian and Mary and Matt and Allison took their lunches and ran across Receiving and out the open loading dock door and jumped from the elevated platform to the drive below. Mary had the blanket and Ian the Frisbee and all four carried their lunches in brown bags and together they ran down Berkeley to Boylston then weaved their way through the crowds on Boylston the three blocks to the Common where they spread out the blanket at the bottom of the Common's broad sloping field. (It really had long been a "common" pasture for the city's livestock before such responsibilities were delegated to the inhabitants of more rural areas outside of town and the pasture turned into a "common" gathering and recreational spot.)

Ian flopped down on the blanket, panting heavily. He was a Records Manager and the supervisor for Allison and Mary. "I'm so winded I need a fag," he said, and pulled a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket. He lit the cigarette and rolled onto his back. He exhaled a long thin stream of silver smoke. "Nothing like a good smoke to get air back into your lungs."

Allison lay down beside him. "They'll kill you, you know."

Ian grinned indulgently at her. "If not these, then something else."

"You're too young to be looking ahead to death."

"How do you know? I've got three years on you, three years closer to death."

"You're twenty-one, Ian—way too young to be worrying about death."

He turned those dark and sad eyes on her. "The right time to start—it's all downhill from here."

Mary landed between them, her bottle-blond hair like a screen blocking their views of each other. "What are you two talking about?" she cried. "It's the prettiest day of the year and you're talking about death? Ian's Irish Catholic but what's your excuse, Allison?"

"I'm Irish Catholic too."

Ian sat up. "When did you last go to confession?" He stared down at Allison with the cigarette hanging from between the long fingers of his right hand.

Allison blushed. "I'm sort of inactive. But my dad still goes every Saturday and says confession for me."

Ian scoffed. "Doesn't count."

"Better than nothing."

"What's your dad know about your sins?"

Mary screamed so loud the toddler playing patty-cake with his mom twenty yards away started crying. Mary waved sheepishly at the woman. "Sorry!" She turned and looked first at Ian then Allison. "Shame on you both. You keep this up and I'll give you five Hail Marys and two Our Fathers just for dragging me down."

Ian laughed, hung the cigarette between his lips, then jumped up and grabbed the Frisbee. He tossed it high in the air only to have it return directly to his hand. He did this several times until Matt joined him and they tossed the Frisbee back and forth in a clear part of the lawn partway up the hill.

It was a day nearly as beautiful as Mary'd proclaimed—if not the prettiest day of the year darned close: upper sixties in the shade, warmer in the late-summer sun (two days before the autumnal equinox), not a cloud in the azure sky, a light breeze rippling the Garden Pond across Charles Street. The four of them had sat at break earlier that morning in the bowels of the Hancock lamenting their estrangement from the sun when Allison suggested they turn their lunch hour into a picnic on the Common. And here they were.

Allison nibbled on her peanut-butter sandwich as she watched Ian and Matt loping around the field chasing the Frisbee. "Do you go to confession?" she asked Mary.

"Every week," Mary replied while eating her pasta salad out of the square plastic container. "But I'm Italian—we don't take it seriously."

"Then why do you go?"

Mary shrugged. "Always have. I wouldn't know what to do if I stopped going to confession."

"But you just said you didn't take it seriously."

"Not the words or the penance. But the act of going, the routine, is very important."

Allison turned and stared at her blond and buxom new friend, a records clerk that had started the same day as she. "That makes absolutely no sense."

"Never said it did."

By the time Ian and Matt returned to the blanket, Mary and Allison had finished their lunches and were lying on their backs staring at the blank sky. The boys wolfed their sandwiches and chugged the cans of soda they'd bought out of the vending machines in their break room. "What are you two doing?" Matt asked when the girls didn't pay them any heed.

"Writing our futures on the sky," Mary said without looking at him.

"And what do they say?" Matt asked. He was from Maintenance but hung out with the gang from Records.

"That's for me to know and for you to find out," Mary said. Everyone knew she had a crush on the curly-haired Matt, including the cagey subject of her desire.

"And how do I go about doing that?" he asked.

"You'll figure it out," Mary purred, still staring straight up at the sky.

"My future is as blank as that sky," Allison said calmly to no one in particular.

"Got to be something there," Mary said.

"Oh, there is. I just can't see it."

"Your husband? Kids? College? Got to be something there, even if it doesn't come true."

"Nope," Allison said. "Nothing I can see. Nothing in particular I'm hoping for. Just a blank sky."

"That's from leaving home," Ian said.

Allison sat up and spoke to Ian as if they were alone. "You're right. And it's a wonderful freedom."

"Until you fall."

"Who has to?"

Ian shook his head. "Now I know why you stopped going to confession."

"Nothing to confess."

"Still good for the soul," Mary chimed in, apparently done writing her future in the sky.

6

Certain individuals possess the ability to spot subtle features—features invisible to most people—in a given environment. Such abilities exist for rural settings—where one so blessed might spot a far-off spring in the woods, or a bounty of wild grapes buried deep in a thicket—as well as for urban domains. Zach was glaringly blind to most of the subtle amenities of Boston. The off-the-beaten-track boutiques, cafes, used-book shops, and discount basements that most locals labeled as the real charm of this manageable city were totally invisible to Zach; and when shown them by Allison or Ann or some new-found friend, he'd have to meticulously document the name and address of the place to ever find it again.

But what Zach had a knack for—and he knew of no one else that shared this ability—was identifying spots of isolation and seclusion hiding in plain sight amidst the hubbub of city life. Within a few weeks of roaming the city alone by day, after Allison started her job at The Hancock, he'd discovered three such places; and over the coming months he found maybe a half-dozen more. These hidden in plain sight nooks of isolation—where he could sit or stand or meander and be certain no one would bother him or be watching—became essential to his survival in the city, as he needed to spend time outside the apartment, get outdoors, but couldn't bear the oppressive weight of always having to be on guard against unexpected assault or approach by muggers or panhandlers or cruising men or simply prying eyes.

The first of these discoveries was not really all that hard to find. In fact, it was one of the main features of the Back Bay region—the Charles River Esplanade, a pedestrian green space between Storrow Drive and the Charles River Basin with mainly open lawns with intermittent trees crossed with paved paths for jogging or biking. While the Esplanade stretched for more than a mile—from the Museum of Science at one end to the Mass. Ave. Bridge (and included the Hatch Shell for the famous July 4th Pops concerts)—Zach confined himself to the use of the rather narrow strip of green just east of the Gloucestor Street footbridge and stretching to the water fifty yards in front. Anchoring this domain was a beautiful majestic maple twenty feet off the path where you could sit or lie in the shade, and a short distance away a rarely used bench beside the path where you could bask in the sun on a bright late fall or early spring day—both spots surprisingly ignored by those jogging or biking past, both locations affording clear views of the rowers in their one-person skulls creasing the sparkling water and the MIT Dome with its calming limestone beige and soothing classical proportions. Zach spent countless hours in these two spots—reading, reflecting, daydreaming—and was not once bothered by another human being (though an overly friendly Lab did slobber on his face one warm summer afternoon).

The second of these discoveries was as stark and unsettling as the Esplanade was calm and soothing. After walking through downtown on School and Water and Milk and past the recently renovated warehouses of Faneuil Hall Marketplace, crossing under the rumbling Boston Expressway and dodging traffic on Atlantic Ave. and strolling across the Aquarium Plaza and past the honking harbor seals in their outdoor pool and along the left side of the hulking monolith of the windowless Aquarium building, you came to a narrow strip of unkempt pier between the backside of the Aquarium and the littered brown water of the Inner Harbor. Though freely accessible to the public, no one voluntarily came to this almost always chilly (with the wind off the cold water), dark (in the near constant shadow of the Aquarium), smelly (with the piquant odors of a working harbor and the bilge from the Aquarium's three-story cylindrical glass pool), and loud (sometimes deafeningly so, with wide-bodied jets taking off from Logan Airport across the harbor) nether zone. No one, that is, except Zach. He thought of this spot as the armpit of the city; and in fact it did sit in a kind of smelly niche between the North End—the "head" of the Boston peninsula—and the "body" of downtown, the "waist" of the Common and Public Gardens, and the "legs" of Back Bay. He liked to spend time in this armpit, this shunned strip of water-logged wood floating atop a foul bay, because he wanted to understand, to know intimately, the slimy and smelly underbelly of the city, that by knowing that he might better contemplate the dark side of human nature and the human endeavor, an endeavor which had, after all, produced this city, cities everywhere, as one representation of its crowning achievement. Alongside this higher, if ill-advised, calling to understand, Zach also liked to come to this spot because in its abject loneliness it almost exactly mirrored the pool of dark despair growing in his soul.

The third spot took a little longer for him to discern. He had to walk through the Public Gardens many times, stare at this one vista repeatedly—like looking at the childhood puzzle innumerable times before finally seeing the rabbit hidden amongst the foliage and figures and landscape—then one day there it was. It was an innocuous weathered bench with rusty iron legs and worn-raw wooden slats beside a mammoth willow oak on the Boylston St. side of the Gardens, maybe a third of the way from Arlington to Charles. The bench was only ten feet or so off the path that circled the Gardens Pond, but this part of the path was hardly ever used, and in any case the bench was well protected from that path by that massive oak trunk. And once you sat on the bench (which no one ever did, except Zach), you were screened from Boylston's heavy car and foot traffic by a thick hedge of year-round green holly bushes, protected from Arlington by a dense mound of forsythia that started at the corner of Boylston and headed north, and screened from the pond by a mix of azaleas, ornamental cherry trees, and low cedars. But—and here was the best part—there was one clear viewing line from the bench to the pond, giving an unobstructed view of the shallow water where the swanboats would turn and head back toward the arched bridge and the boat docks nearby. And because they followed a counter-clockwise route, the boats were always headed away as they passed through this slot in the foliage, and Zach watched mesmerized as the people and boats with the white swans painted on the side drifted away like images in a dream. There was something almost painful in this voyeurism, as they were ever departing his sight, never to return—at least not those people on that boat. He never tired of that view and the melancholy it produced in his heart. And even on days when the swanboats weren't in the water—fully six months of the year: the cold months—Zach still spent time on the bench because he loved being close to all the movement and noise and smells at this heart of city life, immersed in that vibrancy, that pulsing plasma, without surrendering any part of himself to its demands, unless the surrender of hope counted as payment.

7

The lunch shifts were the worst.

He didn't mind the weeknight calls, especially the nights of big parties or special meetings. Then cars came in fast and frequent and parking spaces were hard to come by, took a good eye and an intangible instinct (what the guys called "scent") to consistently pick out the resident heading for their car (instead of walking to the market or out for a stroll) and which car they were heading for from a block away and race to a spot directly behind that car (not even one space in front of it or you were lost) and wait till they came around and unlocked the car and drove away and you slingshot your car into the space before anyone else could horn in on your find. After parking Zach actually jogged back to the Club to get the next car waiting (sometimes there would be a dozen or more double-parked along Comm. Ave.) and get back in the game with the other car parkers and all the local residents out there competing for those rare openings. On those nights, Zach always parked the most cars, sometimes three or four times as many as the next closest competitor, and reaped the most tips as a result. Those nights, with their competition and camaraderie and decent pay, the job was fun.

But the lunch gigs with only a half-dozen or so cars and easy to claim spaces everywhere, some even within sight of the Club, were oh so boring. They always scheduled two parkers plus Lonnie, the parking super, for lunch. Lonnie himself could've probably managed if he weren't so lazy, sitting in his Olds listening to fifties music when he wasn't sucking up to the fat-cat elite as they paused at the foot of the entrance steps to take a few last drags on their cigars before snuffing them out in the brass ash can at the door. But since they paid the parkers so little in wages—everybody worked for tips—they didn't mind scheduling two for lunch to keep Lonnie from ever having to lift a finger and to make the members feel generously cared for. And Zach, being one of the few parkers without a full-time job or classes to attend, and wishing to impress the manager with his loyalty and reliability, was one of the regulars for this monotonous, poor-paying slot.

The first few months, the other parker most often paired with Zach was Rodney, the nephew of one of the members and a recent graduate of Harvard who seemed not to have an ambitious bone in his body or interesting thought in his head as he spent the whole time either leaning his chair against the wall with his eyes closed in the left-side parker cubby of the shallow entry porch or drawing pornographic caricatures in a pad in the break room, not even trying to hide the pictures if someone walked by. As a result of Rodney's blatant indifference and Lonnie's "I'm above this" misdirected pride, Zach parked almost all the lunch-shift cars, and reaped virtually no reward for his reliability and efforts as the lunch regulars were notoriously poor tippers, and the few who did tip tended to give their money to Lonnie "to hold the car close"—which meant in one of the Club's two designated spots directly in front.

The only saving grace to these interminable gigs—that Zach at first thought of as diversions in the middle of his boring days but soon came to regard as demeaning—was Blanche. She worked out of her apartment in a building one door down from the Club, doing the paperwork for some ill-defined import business. She was blonde and lithe and wore light-colored sundresses and sandals and had graduated from Ole Miss the spring before. All the car parkers, even lecherous Lonnie, laughed at her drawl and wanted to sleep with her. Even indifferent Rodney, who claimed he was always tired because his Korean girlfriend would never let him sleep ("if you know what I mean") perked up when Blanche walked past and said "Hi, y'all" with that huge smile unmasking those brilliant teeth.

But she held Zach's attention with something more than simple sex appeal (though, truth be told, that held his attention as well, however mundane and clichéd). But what caught his eye the moment he saw her and never faded even after she moved away the following spring, was her abundant light amidst this darkness. Her light was partly tied to her fair skin and blonde hair and natural grace, but it was also something more. She seemed so at ease with herself and her world, so comfortable and happy and without expectation or agenda. In short, she seemed so alive—and finally so out of place in this uptight, frost-bitten, hypocritical, callous, and hyper-competitive northern city. What was she doing here? How could she stand it—being pushed around and made fun of and gawked at like those harbor seals outside the Aquarium? Zach didn't want to sleep with her, he wanted to rescue her, take her back to wherever it was that could produce such a perfect grace-filled specimen, tell those there not to let her out of their sight next time.

But in his many days of rapt observation of Blanche—encounters that never got past brief and superficial exchanges—and the months of silent mourning following her departure, Zach never considered what sort of world might've produced such a creature. To this life-long New Englander steeped in all its inhibitions and convoluted legacies, the fecund South was simply beyond the capacity of his imagination.

8

"Zach, I don't want to go out to Hilary's. I'm tired from a full day of work and just want to sit at home and read and go to bed at a reasonable hour."

This was the third time this week that Allison had rebuffed a suggestion by Zach to go out after dinner. Tonight, cloudy and cool with a fog coming off the ocean, he'd suggested they go to the bar of a restaurant up on Boylston. Last night it was an invitation for a walk, two evenings earlier—a hot day—a suggested trip to the ice cream parlor. Every time she'd pled fatigue, a need for rest and quiet time after her long day.

"You weren't too tired to go to Jimmy's the other night." Jimmy's was a bar and grill on the ground floor concourse of the Prudential Tower.

"That was different. That was for Matt's birthday and right after work and I still got home at a reasonable hour and to bed early enough for a good night's sleep."

"And missed dinner." He was still angry that he'd had to eat his carefully prepared, albeit simple, meal of hot dogs and beans and potato rounds by himself after stewing over her tardiness before noticing on the calendar the note about going out after work.

"Zach, I'd told you about that," she said for what seemed the hundredth time. "I'd even invited you to meet us and you said 'No thanks—I won't know anybody.' We've been over this. Let it go."

"I have let it go."

"Yes, that's clear."

"I just don't know why you have the energy to go out with your friends from work but won't take the time to go out with me."

Allison sighed heavily and curled up into a tighter ball in the butterfly chair, looking like she wished the chair would close over top of her, encase her in a cocoon that she might wake up a long time from now a changed creature—the butterfly for which the chair was named. "Zach, I'm still learning my way around at work—it's all new and intimidating. It's important for me to have friends there, and to build on those friendships. It's part of work, not competition with you. And I've asked you to join us when we go out. You'd like Ian. He says he wants you on his basketball team."

"It's not about work or your new friends there. It's about us spending time together."

"We do—right here in the apartment, only maybe better without the arguing."

"I spend most of my day in here."

"That's not my fault."

"I don't need to go out every night. I just want to go out some nights, to vary our routine a little."

"We will—this weekend. Then I don't have to worry about getting up and being ready for work. We'll go out tomorrow night."

"You said you were going to Jimmy's from work."

"Oh, that's right—Jackie's last day. Why don't you meet us, then we can go from there to get something to eat. It'll be fun, Zach. You need to meet people and make friends."

Zach felt cornered, trapped between the accuracy of her simple assertion and his sense of righteous anger at her neglect of his needs. They'd been over this same ground numerous times in the last several weeks—hell, numerous times in the last several days. They weren't making any progress, at least none he could perceive. He shook his head, grabbed his jacket, and headed for the door. "I'm going out," he muttered without turning around, trying to indicate an indifference to her needs to match what he perceived as hers toward his, but also wanting to be sure she heard him, registered his anger and frustration. He didn't quite slam the metal entry door but came very close as he pulled it shut with a resounding bang.

In his wake Allison had a moment when she felt tears welling around her eyes. She blinked those tears away, forced the sadness out of her heart, grabbed her book off the freshly finished end table—one of her tasks on a night she didn't go out—between the chair and the couch, and poured her attention into the story of a futuristic society seeking solace in a mystery man.

When he hit the street and turned left toward downtown, Zach was so caught up in his anger and despair he didn't notice the fog. But by the time he crossed Exeter and was in the thicker trees of the next block, the encroaching fog combined with his cooling anger to leave him feeling like he'd stumbled into a middle world between earth and hell. This new world extended about thirty feet in all directions then faded into the blur of the fog with its suspended droplets racing past in the eerie glow of the gaslights, pushed along by an east wind off the harbor like the spirits of lost souls or the winds of earth's shaping.

Zach had a very active inner life, an imagination sufficiently vivid and compelling that it often took precedence over the physical world of his surroundings, carried him away in what others might call daydreams or waking visions or imagined conversations within himself, those conversations with others or with himself (his own mind filling the roles of both first and third persons). The power and pervasiveness of this inner world dated to Zach's earliest memories and had found its manifestation in ever-changing circumstances, from the wall-paper world beside his crib to the mud-puddle world at the bottom of the street to the field-work world astride the roaring tractor to the duck-blind world of reeds and cattails. So familiar was Zach with this inner life that his consciousness flowed seamlessly between that world and the outer reality that his body occupied, at least while alone. While in the company of others he forced himself to stay in the real present to avoid ridicule or discovery, wouldn't let his mind drift away into his inner life. This in turn explained why he filled his life with so much solitude, so many opportunities to escape the real world and engage this inner world.

But since moving to Boston he'd found himself with entirely too much time alone—his inner world was threatening to consume his outer one, or at least the part of himself that occupied that outer world. He'd not realized how his former well-established balance between the two realms relied on the heavy demands from the outside world, the demands of a large family, friends, school, jobs, the farm. With most of those demands systematically and intentionally swept away in the pursuit of freedom from expectation and contingency, freedom to discover himself and follow his heart, Zach had created an imbalance which he didn't know how to correct. He'd not anticipated the cost of removing external demands and expectations from his life.

Nor had he and Allison had any chance to prepare for this life where they were so heavily reliant on each other for both practical and emotional needs. They were finding their way with the practical part—opening a joint checking account, paying bills, divvying up household chores—but clearly having trouble with the emotional dependence. Allison, whether instinctively or intentionally (probably a little of both) was seeking fulfillment of her emotional needs beyond just Zach. But Zach, uncomfortable with the city and its intimidating populace, had no natural ability or inner will to explore the possibility of finding others to help him through these challenges. Allison was the only one he trusted to help him, and she was clearly resisting his heavy demand, maybe without even knowing what she was doing or why.

The fog, the twilight, the still strange city combined to place Zach in a rare moment where his inner world and the outer world blended to the point of being indistinguishable, where what his eyes saw and what his heart felt were the same—a haze of unknowing, threat looming in every direction, no apparent path to safety or security or even the hope of consolation. He'd had a few other instances of such congruence between his worlds—waking in the dark after a vivid dream, hunting in a sudden squall, driving back from Yale in a blizzard—but in all those other cases his consciousness could fall back on the reliable safety net of a world he knew would catch him if he fell beyond himself—the very same family and friends and obligations that he chafed against were unfailing in times of crisis. This time, that safety net was gone—dismissed by him with no consideration for its hidden or apparent virtues (having instinctively known that if he'd weighed those values, he could've never walked away).

So fog it was, and lostness, and an unfolding desperation that raced to the edges of his outer world that was also his inner world—the limits of the fog. His thoughts bounced off those walls back upon himself—then out again, bounced back, out again, and so on. He carried this world forward in time and space, across Dartmouth and Clarendon and Berkeley and Arlington, to the gates of The Gardens and parallel that black wrought-iron fence with its sharp-pointed finials, over to Beacon and along its truly unfamiliar pavement made all the more unfamiliar this night. As he walked uphill toward downtown, the fog lifted slightly, enough for him to better see the cars and even a horse-drawn carriage with no passengers, only its driver guiding his horse toward the end of their shift, to the stable in some basement catacombs downtown, toward hay and a little grain and a chance at a standing rest till the next shift began in new daylight.

There to the right, an entrance to The Common suddenly appeared in the wall of stone and fence, the open landscape beyond dark and deserted with the fog suspended twenty feet off the ground like a gauze canopy above the damp walking paths. The nocturnal Common had a reputation for being the haunt of muggers, drug dealers, and available prostitutes of both sexes. In this fog-capped dark on this lonely night it was clear to see why—who but the damned would venture into that nether world? Which was exactly why Zach turned off the safe and reasonably well-lit sidewalk of Beacon and into the dark and abandoned realm of The Common, took the path that led straight into its heart, sure that the center of this darkness and threat could be no worse than the realm he inhabited at the moment, might even offer some kind of relief within its unknown.

His eyes quickly adjusted to the greater dark which was, of course, not true dark. Even under the curtain of fog, the widely spaced gaslights and the pervasive glow of the city gave him more than adequate light to find his way and scan for danger across the open slope and around the occasional trees. There wasn't another soul visible anywhere on The Common, either on his path or the others he crossed or could see in the night. Yet still he felt that he was being watched, wondered how many pairs of eyes were trained on him this minute, and what their intent might be, or interpretation of his presence, if these watchers had intent or interpretation. He imagined who might be out there—a drunk waking from a stupor beside the wall and clutching tighter the empty bottle inside its bag beside his shoulder, a hooker pulling up her fishnets to try to hide their tear, a dealer dropping his supply in the trash can till this loner (must be a narc) finished his rounds: all these invisible eyes watching this unfamiliar and reckless figure boldly crossing this urban no man's land. They couldn't guess his intent or his capabilities; and this lack of understanding frightened those watching eyes, all of them.

Except there were no eyes watching, at least none tied to the earth. This night at this moment, The Common really was as empty as it appeared, devoid of the lost and the damned alike—except for Zach (who felt both lost and damned), now almost all the way through the dark heart, nearing Charles Street and its occasionally passing cars and taxis.

But from above and unseen beyond the fog—his fog, droplets suspended that were indeed spirits but not lost, right where they needed to be, pushed along by the winds, his winds, of earth's shaping—God watched the meandering and tormented progress of this one of his beloved. He watched not because Zach was tormented, any more than he would've watched if Zach thought he was secure and happy; and he didn't pay Zach particular heed because he merited such witness—he loved all elements of his creation equally. But what held his attention on Zach was how much this young man desired to know his creator. That desire by itself was not unique—all his creatures had that desire somewhere embedded within them (and this trait was not his choice or doing, by the way, just something that had happened and brought him endless pleasure and engagement). But what had brought Zach to his attention, what made him stand out, were the lengths to which he was willing to go in this attempt to know him. Zach didn't understand exactly what he was after, yet was willing to sacrifice everything in the hope, the search. This was a rare and outrageous level of determination, one almost always destined (by the world, not him) for failure, usually in a disaster felt by many, sometimes in a silent fall known only to the faller. Either way, the size of Zach's wager—a perversion of free will all but unheard of in creation—held his attention from above the fog, an attention that would not intervene, however loving or curious, but took pleasure in the watching, and wished for a good outcome to this reckless child's dive into the void.

Zach crossed Charles Street without ever breaking stride. He wondered if he'd have altered that stride if a car or taxi had been bearing down, or if he would've simply walked without pausing into the street and let fate decide whether he survived beyond the screeching tires. He didn't know the answer—the trial passed with no cars approaching, without a true test.

He entered The Gardens and strode across the well-lit arched stone bridge. There were a handful of people on the wide main path, including an older couple—the man in a tux, the woman in a slinky evening gown—in a prolonged and closed-eyes kiss in the middle of the path at the top of the bridge. He wondered at their brazenness, the risk they took in their abandon—but a risk on the night or in their love? That was a question that Zach posed to himself but refused to try to answer. He raced down the far slope of the bridge and through the rest of The Gardens then across Arlington (pausing to let the traffic pass) and up Comm. Ave., the trees dripping but the street no longer enshrouded in fog.

As he approached their apartment building, Zach felt calmer but had no idea why. He chose to minimize the impulsive risks he'd just taken, risks to his heart and body. Instead he told himself that he'd just been out for a walk, a little fresh air on a spooky night. And a part of him actually believed that story.

So it was easy then for him to enter their dark apartment in virtual silence, strip naked beside the bed without turning on the light, slide between the sheets next to his wife feigning sleep, and with gentle but determined touch map out an itinerary that delivered the two of them to an old familiar home, both a place and an action, and finally a release of tension that their young marriage craved, that might hold them together a while longer.

It was only after they'd completed that journey that Allison thought to wonder where Zach had gone to return so refreshed, and Zach thought to wonder where Allison had found the energy and enthusiasm for shared pursuit that had been lacking earlier. But neither posed their question to its subject. They just fell asleep.

9

No sooner had Zach poured himself a mug of beer from the pitcher in the middle of the four tables pushed together with people—some seated, some standing—crowded all around and nibbling on nachos and popcorn and sipping on their drinks, then a tall and lanky guy with pale skin set off by his raven black hair tapped him on the shoulder and gestured with a tilt of his head toward a wall of games on the far side of the bar. "You got to check out this machine," he said and turned and walked away without looking back.

Zach glanced at Allison on the far side of the table sipping a White Russian and talking with a buxom blonde girl in a beige sweater.

Allison smiled back at him and made a shooing gesture in the direction of the departed dark-haired guy.

Zach shrugged, grabbed his mug of beer, and waded through the milling crowd in pursuit of the dark hair he could see bobbing above the heads through the thick cigarette smoke.

He caught up with the guy where he was standing behind a beautiful woman with crimped blonde hair and dressed in a sheer white smock top and extremely tight jeans who was in the middle of playing a pinball game. She twitched her butt and hips in sporadic spasms, bumped the game table with her thighs, and swayed her torso from side to side in an attempt to persuade the shiny silver ball to go where she desired for it to go. She made occasional grunting noises interspersed with low moans that blended with the pinball machine's clicking and dinging as she accumulated points and extra balls on the scoreboard at the head of the table.

The dark haired guy slid a cigarette out of the pack in his shirt pocket and lit it with a lighter while he waited his turn on the machine. He watched the woman's contorted motions nonchalantly then glanced sideways at Zach with a sly smile.

Zach stood to one side, his back within inches of a standing couple in the midst of a heated argument. He hoped he didn't get wet if the woman threw her drink at the man. But soon he forgot about their argument and became mesmerized by the energy and light and noise and motion of his surroundings, a sensory overload that gradually came to be focused on the twitching hips and shapely thighs squeezed into those tight jeans.

The woman cursed, slapped her hand on the machine's glass top, and strode off in a huff without looking at either of the men waiting behind her.

The dark haired guy's eyes followed her till she disappeared into the crowd, then he looked at Zach. "I'm single; I can look. You're married; you ain't supposed to look."

Zach shrugged. "Just checking out the game."

"Sure—you and me both." He slid into the player's spot vacated by the woman and dropped a quarter into the slot. As the first ball dropped onto the queue, he turned to Zach. "I'm Ian McCarthy." He hung the cigarette on his lips and extended his hand.

Zach shook that hand. "Zach Sandstrom."

Ian laughed. "Yeah—I know. Allison won't shut up about you."

Zach looked perplexed. "News to me."

Ian didn't hear. His attention was on the game as he put the first ball in play.

Zach stood to one side and gazed across the crowded bar. The game tables were against the wall between the long wooden bar and the entry foyer. There was an open space that ran the length of the room, from the entry to the bathrooms and kitchen at the far end, a space currently filled with standing patrons. Beyond this open area, along the wall opposite the bar, were tables tended by waitresses where you could sit to eat or drink. Allison and about a dozen of her co-workers were gathered around four of these tables that they'd pushed together and covered with a mix of appetizers and beverages. Zach could make out where those tables were in the far corner but couldn't see Allison from where he stood.

He turned back to Ian. "Holy shit," he said. Ian already had over fifty thousand points and two balls to go. The woman had washed out under thirty.

Ian shrugged without taking his eyes off the board. "Nowhere near my record." He shifted subtly from side to side, bumped the table very judiciously, and offered up none of the sound effects or gyrations that had defined the woman's game.

"Which is?"

"Somewhere north of a hundred grand—and I'm not even on the leader board."

"Still, not bad."

Ian paused before putting his last ball in play, took the cigarette out of his mouth, and faced Zach. "Lots of practice," he said with a wink and a charming smile.

Zach wondered right then if he should be jealous of his wife working for this man, but he said, "But I liked the moves of the player before you."

Ian laughed. "All splash, no finesse."

"Speak for yourself."

"Hey, don't get me wrong. Splash has its place—just not at the pinball table."

He got no argument from Zach.

A half hour later the two of them waded back through the crowd to the Hancock table. The numbers around the table had thinned some and those that remained were all seated. Several had plates full of food in front of them—a burger and fries, a club sandwich with pasta salad on the side.

Allison got out of her seat and came around to meet them. "We were just recruiting a search party."

Ian raised his arms over his head. "Topped my high score."

Allison and Mary and a couple of the other clerks cheered half-heartedly. "Our returning victors."

Ian gave a self-deprecating shrug. "Play enough games, you're bound to get lucky once in a while."

Allison leaned into Zach's shoulder with a light and chaste greeting. "And did you play?" she asked.

"Did he play?" Ian exclaimed. "This guy is officially addicted."

Zach blushed. "It is fun," he said. "But I've got a ways to go before I'm any good."

"Pinball Wizard watch out," Ian said with a slap on Zach's back before he sat down and grabbed a couple fries off the burger plate.

"Ian!" Mary cried out.

Ian shrugged. "Tribute payment."

Allison laughed. "For the pinball champion or the work super?"

Ian considered the question. "For being an all-round nice guy."

Allison shook her head. "Remember that one for when you go to confession tomorrow."

Across the table Mary groaned. "Not this again."

Zach looked to her. "Not what?"

Ian looked at Allison. "Is conceit one of the seven deadlys?"

Mary said to Zach, "These two and their obsession with confession—Allison never goes, Ian never stops. And it's a never-ending battle."

Allison said to Ian, "If it isn't, it should be."

"Why?"

"It leads to all the rest."

Ian thought about that for several seconds then said, "If you say so."

Allison laughed. "First time you ever listened to me."

"And the last." He looked around the table, spotted what he thought was his mug from back before pinball, looked it over carefully, then drained the two inches of warm beer before refilling the mug from the pitcher in the middle of the table.

Allison and Zach sat in two empty seats next to Mary and Ian. The guys ordered burger platters and another pitcher of beer from the middle-aged waitress that stopped by to clear some of the empty plates and glasses.

Ian looked at Zach. "Do you play basketball better than pinball?"

"I'd like to think so."

"Allison says you were all-state in high school."

Zach nodded. "A few years back."

"We've got a team in a rec league down in Dorchester. We're pretty good, runner-up last year. But we need a big man. I was hoping you might consider playing for us."

"How much you pay?"

Ian laughed. "I knew I'd like you. How about all the beer you can drink at the pub after each game? Might get you invited to a few hopping parties along the way, too."

Zach nodded. "Tell me about your team."

And the two of them proceeded to spend the next several hours talking almost non-stop—about basketball at first (local talent, the college game, national stars they'd played against, the Celtics), later about other sports, about fixing up cars, about fishing and beer drinking. This latter topic was a logical one, as they consumed several pitchers of beer between them with Zach drinking more than his share. Every so often Allison or Mary would interrupt their conversation with some comment or observation. And Ian and Zach would listen, respond politely, then resume their conversation where they'd left off.

Allison watched the two from her seat behind Ian with a mix of feelings. On the one hand, she was glad Zach had finally made a friend in Boston, one who shared many of his interests and would open up opportunities for many other friendships and pursuits. On the other hand, she was secretly sorry that this new friend was one of her new friends also, had been (before tonight anyway) her closest new friend. Against her conscious wish and judgment, she felt jealous—but of Zach, not Ian.

It was 11:30 when Mary stood and gathered together her purse and totebag from work. She needed to catch the subway to her home (she lived with her parents) in Brookline before the subway shut down for the night. All the rest of the gang from The Hancock had already left, leaving Zach and Allison and Ian alone at the big table. They used Mary's departure as a reason to move to the bar, where a handful of late-nighters were sitting on stools with their hands wrapped around drinks or coffee. The three sat at the end of the bar nearest the pinball machine and video games. Zach got Danny the bartender to change some bills for quarters and slid off his stool (almost losing his balance) and walked deliberately over to the pinball machine, inserted a quarter, and began playing without a word or a glance (or a thought) to the other two.

Ian watched Zach's unsteady walk to the pinball machine, then turned to Allison. "Better keep an eye on him."

"He's your best buddy—you watch him."

Ian shook his head. "He's your husband."

"Zach's never listened to me yet, least of all when he's drunk. Don't figure he'll start tonight."

"And you think he'll listen to me?"

"Sure. He thinks the world of you."

"We just met."

"Follows his heart, wherever it leads."

"That's dangerous."

"That's Zach."

Ian turned on his stool toward his new friend. "Then let's both keep an eye on him."

Allison smiled. "Maybe you're a bit impulsive too."

Ian laughed. "Not a chance. Just my brother would kill me if I lost our new center before he even played a game."

Allison shook her head. "Ever the manager."

Ian nodded. "That's why they pay me the big bucks."

The two took their drinks—Ian had switched to coffee awhile earlier, Allison to plain cola on ice—and walked over to keep a closer eye on their charge.

Just as they arrived and took up positions on either side of Zach, he managed to hit the ball perfectly and send it over the top loop of the board, earning him ten thousand points and an extra ball. Zach sighed and said without looking up, "Going over the loop-dee-loop is the best feeling in the world," then continued playing with a loose-limbed ease and instinct well-suited to securing a high score.

Above his leaning figure, Ian and Allison exchanged grins and a knowing glance. For tonight at least, Zach was in good hands—all four of them.

10

In seventh grade, Zach's English teacher, Mrs. Anthony, asked her students to write a short story on a topic of their choosing. Zach wrote a two-page hunting story titled "The Death of a Dove" where the point of view shifted from omniscient to the hunter (a twelve-year-old boy) to the dying dove. The story earned him lavish praise from Mrs. Anthony. But more important than praise, Zach discovered in writing fiction a means to externalize and ground his inner life. Such expression became a critical form of release over the next eight years on those occasions when his inner life became confusing or painful. If he'd had a frighteningly vivid dream or was hurt by the betrayal of a friend or heart-broken over the death of a pet, he found some peace in writing fiction. As with the story of the dying dove, these later stories (they were all short forms of prose fiction) rarely addressed the cause of his pain or confusion directly, yet they still helped calm and console him.

So when Zach found himself in Boston with way too much free time and a near overwhelming inner life (populated with visions, dreams, inner conversations, daily disillusionments, constant fear, and frequent anger—most of it directed at himself), it was natural for him to turn to fiction writing in an attempt to fill the free time and ground the static sparking in his soul. Most of these early pieces were veritable explosions of emotion, lightning bolts of prose devoid of plot or theme or even, in some cases, characters, powerful but largely directionless releases of the angst built up within. Zach was vaguely aware that lyric poetry might be a genre better suited to these sorts of outbursts; but he had no training in that genre, little awareness of its rich history, and no natural predilection toward its voice and rhythms. So he stuck with the short prose form. In any case, he had little expectation that these particular writings would ever be read by anyone. That wasn't the point or goal of their creation. He was writing to try to keep himself from consuming himself. He was doing it to save his life.

Yet from this nascent habit, this desperate attempt at self-preservation, Zach gradually came to define a purpose to fill this aimless period. As he wrote more, and slowly began to expand the scope and complexity and length of his stories, he fostered a desire to learn how to write well. To teach himself, he turned to the great works of world literature. Zach had encountered a sampling of these works throughout high school (where he'd been fortunate to be taught by several young and energetic English teachers) and most especially in the rigorous English 15 at Yale. From this basis, and armed with a lending card to the cavernous Boston Public Library (both new and old buildings) just three blocks from their apartment, Zach began to read—well, everything, at least in literary prose fiction and in English or English translation. He read the Russian masters, the French masters, the British classics. He read nineteenth century American literature, and extensively in twentieth century American fiction. And he read contemporary literary fiction of all sorts, from Heller to Pynchon, Barth to Barthelme, Welty to Oates, Updike to Capote, Matthiessen to Stone, Fowles to Irving, Mailer to Cheever, Nabokov to Marquez, Bellow to Malamud. He read anthologies of short fiction and the annual volumes of prize-winning short stories. He studied their language, their voices and dialogue, their grammar and syntax. He kept a journal on his responses to what he'd read. He compared and contrasted styles, periods, themes, outlook. With nothing else to do with his life, he voluntarily immersed himself in the bottomless, often dark and dangerous, sometimes exhilarating and uplifting, sometimes warm and soothing, too often frigid and numbing pool of literary fiction. It was the one worthwhile thing he did with his life at the time, and he knew it and was happy for the escape and its rewards.

11

Zach wrote his early stories in long-hand using a sharp No. 2 pencil on narrow-ruled pale green pages in a spiral-bound notebook. If the story still engaged him after several days or weeks, he'd rewrite it in a "2nd draft" spiral-bound notebook. If that draft satisfied him, he would carefully copy it in his best cursive penmanship using a frequently sharpened pencil onto wide-ruled yellow writing paper. This final draft he placed in an individually labeled manila folder.

Setting Sun

There were so many hunters in the swamp one needed a reserved seat. He chuckled at the thought, sitting on the hillside, facing the swamp and the setting sun. Then the laughter went out of his face. It really wasn't funny.

Just before sunset the ducks started coming in—alone, in pairs, sometimes in small bunches. This swamp was where they had rested every night since July. This was where they had rested last night. They were returning to rest again tonight.

As each bird or group of birds came in, they were greeted by a thunderous barrage of shotgun fire starting a full quarter mile from the roosting swamp. But they didn't turn away. They just kept coming. And if they made it to the roosting swamp, they would actually land, only to be shot off the water. Not one in ten made it out. A few lucky ones flew over after having gone through and survived. The setting sun glowed orange through the pellet holes in their wings. They swung around and headed back toward the swamp where they had roosted in peace all summer.

It was only much later that he typed some of these early stories, after he opened those manila folders and discovered that his pencil on yellow paper had faded to the point of being nearly illegible. He used Allison's electric typewriter that she'd left with him, the one he'd bought her when she was taking those typing courses in high school and thought she might become a secretary.

12

It was a beautiful Saturday in mid-October and Zach and Allison decided to play at being regular Bostonians. Two months into their stay, they were after all official residents. They had an apartment where they received mail; they had jobs and a local joint checking account, paid taxes, were registered to vote. (Zach had not switched his driver's license—Allison didn't have one—and the truck was still registered to Zach's parents, but those seemed minor points of resistance to full residency.) They cheered for the Red Sox (their season recently ended as runner-up, again, to the Yankees) and the Celtics (Zach got to park Red Auerbach's car at the Club) and the Bruins. They'd quickly adopted the long "ahhh" sound for the phonetic "ar." They ate corned beef and cabbage on days other than St. Patty's (if it was on sale at Star Market) and jostled with the best of them in Filene's Basement.

So after a breakfast of French toast and bacon, they put on light jackets against the chill and strode confidently out into the crystal clear morning for a meandering stroll through their new hometown. Zach led the way down the path on the mall in the middle of Comm. Ave., giving a wide berth to the occasional homeless men curled up on the park benches. He turned and walked backwards—skipped backwards!—as he smiled at Allison following him at a brisk pace. They both felt a swell of energy, born of the crisp and brilliant day, their youth, and a sense that maybe after years of planning they'd found a home that was genuinely their own.

They crossed Arlington hand-in-hand, swaying their joined arms wildly back and forth then in a full circle, twining and twisting their fingers, daring the other to cry out or let go—but neither would.

They entered The Gardens and jogged together up the near-side slope of the arched bridge. Zach had long since forgotten or suppressed the memory of crossing that bridge on the fog-shrouded night weeks earlier, replacing that recollection with those of numerous crossings since. But just as they reached the peak of the arch he recalled the couple from that night in their kiss of oblivion on the crest of the arch. So he stopped suddenly in that same spot on this very different occasion, almost jerked Allison's arm out of its shoulder socket with the surprise pause, and pulled her tight to him and kissed her cold lips. Her eyes never shut—remained wide with shock and wonder—and so therefore neither did his; and the kiss lasted only a couple seconds as a family with a stroller and a dog on a leash nearly ran them over.

But for Zach at least the brief and spontaneous gesture achieved its purpose—a wager on the promise of youth and love. For Allison it was the latest example of unpredictability—albeit a pleasant one—from this man whom she'd thought she knew but now realized was a total mystery—maybe always had been one, or maybe had been made one by their new life and circumstances. In any case she buried her foreboding under the optimism of the day and the taste of maple syrup he'd left on her lips, and ran down the far side of the bridge with her unpredictable husband in hot pursuit.

They skipped the heart of downtown with its famous department stores and streets already crowded despite the early hour, and cut across The Common to The Statehouse and along a short leg of the Freedom Trail and on to Government Center. The broad plaza was nearly empty on this weekend morning though a work crew was setting up a small stage for a free concert later in the afternoon. They sat on one of the cold stone benches and watched the workers bolting together the tubular steel framing. Though the bench was cold, the sun was warm and they were invigorated from their brisk walk. They shed their jackets and tied them around their waists like school children waiting at the bus stop. They put their arms behind them and leaned back against the bench, exposing the full length of their bodies to the sun climbing the sky over the Harbor.

"It's Opening Day of hunting season," Zach said casually.

"Here?"

"I don't know about in Massachusetts. I meant back home."

"You miss it," Allison said—a statement, not a question. Zach lived for Opening Day, more than Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's and his birthday combined. It'd been his special day, long as she'd known him.

Zach shrugged. "I guess—more last night than today. It's hard to want to be anywhere other than here today." He looked over at Allison with an earnest stare.

Allison took a deep breath. "I'm not sure I'm able to replace Opening Day."

"Oh, you're more than able. But are you willing?"

It was Allison's turn to stare in earnest. "Zach, I can only be who I am."

"And who's that?"

"The girl you've known the last four years—no more, no less."

"Good enough so far."

"In Dover."

Zach jumped up. "Too pretty a day to talk about this," he said as he skipped backwards across the plaza, his eyes never leaving hers.

She thought Opening Day was simpler before standing finally and following her husband, who had stopped and was waiting for her in the middle of the empty plaza.

They walked around behind City Hall and down to the restored warehouses of Quincy Market. The little shops and boutiques, craft kiosks and food court of these brick buildings were more suited to tourists than locals, and thus weren't very crowded this early in the day. Zach and Allison were happy to play tourist for a few minutes after being staid residents for the bulk of the morning. After browsing a bookstore and a souvenir shop, Allison ducked into a boutique of trendy women's clothing on an East Indian theme—all bright colors and flowing loose designs. She held up a long cotton skirt in a dark burgundy and rich gold pattern, then matched it with a simple turquoise blouse with puffy sleeves.

Zach smiled and nodded. "Try it on."

Allison looked doubtful. "You sure? Even if it fits, we can't afford it."

"Try it on," he repeated.

She smiled and scooted into the lone changing room at the back of the narrow store.

As Zach stood among those brightly colored clothes staring out at the nearby atrium with the day's sun streaming through the skylights and painting everything, himself included, in its brilliance, he felt for the briefest moment that he was blessed. And in that instant he knew that the blessing came from outside him, was somehow tied to the day and the strangers wandering past and the colors and the exotic smells of the many foods cooking nearby.

"Zach," Allison whispered from behind him.

He turned and saw the loveliest site he'd seen since the day they were married—Allison in the skirt and blouse that fit her perfectly, accented her tall thin body, the colors complementing and highlighting her auburn hair and dark eyes and fair skin. But more beautiful than the outfit and the lovely body within it was the shine in her eyes, the glow to her cheeks as she smiled shyly before his gaze. He suddenly understood more fully the source of his external blessing. He nodded to her questioning look. "An early Christmas present."

"You sure? We've barely got our heads above water."

He nodded emphatically. "I made good tips last night. We're fine." That statement was a bit of an exaggeration, but he wanted her to have the beautiful outfit and could make up the money somewhere.

She giggled to herself and fairly danced back into the dressing room.

Zach wondered where that joy and innocence had been hiding lately.

They made a lunch of two grilled Italian sausages (Zach's coated with onions and peppers) on crusty home-made rolls and real lemonade with lemon slices in tall paper cups. After eating they strolled under the Southeast Expressway with its tractor trailers rumbling the I-beams and suspended concrete slabs. Zach gave Allison a little hug and shouted over the roar, "How romantic!" Allison's laugh was inaudible. They jogged across a surprisingly busy Atlantic Ave. and over to the Aquarium. The day was too pretty to spend it inside the Aquarium's dim spiral walk, and besides they couldn't afford the admission. So they spent a few minutes watching the surprisingly human antics of the three harbor seals in the pool at that moment—their barking and waving of flippers and big soulful dark eyes gazing back at the gazers.

Zach said, "Let me show you my secret spot."

Allison looked at him warily.

"Don't worry—it's safe, at least to the body."

She smiled. "Do I need to close my eyes this time?"

He laughed. "Not this time, and the only lemons today are in our cups." He held his up, empty of lemonade but with the bottom covered by lemon slices.

"In that case, lead on."

Zach led her around the side of the Aquarium. In the midday light, the harbor seemed unusually placid and serene, the sun shining brightly on the white condominiums under construction across the bay, along the North End's waterfront. Gulls bobbed on the gentle swells and a couple sailboats ventured out from shore, their striped sails vivid against the blue background.

They came around the back side of the Aquarium and Zach took her to the middle of that abandoned stretch and walked to the edge of the pier with the thick rope strung between two pilings at waist height the only defense against falling in the deep water. He turned to her and waited.

She gazed across the bright harbor toward the airport. "And?"

"And what?"

"And is there something more? Something I'm missing?"

He followed her gaze across the water. The wind was out of the north this morning, bringing in the cool clean Canadian air; so the planes were approaching, rather than taking off, over the Aquarium, their engines in a relatively quiet high-pitched idle, their lumbering fuselage almost graceful in slow descent. The narrow stretch of pier was in full light, the sun not yet fallen behind the building. And the normally stinking bay smelled almost pristine in the clear autumnal air, with just a hint of the salt smell of the sea. Far from being the desolate armpit of the city, this previously forlorn spot was quite enticing at this moment on this day, would've been a nice quiet spot for a picnic if they hadn't already eaten their lunch at Quincy Market. "A little hideaway," he said finally.

"Pretty, I guess. Kind of quiet, kind of industrial." She looked over her shoulder at the monolithic unadorned back wall of the Aquarium.

"It's always quiet, and usually not nearly so pretty. That's why I like it."

"Because it's ugly?"

"And lonely."

"And so far away."

"Practically the end of the earth."

Allison stared at him. "Why would you come to an ugly lonely place that's so far away on purpose?"

He gazed on her loveliness and could not for the life of him come up with an answer to her seemingly simple question that wasn't simple at all. "I don't know. Sometimes it's just where I need to be."

"Today?"

"Today you are where I need to be."

She knew she should feel pleased and honored by this heartfelt declaration; but the need inside his voice, the need within his whole being these last two months blocked such a response. She felt the declaration as more weight when she needed less, needed more freedom and space to let her own life unfold. She loved Zach but she couldn't possibly carry him, not now anyway, maybe not ever. "And where I need to be is somewhere with a few more people and a little more activity."

Zach nodded, not in the least troubled by her tepid response to his secret hideaway and his simple avowal. In fact, he'd expected as much, on both offerings. But the bright day and this time together not fighting or tense or estranged was enough to keep his spirits buoyant, for the moment. "Where to?"

"Can we swing by Filene's on our way home? I need to get Mary a little something for her birthday."

"Lead on."

And she did, around the far end of the Aquarium and toward the crowded streets of the shopping district. Above another passenger jet fell from the sky, finding its way home on the perfect day.

Flying Things

The boy sat on the empty pier and looked out across the sparkling harbor. It was a sunny day and warm and he looked at the water and at the blue sky. He saw flying things.

There were gulls casting white arcs against the sky, sometimes plummeting to the water, splashing and rising again, the other screeching in expectation or envy. He watched this.

And across the water was an airport, planes rising and falling, their silver sides flashing in the sun. He watched the planes too, their descents silent, their take-offs noisy across the placid bay.

And sometimes he watched a plane shrink into the blue until it was so far away he would blink and fail to find its speck. He would turn then and watch the gulls gliding idly until another plane took-off.

That afternoon he saw how birds never flew straight, always rising or falling in gentle arcs, coasting, their flight graceful and soothing. And he saw how planes always flew in a straight line, even in making their broad turns, the movements direct, calculated. He thought about this and decided that birds' flight was prettier.

And he guessed he would like to fly like a bird. Someday.

But now he sat alone on the pier and watched flying things and knew he would sit there until the sun fell beneath the buildings. Then he would go home.

13

Ian's brother Sean shouldered his way to a spot alongside Zach sitting at O'Leary's bar during the post-game celebration following their first game of the season. Sean put his arm over Zach's shoulder and waved to old man O'Leary. "Set this guy up with another shot and a beer on me."

Zach shook his head in mute protest but didn't bother to argue. He already had three beers and two shots lined up in front of him on top of the two beers and a shot he'd already drained. He'd tried to wave off the previous shot and beer, from Jack, only to have Ian tell him that if you declined an honorary drink at an Irish pub, it automatically got doubled. Zach'd thought Ian was kidding until old man O'Leary doubled up Jack's tribute. So he wasn't about to challenge Sean's generosity. "You going to help me drink them?" he shouted to Sean above the boisterous crowd and the Van Morrison playing in the background.

"Can't hold your liquor, Big Guy?"

Sean struck a nerve with his taunt. Zach never declined a drinking challenge, and he almost always won—at least in the short-term. "You going to drive me home?"

"No problem. Drink up, Big Guy; you've earned your reward."

Zach had led his team over their arch rival, Riley's Pub, with twenty-two points and numerous rebounds and blocked shots (which they didn't track—so those numbers often swelled in the recounting). The guys on the other team were repeatedly caught off guard by Zach's long arms and instinctive timing, getting their shots swatted back time and again. The handful of fans in the stands kept asking where Sean's Plumbing had found this ringer, wanted to know where he'd played college ball. Zach basked in the attention and accolades, and did indeed enjoy his rewards—all of them: lined up on the bar in front of him and singing his praises around him.

A few hours later, with all of the glasses in front of him empty save one mug that had a few swills of beer still in its bottom, Zach sat alone at the bar. Other than old man O'Leary stacking glasses on the shelves at the far end of the bar, the room was empty. All the guys except Sean had headed home on this weeknight, needing to get at least a few hours of sleep before rising at dawn for work. Even Ian had thrown his hands up in surrender to Zach's relentless consumption of alcohol and headed for home (he lived with his parents in Milton, a short drive away) about twenty minutes earlier. Sean had gone off to call his girlfriend from the pay phone in the back by the restrooms, to tell her that he was going to take Zach home and not to wait up. ("She's asleep already," Sean had said. "Then why call her?" Zach had asked. "To make sure she misses me," he'd replied with a wink. Zach knew Allison was sound asleep and would surely kill him if he dared to call this late to say he'd be still later.)

The bell on the front door tinkled faintly in the quiet bar. Had it been tinkling all night? Zach wondered with a drunk's obsessive focus on some minor detail. How had he missed that noise till now? Or had old man O'Leary just activated it, with some switch or lever?

Zach turned in his seat and looked down the long barroom to the glass door at the entrance. He was looking for the bell but was startled to see a dark-haired beauty in stiletto heels and tight leather pants and a short rabbits' fur jacket walking toward him. She smiled at him with bright red lips and pale skin over her high cheekbones, and never took her eyes of his. "Seven and seven, Johnny," she said without looking to the bartender.

"Bar's closed, Angela," old man O'Leary said wearily.

"Says one A.M. on the door—still five minutes left."

"You going to drink it in five minutes?"

"If I can't, handsome here will help me out." She sat on the barstool next to Zach, brushing his shoulder as she sat and leaving her knee in those tight pants touching his once she was seated. "Won't you?" she asked him from inches away, a sweet fragrance on her breath.

Zach desperately wanted to rally his sensibilities but was having trouble fulfilling that goal. His eyes were not focusing and his tongue felt thick in his mouth. He managed to nod to her finally. Then a dose of some glandular chemical released into his blood stream and gave him back his voice. "Drunk everything else in here tonight. Might as well help you with yours."

The woman smiled. "A man after my own heart," she purred in a voice meant for only him. "Stand handsome up too, Johnny," she shouted over her shoulder before pulling a cigarette out of her small purse and lighting it with a Miss Piggy lighter.

At that moment in that place, Zach thought her the most sexually attractive person he'd ever seen. Deep within his clouded mind, some part of him knew that at least half of his attraction was the result of his inebriated condition. That very dim realization didn't matter. It was one A.M., he was unattached (in his clouded mind of the moment) and far from any sort of tether, and he wanted this girl. He was already wondering where they could go after their drinks.

Then Sean showed up. "Angela," Sean shouted as he came around the corner from the restrooms. "Figures you'd be just starting out when everyone else has gone to bed."

Angela rolled her eyes. "You're still here, Sean."

"Taking care of my man Zach," Sean said, and wrapped his arm over Zach's shoulder from the side opposite Angela. "He led my team to victory tonight and he's been enjoying a little victory lap. Isn't that right, Big Guy?"

"More like a victory swim," Zach muttered. "Through all the beer."

"Well then I'm glad I made it in time to toast the hero," Angela said. She let her hand, the one without the cigarette, fall nonchalantly to his thigh and stay there.

Old man O'Leary placed a full glass in front of her and a mug in front of Zach. "It's one o'clock. I'll give you five minutes grace period then I'm turning out the lights and locking the door."

"Tell the missus it was Angela's fault," Sean said.

"Been telling her that for years," O'Leary said. "She don't want to hear it no more."

"Be bored without me, Johnny," she said.

"Happy to give it a try, Angela. You've now got three minutes." He headed behind the bar to turn off the lights in the kitchen.

"No problem, Boss," Angela shouted. She looked to Zach. "To my new friend," she said and raised her glass. "And all his future victories."

Zach lifted his mug and tapped her glass. "Works for me."

They tilted their heads back in unison and drained their glasses, Angela thumping hers on the bar a split second before Zach lowered his mug.

Behind them Sean shook his head. "Come on, Big Guy; time to get you home before we all turn into pumpkins."

Angela put her hand on Zach's shoulder as he started to stand, holding him in place with her touch and compelling stare. "I can take care of him, Sean. You get on home to that cute little girlfriend of yours—bet she's missing you."

Sean lifted her hand off Zach's shoulder and set it at her side. "Time to get him home to his wife," Sean said emphatically.

Zach gave a little apologetic shrug to that beautiful face and body calling to him like the world's oldest promise of perfect rest.

Angela's gaze never left his eyes, and never withdrew their invitation. "Maybe next time," she said, her sweet breath like an elixir on his tongue.

Zach didn't know what to do except nod.

Just then, the lights of the bar went out.

Allison stormed Ian's office at 8:01 A.M. "What the hell you doing bringing Zach home at 1:30 in the morning?"

Ian glanced up from his chair with those bedroom eyes that looked like they should've spent a little more time in the bedroom this morning. "I didn't bring him home; Sean did."

"But he was your responsibility."

"He's an adult. He's his own responsibility."

"In a strange neighborhood with you getting him drunk and keeping him out till all hours of the morning? And you think he's supposed to take care of himself?"

"He's a big boy, Allison. Where he drinks and how much he drinks is his choice."

"He could've never found his way home."

"Sean promised to take him home. That was never in question. And he kept that promise."

"At 1:30! What they hell were you doing at 1:30 on a Wednesday night?"

"I don't know; I left and went bed. You'll have to ask Sean. Better yet, ask your husband."

"You left?"

"I was tired. I had to go to work today. Zach and Sean could sleep in."

"You left Zach in a strange bar in the middle of the night?"

"I left Zach and Sean at a neighborhood pub. Sean said he had it covered. I trust my brother. What the hell are you yelling at me for?" Ian's eyes had woken up.

Allison paused and took a deep breath. When she continued, her voice was calmer. "Last night I was worried to death. Today I'm just upset—mainly with Zach but also with you. Zach may be a big strong guy and look like he has everything under control; but he's out of his element, Ian, and very vulnerable. He wants to belong, wants to be a part of something. To do that, he sometimes makes bad decisions, including drinking too much and staying out too late."

"I still don't know why you're mad at me."

"You need to keep an eye on him."

"We did. We got him home safe and sound."

"How do you know? You said you left."

Ian smiled. "I know because if Sean hadn't, you'd be singing a different song."

"No, really—how do you know?"

Ian looked a little sheepish; she'd spotted his lie with uncanny instinct. "I was just a little worried about him and you, and called Sean after he got home. He cussed me out for waking Jenny then told me he'd delivered your sweet husband safely to your apartment building and even waited to see him go inside." He didn't add that Sean said he'd had to rescue Zach—or "hold him back," to use his words—from the neighborhood maneater.

Allison's anger, at least toward Ian, melted away. "You lay awake worrying about me and Zach? That's sweet."

Ian threw his arms up. "A minute ago you wanted to roast me on an open spit. Now you want to give me a medal? I didn't lay awake—I woke up and thought I'd check with Sean. I'm not your husband's keeper and don't want to be. I can barely take care of myself. But I'm not going to leave any friend of mine in a bind, especially not if he's had too much to drink. What kind of guy do you think I am?"

Allison leaned across his desk and kissed him on the forehead. "Exactly the kind of guy I thought you were."

"Then why were you so pissed?"

"Because I thought both you and Zach let me down and that was too much for me to take."

"I'm not the one you need to be talking to."

"I know," she said, looking down at the desk.

"So talk to him."

"It's hard."

"Why? He's your husband."

She shrugged. All her confusion flowed back into the void left by her receding anger. She suddenly felt very tired. "Thanks for being a friend to Zach, and helping him feel alive again."

"But his feeling alive worries you to death."

"About the size of it," she said before turning and leaving the office.

"I knew I should've called in sick," he muttered to himself.

Real Loss

He walked into the kitchen and slammed the door. He held the shotgun in his left hand, the knuckles white with fierce tension against the blue metal. There was a trace of silver smoke lingering about the barrel.

He stood just inside the door and looked at her sitting there. She looked back.

"Done," he said and put the gun in the corner.

He sat across from her and stared down at the table. She watched the top of his head, his hair hanging down, hiding his eyes. Neither spoke.

Their cat of twelve years, hopelessly crippled and suffering, lay outside in a cooling heap, dead, waiting for burial.

14

It was a slow night and Zach was in a Town Car owned by some insurance company CEO when he spotted his sister Ann coming out of her apartment building. He pulled over and slid down the passenger window with the driver's electric controls (still an exclusive novelty). "Need a ride?"

Ann couldn't see in the car and assumed it was a pick up line. She gave a brusque, "No," and headed down the sidewalk.

Zach drove a few yards beyond her walking figure, parked the car in the middle of the street, and got out. He put on his car parker's hat (which they were required to "carry" at all times but hardly ever wore). In his dark slacks and shoes and white shirt buttoned to the collar and that hat, he looked like a chauffeur. He ran to intercept Ann on the sidewalk. With his best British butler aplomb he said, "Your car is waiting, ma'am."

Ann finally recognized him (though barely, in that get up—his height gave him away). "Zach! I figured you for a pimp!"

Zach laughed. "Pimps don't drive Town Cars!"

"Maybe the new corporate versions do."

"I wouldn't know about that."

"Unfortunately, I do."

Zach stowed his response to that question. He'd seen his sister only rarely since she'd helped them set up their apartment. They'd never been especially close growing up, and he didn't want to seem like he was tagging along behind her with their move to the city. Her putting them up for a week in her cozy apartment, then helping them get set up in their place had left him with a debt—more of an emotional sort than financial, as they'd already paid off most of her loan—that was its own obstacle to getting any closer than they'd been growing up. But that didn't mean he didn't enjoy seeing her, and wouldn't revel in a chance to play an adult version of dress up with her now. He switched his British butler accent to western cowboy in the big city. "Don't know about all that, ma'am. I was told to pick up the lady and drive her wherever she wanted. You going to help me do my job or not?"

Ann laughed. "I'm headed to the market for a few groceries."

"Then let me take you there in style," Zach offered, once again the doting little brother.

"You sure? They won't miss the car?"

"The guy and his wife just went in for dinner. He won't be out for hours, and there aren't any parking spots to be had. So I'll just be cruising anyway—might as well cruise to the store with 'me lady'." A car pulled up behind his parked car and honked its horn. "But if you're coming, you've got to come now."

"Far be it for me to turn down an offer like that." She slid between two cars and out into the street.

Zach got to the car ahead of her and opened the back door. She slid onto the plush leather seat in her jeans and sweater and leather jacket. Zach closed the door, jogged around to the driver's door, nodded in apology to the trailing car (he couldn't see if it was a man or a woman inside), jumped in the Town Car and zoomed off like a taxi driver out for a big tip.

"This is so extravagant," Ann said from in back, running her hands over the seats.

"Check this out," Zach said and turned on the stereo that played just in the back—a Bach concerto—and hit the convenience lights that illuminated just the backseat.

"I feel like such a star."

"You are a star."

"To my penthouse suite, James."

"On my way, ma'am."

"How have you been, Zach?" Ann asked. "Can't believe we live just a couple blocks apart and hardly ever see each other."

Zach stopped at the light at the corner of Comm. Ave. and Exeter. He glanced over his shoulder. "I'm good. Keep busy with the car parking, doing some reading. Got hired as a loading dock spare, though they haven't called me yet."

"What's that about?"

"Overnight work—eleven to five—at a trucking terminal across the river in Cambridge. They call you around eight to come in at eleven if they need extra help or someone calls in sick. It'll pay good, if they ever call me. My name must be at the bottom of their list." The light turned green and Zach drove across Comm. Ave.

"Not much notice."

"And hard on the night life—have to sit by the phone for a call that may, or most likely won't, come. Then have to gear up for heavy manual labor till dawn with no sleep."

"Sounds awful."

"I'll find out. It's a job, sort of—not many of those out there, least not for an uneducated, unskilled bloke like me." He zoomed across Newbury and snuck around a double parked car with inches to spare. He knew how to drive these streets and liked showing off for his sister.

"And Allison?"

"She's fine. Working all the time. Taking a night class in calligraphy. Sometimes out with her friends from work." He swung onto Boylston, cutting off a cabby who honked his horn and shook his fist. Zach loved it.

"Fit right in."

"She has."

"And you?"

"I'm fine. Having fun driving all these fancy cars, muscling the cabbies and residential pricks—no offense to present company."

"None taken. I wouldn't dare drive in the city—not with the likes of you out here."

"No place for the squeamish." To prove his point, he made a U-turn across three busy lanes and slid between two cars and onto the service road for the Pru.

Ann gasped. "Alive," she said when her voice returned. "To the market alive would be good."

Zach laughed. "Good as done," he said and cruised slowly toward Star Market which was on the basement level of the Prudential Tower.

"And you?" Ann asked as they came to a stop in front of the busy entrance to the grocery store.

"And me what?"

"Fitting in?"

Zach laughed. "Got you here, didn't I?"

"That wasn't my question."

Zach got out of the car, put on his hat, hustled around to the far side and opened the door for Ann. People on the sidewalk behind them stopped to look.

Ann put on her sunglasses from her purse and tied a scarf around her head, then stepped out. Pedestrians stared, trying to make out the celebrity stopping by the market in her chauffeur-driven car. Someone took a photo. Faye Dunaway lived in a penthouse nearby. Ann nodded thanks and leaned over toward her driver. "Are you fitting in?" she whispered.

Zach whispered back. "I'll pick you up in half an hour—either in this car or a better one."

"How will I know?"

"Look for the tall chauffeur that doesn't fit into this picture."

She nodded. "He'll be easy to spot."

A half-hour later he was double parked outside the market leaning against the same car with his hat on and his shirt buttoned to the collar.

He'd swung back by the Club and told Lonnie he was having trouble finding a space and could he try another car "that might bring me better luck." Lonnie, who Zach figured was born suspicious, looked at him out of the corner of his shifty eye and said, "And just which car do you think will bring you better luck?" Zach already knew which one he wanted but pretended to check out the seven cars stacked out front waiting parkers. Then he said, "I bet the Rolls would change my luck." It was the same vintage Rolls that had been involved in the Garden concert debacle a month before. It really was a beautiful car. And Lonnie just laughed, didn't have to say a word.

Zach shook his head, stymied again by the parking super. He'd looked over the other cars waiting there, including a Benz and a nice Jaguar; but they were all too small to look like chauffeur-driven cars, and besides wouldn't easily accommodate Ann's groceries. So he cussed Lonnie under his breath and jumped back in the Town Car. As he drove by he'd shouted, "If I don't get a space all night, it's all your fault." Lonnie just waved him off—to his ill-fated search for a parking space or whatever other shenanigans he had in mind.

Zach didn't mind waiting beside the shiny Lincoln, drawing the stares of the young and the old alike scurrying on their way to and from the grocery store, carrying a handful of groceries or a cart-full. He liked being in the midst of the bustle but separate from it, as long as he was in control. He wouldn't have minded waiting there all night, an ornament for the viewing pleasure of those passing by, as long as no one dared to approach him or hassle him. Had that happened, he would've been inside the car in a flash and out of there in a screech of tires and a cloud of exhaust.

But nobody bugged him, however much they stared; and Ann emerged with two bags of groceries, still disguised by her sunglasses and scarf.

Zach gave a slight bow and took the bags from her arms. He popped the trunk with his remote control (another rarity in that period) and set the bags in its yawning cavern. He opened the door and Ann slid into the spacious backseat. He closed the door and the trunk and went around to the driver's seat and raced off to Boylston through the gawking crowds, honking his horn once for good measure.

"How's it feel to be famous."

"I'd like to say it's no different, but it really feels different. People, at least the ones who saw you drop me off, treated me differently—with respect, almost with a kind of silent awe."

"Don't get too used to it."

"Don't worry, I won't. I didn't really like it—odd being set apart just because of who you are."

"Happens more often than you'd think."

"Well, not to me. But thanks for picking me up. That part is really special, and very nice."

"My pleasure."

"You going home for Thanksgiving?" she asked as they turned onto Fairfield.

"I don't think so. You?"

"Of course."

"I don't think we're going home for Christmas either."

"Why not, Zach? Mom will be upset; Dad too, though he won't show it."

"They'll hardly miss us."

"You know that's not true. Why aren't you going home for either holiday? I know you're not working, and surely Allison has a few days off."

"It's not work. It's just that Allison and I are going through some things and don't need to be thrown back into the old world right now—not sure we could handle it."

"Christmas presents and a couple of fancy meals?"

"Family and friends and who they'd try to make us be."

"Just be who you are."

"That's the problem—we don't know who that is, or at least I don't." He pulled in front of Ann's building and double-parked.

Ann sighed. "You'll be missed."

Zach popped the trunk and came around to the rear door on the passenger side. He opened it for his sister.

She looked up at him with just a touch of reproach in her eyes as she climbed out of the car.

He closed the door then retrieved her groceries and handed them to her.

She took the bags then stood on her tiptoes and kissed her brother on the cheek. "Good luck in your search," she said.

He nodded.

"And thanks for the chauffeur-driven ride. It was great!"

"My pleasure," he said then watched her till she climbed the steps and unlocked her building's front door. She waved before disappearing inside.

He waved back. He didn't see her again for six months.

15

Zach sat on his Esplanade bench reading Madame Bovary in a translation by "W. Blaydes." (What sort of translator would grant the use of only an initial for a first name? Either a very famous one or a very minor one—Zach doubted he'd ever know which one Mr. or Ms. Blaydes was). The edition also included several portraits (all of them dour) of Flaubert, and a forty-page critical introduction by Henry James. The introduction was a fascinating if tedious literary work in its own right, as James in characteristic prolix style exposed much more about his own view of art than any insights into the novel or Flaubert's method or intent.

It was the kind of slate-gray early December day that seems God's stern warning to all New Englanders to get out while the getting was good—or pay the price of enduring a long and harsh winter. The clouds were dense and dark but high, with no threat of rain. A sharp cutting wind ran parallel the Charles, coming out of the east, off the Atlantic which should've still held onto a little of the summer's warmth but, if it did, wasn't sharing any of that warmth with this cold and damp wind. That wind kicked up small white caps on the gray water, and this was the first time in Zach's observation that there weren't any skulls or sailboats out on the Charles. The leaves were long since off all of the trees, including Zach's favorite maple rising in skeletal nakedness to that somber sky a few yards from his bench. Not only was the water empty but so were the jogging paths, as the joggers and bike riders and the strollers had apparently all agreed to cede the afternoon to the clouds and the cold, spending their time indoors instead, ruminating over the recently completed Thanksgiving feast, or planning for the upcoming Christmas festivities.

Everyone, that is, except Zach. He hunkered down inside the long camel-hair wool coat he'd helped Allison dig out from her parents' attic, a coat that dated to the days before her dad had joined the Army Air Corps and been shipped off to England to serve as a tailgunner on a B-17 bomber flying missions over Germany. The coat was a little short on Zach but thick and warm and well-suited to his eclectic (some might say vagabond) style of the period. It also allowed him to hide out in plain sight, pulling his head down below the heavy collar and thick shoulder pads, out of the raw wind and out of sight from anyone who might be looking from Storrow Drive or the high-rise condos on Beacon.

He read the novel resting atop the coat over his thighs and couldn't decide if it was the dark story making the day seem still grayer, or the gray day making the story of Emma's life doomed by her voracious needs seem darker still. In either case, the day and the novel conspired to feed his own desire to feel cast off by the world, thrown out into the dark emptiness, the light and warmth and life of the city visible to him at every turn but not accessible—a merry feast in the brightly lit room just beyond the unmovable and unbreakable window pane: ever present, ever denied.

He read James's introduction and the entire novel in one sitting that chill afternoon along the Charles, using a self-taught speed reading technique that let his eyes see the words—whole sentences and paragraphs—without his inner voice speaking them individually. Not only was this a fairly impressive accomplishment in literary consumption, it was even more an achievement in endurance and ascetic self-denial, which was exactly what he intended, desired. Anyone looking on throughout the afternoon from a picture window in one of those high rises across Storrow Drive would've thought at first the pale lump on the bench was a homeless man asleep or passed out, then later figured it must be an abandoned coat or blanket—nobody, not even a drunk, could stay that still that long (what about a bursting bladder? the itch of fleas?).

By the time Zach rose—stiffly, to say the least—the gray day had turned into a charcoal dusk. By then, he would've been invisible to those high rise window lookers. But they weren't invisible to him. Every window, every last one—those lit with activity, those dark with intimacy—were a peek into a world denied or rejected or, truth be told, a little of both.

He found his way home through empty paths that led to lonely streets.

Portrait

The sun cast a dazzling chain of sparkles on the water and their reflection danced on and around the shaded bench sitting unused on shore. A breeze rustled the leaves gently side to side.

Sailboats moved silently up and down the blue river, the sun bright on the triangular white sails. And cars silently crossed the distant bridge, their windshields throwing transient diadems to the bench. They would disappear on the far side, swallowed by the stoic buildings rising above the green of the distant trees.

People walked past the bench, their shadows extending beyond the walk and merging with the shade of the trees. Their voices were clear and pleasant in the quiet afternoon. But none stopped. And dogs occasionally loped past, circling the bench, probing the brush, their flapping tongues tossing drops of saliva, one or two of which fell on the bench. Then they would run on. And sparrows would appear, chirping in the rustling leaves, falling in groups to dance in the dust where forgotten feet had killed the grass. They would flutter about, squawk at one another, roll in the dust, ruffle their feathers, and fly away.

And long after, the people and dogs and birds and boats were gone. The sparkles dead. And the bench faced the setting sun and turned orange-red in the sunset. Then the sun too was gone and the empty bench was alone with the silent trees and the gentle lapping of the water.

16

Zach rose above Allison in the dark of their bedroom that wasn't full dark on their foam mattress that was now raised about a foot off the hardwood floor on the simple platform that Allison had nailed together and finished in a dark stain and two coats of satin poly. The foam dimpled under his knees where they were centered between her thighs. His arms were locked on either side of her shoulders, holding his body more than a foot above her, their skin not touching at any point in this momentary pause. He looked down on her pale face framed by her dark hair which was framed by the beige pillowcase glowing gray. Her eyes were open, gazing up at him through the grainy air, glistening in the dark but unfathomable, unknowable in the limited light—unknowable even in the full light, Zach suddenly realized.

But already set on their practiced path toward a goal that was knowable, entirely too fathomable, Zach slowly lowered his torso until they touched at precisely one point, the nerve endings of his skin stimulated almost beyond bearing by her moist soft flesh, the nerve endings of her skin aroused and parting, panting almost, in welcome. Every cell in both their bodies—trained in this task by millennia of evolution, familiarized through years of sharing—called them toward this union, toward the sequence of actions that would culminate in procreation or at least a chance of fulfilling that purpose. Unlike so many of the times before—in a car, a hayloft, on her mother's couch, on his bed with his siblings in the next room—unlike then, there was no obstacle to this joining, no reason why not, except in Zach's desperate desire to feel fully at home, fully welcomed, in her.

So at that first touch, the touch at the opening—hers, theirs—Zach paused and whispered, "Why won't you open yourself to me?"

Allison wanted to think this an absurd question, wanted to laugh derisively and point out her spread thighs, her knees raised and parted, the dripping wetness at her core. She wanted to hide behind that obvious, but couldn't. She knew exactly what Zach meant, and also knew she had no answer—not that would solve the riddle, not that would sate his longing, not that would fulfill her expectation of herself, her marital commitment. So she spoke the truth up to him, his face all shadow against the lighter ceiling, his eyes invisible though fully known and seen in her heart—their hunger, their insatiable need. "I'm as open to you as I can be."

This response, more honest than any she'd ever shared—an honesty no doubt brought on by the day of the week (Friday) and time of day (well past midnight) and state of intoxication (moderate for both of them) and point in their relationship (beyond needing to lie or hedge or hide behind hope) and creeping desperation (needing to know where they fit—with each other and their new world)—her honesty sent a ripple of new and unfamiliar desire through his whole body, a ripple that gained expression in a flickering of movement in the place where they touched. It would've been the simplest thing in the world to let their bodies act out this age-old longing, this well-practiced exchange that could've masked for a few minutes or hours or days their growing estrangement. The night and the city expected as much. This night and this city now harbored and fostered such exchanges across its miles and its hours—exchanges frantic and measured, intimate and abusive, tender and violent—between countless pairs less suited for one another, less loving, less caring, less familiar than these two here and waiting for Zach to continue what he'd started.

"I need you to be my new home."

"You know I can't be that."

"Why not?"

"You'd crush me."

"I wouldn't have to."

"You would. It wouldn't be fair."

"To whom?"
To me. To you. To us."

Zach thought about that and knew she was right. "Let's have a baby." It was the kind of idea that came to a person at a moment like this. Actually, it was a desire that Zach'd had for quite some time, but had never admitted—not to Allison or anyone else or even to himself. Yet it seemed a solution to his need for a purpose and his need to be needed. It seemed a perfect answer, and an easy one. They were, after all, halfway started already.

"I'm eighteen, Zach. I'm not ready to have a child."

"Why not?"

"I'm just starting my life. Children come later."

"I already know my life, and I need something to make it whole."

"A child can't make you whole."

"No, but it can be a purpose that will make me whole."

"Find your purpose in something other than people."

"People—more accurately, an individual—are the only purpose worth having."

"Maybe not for the one so designated."

Zach heard this rejection in the full breadth of its implications. He also heard it in its simple and compelling fairness. No one should be forced to be another's purpose. No one should be forced to be another's home. These were basic rights, the kind of rights one thought about and saw clearly and accepted at moments like this, accepted fully and without debate. And for the first time Zach realized just how lost he was.

Beneath him Allison took matters into her own hands—or, rather, her own body—by sliding her butt toward his groin. In a physiological affirmation of his age and libido and full trust in his partner, Zach's penis had remained tumescent throughout their verbal exchange. It slid easily into her vagina. Released by her simple gesture, their bodies blended into their old best self that was their present and still best self, a merger that culminated in one more chance at procreation, whatever that prospect might mean to their joint or separate futures, a chance thrown forth into the recesses of her body with Zach still far above her on his locked arms.

17

Matt left a note in Allison's cubby in the employee locker room asking her to meet him at the high-speed elevators at 5:10.

The maintenance guys would occasionally invite the data jockeys to ride with them to an empty upper floor for a spectacular overlook of the city. These private viewings were one of the few perks of being a lowly maintenance guy, and they doled them out judiciously in return for favors or status. That Matt was asking her probably meant that he had something planned with Mary and Ian and maybe some of the other file clerks.

But when she asked Ian about it late in the afternoon as she passed him in the mailroom, he said he knew nothing about it.

She shrugged and said, "Guess he and Mary are planning a surprise."

"Mary left early, to go to the dentist."

Allison looked puzzled. "Wonder what he wants?"

Ian looked down at her like the big brother he seemed to want to be. "Good question."

Allison looked back at him in annoyance, wishing his protectiveness were jealousy or at least a hint of rivalry. "I'm sure he just wants to show me something."

"My thought exactly," Ian said.

She punched him in the shoulder like the big brother he wanted to be. "I can take care of myself."

He winced and rubbed his shoulder. "I can see that."

She left in a huff.

At precisely 5:10 she was waiting alone in the cramped and unadorned elevator entrance on the sub-basement level. On this level the elevators were key-access only, so there were no buttons to push or digital floor-level indicators. She waited for five minutes that seemed like an eternity in this lonely concrete cubicle lit only by the glow of emergency lights and pervaded with the dull hum of all the equipment housed in the rooms around her, lighting and heating and guarding the sixty-two floors above her. The thought of all those floors, their sheer mass and oppressive weight, sent a shiver over her body. She turned toward the door to the stairs.

Behind her the metal doors to the high-speed elevator opened. Matt stepped out, used his key to lock the doors open, and said, "Don't I get at least five minutes' grace period?"

She let go of the handle of the stairwell's fire door and faced him. "You got six. If it had been five, I'd have been gone." She tried to look perturbed but couldn't. He had the cutest dimples when he smiled, and a schoolboy's curly brown hair. There was no way she could remain angry with that face.

"I'll count myself lucky then. Ready for a zoom to the top?"

"Where are we going?"

"It's a surprise."

"A surprise I'll like?"

"I wouldn't have asked you if I didn't think so."

She hesitated just a moment then stepped past him into the mahogany paneled elevator.

Matt unlocked the doors and stepped in beside her. He inserted the same key into a lock at the top of the control panel, above the button labeled Observation Deck. Before turning the key, he pulled a pack of gum from his pocket and offered her a stick.

"That fast?"

"Popped a lady's eardrum last week—or that's what she claims. Probably popped it herself with a cotton swab and figured she'd milk the world's biggest insurance company for a hefty claim."

"Third biggest."

"What?"

"Insurance company." Allison unwrapped the stick of gum and put it in her mouth. She stuffed the empty wrapper in the front pocket of her brown corduroy pants.

"First or third, deep pockets anyway you cut it."

"You think she'll win?"

"With our claims agents and lawyers—not a chance." He turned the key.

Allison started to nod agreement but forgot the gesture as the elevator's sudden upward rush caused her to lose her balance and fall against the back wall of the car.

Matt said, "Fasten your seatbelt."

"Now you tell me," she said. Her ears popped painfully despite chewing the gum. Maybe the woman was telling the truth.

In twenty-two seconds (Allison counted while staring at the elevator's marble floor and trying hard to ignore her queasiness) the car began to decelerate, and came to a full stop at exactly thirty seconds. The doors opened on a darkened space. She looked at Matt who had a big grin on his face. "Where have you brought me?" she asked. She wondered if this was the entry to some sort of surprise party, but her birthday wasn't for months and she was already married so what would the surprise party be for?

"Come and see." He stepped out into the darkness and reached up with his magic key to lock the elevator open, on this floor till he decided to release it.

She walked cautiously to the doorway and stared into what awaited her. With the bright light of the car behind her she could see that the space beyond wasn't nearly as dark as it had seemed. The entire floor of the building was open and dimly lit by red emergency lights and the sparse light of the evening and the city that the heavily tinted windows let in. There was heavy industrial equipment arranged throughout the space—electrical panels, massive square and round metal ductwork, air handlers, blowers, pulleys and cables for the elevators, exposed steel beams and trusses—all looking quite eerie and intimidating in the pale red glow.

"My home away from home," Matt said, gesturing with a sweep of his arm across the entire space.

"I don't know if I should be impressed or terrified."

"Don't be either. Just step on into my humble abode."

She did, tentatively. But when she realized the concrete floor was level and uncluttered, she walked with considerably more confidence. "I love what you've done with the place—so tidy and cozy."

"I thought you'd like it."

"Might need to invest in a few more lights, though."

"Oh, there are plenty of lights." He pointed to the banks of fluorescents hanging from the ceiling. "But we're forbidden—under penalty of termination—from turning them on after dark. Some bigwig is afraid the city will see all of this hardware and think less of company or the building. My question is: if you're the tallest building in New England, let alone the city, who is going to look into your top floor?"

"A few pigeons, maybe?"

"Then let them complain."

Allison shook her head. "Got to keep them pigeons impressed—get them buying more life insurance."

Matt shook his head. "Follow me."

She did, through the corridors between banks of breaker boxes and humming air handlers. He led her to a door in the only full-height wall on the floor and opened that door with another key.

"How many keys do you have?"

"Two—you've seen all I've got," he said, though there were at least another twenty on the large steel ring he held in his hand.

"I'll know who to call when I get locked in the toilet stall."

"Just crawl over the top. I do all the time."

"Why?"

"More fun that way. And then they have to call us to unlock the locked stall."

"And you enjoy that?"

"No, but I enjoy sending Tony. He's unlocked more toilet stalls than any maintenance man in the city—makes him feel so important!"

"And gives you a good laugh."

"Absolutely."

"If I can figure how to climb out, I'll give him an adventure in the ladies' room."

"That might be too much for him!"

By then they were at the doorway at the top of the stairs. He didn't need a key to unlock that door. It opened by simply pushing on the egress bar. They stepped out onto the roof of the building.

The dull humming quiet of inside was suddenly and overwhelmingly replaced by a jumble of outdoor sounds—honking car horns, the roar of a jetliner climbing out of Logan, the clacking of a trolley car on the above-ground tracks west of Mass. Ave., the rumble of rush-hour traffic, the hum of human voices punctuated by the occasional shout from the sidewalks below. The very air itself seemed teeming with life, a life accented by a steady north wind rushing past this high up despite the calm clear day.

Matt held the door open and Allison stepped out onto the textured roof covering. She had one last reservation. "Do you have a key to that door on that fat ring?"

Matt laughed. "Don't want to get locked up here with me all night?"

"Might be a little hard to explain."

Matt latched the door against the wall of the stairwell. "I've got one they say works, but we'll not take any chances."

"Good idea." And with that she was free to enjoy the fresh cool air and the glorious view. She jogged over to the four-foot high solid knee wall and looked over the edge James Ave. far below. Then she ran to the north end and gazed across Boylston and Arlington to the dark Gardens with their well-lit bridge and past to the Common and the brightly lit buildings of downtown. Behind her the entire length of the far side was blocked off by a row of massive air conditioning coils, all quiet on this cool day. She glanced up at the emerging stars, visible this high above the smog and light pollution, then did a slow three-hundred and sixty degree rotation to look at the horizon in all directions—inky black everywhere except in the west where it was dimming through shades of dark blue to purple to black.

Matt remained by the door watching her every move.

"So why'd you bring me up here?"

"To share the best view in New England."

She nodded and walked slowly toward him. "No argument on that."

"And give you a whiff of fresh air after breathing all that stale canned air in the basement."

She stood a few feet from him. "The fresh air is nice, the freedom is better."

"No argument on that."

He finally moved away from the door and across the roof to one of the air conditioning chillers. He used his pocket knife to pry open the cover to one of the side panels. He reached his hand inside and lifted out three cans of beer strapped together by their plastic holder, raising them aloft against the starry horizon like a prize fish.

"Where'd you get those?" Allison giggled.

Matt crowed proudly, "We store them next to the cooling lines in the summer. This is all that's left. Figured I'd better drink them before they tarp these units for the winter next week."

"Are they cold?"

"Cold as the day—cold enough."

He strolled over to a tall pile of tarps waiting to be spread over those inactive chillers. He lifted himself on top of the pile, then knelt on top and extended his hand down to Allison. "The view is even better up here."

Allison did a quick assessment. Zach'd told her that morning he'd agreed to use the truck to help move some furniture for one of the waiters from the Club and wouldn't be home till after seven. Then she thought about Mary and figured she'd simply tell her the truth—Matt took her on a tour of the top floors: maintenance did those sorts of things for data jockeys all the time. They were just two co-workers enjoying a pretty late-fall dusk before winter claimed the land and their lives. What could be the harm in that? Then she thought about Ian—well, she decided she wouldn't think about Ian right now.

She reached up and took Matt's hand and dragged herself atop the pile of vinyl-coated canvas. Matt was right on both counts—the view was even better up there and the beer was cold enough.

At precisely that moment Zach was helping Hector, a waiter from the Club, push a mattress (Zach was pushing from below, Hector grunting from above) up the cramped stairs of an old apartment building off Washington Street. To get here, Zach had driven through poverty and urban blight of a level he didn't know existed in Boston. He now had a visual image of the kinds of neighborhoods that so often made it onto the late-night local news. He'd just as soon have remained in blissful ignorance on this particular matter, but sometimes life and circumstances are not so accommodating.

Hector had only been working at the Club for several weeks. He was from some island in the Caribbean. Zach liked his lilting accent and his constant playful smile and the fact that he would sneak desserts to the car parkers. So when he mentioned he was moving into a new apartment, Zach volunteered his truck to help move the larger furniture. The only such piece of furniture Hector had was this hand-me-down bedframe and mattress.

So here they were, trying to curl the recalcitrant mattress around the landings of the tight staircase, on up to his room on the third floor of this recently renovated building in a neighborhood a few notches above those they'd driven through, with a markedly Caribbean flavor in its populace and merchants—open-air produce and craft stands (despite the season) crowding the sidewalk and tended by olive-skinned women in loose floral-print dresses and head scarves. Except for the cool New England evening and the glimpse of the far-off Hancock Tower he caught between two tenements, Zach would've thought he'd passed through a time-space warp on his way down Washington, so exotic were the sights and sounds and smells of this enclave.

He and Hector finally succeeded in getting the mattress to the third floor and dragging it through the doorway and across the living room and into the tight bedroom. They stood it against the wall while Zach helped Hector knock the wooden bedframe together. Actually, Zach did all the work, tapping the hooks of the siderails into the notches of the headboard and footboard with a scrap of 2 x 4 since there was no hammer available, then spacing the wooden slats atop the siderails' ledger. Hector stood by and watched with that ever present grin, apparently clueless about anything and everything mechanical. (It never occurred to Zach that this might be the first bedframe he'd ever seen.) They then dropped the mattress onto the bedframe; it fell into place with a gratifying thump. Zach slid it slightly to one side to get it centered on the frame, then stood back to admire their accomplishment, trying to ignore the stains on the mattress cover.

Hector nodded in thanks. "You are a good friend. Can I honor you with an island beer?"

"Don't know what that is, but sure. Never met a beer I didn't like."

They moved out into the living room with its boxes stacked off to one side and the rest of the floor empty. Hector went into the kitchen and returned with two beers in brown bottles without labels. He handed one to Zach, then pulled forward two of the boxes and invited Zach to sit. They sat in the middle of the empty room lit by a lone bare bulb in a porcelain overhead fixture.

Zach looked at Hector and raised his bottle. "To your new home."

Hector seemed confused and briefly lost his smile. "In this country?"

Zach said, "I meant in this apartment; but sure, in this country too."

"I hope I can stay."

Zach hadn't considered that either—Hector's immigration status. Was he even here legally? If so, what sorts of requirements would he need to fulfill? And if not, what fears and challenges would be a daily burden? Zach couldn't imagine being a newcomer in a strange country; it was all he could do to negotiate the challenges of finding his way in his own country.

Hector reached out and tapped Zach's bottle. "To new chances."

Zach nodded. "New chances." He took a long swallow of the beer. It was bitter and heavy with just a hint of citrus—maybe orange, maybe some other fruit he couldn't identify. He'd never tasted anything quite like it, but it wasn't terrible. After a few more swallows, he actually began to enjoy it.

They sat in silence staring out the small window to the building across the street with a couple of windows lit in the darkening evening. For Zach this moment reminding him of the end of the day on the farm, feeling satisfied and tired with the day's work draped over your shoulders, looking out across the resting herd or the dark fields with a beer (always a can—bottles and potential of broken glass cutting their animals too risky) in your hand and a sense of accomplishment in your heart.

For Hector the moment offered an opportunity of a different sort. He set his beer on the wood floor and reached his hand out and slid it over Zach's shoulder and caressed Zach's cheek lightly with the backs of his fingers.

Zach jumped at the touch, dropping his beer on the floor. He stood and glared down on the small man with shock and hurt in his eyes. That sense of betrayal quickly turned to fury. He ground his teeth and clenched and unclenched his fists in an effort to contain his anger, to try to restrain his impulse to pick up this traitor and break him in two (there was little doubt he could effect that end, given Hector's diminutive stature and Zach's size and strength and the flush of adrenaline in his veins). "Don't you ever touch me again," he growled in a low voice through his clenched teeth. He kicked the label-less beer bottle with all his pent-up vehemence. It went spinning across the floor, spraying citrus-tainted beer in all directions before slamming into the baseboard of the plaster wall under the window (but not shattering). Zach turned and ran out the door, slamming it in his wake.

He got lost trying to get back into the city. He pulled over on sidestreet with burned out cars and boarded up storefronts. He turned on the dome light and got out his map. He well knew the danger lurking around him here, the kind of danger they talked about on the late-night news. He was glad for it. He hoped some punk would approach the truck so he could have it out, here and now, once and for all. He glanced around him but could discern nothing beyond the light's reflection in the windshield and the windows.

No one approached the truck that night. He figured out how to get back into the city. As he cruised down Washington toward the paired Prudential and Hancock towers, tears streamed down his face.

Christmas Shopping

It was a week before Christmas and the streets were full. One lady wore a torn sweater and an angry face. And she started shouting.

"You goddamn sonsofbitches."

A few people turned and stared before continuing on their way.

"All you well-dressed, well-fed rich scientist bastards. Leaving me out in the streets to freeze and starve. You're trying to make a martyr out of me. A martyr! Well I don't want to be a martyr. Goddamn it, I'm a human being! Do you hear me? A human being!"

They heard. All of them, with their packages bouncing in overfilled bags, heard.

"See this? I'll be wearing this same goddamn sweater all winter. Look like a dirty rotten bum because you took away my life. Are you listening? You damn scientists spend all your time making the world better and forgetting that there are people with no food or clothes. Damn you bastards. Damn you all to Hell!"

The bustling crowds parted before her. This crazy woman was a little frightening.

"You took away my job. Put me on your lousy damn welfare. Make me feel like a bum. Force me down. Grind me into the pavement. Make a martyr out of me. Well I'm just a human being who wants to eat and keep warm and you better listen. Do you hear me?"

She was still walking, shouting, gesturing to the hard and cold buildings, the blue sky beyond.

"All you goddamn scientist sonsofbitches. Look at me! I'm a . . . ."

Her voice faltered, died. And the thousands of spirited shoppers sighed as one.

And the lady continued walking, silent now.

18

The week leading up to Christmas saw Zach sliding deeper into melancholy and Allison growing daily more cheerful. Part of this divergence was due to the aftermath of their separate incidents that recent evening—Allison on the roof with Matt, Zach helping move Hector—as each chose to process their experience internally, neither choosing to share their watershed episode with the other. And this divergence continued a trend that had begun with their arrival in Boston in August, as Zach found himself increasingly isolated—from Allison, his family, the world of the city—and Allison found herself growing steadily more comfortable—with her job, her new friends, the city that had opened itself to her. In short, Zach found himself estranged from himself, from any sense of purpose or peace, in large part because of the growing emotional separation from Allison; and Allison found herself more at home and comfortable with herself, the first independent adult self she'd ever known, despite the growing alienation toward Zach.

It was Saturday, December 24th, and they were together in the apartment the whole day. It was a blustery cold gray day with occasional snow squalls. Many of the stores were closed for the holiday, still others closed for the weather. Zach had already done their grocery shopping, Allison had done the shopping for Christmas decorations, and there was no reason for them to go out into the inclement weather. So, for the first time since getting married, they were stuck in the apartment together for a whole day, with a similar day of joint confinement to follow tomorrow, and perhaps a third (Monday being the work holiday for them both) after that. In typical clueless passivity, neither had anticipated this long period together alone or made any plans beyond the holiday menus—home-made lasagna for Christmas Eve, a turkey breast and all the trimmings for Christmas Day—to be eaten at their small dining table, just the two of them.

Allison spent her morning and early afternoon decorating their living room. They'd bought a potted Norfolk Island pine earlier in the fall, and she draped colored mini-lights on its umbrella-shaped branches and around its trunk and pot. She hung tiny Christmas bulbs beside the lights on the tree and larger bulbs from the window and door casings and on some of their other potted plants lined up on the long wide window sill. She taped garland to walls around the doors and hung flannel stockings (bought at Filene's—they'd not been home to pick up their personal hand-knit stockings with their names and birth years, even if their parents would agree to part with them) on the fireplace mantel, Zach's a deep blue with white lace fringe, hers a bright red with gold trim. Finally she dragged out the step stool and hung a piece of plastic mistletoe complete with white plastic berries from the overhead light in the entry hall. No one could enter or leave the apartment without passing under it. The thought of that condition brought a smile to her face.

Then she settled down to wrap presents in the large open space in the middle of the living room floor. She loved wrapping presents, had always wrapped everything for her family (except hers, of course). She briefly wondered how they'd make out this year, without her to wrap their presents. She'd bought presents for everyone in her family, planned to box them up and mail them next week. She'd not mailed them earlier since she and Zach had gone back and forth on whether they would go home sometime over the holidays or not. With that possibility now cancelled by the weather and Zach's refusal to compromise on the point, she'd have to mail the gifts. But that was O.K. She always enjoyed getting late gifts to help alleviate the letdown that inevitably followed Christmas. She turned on the radio and sang along to the carols that played on WGBH while she wrapped.

At his desk in one corner of the bedroom, Zach worked on a short story about a shepherd caught in a blizzard on the Wyoming prairie who foregoes his own safety and security in a hopeless attempt to try to drive his flock to safety in the shelter of a distant canyon. He knew exactly what he felt, exactly what he wanted to say; but he didn't know how to say it, didn't know how to string the words together to convey his feelings. This lack of literary ability combined with the story's tragic plot combined with the gray and gloomy day and nowhere to escape to left Zach feeling fidgety and uneasy. He set the story aside and turned to his journal and wrote about a gray Christmas in a gray city. Then he set this aside and picked up John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman and read in it for a while. None of these activities worked as they usually did to help release his pent up energy and ground his restless soul. He wondered if it was the holiday, the time of year, the gray and stormy day. He wondered if it was Allison's cheerful presence in the next room, turning their apartment into her simple vision of a low-budget Christmas décor. He had no idea what was going on. He'd never spent a Christmas where he had time to think about what he was doing, time to reflect on what the holiday and all its associate tradition and festivities actually meant or didn't mean. All Christmases past had been so full of commitments and obligations and responsibilities, almost all dictated by others or by history and tradition (those "others" on back decades, centuries even), that now alone with no such predeterminations, he had no idea what to do with himself.

So he put down his book and decided to make lunch.

As he walked into the transformed living room, Allison looked up with a start and shouted, "Zach, warn me when you're coming in," and pushed something (it looked like a couple of his preferred notebooks) into hiding under the couch.

Zach could laugh at her sudden surprise amidst the jumble of wrapping paper and ribbons and labels and tape, some presents neatly wrapped and set to the side, other unwrapped gifts still in their shopping bags (or hurriedly shoved under the couch). "You look like an elf on the busiest day of the year."

"I finally feel like it's Christmas. I was beginning to wonder if I'd feel that this year."

Standing above her, Zach suddenly felt his heart torn open in love for this woman—girl, really, just eighteen, hardly more than a child. Where had she been, this love of his life? Where had this love been hiding these last months? He knelt beside her, a little behind, and kissed her neck and nuzzled her ear. "Merry Christmas," he purred.

He felt her cheek curl into a grin against his face, felt her take a deep breath under his hand. "Merry Christmas," she whispered. "But you're kneeling on my scissors."

He felt that too, pressing against his knee. He stood back up. His love outlasted her gentle rebuff. "Don't cross a working elf," he said.

"Not on the busiest day of the year," she said and used those scissors to speed cut a long strip of red and green checked paper.

"Just stay out of her way," he said and gave her a wide berth on his way to the kitchen.

"Good idea," she said.

"You want a sandwich?" he asked over his shoulder.

"What kind?"

"Fried bologna and cheese."

"Hold the bologna, grill the cheese."

"Eye-eye, Elf!" he said and disappeared into the tiny kitchen.

Later that afternoon, with Zach again reading Fowles (on the bed this time) and Allison done wrapping and now knitting on a quilt for her newborn niece, their doorbell rang.

Zach jumped off the bed and looked around the doorframe to Allison.

She shrugged. "Beats me. Early Santa?"

"He comes down the chimney at midnight, remember?"

She nodded. "But this is Boston."

"So I've found out." He slid on his flannel slippers with the plastic soles. Their intercom didn't work; and even if it did, there was no way to unlock the front door remotely. So he'd have to trudge down the four flights of stairs to see who had rung the bell. Could be nobody there—sometimes homeless people rang all the bells then left if they didn't get buzzed into warmth. There was only one way to find out. He turned at the door and looked back at Allison. "Probably just some homeless guy; but if I ring three times, come down to help carry up the boat load of presents."

"Eye-eye, Elf," she said and gave him a quick salute before he disappeared out the door.

But it wasn't a boat load of presents or a chilled homeless person. Ian McCarthy stood smiling through the glass door with a snow-flecked red stocking cap, a big smile, and a beautiful fair-skinned girl with raven black hair standing beside him holding an open cardboard box.

Zach opened the door and shook Ian's hand. "Merry Christmas, you old rascal," he said. He'd not seen Ian for several weeks, as their basketball league was on an extended holiday break. Zach suddenly realized how much he missed both Ian and playing basketball.

Ian's face twisted into that wonderful lopsided, half-jesting, half-childlike and vulnerable grin. "Didn't want to leave you country bumpkins alone for the whole holiday."

"I told Allison it was probably some homeless guy—I was right!" He stepped to one side so that the two could get inside in the warmth at the base of the stairwell.

"Zach, this is my sister, Deidre. Deidre, this is Zach Sandstrom, some hick trying to find his way in the big city."

"And still lost," he said but with a smile and a wink.

"Don't call on me to come find you," Ian said.

"With your track record? Not in a million years," Zach said, then looked at the young girl with the fair skin. She was smiling but gazing down shyly, into the box she was carrying. She looked like she was in high school or recently graduated, about Allison's age. In the dim light of the hallway and with a smattering of snow in her hair and the simple lines of her fresh skin, she looked like an angel—a Christmas angel called to proclaim God's glory in her simple presence if not in the newborn child Jesus. Zach lowered his voice. "I'm pleased to meet you, Deidre. Don't let this nonsense with your brother scare you away from here."

She finally looked up at him and riveted him with her piercing dark and knowing eyes. "I have two older brothers and more crazy uncles and cousins than I can count. No noise you could make would scare me away." She smiled fully then and extended a mittened hand from around the box. "Pleased to meet you, Zach Sandstrom country bumpkin."

Ian couldn't smother his laugh. "In case you haven't figured it out by now, in Irish Catholic families—at least the kind that exist in these parts—the men make all the noise and the woman hold all the power."

"And you'd be lost without us," Deidre said.

Ian held his hands up in surrender. "No argument here."

Zach stood silent and happy to one side, lost in their family ribaldry and the simple sound of their comfortable teasing, the product of a lifetime of care and companionship.

Deidre turned to Zach. "I brought my kittens. I've only got two left and Ian said you and your wife might like one as a pet."

Ever since returning Gina to the farm, Zach had missed the presence of a pet in his life (not to mention the presence of all the farm animals that had been a constant part of his life until four months ago). He and Allison had occasionally talked of getting an urban pet; and the most likely such pet would be a cat. But neither of them had ever had an indoor cat (the dozen or more cats on the farm were all outdoor versions, and half feral), and they weren't sure how such an experiment might work out. Zach looked to Ian. "Did Allison mention wanting a cat?"

Ian shook his head. "Not that I can recall. Dee said she had two kittens left. I said I wanted to say Merry Christmas to the Sandstroms. So here we are."

"You don't have to take one," Deidre said. "I won't have trouble finding other homes."

Zach laughed. "We've been talking about possibly getting a cat." He peeked in the box. Four golden eyes peered back at him from the dark recesses. "I'm guessing Allison will be glad to take one from you. If I'd been a better planner, I would've thought of it as a gift for her."

Ian's face grew serious. "We won't tell."

Zach looked at him eye to eye (they were nearly the same height, Ian maybe two inches shorter) and felt more gratitude toward a human than he'd felt toward anyone in months, maybe years. "That'd be nice. I'll tell her later, but maybe not today."

Ian shrugged. "You don't have to tell her. God'll let this one go."

"You know that?"

"I'll tell Him for you in confession."

"Later tonight?"

"Next week—priest takes Christmas off."

"Too bad the sins don't."

Ian shrugged. "Never know."

Zach shook his head. "That's one thing I do know."

Beneath them, Deidre stared ahead in angelic silence, female knowing.

Above, a door creaked open. Allison's voice rained down on them. "Zach, you O.K.?"

"Just found Santa and his helper on the door stoop," he shouted.

She glanced over the railing from the fourth floor. "Then bring them up."

Zach grinned and stepped aside and invited them to head up the stairs. Ian waited for his sister to lead the way with her box holding Christmas hopes then followed.

As the three headed up the stairs, Zach could see Allison looking down through the middle of the stairway, trying to spot who was coming. Since Ian and Deidre were hugging the wall in their march up, he knew Allison couldn't see who it was and had to wait their arrival. He marveled at her patient curiosity. He'd have long since rushed down the stairs, or chosen to stay in the apartment (more likely the latter—indifferent or frightened of the surprises lurking out there in this hostile urban environment). But Allison wanted to know yet was willing to wait. Maybe he needed more of this aspect of her disposition to survive, let alone prosper, in this place.

Allison looked momentarily confused when the unfamiliar girl with her box started up the final flight of stairs beneath her. But when Ian came into sight, she shrieked and rushed partway down to greet him with a hug. "Merry Christmas!" she cried. "You're the last person I expected to see today! I figured I wouldn't see you again till the new year." (Ian had the week between Christmas and New Year's Day as vacation.)

Ian grinned his lopsided little-boy grin and acted embarrassed at her enthusiasm but was clearly pleased. "Told Zach I couldn't bear to think of you two alone for the whole holiday."

"Aw, my guardian angel," Allison cooed as she released him from her hug.

"And this is my sister Deidre."

Deidre reached out her hand around the box from two steps above the pair. "You can call me Dee—everyone else does."

Allison took her hand from below. "Merry Christmas, Dee. Anyone who can put up with this guy for an older brother has my respect."

"You just said I was you guardian angel."

"On you best days," Allison said and winked.

Ian just shook his head and slid past Deidre up the last flight of stairs.

"What's in the box, Dee?"

Deidre smiled. "Maybe a surprise for you."

Allison tilted her head—that same patient curiosity.

Zach said from below. "Why don't we get off these stairs and into the apartment?"

Just as Deidre turned to head up, one of the kittens—the gray one—put its front paws on the side of the box and peeked over the edge. Allison saw the kitten and shrieked. "A kitten!"

Deidre said, "Well, actually two."

Allison turned to Zach. "Are they for me?"

Zach shrugged and smiled—nowhere to go now but deeper in. "I guess, if you want them."

"If I want them!" Allison said incredulously. She was on the step beside Deidre and reached in to pat the gray kitten. "Can I hold him?" she asked.

Deidre said. "It's a her—they both are girls. And sure—she loves to be held."

Allison slid her hand under the belly of the small ball of gray fur and lifted her out of the box. She held the kitten at arms' length like a specimen for study, then cradled it close to her chest, against her red sweater. She turned and looked at Zach. "I can't believe you did this for me."

Zach shrugged. "It was kind of a last minute idea." He glanced at Deidre over Allison's shoulder.

Deidre offered back a simple nod over her kind smile—no judgment or admonition anywhere in her face, or in her whole angelic presence far as he could see.

Behind him and above them all, Ian looked down and said, "O.K., who put up the mistletoe?"

Allison shouted, "Don't move!" then handed the kitten back to Deidre and ran up the stairs.

By then Ian was in their living room, beyond the mistletoe. "Too late," he said.

Allison chased him down and jumped on his back from behind. "I'll catch you one of these times."

"Not if you break my back first." But he was laughing the whole time.

Deidre and Zach followed close behind. "Kids, kids," Zach shouted. "No presents if you don't quit your rough-housing!"

Allison slid off his Ian's back.

Ian looked sheepishly at Zach. "She started it."

Allison punched him in the arm. "You traitor."

"Oww," Ian cried. "See?"

Zach could only laugh, happier than he'd been in months.

The four sat and talked over chips and soft drinks for more than an hour. Deidre, it turned out, was within a few weeks of being exactly Allison's age. She'd graduated from high school the previous June and was now living at home, helping her mom with housework and going to the local community college for night classes, and caring for her cat's litter of kittens. The sister to the gray kitten was black with a white chest and paws and somewhat shier than her gray counterpart but more watchful. Allison immediately fell in love with both of them, and there was never any question of keeping only one.

"Have you named them?" she asked Deidre.

"No. I figured that was up to the owner."

"She was scared if she named them, she wouldn't be able to give them away," Ian said.

Deidre nodded in silence. It was clear giving these last two away was harder than expected.

Allison said, "What should we name them, Zach?"

Put on the spot, Zach seemed confused. "I don't know." The reality of having impulsively committed to not one but two new pets was just starting to sink in.

"Their colors remind me of the Civil War—with the dark blue of the North and the gray of the South." She'd recently been reading some John Jakes novels.

"Scarlett and Melanie," Zach volunteered.

Allison shook her head. "Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee," she said firmly.

"Those are boys' names," Zach protested.

"So what?" Allison said. "We'll give them girls' nicknames—the gray one will be Bobbi and the black one Lyssa."

Her choices, not to mention the oblique and improbable reference, seemed illogical to Zach; but he saw she was set on her selections. "They're your cats."

"Bobbi and Lyssa," she said with finality.

Across the room, Ian was quietly teasing the black kitten by gently shaking an offcut of ribbon Allison had missed. The kitten silently stalked the quivering ribbon, skulking along beneath the couch and behind the end table and under the curtains till it was within striking distance. It held in a frozen crouch behind the curtain, watching the ribbon, waiting its chance. By now, the other three humans in the room (the gray kitten was asleep in Allison's lap) were silently watching this drama unfold.

The black kitten, Lyssa, held in its frozen crouch for many minutes. Ian's hand grew tired of shaking the ribbon, but he wouldn't stop. He took his eyes off the kitten for a split second to glance up at the others with a grin. That's when Lyssa chose to attack—not the ribbon but Ian's quivering hand!

"Yoww!" Ian screamed and jumped out of the chair, more startled than hurt by the shallow scratches and fang marks on the fleshy base of his thumb. "You Pisser!" he shouted, using a local slang term for an astounding, and outstanding, event or entity.

The other three shrieked in laughter till they felt their sides would split.

And at that moment, about 4 PM on Christmas Eve, 1977, Lyssa became Pissah (the "r" dropped in requisite Bostonian phonetics) for the rest of her sixteen years.

Later that night, about the time Santa was scheduled to drop down their chimney and leave his gifts or a cloud of soot (or a lump of coal, as their tradition called for if the designee had misbehaved), Zach woke to see his wife asleep beside him in the pale light, curled on her side facing him, the two kittens no longer in their box beside the bed but curled up tight together in the gentle curve of her waist, as at home in her warmth and bed as she was in their sudden total love and dependence. He smiled at the sight, found in it a kind of Christmas hope and promise that had seemed so remote and unlikely just twelve hours before. Maybe there were still miracles to be had in this wanton world, he thought or tried to believe; and maybe one or two of those miracles might just lie down beside him, share their warmth. He could hope; he could seek.

He rolled his head in the other direction and looked out their bedroom window. Big flakes swirled just beyond the glass against the slate background. It'd be a white Christmas to boot, he thought, before wondering if those flakes—blown hither and fro out there in the blustery cold—were a good or a bad omen, spirits of blessing or harbingers of curse. A year ago, he would've seen it all as promise, boundless opportunity. Just now—even in the glow of this recent Christmas blessing, their warmth mere inches away—he just didn't know, wouldn't venture a guess.

Cold Exploring

In the Public Garden on a winter's day:

Standing on the bridge, kids (not swanboats) glide past, their skates sparkling in the sun, their laughter swelling in the crisp air. They are so young.

The birdhouse is empty.

The ducks are gone.

Walking on, past empty fountains, bronze statues, their spouting mouths gone dry, frozen hard in the dead cold. When did they ever live?

Naked trees.

Brown grass.

Shriveled flowers.

Flocks of pigeons rise before the policeman's horse. And fly away. The horse puffs clouds of frosty white, its rider huddled tight against the wind.

Go back.

Back on the bridge, journey complete, laughing and giggles and shouts. Alive. Wonders on ice, they skate about in mirrored grace. Maybe not so young.

Turning, leaving after a long pause, there is George Washington, marching. Where?

His cold silhouette dissolves into the setting sun.

19

Zach walked across the Mass. Ave. bridge from Cambridge to Boston in the pre-dawn dark. Snowflakes swirled around him, blown sideways and even back up into the sky by a bitterly cold, cutting wind that rushed out of the west over the frozen Charles and slammed into the defenseless bridge and anyone unlucky enough to be stuck walking on it, there being precisely one person so fated at this early hour in this harsh weather. There were hardly any cars on the bridge—a few cabbies hopeful of earning a generous tip on such a night, an ambulance rushing past with its red lights opening wounds in the storm to slowly heal in its wake.

Zach had just finished his first shift as a loading dock spare at Mercury Freight located near Central Square in Cambridge. He'd taken the bus from Back Bay to Central Square at 10:30 the night before; but of course neither the busses nor the subway was running now. There were only two ways home, and cab fare would've cost most of what he'd earned that night. So he walked.

He didn't really mind walking, despite the cold and snow. After being very sleepy halfway through his shift—a visible condition that had earned him two sharp rebukes from his ornery supervisor—he was wide awake now and felt the need to let some of his anger and despair diffuse into the night and the storm. The work at the freight terminal—unloading packages and boxes from one trailer onto a pallet to be moved and loaded onto another trailer—was physically strenuous but not unreasonably so; he'd done many tasks on the farm that were more demanding and exhausting. But what was so unsettling to Zach was that everyone there in the busy large terminal was either mean or aggressive (generally both together) or indifferent. No one tried to be the least bit helpful or supportive or encouraging or even funny (unless making fun of Zach was considered funny—which of course it wasn't, at least not to Zach). There were two other spares on their first shifts, and he thought he'd found rapport with one of them (the other, far as Zach could tell, was mute). Then, late in their shift, this nascent buddy blamed Zach for a mistake he'd made; and Zach hadn't even protested, just took the verbal dressing down from the super while glaring at the downcast face of the traitor.

So compared with the experience of his night in the indoor shelter of the terminal—a kind of waking nightmare that mixed extreme physical fatigue with cruelty and callousness—Zach's solitary walk home in the icy cold of the storm was a respite. In fact it was more than a respite. This storm in the middle of this lowly bridge over this frozen polluted river in the pre-dawn of this sprawling urban chaos was at the moment the best home Zach could hope for. That this realization was born of self-pity that was born, largely, of fatigue and loneliness (all of which Zach acknowledged silently to himself) made it no less true.

What better home did he have? He couldn't return to his family and the farm. They'd no doubt accept him but with a level of silent censure and smug condescension that Zach would die before enduring. He could return to Yale but that would take months to arrange and what would be there for him that wasn't there when he'd fled its sterile and over-achieving cliques last spring? He could throw himself on his sister's mercies and hope she wouldn't divulge his desperate plight to the rest of his family, but what new opportunities would he find there? He could (and, finally, would) find his way back by this deserted trail to Allison and the kittens (already starting to grow tall and lanky) asleep in the apartment, but she'd be rising about the time he was climbing into bed to head off to a job and a life that was not only foreign to Zach but largely excluded him. He couldn't understand what she saw in that job or the friends and life she'd put together there, and she'd stopped trying to explain or justify her enjoyment. He was in the tenuous position of largely living off her earnings while silently despising both that dependence and the job that was drawing her away from him.

He'd previously hoped, albeit with little conviction, that steady work at the loading dock might provide funding for additional life options (even though he had no idea what such options would look like). But as of tonight, that hope had been dashed. He doubted they'd call him back; and even if they did, he knew he couldn't endure any more than the occasional descent into such humiliation and debasement. He also, with a level of sweeping assumption common of such moments of despair, concluded he could not tolerate any similar entry-level blue-collar employment. His pride was too great, his expectation of human dignity and cooperation too ingrained, to endure the abuse and harassment of such employment. With this acknowledgement, he eliminated more than three-quarters of the job possibilities available to him, here or anywhere, and all the highest paying ones. What's more, with a kind of swirling freefall into pessimism to rival the snowflakes swirling tangle at the whim of the gales, he came to presume that those few remaining job prospects would each carry their own fatal flaw—some condition or demand that would be unacceptable to him. He'd cut himself loose from the one world he knew only to discover there was nothing anywhere to replace what he'd rejected, nothing else strong enough to bear the weight of his needs, and his need to be needed.

On the Boston side of the bridge, instead of keeping straight on Mass. Ave. to Commonwealth, he took the stairs (particularly treacherous with three inches of snow atop a glaze of ice) down to the Esplanade. Trudging through pristine snow—which made him feel good: one thing in this ugly city that he could make his own before it was smeared by human contact—he found his way a dim quarter mile maybe on the path or maybe across the frozen lawn to his bench overlooking the Charles. He brushed the three inches of snow off its ice-coated slats and sat down. He looked across the river glowing white through the haze of the storm. He looked at the gaslights on the bridge glowing fuzzy like cotton balls through the storm. He tried to see across to Cambridge but couldn't make out the shoreline. He suddenly, desperately, wanted to see the MIT dome, its lofty limestone curves reassuring of a better time, a better world defined by graceful arcs of prescribed chords, singing music in shape. It was nowhere to be found in the storm of his day, his life.

Still, there was consolation in the moment, reassurance in the great leveler of climate and dark and solitude. He was at home; there would always be this home.

By the time he'd stomped the snow off his feet and made his way up the stairs to their apartment, Allison had already gone to work. She'd left a note on the table:

Hope the long hours are good news and not bad for you. I may be home early but will probably stay on as skeleton staff since I'm the only one within walking distance. Keep an eye on Bobbi. She threw up on the bed last night. Maybe she missed you!

Allison

P.S. I missed you too!

Zach smiled down at the two kittens as they took turns rubbing against the damp denim of his jeans. Bobbi sure didn't look sick. He gave them a little food then stripped off his clothes and slid into bed. Just before he fell asleep, he caught a strong whiff of Allison. It was almost as if she were right beside him.

Strange As Time

The man was reading and the cat was watching the snowstorm.

As gusts of wind blew winter's first flakes against the window, the cat's head would twitch, following the path of some flake as it travelled from oblivion into oblivion. And occasionally the cat would stand on its hind legs, its forepaws clawing vainly at the glass, trying to capture the elusive flake, absorb its eternity. And as the man read, he heard the muffled howl of the wind and the cat's futile tapping on the glass. And once he looked up and saw the cat standing erect, pawing at empty air, its lithe figure silhouetted against the swirling storm. And the man laughed and returned to reading his book.

For a long time it was like that—the man and the cat in peaceful warmth, the storm beating against the window.

When the man next looked up, he saw the cat staring out the window. Suddenly, the animal leapt back in apparent terror and looked quickly about, frightened and confused. It spotted the man and, with a deep-seated cry, it ran to him, jumped into his lap, and nestled quickly into its secure warmth.

"What's the matter?" the man asked.

He was answered by a steady purr.

"Silly animal."

And the man resumed reading and the cat purred and fell asleep and the snow fell outside.

20

The hulking center for the other team, a white guy named Barnes whose game was all brawn and no finesse, had been pounding on Zach all game long, mixing his quasi-legal muscling and leaning with the occasional undetected cheap shot—an elbow to the kidneys while in a crowd under the basket, a nudge while he was running downcourt that tripped Zach and sent him sprawling.

So by late in the game, with Zach's team comfortably ahead, Zach had pretty much had enough of this guy Barnes's abuse, physical abuse that had been heaped atop the broader and vaguer abuse that Zach had been experiencing, or at least feeling, at the hands of the city and his life for some months now. So when Barnes got the ball on a breakaway and was headed in for an uncontested lay-up, Zach sprinted to catch the slow runner and gently nudged him from behind as he was fully extended for the shot. That gentle nudge—just a typical foul, nothing more egregious—was more than enough to throw the big man off balance and sending him flying into the padded wall beyond the basket. Zach was whistled for the foul, raised his hand, and turned to walk away. But the hot-head Barnes was not about to let the affront go so easily. Peter yelled from the bench for Zach to watch out, and Zach turned to see Barnes standing five feet away with his arm cocked and his hand holding the ball, about to throw it with all his might at Zach. Zach just stood there, didn't try to duck or run. And when the ball came flying his way, he took a half-step to one side and caught it.

But Zach wasn't about to let the affront go at that. He'd had enough abuse for this night and for these last six months. He never fought, never got openly angry, never tried to hurt anyone. But at just that moment of catching the ball intended for his head, he'd had enough. So he took the ball and threw it back at Barnes with all his might. And the hulking Barnes, shocked by the mild-mannered Zach's reaction and not nearly so nimble, didn't have the time or the agility to duck or get out of the way. The ball hit him squarely in the forehead and bounced all the way to the ceiling of the rec-center gym. The blow should've knocked him out; it would've knocked out anyone else on the floor. But Barnes had a head as hard as it was dense, and all that happened after the ball hit him is he saw red. He ran straight at Zach and swung wildly with the fist of his right hand. Zach dodged the fist, but the momentum of the guy's body and wild swing brought Barnes's elbow squarely into the bridge of Zach's nose and broke it.

By then Peter was off the bench and had hooked both of Barnes's arms from behind, held the big guy upright and helpless in front of Zach. That scrawny Peter could immobilize this guy who was twice his weight and nearly a foot taller impressed Zach. Clearly Peter'd been in fights before and knew how to maximize his limited resources. Zach's hands were already balled up in fists and his adrenaline was flowing from the whole incident but especially from the sparking pain of his nose. He lined Barnes up in his sights and saw Peter nod from behind. If the ball hadn't knocked this lummox out, surely a left-right combination would. It was all there for the taking—his just revenge not only against Barnes but against the last half year, all just waiting for him to clean this guy's clock as he cleaned out all the anger in his soul. He cocked his left arm to lead, held his right in momentary reserve.

Then he dropped both arms and walked away, seconds before the ref arrived and pushed him away. It wasn't worth it; it would solve nothing. He walked over to their bench and sat down and watched with amusement as the little scrums between the two teams, going on all around the court, slowly played themselves out. It was only after some seconds that he realized the liquid soaking his jersey was his blood—or at least a lot of blood mixed with the sweat that was already there. That blood was as good a catharsis as knocking out Barnes would've been. It somehow seemed more proper, more fitting to his life and legacy; or at least that's what he thought as the adrenaline drained from his veins and left him shivering and empty feeling. He grabbed a towel and held it to his nose.

The ref tossed both Barnes and Zach, eliminating them from that game and earning them automatic suspensions for an additional game. He then suspended the game since he would've had to toss everyone else on both teams for fighting and coming off the benches; and if he tossed everyone, then both teams would have no players for their next game and that would screw up the league's schedule. So he suspended the game at the time and the score prior to the nudge Zach had given Barnes—"just a little love tap" as Sean called it in protesting the ref's ejection of Zach. The ref had replied, "And I guess sending the ball into orbit off his head was just a light toss of affection." And Sean had said, "Can my man help it if the guy can't catch a simple pass?" Zach stayed ejected, and suspended for one game.

At the bar Sean was still hot about losing Zach for a game but otherwise quite fired up. He threw his arm over Zach's shoulder and gave him a rough hug. "About time somebody gave that musclehead a dose of his own medicine." He called to old man O'Leary's son Mick to set Zach up with another round. "That big gulluke has been pounding on me since grade school. I've never repaid him for the black eye he gave me in 'touch' football in fifth grade or the dislocated shoulder while playing soccer in gym class in ninth grade. He ain't nothing but a lard-brained bully."

Zach laughed along with Sean but took no pleasure in exacting the team's stored up revenge on Stone Barnes (that was his real name—Stone). Truth be told, he was a little frightened of what he'd done, scared of this spontaneous release of anger and its brief but violent ramifications (not the least of which was the smashed bridge of his nose, now sore and swollen). He wondered where that flare-up of anger had come from, and when it might return, and what the consequences of the next incident might be.

Mick dropped off a beer and poured the shot right there in front of Zach, sloshing as much of the Canadian Club on the bar as in the shot glass.

Sean acted shocked. "Hey Mick, give me a straw and I'll drink off the bar all night."

Mick laughed. "Give you something new to suck on."

Sean feigned anger. "I'll show you something to suck on." He started to climb over the bar.

"Down, Rover," Peter said, shouldering Sean into the next seat at the bar. "One fight a night is enough."

Sean said, "He's running anyway," to Mick's back as he strolled to the far end of the bar to serve a couple college girls that had just come in.

Zach slid the shot over to Peter. "Compliments of Sean through me." After the first post-game drinking binge, he'd learned to share his tributes with others. Apparently such generosity did not incur the wrath of the Irish drinking gods (of which there were a whole stable full) and result in the proliferation of your drinks.

Peter nodded, took the shot, and knocked it back before Zach could reach for his beer and toast the diminutive point guard.

"I was going to toast your bravery against Goliath," Zach said.

Peter shrugged. "I couldn't believe you caught the ball. Nobody had ever done that to him before."

"Done what?"

"Stared him down and taken his best shot."

Zach shrugged. "What else was I going to do? I didn't have time to run. He was too close for me to duck. So I caught the damn thing."

Peter just shook his head. "Then when you beaned him—man, I think every kid in five counties loved the sound of that beaning. After seeing that, I just had to get out there. If he'd ever gotten turned around on me, he would've broken me in two."

"But you had his arms locked."

"Believe me, I was holding on for dear life."

"More than long enough for me to take a free shot."

"Why didn't you?"

Zach thought about that a minute. "I don't know. I wanted to, then I didn't want to anymore. The anger all went out of me."

"Yeah," Peter agreed. "It would've felt good for about five seconds, then I would've felt bad for the asshole. And who wants to feel bad for him!"

"To slaying the dragon," Sean slurred from his seat.

Peter rolled his eyes to Zach. "Sean, there was no dragon and there was no slaying."

Sean looked over at Zach. "See what I have to put up with in these townies? Do you see it? No poetry in any of them, no flare. Where's the flare, Peter? Where's the lyricism in your soul?"

"You ain't careful, Sean, I'll have you drinking off the bar, only it won't be with no straw," he growled, before winking to Zach out of Sean's line of sight.

Zach slid Peter another of his stowed shots, and followed it with his mug before Peter could down it. "To slaying dragons," Zach said and tapped the shot Peter held.

"Or at least quenching their fire," Peter said before emptying the clear glass with the white line a quarter inch below its rim.

Sean said, "Now he turns lyrical, now! Waits for our ringer from the Ivy League to get a little illustrative."

Peter turned to Sean. "If I didn't love you so much, I'd hate you when you were drunk." He grabbed Sean around the neck and gave him a quick noogie before turning and heading down the bar to check out the college girls.

"See what I have to put up with?" Sean said to Zach. "Have you ever seen such a gang of Cretans?"

Ian took Peter's place between Zach and Sean. First he turned to Sean. "Keys, Captain," he said.

Sean looked shocked. "First Cretans," he shouted. "Now my mother!"

"Yeah, I'm your mother; and you wouldn't be alive if I weren't. Now give 'em up." He held his hand out with his fingers calling forth the keys.

And Sean pulled out his car keys and gave them to his younger brother. "You owe me a drink."

"You owe me your life," Ian said, but waved to Mick and pointed with two fingers to Sean.

Mick nodded from the far end of the bar.

Then Ian turned to Zach. "Bring your beer and come into my office." He nodded toward an empty booth beside the plate glass window looking out on the sleepy intersection in rundown Dorchester Center.

Zach said, "I got three beers and a shot."

"I don't care if you got seven maids a'milking and six geese a'laying, bring them along and sit with me a minute."

Zach tried to carry everything but was having trouble grasping the shot with the beers filling his hands.

Ian shook his head, grabbed the shot, and knocked it back. "Got to teach you college boys everything." He went on to the booth.

Zach shrugged and nodded. "Crude, but effective," he said, either to himself or maybe out loud. He followed Ian and slid into the cushioned seat opposite him.

Ian slid a full shot from his side across to Zach. "Now we're even."

Zach laughed and pushed it back. "You don't have to do that."

Ian shook his head and slid the drink back to Zach. "Don't tell an Irishman not to keep tabs—or someone will be dead by the end of the night."

Zach nodded. "So I'm learning."

Ian nodded. "Good. So how are you and Allison?"

Zach was so shocked by the question he wondered if he'd heard right. "What?"

"Your wife—how are you and she getting along?"

"Kind of a personal question, don't you think?"

"Not when she's moping around my office half the time and you're taking on the league's thug like you want to get killed."

"He threw the ball at me."

"You bumped him for no good reason and forced his hand. The game was over Zach; you didn't need to provoke him."

"He'd been pounding on me all night."

"That's what he does. That's what guys like him do. And you don't ever take them on at their own game—not if you want to live another day."

"I'm here, aren't I?"

"Because he was so surprised by your stupidity that he missed with his first shot, then Peter saved your ass. He, or whoever the next thug you decide to taunt is, won't just leave you a broken nose next time."

"You're not my guardian."

"Then what about Allison?"

"You're not her guardian either."

"No, you are. Start acting like it."

"How I act toward Allison, or don't act, is my business, our business."

"You're both screwing it up."

"Says who?"

"Says the only person in this city that cares about both of you and thinks you really love each other even though you treat each other like shit."

"What do you care?" Zach said and stood in a huff and returned to the bar.

"I just told you," Ian whispered to himself as he looked at the three beers and a full shot on the far side of the table.

21

Sean's girlfriend Jen, Peter's girlfriend Mona, and Jack's girlfriend Stephanie all corralled Allison the minute she walked through the door and shuttled off to a bedroom down the hall for a little—well, a lot—of girl time around a bottle of sweet white wine and a bowl of chocolate-chip cookie dough (back before that indulgence became a popular fad). They were at a house party—the house belonging to Mark and Cheryl, Mark being the only other married member of Sean's Plumbing basketball team—in Mattapan on a Saturday night in early February.

Ian had pulled a fast one and invited Allison without first running it by Zach. Zach had initially resisted accepting when Allison told him about the party over dinner earlier in the week, preferring to keep his basketball team world to himself (and worrying, just a little, that some of his extreme behavior might get inadvertently recounted to Allison by a fellow player, or one of their girlfriends, under the loose-tongued effects of alcohol).

Allison had responded, "You party with them all the time. Why can't I join in the fun just this once?"

"I play basketball with them. We have a few beers afterwards."

"You play basketball for an hour, then party the rest of the night."

"We play for more than an hour, and the drinking is just an extension of the game."

"Yeah, that's what all the alcoholic beer-bellied oldtimers welded to their seats at the pub told their wives twenty years ago—'we're just having a few beers after the game'."

That image registered powerfully on Zach's mind—a little too powerfully for his own comfort and confidence. Was that really where he was headed on this? Had he fled the dead end of Dover just to find a substitute confinement in the backwater insular burbs of Boston? "If that's what you think of us, then why do you want to go to a party with all those losers destined for beer-bellies and hollow eyes?"

"Because they aren't there yet and I want to share in the fun before it's too late."

"What would 'too late' be?" He wasn't trying to divert the conversation—he was genuinely curious what too late meant to Allison. It was a phrase that crept into his thoughts entirely too often for one all of age twenty-one (his birthday was two weeks ago).

"Zach, I don't care about 'too late'. I care about right now. I just want to live and have fun."

So here they were at Mark and Cheryl's—living (that part was incontestable) and having fun, or at least making a reach for it in this night and at this place.

Well, perhaps Allison was making a reach for it. Zach felt ill at ease and morose. Without the preface of on-the-court camaraderie and the euphoric effects of athletic exertion, the people around him in the mundane setting were all too reminiscent of his adolescent experiences—kids playing at being adults with their cans of beer and cups of wine (or, if they were really reckless, rum or vodka), talking about getting drunk last weekend as they got drunk this weekend, dreaming of an illicit roll on the mattress of some back bedroom with the latest focus of their hormonal craving. Though the faces around him were new, their average age a few years further toward adulthood (and thus a little more desperate in their searching, their more urgent longings), the dynamic was little different from Dover, and certainly no more hopeful or interesting. Was this really the end of the search that had started with so much hope and expectation six months before?

Mark (the host of the party) came over to where Zach was sitting in the corner of the crowded living room and sat on the arm of the chair Zach was trying to hide in. He tapped Zach's beer bottle with his own. "To better tomorrows."

Zach could nod agreement with that and took a long swallow of beer.

"It'll be nice to get you back next week," Mark said. In last week's game, the one Zach had to sit out on suspension, Sean's Plumbing had been beaten badly by Kennedy Dry Cleaning, a mediocre team that had taken advantage of Sean's Plumbing's lack of height and inside presence to throttle them and drop them into a tie for first place with Riley's Pub.

"It'll be good to get back. Not much fun sitting on the sidelines cheering."

Mark nodded. "I know the feeling." He'd played ball for Dorchester High, earning all-conference honors his last two years, but then sat on the bench for a year before washing out of Northeastern. He now worked as a salesman for a medical supplies company. He was the oldest guy on the team, a year older than Sean.

"Do you miss it?" Zach asked.

"Miss what?"

"Playing organized ball."

Mark looked across the room. "Not really. All the rules are a high price to pay for the bigger crowds and attention."

"The competition's better."

Mark turned back to face him. "I do miss that—guys taking their game seriously, trying to maximize their skills. Hard to find that intensity in rec league."

"With the players tired from a long day at work or a night up feeding the baby."

Mark laughed. "Least no babies on our team yet."

"You and Cheryl?"

Mark grinned sheepishly and glanced at the floor. "Maybe."

"Really?"

"Yeah, maybe. But keep it a secret."

Zach made the sign of zipping his lips then added, "A hard secret to keep."

"Tell me about it. What do you think all those girls are talking about in the back bedroom?"

Zach had a fleeting and unsettling realization—those back bedrooms this night were being used to talk about the birth of babies, plan baby showers, rather than for the purpose of making babies, the lights off, the words hushed, just two bodies talking in acts of primal need. But were those conversations about babies as primal in their needs—for that gender anyway—as the groping and the penetrations in dense dark? He looked up to Mark who was now staring down on him with an almost beatific gaze. "Well then," he said. "To better tomorrows for you and Cheryl." He raised his bottle and tapped Mark's.

Mark nodded. "It'll sure be different."

"A new adventure."

Mark shrugged. "I guess." He stood next to Zach's chair. "Let me go check the appetizers and the trash. Those are my two tasks for tonight—the food and what's left over after it's consumed."

"Good to be needed."

"I guess. Let me know if you want an interview with the firm. Two slots opened up in sales just this week."

Zach nodded. "Thanks for the offer. I'll let you know."

Mark nodded, raised his bottle silently—a beacon of freedom or shackle of imprisonment, or maybe a little of both—them disappeared into the crowd of revelers.

Allison reappeared after more than an hour and found Zach still stationed in his chair. She flopped down on his lap. Her breath smelled of sweet wine and her muscles had the looseness of mild intoxication mixed with the agitation of a sugar high. She rolled the back of her head from side to side against his chin and squirmed her butt deep into his groin. After this uncommon greeting, she nuzzled her face into the notch between his shoulder and neck and whispered into his ear, "Cheryl and Mark are pregnant, but don't tell anyone."

Zach nodded against her face. "I know."

She looked up in surprise. "How'd you know? Ian?"

He shook his head. "No, Mark himself."

"I didn't know you two were close."

"We aren't."

"Then why'd he tell you?"

Zach shrugged. "Maybe that's why—safer to tell an outsider."

Allison thought about that. "Strange," she said.

"The pregnancy or the telling?"

"All of it," she said while looking sideways at the shifting crowd gathered in the dim room. She then suddenly turned her face into Zach's head and lightly nibbled at his earlobe.

Zach leaned his head away. He wasn't near drunk enough to enjoy such a public display of affection, least of all from his normally restrained wife. "What's got into you tonight?"

She shrugged. "You're always wanting me to be more 'physically expressive'." She repeated a phrase Zach had used years ago and regretted ever since—every time she trotted it out to remind him of the mistake. "So I'm taking your advice." She slid a hand down between her butt and his lap and massaged, in cramped quarters, his body parts she found there, out of sight of the crowd but certainly not out of notice of Zach's suddenly taut body—taut from head to toe even as those massaged parts grew taut in their own manner.

Zach leaned hard against the chair back, torn between what her hand and her suddenly enticing fragrance were calling forth from him, and what his mind was telling him about their surroundings and their exposure to this community where they were both outsiders and contingent members. He understood, from years of training in a similar community, that what they did next would define their entire future in this community. And at the moment, he didn't know what message he wished to send.

Ian appeared from the crowd. "Now that's what I'm talking about," he said with a broad smile.

Allison quickly sat straight up, her hands folded demurely in her lap. "What?" she asked.

"The two of you acting like you might even like each other."

"We always like each other," she said defensively.

"Then maybe love each other. It ain't so hard if you try."

"How would you know?" she asked.

"Oh, I've tried—a lot. It's easy for me. Not so easy for the other side—least not the ones I've picked."

"Better if you don't have to try. Better if it comes naturally."

"See how long that lasts," Ian said.

Zach muttered, "We have."

Allison stood. "I'm off to find a White Russian." Her body had lost its swaying looseness, was suddenly all angles and stiff movements.

"The man or the drink?" Ian asked.

"Maybe both," she said and headed for the kitchen.

"That went well," Ian said to the freshly alert Zach.

"It's for the best."

"Whatever the hell that means."

22

They left the party early enough to catch one of the last redline subway trains heading back into town. Allison had actually sobered up slightly as the night wore on (despite fraternizing with several of those White Russians) and Zach had discreetly maintained the in-control buzz he'd put on shortly after arriving. So the two of them defined a staid and quiet couple in the nearly empty subway car. At first glance, an observer might've guessed they'd been married many years—had several kids at home with the grandparents, jobs accumulating pensions and benefits, plans for a house in a better neighborhood—until they noticed the slight flush on youthful skin and the barely hid stiffness. This more careful observer would've then identified them for what they were—young, recently married, half-drunk, and in the midst of a silent fight.

They walked together from the Dartmouth Street Station in the clear cold night. They passed numerous late-night partiers—snuggling couples, boisterous groups of four, six, eight (all the numbers even)—and several busy bars along Newbury Street; but as they walked along Exeter the crowds thinned and the chatter of night life faded. By the time they reached Comm. Ave., they were the only people on the sidewalk and the banks of frozen and grimy snow left over from the storm of two weeks ago, mounded to each side, seemed almost walls of a prison, or at least obstacles to escape from this night that had started out with so much promise now ever narrowing in its prospects.

They'd been walking in silence together, stride for stride, maybe a yard or so of space between them except when a passing group or the constraints of the snowpack forced them closer. But after crossing Exeter headed west on Comm.—where the snow and a treacherous sheet of ice at the far curb forced them to align in single-file on the narrow patch of sanded pavement, with Zach (as always) falling in just behind Allison—instead of catching up to Allison, Zach stopped cold at the curb and waited to see what Allison would do. She never even paused or looked back in her determined, brisk stride. He could've fallen off the face of the earth (or fallen face first on the sheet of ice) for all she showed or seemed to care. Zach shook his head once but was hardly surprised. He finally followed behind—in normal stride, not hurrying to catch up—when she was perhaps fifty yards ahead and mounting the stairs to their building. She disappeared inside the entry, leaving Zach totally alone in the snow-glazed desolate night.

She sat on the bottom step of the stairs in the warm and bright stairwell as he came through the inner entry door. "That was quite unnecessary," she said as he let the door fall closed and locked behind him.

"What?"

"Testing me by stopping."

Zach started to make up an excuse then abandoned that pointless line of debate. "I wanted to see what you would do."

"What I would do was continue walking as fast as I could to get out of the frigid cold and into the warmth."

"Without me."

"With or without you—your choice, not mine."

"We both made a choice."

She just shook her head, then rose and climbed the four flights of stairs in silence.

Later with them in bed—Zach in just a long-sleeved T-shirt, naked from the waist down; Allison in flannel pull-on shorts and a mismatched pajama top with long, loose sleeves—and trying to find their way to rest if not sleep in the city dark that wasn't dark at all in the bedroom that was too warm despite the frigid night outside with all the heat of the building rising to this the top floor, Zach took a reckless chance and slid his hand under the covers toward Allison's mid-section as she lay in silence on her back, not sure what part of her body his fingers would find or what sort of reception would greet them but needing to do something with the tension boiling up inside him. He wasn't so much making a wager on Allison or their relationship—even if he were a betting man (which he wasn't) he'd steer clear of those long odds for this night—as he was simply trying to offload or at least distribute a weight that if left inside threatened to consume him in anger or self-destructiveness.

As it happened, his hand under the sheets found the gap between two of the widely spaced buttons of her shirt and slid easily all the way to the bare skin of her stomach, the dimple of her navel. The mere touch of warm skin not his own produced a wave of desire that in that instant defined every molecule of his body, every shred of his being. That skin and the promise it harbored was the urgent altar of his worship, the source and destination of his life. He'd extended his hand seeking consolation of any sort; he'd found in that touch—epidermal cells to fingertip whorls—an all-consuming singular purpose. That was how far out there he was on the edge of his life.

Allison rolled toward him onto her side (not away as he half-expected) in a move that Zach interpreted as welcome. His hand still under her shirt slid to the top of her side, felt there the ridges of her ribs and the soft hollow just above her pelvis. His fingers—with an intent of their own; or, more accurately, the accumulated instinctive intent of every part of his body—slid downward to the elastic waist of her shorts and gently slid under that band.

"Zach, no."

"No what?"

"Not like this."

"Like what?"

"Like I lie here on my back and you climb on top and that will make it all better."

"What if it does?"

"It won't."

"For me."

"Not for me."

Zach's fingers, paused in their pursuit, suddenly became lost; his singular purpose shattered into a million tiny pieces.

He thought to himself—A few hours ago you were jerking me off in a room full of people. But he didn't say it. His heart and soul, normally so full of feelings begging expression in words, had nothing to say. Those feelings that would've become words had changed course, turned inward. His hand, devoid of intent, fell victim to gravity, slid off her side, out of the envelope of her shirt, to the mattress like a dead weight.

Allison, at a loss for words herself, sadder than she knew how to say—for her but in some strange way more so for Zach, his huge dark unfulfillable needs—rolled a hundred-eighty degrees, to her back and then onto her opposite side, the S-curve of her legs, butt, spine, and the back of her head to Zach. She didn't mean the message of dismissal this maneuver sent, knew how it could be read and knew in her heart she didn't mean it like that; but she did it anyway.

To Zach it didn't matter what messages she sent with her body now. The moment of opportunity had vanished, and he was left with the remains. As he rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, those remains seemed suspended in the air above him, his mind and body numb from the shock of the loss just registered, and from the alcohol in his bloodstream, and from the night (just turned to morning as the digital clock on the nightstand clicked to midnight), the long day, the last six months. He lay there in the city dark, momentarily weightless.

Then the weight slowly, inexorably, settled down atop him, pushed downward heavier and heavier. Within minutes—the clock now read 12:04—he felt he couldn't breathe, didn't know if he'd be crushed to nothing or explode outward in an instant's violent dispersal. He sat up suddenly to break the spell, felt immediately calmer. He turned and hung his legs off the side of the mattress. His feet touched the cold floor (how could it be so cold and the room so hot?). He sat there a few minutes and caught his breath, tried to find a stasis within his racing heart and jumbled mind where he could remain outside of assault even if not wholly at peace.

He found such a place within himself but it was far, far from anything resembling fatigue or a call to sleep. In fact it called in quite the opposite direction—he was wide awake, needed to move, needed to do something with all the energy now bottled up inside. So he stood quietly as he could manage (for some reason concerned with not disturbing Allison) and slid on the jeans draped over the chair to the desk (forgetting his boxers on the floor by the bed) and the flannel shirt hung beside it, then went out to the living room and, without turning on a light, found his shoes and socks left in the foyer by the door and put them on while seated on the couch.

Though his several recent actions suggested he'd already made a choice, in fact those actions had been performed in a kind of waking trance, as if sleep-walking through some harmless exercises knowing that waking would stop the sequence prior to some critical or harmful choice. That moment of choice—critical, harmful, irrevocable—arrived when he reached out in the near total dark of the foyer (the only place in the apartment other than the bathroom where you could find true dark) for his long wool coat hung on its peg. When his hand found it there and accepted its heaviness from the peg, he knew he was headed out into the night. All that remained was for him to find his wallet and keys on the table by the pegs, and put them in his pockets. He opened the front door, the foyer suddenly awash in the light from the stairwell, stepped out into that light, and quietly shut the door firmly behind him. And at that moment he suddenly felt free, as if all the weight of his world had been lifted by some big block and tackle hung from the sky (or from the black skylight up there in the roof above the stairwell). With a lightness of step he'd not known for months, if ever, he fairly flew down the stairs and out into the frigid night.

Behind and above, still on her side turned away from the spot he'd vacated, Allison reached down toward her feet, found first one cat—Bobbi, with the rhinestone-studded collar—then the other—Pisser, floppy jointed in obstinate sleep as usual—and cradled them both close against her chest, her neck.

23

Zach had walked past the Xstasy Revue numerous times in daylight. Its pink neon sign in seductive cursive lettering, and dark recessed entrance produced its intended effect, at least on his hormone-tainted mind. Surely within those shadowed confines would be the fulfillment to the diverse and amorphous desires, if only he dared step inside. (That this allure of the illicit closely paralleled the attraction of the Freak Show, complete with its carney hawker, at the Dover Fair—an attraction Zach had resisted over all the years—was not lost on him during his daylight passes.)

So when he'd found his way to Boylston and discovered all the legit bars with lines out their doors, he couldn't say if it was instinct or intention or accident that carried him further down Boylston to the two-blocks of strip clubs and peepshows known as the Combat Zone, and onward to its centerpiece—the Xstasy Revue. And once there, he didn't hesitate a second before the entrance, strode confidently into that darkened recess as if it'd been his calling for all these years, paid the hulking bouncer his five-dollar cover, and stepped inside.

The first thing he noticed was how dark the space was, darker than his bedroom with all the lights out except for the bright light over the bar. Once his eyes had adjusted to the limited light, he saw how small the room was—a handful of tables scattered around an oblong circular bar with a raised platform in the middle. And it was relatively empty—maybe a couple dozen patrons total, a few at the tables, most scattered around the bar. And all the patrons were male, the only females in the place the skimpily clad (but with all critical parts covered, albeit barely) waitresses moving outside the bar, and the lone dancer (with not all her parts covered) currently wrapping herself around the shiny silver pole at the center of the raised platform at the center of the circular bar. Between that platform and the bar, two men with crewcuts and black T-shirts served drinks and shielded the dancer from unruly patrons. Zach walked past the tables and took a seat at one end of the bar, with an empty stool to his left and two empty ones to his right. He ordered a beer and paid the four-dollar tab (when you could've got that same beer for half that price at any other bar in town) with a ten and left the change in front of him on the bar.

The dancer was considerably older than Zach, maybe in her late twenties. She was of average height (though she appeared taller standing above him on the platform), had a tanned (or at least it looked tan in the golden light shining down on her) and well-toned body, and a lean, hard face with dark eyes and high cheekbones and shoulder-length crimped dark hair. She was completely naked above her high heeled silver shoes except for a sequined G-string with a triangular patch at its center that sparkled like diamonds on every rotation around the pole. She made a point of staring down directly at the men leaning forward on the bar as she spun languorously around the pole—one minute her arm stretched out straight, hanging her body temptingly out toward the men; the next minute folding that arm slowly at the elbow and wrapping that lithe body sensuously around the metal pole.

At first Zach felt she was staring directly at him on each pass, making eye contact and calling him to her. But as he watched closely, very closely, her dizzying revolutions, he slowly came to realize that her gaze was exactly the same on each rotation. There was no recognition behind that frozen stare, nobody home there to welcome him were he able to close the gap between them. In the other world that he'd occupied his whole life until about a half hour ago, this lack of a presence behind the stare, lack of a person inside the near naked body, would've mattered, would've turned him off and away. But in his current need to externalize and neutralize all, or at least a significant portion of, the frustration and confusion cramming his soul, he didn't care that there was no one present beneath her skin. He didn't even wonder, as he most certainly would've in that other life, how she'd arrived at such a condition—naked from the surface out, blank from that point inward. The skin was enough. The lips and neck and shoulders and fingers and breasts and taut stomach and hips and thighs and calves were enough. He didn't need seeing eyes; he didn't care about the eyes, was glad for the absence of their knowledge and demands.

Nor did he care that there was no chance of closing the few yards of space between them, or that no one other than the surly bartender, none of the sweet smelling waitresses that frequently brushed past, paid him even a moment's attention in the hour or so that he sat there, through one mug of flat beer and the second one that followed. He didn't care that he seemed to be currently invisible to all members of the opposite sex, or perhaps worse than invisible, maybe even a tad frightening—a tall and impoverished (in more ways than one) half-drunk late adolescent desperate for a thrill or a lay.

It didn't matter how they saw him. All that mattered at the moment was that their bare skin and freely proffered sexuality (well, not truly free—offered in return for the cost of the cover charge and the over-priced beer) provided a focus for his attention, a distraction from his confusion, a point of hands-free dispersal of his pent-up desires. It only mattered that he was there in this new game, a game outside himself, outside his pain. Maybe, in this particular regard, it was actually good that he was apparently invisible, dissolved to the world at that moment. If he didn't exist, then he couldn't hurt.

He finished the second beer and left the two dollars on the bar as a tip, hoping that some part of that tip found its way into the hands of that girl—girl now, growing younger by the minute, better matched to him—that had twirled nonstop through his stay. He stepped out into the night and felt suddenly exhausted, longing for his warm bed and sleep. The twenty-minute walk home—his head down the whole way, the occasional late-night passers by giving him a wide berth—seemed interminable in its frigid loneliness.

He stood beside the bed and listened for Allison's breathing. At first he heard no sound rising from the body on its side with her back toward him (had she been like that the whole time, rejecting him in abstentia?). Then he thought he heard slow, measured breaths, the rhythmic sighing of sleep. He slid between the covers and was glad for her diffuse warmth even if he didn't dare to touch any part of her body.

24

It started snowing early in the afternoon the next day—Monday, February 6th. By the time it quit late the following afternoon, nearly thirty inches of snow had fallen, the largest storm total on record. But the unprecedented snowfall was only part of the problem. The "nor'easter" storm also brought hurricane-force winds, with gusts nearing eighty miles per hour recorded at Logan, and sustained winds of over sixty miles an hour causing whiteout conditions, toppling trees and power poles, and pushing that snow into drifts as deep as fifteen feet—burying cars and tractor trailers stuck on the highways (some with their occupants still inside), covering doorways and even entire houses, and making streets impassable and snowplows useless. The storm claimed over a hundred lives, caused countless injuries, resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, closed all roads, banks, and government offices for the week, produced a state of emergency, and brought out the National Guard to rescue stranded motorists, help clear vital highways and bridges, and maintain order in cities and towns. The Blizzard of 1978 was in every sense a natural and human disaster.

And Zach and Allison loved every minute of the adventure. They became again what in some ways they'd never stopped being—schoolkids, out on a snow day without a care in the world, only this time the snow day lasted for a week, their playground was the city of Boston with all traffic banned, all roads pedestrian walkways, and they had more snow to play in than they'd ever seen, piled to depths they would've never imagined possible, not in southern New England, not in this urban setting.

Allison turned off the alarm at 6:30 Tuesday morning. It was still very dark, but that was hardly unusual—she'd been rising for work in the dark for over three months now. She stumbled out of bed and into the bathroom. She was well aware of the seriousness of the snowstorm—they'd talked about little else on the T.V. all last night. The Hancock had gone to skeleton staff at 2:00 PM yesterday afternoon, and she assumed they'd be on skeleton staff today. But her proximity to her workplace made her one of the unofficial skeleton staffers (while they couldn't by law require her to come in, she was happy to oblige and get the time-and-a-half). She figured she'd be heading into work at the regular hour—might have to allow a few extra minutes walking time in the snow.

Zach lay in the bed, the sheets pulled tight to his chin. The room was colder than usual. He heard the wind whistling down the alley, sneaking through tiny cracks in the metal windows. He could see triangles of frost on the lower edges of the window panes against the dark sky. He turned away from the forlorn-seeming day beyond the window (though he could see little, the mourning wind made it feel forlorn). He slid his hand slowly under the covers until Bobbi pounced on it from her perch on Allison's pillow. The gray cat wrapped its paws and whole body around his hand protected by the bedclothes. She gave his hand a rapid-fire series of rabbit punches with her paired hind paws and tried to chew on it through the covers. Zach fought back, rolling the cat over on its back and giving her a taste of her own medicine with a quick scrub of her stomach and a couple of rolling tumbles that left her entangled in the sheets. Bobbi loved it. She found her way out of the knot of sheets, spotted his hand fully exposed atop the covers, and jumped on it, now giving his bare wrist those rabbit punches and chewing on his knuckles with fangs that almost broke through the skin. Behind this wrestling pair, nestled in the notch between Zach's pillow and Allison's, Pisser slept on, oblivious to the furious battle being waged just a few feet away.

Around 6:45 the phone rang. Allison, nearly done with her morning prep, came out of the bathroom still in her pajamas and picked up the phone.

Ian said, "Wake up and go to sleep."

"What?"

"It's an old Three Stooges line—wake up and go to sleep!"

"Why?"

"Because work's cancelled."

"Why?"

"Look out your window, Stupid."

"I can't. It's dark."

"Then go outside, if your door's not blocked."

"Our door is six steps above the sidewalk."

"That don't matter if the wind's blowing against it. I can walk out my window right now, and my room's on the second floor."

"What?"

"You really are dense this morning. Go back to bed and call me when you're awake."

"So—Go to sleep and wake up."

"Who said that?"

"Allison Sandstrom."

"Should give her a raise." He hung up.

Zach looked at her with the light of the bathroom in his face. "What's up?"

"The snow, to Ian's bedroom window."

"So?"

"His room's on the second floor."

Zach jumped out of bed and jogged to their bedroom window. Between the frost on the glass and the darkness outside, he had trouble making out anything in the alley. He couldn't see the buildings across the way. He couldn't see the narrow strip of asphalt and the cars parked in the tiny spaces down below. But he could barely make out something rushing past the window. What was it? Then he realized it wasn't the dark or the frost blocking his view—it was snow falling, so dense and heavy he couldn't see more than a few feet into the haze. And what was rushing past was the snow blown sideways by a furious gale, a gale that rattled the window, left a dusting of snow on the sill, and licked at his bare feet on the cold floor.

"Sweet Jesus," Zach said quietly.

"What?"

"I can't see five feet into this mess."

"I thought it was supposed to be winding down this morning."

"Somebody forgot to tell the storm."

Both wide awake and eager to see what was going on outside, they dressed quickly in their heaviest snow gear. Zach might not have had a sportcoat or a tie or a pair of dress shoes, but he had a generous supply of field-tested cold-weather clothing from his days of hunting and trapping. He loved being outdoors in the worst kinds of winter weather, and he hated being wet or cold. These combined passions had caused him to accumulate over the years thermal underwear and socks, waterproof boots and canvas leggings, canvas hunting vests and coats, wool-lined leather mittens (with a hole for his trigger finger), wool scarves, and a selection of dark-colored stocking caps—called toboggans hereabouts. He'd not brought much of his former life from Dover, but he'd brought all his winter gear; and he was pleased to now have a use for it. And while Allison didn't hunt or trap, she'd spent a lot of time with Zach out in the worst of winter weather—skating, hiking, cutting firewood—and had put together a good selection of winter gear herself (much of it coming as gifts from Zach). So within ten minutes, and without even pausing to eat breakfast, they were bundled up and headed down the stairs.

They opened the door to the mail foyer and discovered over a foot of snow covering the tile of that small space. The outer door, which didn't always latch properly, had been pushed open by the wind or the snow and was now halfway ajar, wedged in place by snow on each side. And beyond the door, their brownstone steps—well, there were no brownstone steps, at least nothing visible or hinting at steps: just a bank of snow sloping down to more snow hiding what was formerly the sidewalk, covering a mound that was formerly a car, at the edge of an unbroken white plain that had once been two lanes of roadway, fading into the blur of the broad mall beyond. It was all just white—flat white with gentle mounds interspersed. And above and around all that fixed white was a blur of moving white, blown this way and that by violent winds still pushing at their door, blowing more snow into the foyer, cutting at the skin of their faces even inside the protected space.

Zach used his boots and the side of his legs to push the snow from around the door back outside onto the stoop. He had to get down on his knees and use his mittened hands to push the mound on the stoop back, heaping it even higher. He brushed off the doorsill best he could and stepped back to see if the door would shut. It remained locked in place. He grabbed it by the knob and rocked it back and forth till he broke the bottom free of the ice that had frozen around it in the early stages of the storm. He pushed it shut, the bottom scraping over the snow and ice on the floor, the hinges creaking loudly. He swung the door back and forth several times until it moved fairly freely. He let it swing shut on its closer and heard the latch engage against the strike. He turned and nodded to Allison, who'd stood behind in the doorway to the stairs watching his furious actions.

"Mr. Fix It," she said with a smile.

"Didn't train all those years on the farm for nothing."

"Need to put you on the payroll."

"That'd be nice."

She stepped around him, opened the outer door, and waded out into the knee-deep snow, sliding down over what had been the steps. Zach followed, pulling the door shut behind and making sure it latched before wading behind in her wake.

The storm-induced transformation of their neighborhood was extraordinary. There were no signs of human activity anywhere on their block—no foot or tire tracks breaking the smooth plain of snow, no cars swept clean, no sound or even lights. In the slowly emerging light of dawn, they could now see a little ways through the blowing snow. They waded out into the middle of what had been Comm. Ave. and headed east. After a few minutes, they spotted the green glow of the traffic light at Exeter. It called to them like a beacon, a reminder of a former order out of the present blur. They walked toward it in silence, Zach trailing behind.

Allison reached the pole of the streetlight first and wrapped her arms around it like a long lost friend. Zach came up behind and wrapped his arms around both Allison and the pole. Above them, the red lights for Exeter switched to green. Zach sloshed around Allison through the snow out into the middle of the intersection and gestured like a traffic cop for traffic on Exeter to come on through, holding off all the traffic on Comm. Ave. with an outstretched hand. Allison waited patiently till the light switched back and Zach waved her on through.

Halfway to Dartmouth, Allison grew weary of breaking the trail and paused and put her gloved hands on her knees to catch her breath. Zach came alongside and put his arm bulked up by all those layers of clothes around her waist similarly enwrapped. They remained in that crude embrace with their heads down in the middle of Comm. Ave. halfway between Exeter and Dartmouth pointed east in the storm blowing furiously out of the east with no signs of life anywhere in sight for several minutes, catching their breath, resetting their bearings.

Then Zach leaned over and found a little patch of skin between her stocking cap pulled low over her ears and her scarf pulled high and wrapped around her mouth and nose, the skin to the side of her eye socket, damp and cold with melted snow. And he kissed that skin, licked lightly at its wetness, tasted the salt of her perspiration mixed with the cool snowmelt. She tilted her head and faced him. Though all he could see was her eyes, those eyes smiled.

He moved out in front of her and took the lead to Dartmouth. In the middle of the Dartmouth Street intersection they paused and looked around—still no signs of life anywhere, and the storm continuing to blow hard as ever, the snow falling fast as before, maybe faster. They looked back the way they come. Their tracks were already filling in, their mark on the city and the morning—still gray as twilight—already being wiped away.

When they'd set out, Zach had intended to go all the way to the Gardens, wanted to see the arched bridge rising up out of the snow over the blank white of the pond. But he knew now that, even with their youthful energy and all that cold-weather padding (which was weighing them down and making their hearts and lungs strain doubly hard), that goal was too ambitious, even foolhardy. This storm was frightening in its intensity and its indifference. They could die or be incapacitated right here in the middle of civilization just as quickly as if they were in deepest wilderness. That realization, standing in the middle of what was usually one of the busiest intersections in Boston, was both liberating and unsettling. The wagers here were every bit as final as out there—in the wilderness. At some level—the level of this storm—the rules of the game were universal.

He looked to Allison, found her dark eyes glistening in the slot between scarf and cap, and nodded back the way they just come. Those eyes registered first surprise then relief. He realized then she'd have followed wherever he'd led; and he realized in the next instant his obligation not to abuse this commitment.

She nodded and turned to head back home. He caught up with her and walked alongside as he cut a new path while letting her stay in what remained of the one they'd plowed with so much effort just a short time before. He was already planning the breakfast he'd make them—fried leftover Cream of Wheat with maple syrup, scrambled eggs with bits of diced bologna, cold juice, hot tea. He could already feel the warmth of that meal, the boost of sugar it would inject into his bloodstream.

They didn't venture out again the rest of that day. After stripping off their outer layers of clothing and draping them on the radiators to dry, they changed their socks and pants that had gotten wet despite all their layers of waterproof clothing. Zach then prepared the elaborate breakfast he'd planned on the walk back, and they ate it at the table in silence with the T.V. on in the background and the newscaster droning on about closings and the state of emergency and the ban on all driving. Following breakfast, Zach did a quick inventory of their food supplies and figured they'd be fine for another day or two. He normally did their week's shopping on Thursday mornings, so he hoped the stores would be open and life somewhat back to normal by then.

As the carbohydrates and sugar of that big breakfast hit their circulatory systems, both of them felt suddenly exhausted though it was not even ten in the morning. Allison lay down on the bed atop the covers and read her most recent Teen magazine. The cats, obviously delighted at the unexpected presence of their "Momma" this early in the day, pressed against her, one against each side, purring loudly. Zach switched off the T.V. and sat at the desk to write. But when his eyes grew heavy and his concentration drifted, he finally gave up on that task and lay down beside Allison. Pisser, fast becoming his favorite in her aloof self-sufficiency (and despite Bobbi's energetic playfulness), rose from her repose beside Allison and curled up on his stomach. Together, they fell asleep in the pale gray light, the wind howling outside, the snow continuing to accumulate.

By mid-afternoon, the winds began to diminish and the snow changed from large flakes to tiny frozen droplets of mist. Then the snow ceased and the wind went calm. Just before sunset, a tiny break in the clouds along the western horizon released a shaft of weak orange sunlight across the snowbound city. Zach stood at their living room window and looked out in silence at the long dark shadows of the alley and the heaped mounds of orange-tinted snow on the roofs opposite. Then the sun set or went behind a cloud (he couldn't see which, the western sky hidden behind the buildings to his left) and stranded the city in its former grayness, dimming now toward dark. Gazing out the window at the fantastic scene, he knew something empirical had change in his world. He just wasn't sure if the change was inside him or outside or some combination of the two.

25

The next day dawned clear and bright and cold. The city—or at least their part of it, the center of Back Bay—which had been a deserted and forbidding gray wasteland the day before was transformed into a bright winter wonderland, the snow so clean and dazzling in the sun one had to squint to look at it. And all the residents who had been holed up the last two days were now out in this winter wonderland—trying to shovel walks (and trying to figure out where to put all that snow), sweeping off parked cars (though there was nowhere to drive them—the streets unplowed, the driving ban in effect until further notice), taking pictures, or just running (trying to run, mainly stumbling) and playing in the snow, diving into the drifts, making snowmen and snow castles on the mall.

After a hearty breakfast (they'd not repeat the mistake of going out on empty stomachs), Zach and Allison donned their snowgear and ran out into the city-wide outdoor party. They headed west this time, up to Fairfield then over to Newbury and on to Boylston, walking in the tracks made by some earlier explorers. Boylston, normally an eight-lane thoroughfare, had two partially plowed lanes, one going in each direction. Pedestrians, some on cross-country skis, some towing kids (or lazy girlfriends) on sleds, crowded those two lanes. An occasional police car with chains on its back tires cruised slowly past, honking its horn to clear the way. Yesterday it was a shock to see no cars in the roads; today it was annoying to see even these few—so thoroughly had the rules of the city changed in that short time.

They went over to Star Market in the basement of the Pru. The entry doors were flanked by policemen and there was a long line of people waiting to enter. A store employee bundled in a fur-lined parka (the entrance was under the wide portico formed by the building above—snow-free but also now in deep shadow and surprisingly cold and bleak after the bright walk here) walked the length of the line explaining that they'd only let in fifty customers at a time and that purchases were limited to twenty dollars per person, cash only. Zach had a few dollars in his pocket but they had no urgent need for supplies (they were running low on cat litter, but they could manage—"Tell Pisser and Bobbi to hold it," Zach said) and no desire to spend their morning standing in the line that had grown twenty feet longer even as they'd stood there and surveyed the scene. They gladly turned their backs on the one reminder of the old city life they'd encountered so far that morning.

They joined in with the rest of the pedestrians strolling down the middle of Boylston toward Arlington. They became part of a big, spontaneous parade with people dressed in all manner of exotic attire—including one bearskin coat, one buffalo robe, and some guy in a pink tutu and tights with black dancing slippers—waving to observers shoveling snow on the sidewalks and clustered in store entryways; shouting and cheering to each other, the crowd, the blue sky; a group of students from BU singing their school's fight song. Most of the stores along the way were closed, but a few of the restaurants and cafes were open, and all of these with lines in front of them. Zach and Allison stuck to the middle of the road, throwing their lot in with this parade of liberation.

They turned left on Arlington, which was still unplowed, and walked single-file in the tracks left by some wide-tired four-wheel-drive vehicle. They turned into the main entrance of The Gardens and followed a handful of others through the deep and largely untrampled pristine snow to the stone bridge which this morning formed a snow arch over the snow pond. In its glittering radiance, the suspended arch of snow met and surpassed Zach's hopes and expectations—human constructions redefined by nature's power could shape something that was transcendent, not only in beauty and meaning but also transcendent of time and space, even of this dimension of reality itself. He stood there in stark wonder staring at the vision, walkers piling up on the path behind him.

Allison finally grabbed his canvas-sleeve and pulled him off into the deep snow to let the others pass. She looked from the entranced Zach to the bridge then back to him. "What do you see?"

Her words broke the spell (which, surprisingly, had survived her pulling him into the snowbank). He looked at her and grinned sheepishly, his cheeks red and raw in the cold and the sun. "I don't know. I've never felt anything like it before."

"A kind of fairyland."

Zach looked again at the bridge. There were children on its crest now, chasing each other, pushing snow off its stone railing. "Maybe a glimpse of something better."

"Than the old bridge?"

"Than this life, this world."

Allison laughed. "You have an advanced case of snowblindness!" She gave him a gentle shove.

He didn't lose his balance from her push, but he let his body fall sideways nonetheless. He tumbled into the deep snow without putting his arms out to break the fall. He rolled onto his back just in time to catch Allison diving on top of him. He wrapped his arms around her and they rolled together three full revolutions through the fluffy white, ending by leaving her on top. A clutch of passing walkers stopped and stared, then smiled and moved on when they heard the couple's giggles.

Allison put her hands on his shoulders and lifted herself a foot or so above his face cradled by the snow. "You back to reality, Mr. Fantasy World?"

"Never left," Zach said honestly.

"Could've fooled me."

They stood, brushed the snow off of each other, then headed back toward Arlington St., plowing a new path through the plain of unbroken snow that hid the frozen lawn and dormant trimmed-back perennials of the Public Gardens.

They'd just finished lunch and were clearing their dishes when the doorbell rang. Instead of their usual stand-off to see who would go down to check, they both stopped what they were doing and ran out the door and flew down the stairs in their stocking feet. Allison reached the bottom first and shrieked at the sight of Ian stomping the snow off his boots in the foyer. She opened the door and threw her arms around his neck.

"Whoa, girl, you'll break the beer." He held six-packs of bottled beer straight out to each side in gloved hands, his long arms spanning the width of the narrow foyer.

"How'd you get into town?" Allison asked after she let go of his neck.

"They don't call me Can-do McCarthy for nothing."

"But the subways are shut down and there's a driving ban. You didn't walk, did you?"

Ian laughed at the thought. "Are you kidding? That's too much like exercise."

Zach came up behind Allison. "More like suicide in this mess."

"Exercise, suicide—all the same to me."

"So how'd you get here, huh?" Allison asked again.

"More important, how'd you score the beer?" Zach asked. All the package stores were closed as part of the state of emergency.

Ian shook his head. "You two going to interrogate me in the cold and the wet, or invite me in to grill me in a more civilized setting?"

"Well," Allison said slowly, "it's really inconvenient and we have oh so much to do—." She paused for effect then smiled up at him. "But if you insist, come on in." She stepped to one side while holding the door open.

Zach said, "Let me help you with the beer."

"Figures," Ian said, handing Zach the two six-packs as he stepped into the dry warmth of the stairwell. He pulled off his gloves and unbuttoned his Navy pea coat.

Zach stood marveling at the beer. The one thing they were out of was beer—their last two drunk on Monday night while they were riding out the first day of the blizzard.

Allison slid past the two men in the cramped space at the base of the stairs. "You two going to just stand there looking at your beer or come upstairs and drink it?" She turned and led the way up the stairs.

"Hey, it's my beer, not his," Ian said as he followed behind her.

"But you'll share," Zach said hopefully as he fell in line behind them, cradling the cold beer in his arms.

"Maybe," Ian said from above. "If you're good."

"And what's that require?"

"Go to confession," Allison's voice rained down from still farther above.

"That'd be a good start," Ian said.

"Lutherans don't have confession."

"The first step to a solution is recognizing the problem."

"I'll talk to my pastor," Zach promised, though he didn't have a pastor, not anymore.

"I'll tell my priest."

Above them a door slammed shut.

A few seconds later, Zach heard Ian say, "But you started it."

Zach finally made it to their top floor landing, where Ian was standing outside the closed door. "What's up?"

"She says we can't come in unless we promise to stop talking about confession."

Zach laughed. "Ian promises to confess that he talks too much about confession," he said through the door.

"That's not good enough," Allison said from inside.

"But you started it," Ian said again.

"We swear on a stack of Bibles that we won't mention confession again for the rest of the day."

"You don't have a stack of Bibles," said the voice from inside the door.

"Then what?"

"The beer. Swear on the beer."

Ian rolled his eyes. "Where'd you find this girl?" he whispered to Zach, barely restraining his laughter.

Zach just shook his head. "Under penalty of lost beer, we swear that we won't talk about confession again today."

"Make Ian say it."

"I brought you the freaking beer," he said. "I can take it and leave."

The door opened on Allison's indignant frown. "Jeez, don't get all Irish temperamental on me. I was just kidding." She took a six-pack from Zach then tried to shut the door on them again.

But Ian had his foot in the door and smiled slyly at the thwarted Allison. "We Irish may have a temper and be half mental, but we don't get fooled by the same trick twice in one minute."

Allison shrugged. "Can't fault a girl for trying."

Ian pushed the door open, hung his coat on a free peg in their hall, and strolled into the living room, grabbing a beer from Allison's six-pack as he went past.

"You're welcome," Allison said.

"No," Ian said, "You're welcome." He sat in the room's lone arm chair.

After Allison and Zach had each opened a beer and put the rest in the fridge and sat together on the couch, Ian explained that he'd hitched a ride into town on a snowplow. "They pulled Peter out of maintenance and put him in a truck since so many of their drivers can't get in. Peter doesn't have a Class I license but they said that didn't matter—they needed drivers. Then when he got in the cab he couldn't see over the plow. So they put a pillow on the seat. Then he couldn't reach the pedals. So they duct-taped some blocks of wood on the pedals and now Peter's a plowman. And the guy's fearless—smashes into those drifts like they were cotton candy. Trashed a few buried cars in the process. After he hit the first one, he called in on the radio and asked what to do. They told him to push the car out of the way and keep on going. Let me tell you, it's a Wild West show out there."

"But Peter's stationed in Southie. How'd you get up here?"

"Came down from the top—get downtown and Back Bay cleared."

"The mayor?"

"The governor! They pulled all the plows out of South Boston just so these Beacon Hill pricks can walk around on dry pavement."

"Getting you back for throwing rocks at school busses."

"Just putting us in our place and keeping us there."

"What about the beer?"

"Southie may not have the clout of the Hill; but we can supply you with banned booze, all the way back to Prohibition."

"A certain kind of knock on the right back door?"

Ian grinned. "I'll never tell."

Zach raised his beer. "To resourceful friends."

"Even if they are Irish," Ian said.

"Because they're Irish," Zach corrected.

"And temper-mental," Allison said.

The three clinked bottles in the middle of the living room bright with the light of the sun reflected off the rooftops of snow across the alley.

Ian stayed the rest of the afternoon and they talked nonstop with excitement and energy and enthusiasm, as if they'd not seen each other for months or years rather than just a few days (Allison had seen him Monday at work, Zach last Saturday at the party). It was as if the storm had drawn a defining line in their lives, and that everything on this side of that line carried greater meaning and significance and ardor. The beer they drank accentuated this sense of heightened life.

When he rose finally, the sun had turned the snow outside to gold, the shadows in the alley long and growing longer. "Better try to catch a ride home before it gets dark."

"How will you find Peter?" Zach asked.

"Just look for the plow with the car bumpers wrapped around the blade."

"Easy to spot," Allison agreed.

"I'm serious, Ian. You going to be able to get home?"

Ian grinned, touched by this uncommon concern from one generally lost in his own troubles. "I'll be alright. Plowman get an hour's break for every four on the road." He checked his watch. "I've got a good idea where Peter is right now."

"Booze or girls?" Zach asked.

"Both, if he's lucky." He pulled on his coat and slid the gloves on his hands while standing in their entry hall.

Zach checked the fridge (it was just two strides away) and returned with the last beer. "One for the road?"

Ian laughed. "You keep it—my treat! There's plenty more where that came from."

"We'll pay you next time."

"May be awhile before I'm back in town," Ian said. "Sean's covering the homeplace today; but he'll be doing plumbing work starting tomorrow—pipes busted all over Milton with the power out and this cold. I'll have to watch over the parents and the girls while he's out doing repair work."

Zach nodded. "You're welcome here whenever."

"Thanks."

"And come back tonight if you can't find Peter," Allison blurted.

Ian smiled down at her. "Worried about me?"

She frowned. "Just don't want you arrested, with the curfew and all."

"We don't got enough money to bail you out."

"You could sleep on our floor."

Ian laughed at their tag-team assault. "I'll get home O.K. Don't you worry."

"But you'll come back if you're stranded?" Allison asked.

"Anytime, night or day," Zach added.

"You'll be the first to know," Ian said with a tinge of wonder at this outpouring of hospitality. These two really were desperate in their loneliness and their desire to define a new family, a family that apparently started with him. He reached for the door handle.

Allison suddenly threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. "Thanks for coming," she said in a soft sad voice. She let go of his neck and stared down at the wood flooring of the foyer.

Zach reached over her and tapped him lightly on the top of his dark black hair. "Thanks for the beer."

"My pleasure," Ian said, then turned and slid out the door and headed down the steps.

The door fell shut behind him, leaving Allison and Zach in a stunned silence with twilight creeping in the windows behind them.

Later that night as Allison emerged from the bathroom in her pajamas with her face fresh-scrubbed with astringent and her hair pulled back in a ponytail, she met Zach head on as he was headed for the dresser to pull out his flannel pajama top. They froze there, face to face, in the narrow space between the bed and the wall, no room to comfortably pass each other, neither quite sure what to do.

Zach extended his arms and lightly ran his fingers along her sides, feeling the ridges of her ribs beneath her cotton top. He suddenly felt as if he were meeting her for the first time, or the hundredth—but meeting her, straight on, clear-eyed and clear-headed.

She looked up at him calmly. "Why did you leave the other night?"

He flinched at the question but didn't retreat. His hands stopped their gentle caress and clutched her, firmly but not harshly, at the waist. He managed through some considerable effort to bear her gaze. "I felt like I was going to explode."

"Because of me?"

"Because of me," he said then added, "Because of us, because of the city, the world. I don't know. I couldn't decipher the pressure; I just acted on it."

"Have you figured it out since?"

"Not really. Once it went away, I went to sleep. The next morning it was all like a dream."

"It wasn't a dream, Zach. You left me alone and went out into the middle of the night without a word. I had no idea if you'd come back or when you would."

"I'm sorry. I didn't know what else to do."

"Where'd you go?"

Zach looked past her head at the wall beyond. "For a walk."

"And that helped?"

"Somehow." He tried to recall that night—his walk, the strip club, the process that had brought him relief. But it was one big blur, even fainter than a dream—like someone else's life, like a story he'd read a long time ago and near forgot. "I don't know how, but it helped."

She nodded. "I can see that." Then she added, "Please don't do that again." She continued to stare at him, saw his unease in his eyes, felt it in the slight tensing of his fingers still at her waist. "Or, if you must, tell me where you're going and when you'll be back, so I'll know when to call the police."

Zach's hands lost their tension, his eyes their dancing nervousness. "I can do that."

"It's only fair," she said.

"It's only fair."

She stepped up on the bed to let him pass.

He grabbed his shirt and went into the bathroom to get ready for bed.

A few minutes later, with her bedside light already off and Allison on her stomach with her face pressed into the pillow, he slid between the cold sheets and curled into a tight ball to conserve warmth, the two of them like strangers who'd just met at dinner forced to share the one available bed at this hardscrabble rooming house out on the edge of this snowy frontier.

26

Over the coming weeks, the city gradually returned to its former self, only with massive mounds of snow piled at every street corner and on either side of the squeezed sidewalks, making driving hazardous and walking treacherous. The snow quickly turned gray and grimy, punctuated by the yellow stains and the brown piles left by dogs (and maybe people—Zach chose not to look too closely). A late February warm spell melted some of this snow and turned the roads and curbs into slush ponds that refroze overnight and led to numerous car accidents and human falls. Blanche Lagarde, the blond from Mississippi that lived next door to The Club, was one of those victims—falling on her front steps before the sun had melted the ice and breaking her ankle. All the car parkers fought over the chance to drive her to the market or the post office (with Lonnie's quiet permission) and help her carry her packages up to her apartment. She accepted these favors with a smiling charm and quiet grace that was unlike anything Zach had ever seen, an intimation of beauty above and beyond mountains of gray snow and gestures of anger and rudeness.

As the city returned to its former callous identity, Zach slowly slid back into his world of isolation and confusion. The memories of the Blizzard (as everyone was now calling it, with a capital "B") and its power to transform not only the city but also his attitude and his relationship with Allison were still very fresh in his mind. But in many ways these memories became a burden, a reminder of loss, as he watched the city become dirty and hostile, and felt himself again drifting away from Allison, as she continued to find life and stimulation from work and her friends there and he rediscovered the frustration and loneliness of too much time alone and too little to do, a condition only exacerbated by the inclement weather and forbidding conditions outdoors. He did have some outside activities—their basketball team wrapped up the regular season and made it to the championship game of the tourney before losing to Riley's Pub by eight points, and he continued to park cars at The Club three lunches a week and nights as needed—but he spent most of his days alone (well, with the cats) in the apartment. He longed for a chance to get out to his hideaways scattered throughout the city; but their main merit—being off the beaten track—had become a major drawback, as all were now either buried in mounds of snow or blocked off by police barricades as too dangerous for pedestrian traffic.

He developed an even heavier dependence on reading, to escape his winter confinement, and writing, to externalize his angst. These twin endeavors provided a boundless universe of imagined territories to document and explore; but they also carried the risk of deepening escapism into an introspective world that was at least as hazardous as it was hopeful, and brought the added peril of no one to blame but himself. At some level he understood these risks but felt forced to accept them for lack of better alternative—lack of, in his narrowed and self-serving vision, any alternative.

A Fragile Memory

It had been snowing all day and now it was dark and it was still snowing.

We stood on the steps and looked at the white city. Steps, sidewalks, road—an unbroken carpet of white. Snow-filtered gaslight and flashing streetlights—Christmas trees! No cars. So quiet. No people. Our world. Our white world. We fell in love with the city that night. Do you remember?

Those bulky coats and stocking caps peppered with white flakes. And shoes soon wet and frozen. We laughed at our madness—our freedom, our prancing rejoice—and ran shrieking through the snow. Your cold hand in mine, we had no gloves, slipping and sliding, giggles through purple lips. We touched and were one.

And there was that car spinning and sliding. You pointed and laughed. But we helped him out, pushed him away, out of our world, whining tires tossing white fluff into our faces. He was gone, silently, into the swirling storm. And we were again alone.

We walked, slow and quiet, and you stopped and stared at sagging branches meshed in white, the load of winter straining brittle limbs, and tears rose to your eyes. And I asked why, and you looked to the ground, the white softness at your feet, and said, "It's the cold, just the cold."

We moved on and saw lights glowing in remote windows, their life distant. And the snow fell quiet and peaceful as we walked through the deserted streets, not knowing where or why, but just walking and glad to be walking in the cold white dark.

There was that bank, that mountainous drift, and I squeezed your hand and then let go, running fast and diving headfirst into the piled snow with a muffled shout. It was so cold and quiet there. And I lay still and listened to the cold silence cushioned about me. And I grew frightened by the sound and pushed off against the cold white, only to fall deeper into it. And I cried out, my voice shouting into the fierce loneliness.

Then, from nowhere, into everywhere, you appeared. Jumping on top of me, we falling together, rolling in the blur. And when we stopped rolling you put your mouth against my ear and said "To the rescue." And I leaned over and kissed your cold lips and felt your warmth and we lay there, huddled together, alone in our togetherness.

And returning to the steps from whence we started, we stood and looked across the white world, our world. And I looked at you, at your red cheeks and snow-matted hair and dark eyes, and I reached out and ran my thumb along your cheek and felt its cold smoothness. And you looked up at me, straight at me, and smiled. We were so much in love.

Do you remember?

The End of Book One, Part I
