

### Before the Mellowing Year

### Book One, Part II

by

Jeffrey Anderson

Copyright 2018 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.

Book One, Part II

March 31st finally saw temperatures reach sixty degrees downtown, first time since early November of last year—nearly five months of temperatures below the normal human comfort level, many of those days punctuated by snow and sleet or cold rain, all of them (even the clear ones) tinged with the gray of winter. Zach's body and spirit felt the weight of every one of those long light-deprived, warmth-deprived days.

So when the thermometer finally crept toward sixty late in the morning of this Friday, Zach was more than ready to break out of his winter doldrums and embrace the promise of spring. This auspicious day came on the heels of a week of days and nights above freezing, a period during which the last of the snow mountains finally dissolved and the ground actually began to dry out and firm up after its extended captivity as either frost or muck, often both in diurnal cycles. Zach loaded three books and a light lunch of a fluffernutter sandwich (thick layers of marshmallow creme and peanut butter between two slices of white bread) and a bottle of birch beer (another local specialty) into his green canvas rucksack and headed for the Esplanade. He knew it was open again, had scouted it out earlier in the week with a celebratory run along the Charles. But he'd not yet actually sat on his bench. The days had been too cool, the wind off the Charles too brisk to be comfortable sitting for long. He wanted his first repose on his favorite bench for this calendar year to be warm and relaxed.

So as he descended the stairs from the footbridge over Storrow Drive, he looked out across the brown grass of the Esplanade and the blue water of the Charles with both hope and expectation. The hope he felt was innate, the bred into his blood hope of a farmer at the first breath of spring, the irrepressible and reckless assumption that thawed earth and warming temperatures guaranteed germination, growth, and new life. The expectation he harbored was both new to him and more complicated, reliant as it was on the resilience of his spirit and the resourcefulness of his imagination. Where he'd found nothing but dead ends and disillusion in his searches of last fall and winter, he was bold enough to believe that he could find his way out of this maze where his choices and his circumstances had dropped him, this set of seemingly insoluble dilemmas the world had placed before him. He could not go back, would not for a moment entertain that option. But he firmly believed, on this day of warmth and promise anyway, that he could will his way forward.

He sat on the bench and set the rucksack beside him. He looked around quickly to confirm that there was no one nearby (the closest pedestrian a jogger far down the path and headed away) then closed his eyes and soaked in the moment through his other senses. He felt the sun warm on the left side of his face and neck, the cool breeze off the water straight in his face, the smell of long-frozen marsh mud finally come back to life, the taste of the brown lawn trapped between dormancy and rebirth. He heard the low rumble of traffic behind him on Storrow Drive, the honk of a car horn in front and to the left on the Mass. Ave. Bridge, the rhythmic chant of a coxswain for the BU crew somewhere off to his right, the screech of gulls high above, the roar of an ascending jet still higher. He absorbed these sensations one by one, fed his starved soul.

Then he opened his eyes on the MIT dome. In all these months away from here, he'd forgotten about that sight, forgotten how critical it was to his survival in this city. But there it was now—soft limestone beige in soft perfect arc above the chaos of low and slovenly Cambridge (seeming all the lower in his mind now with the memories of his two stints in the trucking terminal—they'd called him back once more, giving him the opportunity to quit in person—hidden somewhere beyond and beneath that dome). Arrayed around that centerpiece, everything else he saw—from the blue sky to the gray-green water to the muted colors of the Cambridge and Boston skylines to the traffic on the bridge and across the way on Memorial Drive—seemed stuck between the brutal winter just past and the fresh spring bearing down, seemed stunned by the day and the opportunities it offered. It had been an awful winter. It would take a while to recover.

Zach pulled out his wax-paper wrapped sandwich and opened his bottle of birch beer and ate that lunch in apparent silence and stillness that wasn't silent or still at all, was crammed with stimuli from all directions and into all senses. And thus he began his healing.

After lunch he took out the books he'd brought along from the ample supply he had checked out from the Library. He was in a short-story phase and had brought along bookmarked volumes of Hemingway and Katherine Anne Porter, but the one he chose was a "best of" collection of stories from two years ago. He occasionally read such anthologies and thereby got a quick survey of the range of short fiction currently being published. He rarely read a story that rose to the level of some of the masters of the genre (two of whom were represented in the other volumes in his rucksack), but he enjoyed their range of styles and subjects and at least sometimes encountered a voice that was compelling if not captivating.

And so it was with this volume as he read through the first three-quarters of the twenty or so stories, in the warmth of the sun and the cool breeze off the water, soaking in all the sensations of the real world around him as he happily engaged the characters and events recorded in the fictional worlds of these diverse stories.

Then he read a story by a writer he'd never heard of named Barton Cosgrove. From the first sentence he was hooked. The original but lucid style combined with the frank and clear-eyed exploration of fundamental human dilemmas to cut through all that Zach thought he knew about literature and life, and form a sort of new frontier of seeing within the prose and, ultimately and instinctively, within Zach. While Zach couldn't have put words to this visceral response to this first sampling of Cosgrove's fiction (how could he? he was too caught up in that story), he knew in his heart—that fast, that immediate—that something had just changed in his life. A huge new door had just swung open—not just open a crack revealing a glimpse, not just a plain old door into a plain old house or even a mansion, not even a big roll-up door into a warehouse or a hanger, but a doorway ripped open in the heretofore sacrosanct sky, a doorway exposing new worlds, new ways of thinking and seeing, and most importantly new chances for a life.

When he'd read the last sentence, he closed the book slowly and set it carefully on the bench beside him. The volume seemed now a living thing—demanding of care, capable of harm. He splayed his broad hand completely over the cover, either trying to safeguard its contents or absorb them—he couldn't say which. He lifted his eyes on the day—same afternoon, maybe a touch warmer, the breeze a little gentler, the traffic noises fading to a hum around the edges of his consciousness. There on the Charles, almost invisible near the Cambridge shore, a one-man rowing scull cut a thin silver line west into the sun, into this broad new day.

2

Matt took one corner then another of the dark wool blanket he'd scavenged from the supply room and helped Allison spread it out on a sunny patch of brown but dry lawn off to one side of the Public Gardens. He stood beside the blanket and stared at Allison with that boyish grin and those cute dimples. She blushed under his gaze, reached down and picked up the bag lunch she'd set off to the side while spreading the blanket, and sat quickly on that blanket, at first facing directly into the enticing sunshine, then quickly turning so that the sun was striking the back and right side of her head, warming her but not blinding her. She may or may not have been aware that this turn also meant she'd be back-lit by that sun if Matt turned that gaze on her while seated beside her. Matt smiled and nodded to nothing in particular, picked up the bag holding the two hot dogs and a canned soft drink he'd bought on the way over here, and sat on the blanket, not beside her but almost directly in front of her. This brought another momentary blush to her cheeks, a blush she quickly willed away with the inner choice that she'd not let herself be held hostage to his ploys for the whole hour, not submit completely to his instinctive or intentional charms, however enticing they were (rivaling that warm spring sun). She crossed her legs Indian style (glad for the brown corduroy pants that at least spared her having to worry about how she sat) and opened her lunch of a peanut butter sandwich with the crust cut off the bread and apple. She nibbled on the sandwich and gazed past his face, full lit by the sun and making him squint a little, and looked at the end of the kidney-shaped pond, the sun casting chains of diamonds on its bright blue surface.

After their meeting on the roof (which had not included a single touch, not even the incidental brush of fingers when he passed her the beer), Allison played it cool with Matt for a long time; and he'd seemed happy to oblige her. They ran into each other occasionally in the break room or on the stairs, and always exchanged nods or simple greetings. But after rebuffing his knowing smile two days following their rooftop venture, Matt had limited all his greetings—both spoken and unspoken—to the category of friendly and professional. Then the Blizzard took him and virtually all of the maintenance crew outside for several weeks of doing pitched battle with the snow and ice, and later with the flooding caused by the melting of all that snow and ice. Allison rarely saw him during this period; and when she did, he seemed distracted and distant.

Mary had moved on from her crush on Matt, was now dating a shelver from the Public Library. But Ian had remained ever vigilant over all her workplace interactions and seemed pleased at the coolness between her and Matt though he never spoke of it, never even said Matt's name in her presence. So she was glad Ian was out of work today, having taken a vacation day to help Sean open up a friend's cottage on the South Shore. Mary'd given her a perplexed look from across the lobby as she and Matt headed out the door, and all she could do was offer a shrug in return. She could handle Mary. She was, after all, just having an impromptu outdoor lunch with a co-worker.

As beautiful as the pond was in the bright sunshine of this glorious afternoon, it somehow seemed to Allison empty and forlorn without the swanboats floating by on it (it'd be several weeks—probably early May—before those boats were trucked in and put into service). It was O.K. not to have the boats when the pond was drained for cleaning (as if had been late last fall) or ice-coated with people gliding by on skates, as if those lumbering swans had turned into graceful humans, or snow-covered with prone snowmen presiding over what seemed simply a continuation of the adjacent paths and sloping fields. But with the water so blue and inviting and the sun so warm and casting those chains of diadems across its surface, there was something missing in this scene, some part of the painting yet unfinished.

"So how was your winter?" Matt asked.

She looked from the pond to him. He'd moved just far enough on the blanket that the sun wasn't directly in his eyes and he could look at her without wincing or squirming. At that moment he seemed both beautiful and vulnerable, no longer the in-control relaxed charmer he'd been just a moment before and for all the time she'd known him. What had happened while she was looking away? "Cold. Snowy," she said with a wry smile. "Yours?"

He laughed a bit nervously. "Pretty much the same." He looked away, down the hill toward the pond, his face growing grave as if missing those boats as much as she, maybe more than she. "My mom died just after Christmas."

Allison froze, staring at the side of his face. Then she felt as if she were falling, far down into a dark well despite the ongoing warmth and light of the sun on her shoulders, across the whole scene. She finally managed to push out one word from her suddenly dry mouth and throat. "How?" She didn't add the second word that was crying out inside her—why?

"Cancer," he said to the pond. "It didn't take long, which was good. Changed Christmas for me, probably forever."

He turned to face her again, tried out that old smile on that new face. He was who he'd been a minute ago, but then he wasn't. She was who she'd been a minute ago, but then she wasn't. "I'm so sorry, Matt. Why didn't you tell anyone?"

"I thought I would, when I got back after the funeral. But everyone was talking about the fun times they'd had over the holidays and I didn't want to spoil the mood. Then after a few days, I was glad I'd kept silent. Work was one place I could come and not have to talk or think about it."

Allison didn't know what to think or say. Part of her wanted to hold him; part of her wanted to run. "I don't know what to say. I've never lost someone close, or known someone who has."

"There's nothing you can say."

"Then why did you tell me?"

He looked again down to the empty pond. His gaze, which formerly seemed alive and intimate, now seemed distant and sad. "I don't know. You're the first person I told from work, and I didn't plan on telling you." He looked at her with quiet gravity then offered a helpless shrug. "I don't know why I did."

His boyish good looks suddenly had depth and substance, and the former implied intimacy his eyes had carried was no longer implied but very real, and very potent. She again felt the impulse to run but resisted and held her ground against those disarming eyes and all they spoke. "Thanks for telling me."

He nodded slowly.

She reached out and brushed his near hand lying like a lost soul on the blanket.

He held steady under her light touch for a few seconds, then slid his hand away and used it to take out one of the hotdogs and his can of soda from the brown paper bag at his feet. After taking a huge bite of the hotdog and a long swig of the soda, he asked, "So what are you going to do this weekend?"

There was a weekend forthcoming? This was Friday? Allison had no idea, had completely forgot. She wished again for a swanboat—just one to float across her vision, rivet her gaze, call forth her future.

3

On his walk home from the Esplanade in golden late sun and cooling air, Zach came to understand his discovery of the Barton Cosgrove story as a powerful and far-reaching omen. If the world and fate held hid in its store of possibility propitious guides such as Cosgrove's mesmerizing prose alongside the threats and disappointments he'd come to accept as inevitable, then at least he had a chance at a better future. And he also had a choice to trust and seek and nurture those positive twists of fate that might not be mere fate but could be divine intention—a munificent God's nudging of his life. How else might one explain his spying of that anthology on the long shelf of new releases in the Library, his grabbing it from the dozen or so books on his desk to place in the rucksack, his selecting it over Hemingway and Porter (safe and trusted guides) while sitting in spiritual suspension in spring warmth on the bench, his persisting through all those mediocre short stories to unearth this gem? How could all those improbable choices be simply an accident? They couldn't, or so he chose to believe. He had a chance in this struggle, which is all he could ask for. And he might—could he be so bold to hope?—have a powerful ally in the battle.

After showering and changing, he headed out into the early evening and tracked Allison down at Jimmy's in the Pru, where she was seated along with Mary at their usual table in the corner. He'd anticipated the typical crowd of Hancock employees blowing off steam at the end of the work week, and was surprised to see only the two of them at the table. He was even more surprised at the sudden disappointment he felt at the lack of a crowd, had actually been looking forward to dissipating some of his new-found energy and enthusiasm into that impromptu aggregation. He was still more disappointed that Ian wasn't there—not that he would confide anything directly to Ian, but that the lanky Irishman would surely sense some of what he was feeling without a word said.

He weaved his way through the crowded bar to the table in the corner. Caught up in his own upbeat mood, he failed to notice that the two girls were tight-lipped silent and frowning down at their drinks. "What did you two do—scare everybody off?" It was the sort of comment Ian would make, and he thought they would be amused.

They weren't. Mary didn't look up. Allison glanced up and forced out an unconvincing grin. "Everybody had better things to do."

"Even Ian?"

"Off today—helping Sean down in Quincy or Hingham or some such place."

"So this is it?"

"Just us," she said in a far-off voice that was neither apologetic nor offended.

Zach nodded and smiled. It would take more than Allison's detachment and Mary's petulance to derail his optimism. "O.K." he said and sat down.

The waitress, a spunky middle-aged woman named Renee, appeared out of the crowd. "Pitcher?" she asked Zach.

He nodded without thinking then had a sudden change of heart. "Renee," he called just before she disappeared into the crowd.

She turned with an indulgent smile edging toward impatience.

"Make that a pitcher of root beer." The bar sold soft drinks as well as beer by the pitcher.

"Root beer?"

Zach nodded.

"No joke?"

Zach shook his head.

She shrugged. "Root beer it is," and was gone.

Zach turned to the women beside him who had put aside their frowns to stare at him in disbelief. "What?"

"Root beer?" Allison asked.

"Root beer?" Mary repeated.

Zach squirmed just a tad under their incredulous stares. "I get drunk and I get hassled. I decide not to get drunk and I get hassled."

"No hassle—just shock," Allison said.

"Yeah, total shock," Mary concurred.

Zach shrugged. "First day that felt like spring after that awful winter—too full of promise to get drunk."

"That's a new tune," Allison said, her eyes betraying just a touch of doubt.

"And what if it is?"

"Then good," she said. "Great!" She lifted her glass of rum and coke with mostly just ice and a little pale brown liquid in the bottom. "To Zach's new beginning."

Mary lifted her similarly empty glass half-heartedly.

Zach smiled and raised his empty hand to touch the paired glasses. "I accept your blessing, sans glass."

"That's appropriate," Allison said, and drained her glass, chewing lightly on the leftover ice.

Zach had no idea what she meant by that but chose not to ask.

Mary flopped back in her chair. "As for me, I'm getting drunk."

Just then, Renee showed up with Zach's pitcher and a mug.

Mary pointed to her empty glass and said, "Double me up, please, Renee."

Renee nodded and looked to Allison.

"Me too, I guess."

Zach looked at the two of them without a hint of judgment or expression, then poured himself a mug of root beer, spilling some when ice hung up on the lip of the pitcher. "Beer would be simpler," he whispered to himself as he mopped the spill with a wadded napkin.

"Maybe so," Allison agreed as she stared coolly at him and awaited her refill.

The next couple hours contained more silence than conversation as the three of them waded through their drinks—Allison and Mary getting several more refills and Zach discovering that it's a lot harder to drink quantities of sweetened soft drink, even when watered down by melted ice, than beer—and later ordered plates of food—a turkey club sandwich for Zach, nachos for Allison, pizza for Mary. Fortunately, the busy bar provided lots of distractions to fill the frequent silences; and the three could almost pretend there wasn't anything amiss. During the first hour, Allison seemed to be waiting for Mary to leave, and Mary seemed just as intent on not fulfilling that wish, leaving them in a stand-off with Zach as a neutral, sober, ignorant-of-the-feud observer. Anytime he tried to get them to explain what was going on, they both clammed up. Later, with both girls drunk, the tension ebbed but not the secrecy. Neither would divulge their disagreement.

Adding to the weirdness of the evening (as if it weren't already weird enough—Zach sober, Allison drunk, Mary mad, no other participants to diffuse the tension), Zach twice felt a stocking foot brush his leg; and he knew it wasn't Allison's since she had on laced boots. Then, with Allison off at the restroom, Mary slid onto Allison's empty chair and leaned over very close to Zach's face and with a school-girl's demure look (she was, after all, just nine months out of high school) and a rummy's potent breath asked, "Do you think I'm pretty?"

While she definitely was not his type, and for all sorts of reasons he'd not once let himself cozy up to her no matter how drunk or horny he'd got, she was not unattractive and he could answer simply and honestly (with no consideration of the implications of his answer), "Yes."

She smiled drunkenly from inches away. "You're sweet."

Zach smiled. "Thank you," he said and thought maybe I should try this sober route more often.

"Allison doesn't know how good she's got it."

Zach grew a little apprehensive at the direction of this one-sided conversation but managed to maintain his smile. "Maybe you should tell her. She'll be back any minute."

Mary smiled a knowing smile. "Oh, I've told her, lots of times." She looked over her shoulder toward the restrooms then slid back into her chair. Not seconds later, Allison appeared on the far side of the bar walking toward them. Mary looked back at Zach and said in normal volume, "But she won't listen."

Allison said, "Listen to what?" as she sat down between them.

Zach looked to Mary.

Mary said, "We were just talking about someone else."

Zach said, "I think I'll go play pinball."

Not long after, while wrapping up his third game—all terrible scores: inebriation, at least mild to moderate inebriation, definitely facilitated pinball play—Allison tapped him on the shoulder. "I think it's time to go home." She was weaving slightly in place but still able to stand and walk.

"O.K. What about Mary?"

"She'll take the subway."

Zach looked across the room. Mary looked like she was about to pass out face-first on the table. "Alone? In that condition?"

Allison shrugged. "Then what?"

Zach thought a minute. "She can sleep on our couch."

"Why?"

"Because she's in no shape to take the subway home."

Allison shook her head but was in no shape to argue. "You ask her."

"I don't know what's up between you two; but sure, I'll ask her—just let me finish this game." He turned back to play the last ball.

Behind him, Allison said, "She's not going anywhere."

Zach's invitation woke Mary up a little. She sat up straight and gave him a big smile. Then she saw Allison standing behind him.

"Hi, Mary. Remember me? I'm Allison, your best friend. Zach's wife."

Mary didn't even try to hide her disappointment. "No, thank you. I'll take the subway home."

"Mary, you're in no shape to take the subway home. I won't let you," Zach said firmly.

"And I won't stay in town," she said, just as firmly.

After a tedious and repetitive discussion lasting far longer than it needed to, the sort of debate that is all but inevitable when a sober person is trying to convince a drunk person to do something they don't want to do, they finally agreed that they'd walk Allison back to the apartment, then Zach would accompany Mary on the subway to her parents' home in Brookline. It would be a long round-trip for Zach; but, despite what seemed an eternity since arriving at the bar, the night was still quite young—not yet ten o'clock—and there'd be plenty of time to get Mary home and return to Back Bay before the subway shut down.

Zach waved to Renee and gave her money for the tab plus a generous tip. He then offered his hand to Mary to help her up. (Allison had been standing to one side in silence the whole time.)

Mary took his hand and stood up beside him. She held the hand for a few seconds to insure her balance and stability, then let go. "Thank you," she said. "You're such a gentleman. But I'll be fine."

And, surprisingly, she was. She walked slowly but surefootedly across the room and out into the surprisingly brisk night air of the Pru concourse. The cool temperature and sharp wind woke them all up—even Zach, who didn't realize how sleepy he'd become from the close air of the bar and all the drama of his day.

They walked three abreast with Zach in the middle trying to keep a simultaneous eye on both his charges. This didn't work, as he couldn't make his eyes look out of both corners at once. He wanted to gently hold an arm of each one, strictly for logistical purposes. But he was smart enough, and sober enough, not to try that. So he held back half a stride and looked frequently from side to side to be sure they both were O.K. A couple times Allison outpaced Mary, and Zach would quietly call for her to slow down. She'd always stop in place, look up at the clear night sky impatiently, and wait for them to catch up. And Zach saw this as a victory—at least she paused.

At their apartment Allison climbed the brownstone steps without a word and disappeared inside first one door then the next.

Zach said, "I'll be home soon as I can," to her back but doubted she heard and wondered if she cared. He looked down at Mary and shrugged helplessly.

"I think she's mad at you for being nice to me."

Zach sighed. "She knows it's the right thing to do, she just doesn't know it yet."

Mary giggled. "I'll have to remember that line."

Zach could finally risk a laugh of his own. "Come on. Let's get you home."

They walked briskly without touching over to the Dartmouth Street Station. On the way, Zach realized that if Allison had been walking faster than normal, Mary'd been walking deliberately slower. He noted this piece of evidence on the subtleties of female gamesmanship for future reference, and for one of the few times in his life was grateful for the artless transparency of male anger.

On the near-empty subway car—one of the fancy new middle-pivot Greenline cars, with high-backed cushioned seats and no graffiti—Mary initially sat upright and stiff backed, eyes straight ahead. But as the ride wore on and the car swayed gently back and forth on the rails, her eyes gradually grew heavy and her upright position began to slump. Maybe ten minutes into the twenty-minute ride, she lost her battle with the downward tug of fatigue and alcohol and fell sideways against Zach, her blond head coming to rest on his shoulder. He didn't try to rouse her and freely accepted her weight and touch. He was secretly pleased at the touch, not in any sexual context (he still, even this late on a Friday night, had no physical attraction to her) but in her helpless vulnerability and the trust it implied, never once considering if this too might be one of those feminine ploys.

As the train slowed in its approach to her stop, Zach tilted his body away from her lean. She continued her slide sideways until she finally opened her eyes with her head half on the armrest and half in his lap. At first she seemed confused till she met his eyes and a sleepy smile transformed her whole face into something close to pure bliss.

Zach returned her smile to the best of his ability. "We're coming to your stop."

"Darn!" she said and slowly lifted herself upright in her seat.

"You were asleep."

"I was dreaming."

"About what?"

She laughed. "Now Mr. Sandstrom, we'd have to get to know each other a little better before I could divulge that information."

Zach couldn't help but laugh.

The train came to a lurching stop and they each bounced against their seatback. They stood and walked out onto the subway platform, Zach holding her arm the whole way without thinking about it.

She stopped as the train pulled away. "I can make it from here."

Zach shook his head. "Contract says 'Safe to your door'."

"Where's it say that?"

He wrote the word safe lightly across her forehead.

"Oh, yeah," she said. "Now I see." She tilted her head toward the north exit. "I'm this way. It's only a few blocks."

Outside, Zach inhaled the cool, clear air. He suddenly felt so alive. Then he looked up and was startled to see stars twinkling. He'd not seen those for months. Though he no longer held her arm, he was acutely aware of Mary's close proximity—heard her breathing, smelled her herbal shampoo. All his senses were so acute, his body in tune with the moment and the night. He'd not felt himself this engaged and as one with his surroundings since leaving the farm and the natural order that had been an integral part of his life since infancy. What had prompted this new vitality? How could it be extended?

Mary turned right off the main thoroughfare with its dark storefronts and onto a residential sidestreet with cars parked on both sides in front of three-story rowhouses. Halfway down the block, a house with all its windows dark had its porchlight on. She stopped in front of that house. "This is me." She stepped up onto the first of four steps leading to the entry stoop and the aluminum storm door in front of the main door.

Zach faced her from the sidewalk, still a few inches taller despite her standing on the first step. "Contract fulfilled?"

She nodded slowly, her blond hair backlit by the porchlight, bouncing up and down.

"Well, see you around." He turned to leave.

"Zach?"

He turned. "Yes?"

She waited a minute until he retraced the two steps to stand in front of her.

"Yes?"

"When you and Allison get divorced, look me up please."

Zach burst out laughing. "Mary, you're drunk!"

Mary laughed also. "Yeah, I know." She leaned over quickly and kissed his cheek, her lips barely brushing his cold skin. "A drunk Italian—can't get much more honest or pathetic than that." She turned and trudged up the last few steps, seeming suddenly weighed down. She disappeared inside the dark doorway.

On the return ride to Back Bay, Zach saw everything in an unprecedented glow of hyper-sight, hyper-life—the lettering of the curved banner ads on the wall above the windows, the zigzag black stitching on the ragged purple coat of the homeless man curled across two seats three rows ahead, the dazzling sparkle of headlights blurring into taillights' red burn where the train rose above ground and ran parallel Comm. Ave. at Kenmore Square. It was all so vivid, so felt through the eyes. These late-night visions of sobriety were worth the price of—well, sobriety, complete with its risks of pain, constraint, abject frustration.

4

Starting on Monday and over the next two weeks, with the help of the vast resources of the Boston Public Library, Zach read every word of every page of the published volumes of Barton Cosgrove—four novels, two collections of short stories, and a book of essays on literature and writing. The literary voice that had been so potent in the small dose he'd sampled there by the Charles remained clear and compelling through this sizable corpus. In fact, that voice and the life questions it probed only deepened and broadened in the fuller excavations of the novels, Cosgrove's most natural genre, with one novel in particular, Still Life, laying claim to Zach's soul like an explorer's flag thrust into his heart. This Barton Cosgrove seemed to be speaking directly to Zach, to his doubts and needs and entanglements, across whatever distance lay between Boston and unfamiliar and exotic North Carolina (the setting for all his fiction), the impediments of time and space brushed aside by the power of words in this man's heart, his capable hands.

Zach also discovered, off the cover flap of one of those novels, that Cosgrove was forty-five years old and taught in the English Department of Avery University in North Carolina. From these scraps of information, powered by a newfound passion for life, seemingly called by the voice of this far-off but intimately near writer, Zach's mind, his whole being, posed a question that dominated his thoughts and actions over the next couple months: Would Barton Cosgrove receive him as a student? The first step toward securing an answer to this question, laying claim to a potential future and the prospect of a fulfilling life, was to put together a collection of his fiction to send to Cosgrove for consideration. Zach undertook this task with the single-minded focus of a zealot, spending all his free time polishing his existing vignettes, completing some longer pieces already started, and finally writing a story—his longest yet—that had been roaming around in his subconscious like a lost spirit throughout his tumultuous fall and winter.

The Dark Area beneath the Trees

"Tell me my life."

He spoke into the darkness. Quiet back.

"Please." Asking. Again.

More quiet. Then, "Why?" A response.

"I have to know."

"Are you dying?"

He didn't answer that. Thinking.

"Are you dying? Slowly?"

A pause. "No. Just tired."

"Then I can't help you."

"Why?"

"It is for you to find out."

"What?"

"Your life. It is for you to find out."

He sighed but was silent, gazing into the dark, awake now.

It had been a woman, but faceless as the night. He thought about that. Her voice had been clear, ringing out in the vacuum of sleep. He wondered if he knew her, the woman behind the voice. And if so, how? No answer. Confused, he resigned to the night, its power, falling through consciousness to sleep, black sleep.

He walked into the kitchen, to his family scattered about the table, eggs and bacon steaming, sunlight. He sat and filled his plate.

"Rough night last night?"

He looked to his younger brother. "Huh?"

"Rough night—you shouting in the dark. What in hell you dreaming about?"

He had forgotten his searching, the woman. Couldn't remember now even with this reminder. "Really?"

"Hell, yes." His brother Don looked to the others for corroboration. Julie, Sarah, Jack—all younger—were silent, eating. So he looked to their mother cracking eggs at the stove. (Only their father was missing, eaten and gone, milking the cows.)

"I heard him, yes." She smiled. "But he does it so often I hardly notice anymore."

"See." Don flourished his fork in the air. Proof. Victory. At age sixteen and two years younger than Jase, he needed (thought he needed) to win all the minor skirmishes, having lost the big one—date of birth, seniority in the family.

Jase let this one go and grinned. "Must have been good. Wish I'd been there."

His mother didn't look up from her cooking but said, "Oh, you were. Always will be."

A large field, hay mown flat (his work of two days ago), drying in summer sun. Jase climbed back onto the tractor after hooking up the rake. Together (the tractor, he, the rake) they began circling the field, large circles growing smaller, neat windrows of piled hay in their wake.

Raking hay used to amaze him—the idea of a long, long spiral of hay unbroken from beginning to end, constant shrinking to a point: the cut grass, flat and formless, picked up and rolled into an ordered spiral, ready for the baler. Steady spiral inward. But he wasn't much amazed now. What had once captured his imagination was the idea of movement, of spiraling toward some destination. Travel. Progress. But he had reached the end too many times and found nothing there but an end—stop, unhook the rake, drive away out of the spiral. Just an end. No secrets. No revelations. Not even rest. Only pause—end of one job, start of another.

He drove along, the click-clacking of the rake lulling him into a mindless state just short of sleep. Raking was still good in one way—no demands beyond steering. So he rested, driving in large circles, spiraling to a point, waiting.

He knew her face but not her name.

It was late and he was alone, slouched on the car seat, one hand limp on the wheel, the other cradling an empty beer can. The others had gone, leaving him alone (he had thought) beside the burnt-out factory, their favorite high-school hangout.

She walked, her silhouette dull against the moonless dark, to the passenger door and looked in the window. He smiled and winked (he thought) but made no motion to open the door, no invitation beyond his tired but curious gaze.

She opened the door and sat on the seat, staring ahead a moment then turning, meeting his gaze (which had never left her). "Where you headed?" she asked.

"To home, then to Hell. Maybe not in that order."

"Then drive on."

Jase grinned but didn't move. He stared at her, his head clearer now than in hours, studying this stranger beside him. She was about his age, best he could tell—dark hair to her shoulders, large eyes, attractive features. She was more than pretty enough to arouse him sexually, but she called him away from that and he stared in wonder, not lust.

She spoke again, quiet yet forceful. "Why are you alone here?"

His first thought was to turn the question back on her. She was the visitor out of the night, not he. But her tone demanded more than idle jesting. He considered her question. "I'm searching."

"Searching what?"

"My life."

"And you expect to find it in an empty car dark beside a gutted building?"

"You came."

This was automatic and he asked himself why. He was quickly rising from the fatigue and beer, growing awake with each minute.

She laughed. "But I found you."

"I was here for you to find."

"Mutual, then."

He nodded. Mutual.

They were quiet, each studying the other, looking out into the dark then back again. His feeling of recognition was gone and he was sure he'd never met this girl. So why had she come, entered his life instantly without invitation, sitting now with him, waiting? He looked to her face, pale gray in the dark. No answers.

He finally spoke. "What is your name?"

"Lois."

"Lois, why are you here?"

She smiled. "To deliver your life."

"Seriously."

Her smile dissolved. "I am here because this is where my life brought me. Any purpose beyond that is for us to discover."

The response only deepened her mystery. He sat silent, puzzled.

She sensed his confusion and added, "Take this as truth: We were alone, now we are not. This is our gift, today's gift." She paused. "And tomorrow? Alone again each? Or not? It is not for us to know or decide. Only waiting will tell, bring us our lives. That is your answer. Time." She looked at him then opened the door.

"Wait. What about tomorrow? You don't even know my name. How will we meet?"

She was out of the car but leaned back through the open door. He swore to himself that he'd never replaced the burnt-out dome light. Perhaps light on her face would answer his questions, resolve his needs. But there was only night.

"I told you—time. We must wait. As to your other question, I know your name. And I love you, Jase."

The door closed.

She was gone and he didn't try to stop her. He had more questions, seemingly endless questions, but the force of her last words left him frozen. After a few minutes he started the car and drove home.

As he drove through empty streets, he subconsciously recalled his dream of the previous night. But he was suddenly tired, too tired to bring the dream to consciousness, connect it to the events of his day. He drove toward rest and asked no more questions.

On his right, invisible in the dark, the long spiral of hay he'd trailed earlier in the day lay silent, gathering summer's dew as he raced past.

5

Allison stopped by Ian's office on Monday afternoon. "We missed you at Jimmy's Friday night."

"Good. I didn't miss you."

"Zach really missed you."

"I'm sure you kept him entertained."

"Not really. It was just me and Mary, and we were fighting."

"About what?"

"I don't know—something foolish."

"Not confession, was it?"

"No. Well, maybe a little. I don't know."

"Sounds like a great argument."

"Did you know Matt's mother died over the holidays?"

"Yes. How'd you find out?"

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"He wasn't telling anyone so I didn't either. How'd you find out?"

"He told me."

"When?"

"While we were having lunch in The Gardens on Friday. It was such a beautiful day."

"He told Mary too?"

"No, it was just me and Matt."

"Allison, what the hell are you doing?"

"What do you mean?"

"Having a romantic little picnic in The Gardens. Letting him tell you about his mom."

"It wasn't a romantic little picnic. It was just a spur of the moment decision to have lunch outdoors on a pretty day. And I didn't 'let him' tell me about his mom. He didn't ask my permission. He just told me—his choice, not mine."

"And you think it's just coincidence that you were the first one from work he told, and he just happened to tell you while you were alone together on a picnic?"

"I don't know what you're getting at. I have no idea why he decided to tell me first. I'm honored and I'm touched and I feel real sorry for him. I don't see any harm in that. I don't think it's bad for a friend to share something that's bothering him. I think it's a good thing. That's what friends are for."

"Allison, knock it off. You might snow everybody else with this 'it's all innocent' crap. You might even snow yourself. But you won't snow me. You're playing games with something that shouldn't be played with. The only guy whose burdens you should be sharing is Zach. He's your husband. Let Matt get all sappy and emotional with some girl that isn't already spoken for."

Allison bore the full brunt of this without flinching. When he'd finished, she actually smiled, though thinly. "Next time, don't sugarcoat it. Just tell me straight."

Ian would have none of it. "You don't want me to tell you straight."

"Who appointed you judge over my life?"

"That's what real friends are for—to tell you when you're screwing up. And you're screwing up big time. Now I know why Mary was mad at you."

She had to marvel at Ian's uncanny insight. How could one so cool and removed be so observant? "She got trashed. We both did. Zach had to ride with her to make sure she got home safe."

"That's a laugh—the blind leading the blind."

"No, you're wrong. Zach quit drinking, at least for one weekend. He was sober as a judge and took good care of us both."

"What brought that on?"

She shrugged. "You'll have to ask him. He doesn't tell me anything."

"Maybe he will, if you quit too."

"What—drinking?"

"Cheating."

She stared at him for the longest time, then turned and left the office.

Long nights later Jase was again alone in his car by the gutted factory. He had waited many nights after the others had left, needing to wait but ashamed of his need, and disappointed by its futility.

He was sober (only a few beers downed early) and wide awake, but it was late and he'd already waited over an hour. He reached for the key, resigned to another night of fitful sleep and vivid dreams of confinement (different scenes but always the same ending—locked doors, bare and unyielding walls).

But he stopped, his hand on the unturned key. There was a full moon, bright glow through summer's humid haze. He knew he wouldn't sleep for a while, so he got out of the car and walked. No reason or destination, just movement beneath the moon, temporary release from the burden of sleep.

There were woods behind the building. He knew them well, the trees having harbored his earliest drinking sprees—undiluted whiskey from his parents' cabinet. He found the path which wound for miles through the woods. He had never followed it to its end (maybe never ended, for all he knew). It was a clear path and he would follow it until he got tired.

It was dark beneath the trees, brush thick on both sides, summer's full leaves overhead. The moon threw a rare shaft of silver light on the path and guided him with a diffuse glow, but he could see only a few feet ahead and hardly at all to either side. He heard water flowing to his right and an overgrown path branching off in that direction. He remembered the narrow stream, had fished it for brook trout years ago. He knew this path led to a cluster of rocks beside the stream. He turned and followed the new path, soon coming upon the rocks and the water. There was a break in the canopy and moonlight shined brightly, glowing on the fast-moving water, bathing the rocks in a silver haze. He watched the water flow past into the dark of the trees and the brush. His mind was empty and tired now. He thought of returning to the car.

"God's chosen path."

The words were a whisper but struck with quiet force against his back. At first he thought they were imagined, born of the night and the gurgling stream. Then he knew they were real, realized he'd expected them, had waited long years for their arrival.

He turned, surprised by his calm, and looked across the rocks to the woods beyond. At the edge of the clearing, sitting on a fallen trunk, was the girl who had sat in his car weeks past. She sat with her face to the moon. And him. He smiled but didn't move. He finally spoke. "Woods nymph."

"Pretty but false. Just another human waiting."

He thought, You and me both, but saved that for later. "Where have you been?"

"Most everywhere."

"I mean these past weeks, when I've waited in the car most every night." He flushed, embarrassed.

"You have no faith. You can't force fate's hand. If we were meant to meet a second time, it would happen of its own accord, decreed by God." She paused. "People are always running after things that aren't meant to be, forcing combinations that are unnatural but permanent, regrettable traps. One must wait, let life come to you." She seemed to want to say more but stopped. The brook's flowing was loud in the silence.

"And now?"

"Fate doesn't allow more than one accidental meeting."

"And?"

She remained silent.

He walked to her, stood and looked down at her sitting. He blocked the moon, his shadow falling about her figure.

She looked up at him. "Our lives have been delivered to us tonight."

He sat beside her. Her face, again lit by the moon, was lovely, reflecting a silver tranquility, calm in a tense world.

"Do you believe me?" she asked.

"That we are meant to be together?"

She nodded.

"Yes. Believed it long nights waiting in a lonely car."

"Isn't this better?"

"For you, maybe. I never cared much for waiting. Seems like there's too much to do and too little time to do it to sit waiting for what you know you need."

"You don't really believe that. Like me, you've been waiting all your life. Not knowing but waiting just the same. Impatient, your soul crying for release, but always waiting, faith in the future. I know this is true because if it weren't, we wouldn't have met—not tonight, not ever. You would've driven off with the others that night and never seen me."

"I was alone that night because I was tired and half-drunk and didn't feel like going home just then."

"Call it what you like, but you were waiting."

He didn't respond.

"Whatever the reasons, we've been brought together." She spoke to his profile. "What do we do with it?" It was her first genuine question.

He looked at her. At first he knew no response, had never in all his nights of waiting considered what he would do if they did meet again. His mind searched an answer and didn't have to look far. The answer arose from her face—glowing, asking. He ran his hand along her cheek, its softness cool. She knew his meaning and nodded.

They rose from the log and moved to a carpet of moss at the edge of the rocks. They lay down without speaking, knees sinking in the spongy damp. Their bodies did the talking, spoke in soft caresses, gentle searching, then passionate abandon. Years of hunger fed.

He awoke. She lay against him, her back to his side, their naked bodies touching full-length. It was dark, the moon having set; but he knew where he was, no moment of fear or confusion. He lay still, felt her body rise and fall against his, watched the dark limbs and the stars beyond. "Lois?"

She moved slightly, awake but silent.

"Lois, who are you?"  
She turned and smiled, facing him from inches away. "Woods nymph."

He laughed but said "I'm serious."

She was quiet a moment then sighed and began, delivering the words directly to his eyes, a sacred offering. "I was born in the South eighteen years ago last month, or so my mother told me—no reason to believe her but I did anyway: July 16, good a day as any. Never knew a father. My mother said he'd been killed in the war before I was born. I believed her and told my grade-school playmates what had happened to my dad. They would say 'too bad' then go on playing. Then one day a boy, some wisecrack newcomer, said 'But Lois, there weren't no war when you was born, not for years before or after.' He laughed and ran away but I realized he'd spoken the truth. But I didn't bring it up to my mother, figured she'd explain it in good time.

"Well, when I was fifteen, she did. She worked as a waitress to support us, had been doing it all my life. I could tell she never liked it much, always coming home tired and quiet; but I figured that was a common disease among adults and didn't give it much thought. Then one night I came home after a dance. She'd been drinking, something I'd never seen her do. And when I stepped through the door, she said, 'Damn you.' I froze and took the full force of her years of bitterness. She said, 'You took my life and now you're trying to worry me to death.' Well, I wasn't that late and knew there was something more going on. I was right. You took away my only chance at love, left me alone to slave at some slophouse, too old and ugly now to ever find a man.' I didn't understand, so she made it clearer. 'You fool. Don't you see—your father, the only man I ever loved, left me because I was carrying you, filled me with his seed then ran. He didn't die in no war. Just disappeared. Gone. And me too far along for an abortion and too proud-motherly to give you up. And shamed. I ran with you bouncing inside me, left all I ever had and hid out in this hellhole to waste my life to try to put food in front of you.' She cried then, first time I'd ever seen it. I waited, both shocked and saddened. She looked up with her face all a mess and said 'Go away.' I did.

"I heard her mumbling and crying all night. And I knew I couldn't stay. So I gathered a few clothes and left while she was asleep. And been wandering ever since."

Her eyes had not left his since she began; but now she paused and looked away, not sad but tired.

"And you ended up here?" He meant the small farming town.

"I only walk these woods at night." She smiled. "I don't live here."

"No, I mean this town."

"I came north. Some guy at the bus terminal paid my fare to new York, the only true gift I've ever received. But I saw what the city did to kids my age and left quick as I could and headed for quieter rural areas. And yes, I ended up here. There's an inn on the far side of these woods where I live, paying my way waiting tables—a hereditary disease, I guess. I've been living there since spring and walk these woods nearly every night. The path you came in on leads to the inn. First day I got here I saw it winding off into the woods outside my window. It called and I followed."

"To here." He meant the stream, the rocks.

"Yes." She meant him.

"What could you hope to find in dark woods?"

"Same thing you hoped to find that night in your car—answers to waiting."

"And?"

"I found him."

She said this without hesitation. He nodded thanks and kissed her. She reached out to him, pulled him on top of her, her hunger great after this hard unmasking of her life. He joined her in her need, made it his own.

With summer dawn fat approaching, they stood together, fully clothed, and looked into the dancing flow of the stream. Different lives brought together, the cold water flowing at their feet, past, gone, lost beneath the trees.

"When will we leave?" he asked, the first mention of their future.

It didn't surprise her. "Today."

"But how?"

"Do you own the car?"

"Yes, but it's old and tired. Who knows how long it will last or how far it will take us."

"It will last."

"Why?"

"It will."

He shrugged. "O.K. My car it is. When?"

"Tonight. A little after dark."

"And your things?"

"I travel light, just a duffel bag. Park by the factory and come get me. I'll wait here."

"But there will be people by the factory—beer drinkers, every night in the summer."

"Will they notice, or care?"

"They'll notice, alright. Small town eyes see all." He laughed. "But you're right. They won't care. They'll just watch." He paused. "Do you have any money?"

"About a hundred dollars stashed in a drawer."

"I've got a few hundred. We'll be O.K. for a while."

They knew it was right and smiled. Agreed. Then they returned to watching the water.

Without turning, she asked, "Jase, where will we go?"

"Does it matter?"

"There are some places I can't go."

He understood and considered her question but found no answer. He looked up and saw the sun had risen, fresh and warm, to their right, upstream, above the trees. He turned to the left, his back to the dawn, and watched the water, now sparkling in the new daylight, disappear into the woods. "West," he said. "We'll head west."

She nodded. Agreed.

Unseen at their feet, a twig, tugged at for years by the flowing water, broke away from the bank and was caught up by the stream. It disappeared beneath the trees and brush, all bright now with day's fresh gift.

"You didn't get home till after dawn and now you walk about trying to hide something. Why?" His mother asked this suddenly from the sink while he was eating lunch. They were alone, the others having eaten and gone. It was hot in the kitchen.

"So you heard me."

"I generally do. That wasn't my question."

He knew she was watching him but didn't raise his eyes to hers, stared instead at the sandwich in his hands.

"Jase." Firm but not angry, not yet anyway.

Some door opened inside him and he suddenly knew his answer. He looked at her, bore her stare, and said, "I will not lie to you. My life has assumed a new direction, a direction I cannot, and will not try, to alter." He had been confident during his short speech; but now, with the words out, he was suddenly weak and tired and returned to staring at his food.

"You are leaving." It wasn't a question. She turned back to the sink.

This caught him by surprise. He rose, leaving his lunch half-eaten, and left the house.

It was an hour past sunset when he stopped the car by the abandoned factory. He looked at the gutted building, the charred remains ghostly black in the growing dark. Did it have something to tell him, this hole in the night, this monument to loneliness? "Tell me," he whispered. He waited just a moment, then opened the car door. His life was waiting.

He had deliberately parked away from the circle of cars at the far side of the clearing. He felt their eyes on his back and someone shouted "Unsociable, Jase?" He didn't stop or respond, walking around the building and into the woods.

She was sitting on the log, no moon yet to light her face. He stood before her then bent over and kissed her cheek. "Ready?"

She nodded. "Are you?"

All day he had doubted his readiness (with the exception of his brief statement to his mother); but now, standing before her, he knew he was. "Yes."

He picked up her duffel and they walked single file down the path and toward the car, leaving the stream to sing alone to the night.

As they got into the car, he again felt the eyes of the crowd on him. He was suddenly not only ready but glad, glad to be leaving the town and these prying eyes behind. There had to be something better out there and he would find it, he and this girl now sitting where she had sat that night weeks past.

Nights later, they lay together in the back seat of the car, parked in a highway rest area, truck trailers looming as massive shadows to either side. They were well into the Rocky Mountains and the night air was cold, the two blankets he'd pulled out of the trunk hardly adequate. They lay tight together, each trying to be the other's warmth.

"You know, we have won," she said directly into his ear.

"What?"

"Our lives. Love is the only answer to loneliness. And we have it. We've won. And we are lucky. Few people ever win."

He was tired from days of driving and didn't grasp the full weight of her meaning. "Well, here we are, in the middle of nowhere, nearly out of money and nothing but a few clothes and a beat-up car to call our own. That's a funny kind of winning if you ask me."

"Jase, I left my home at fifteen with nothing but faith and need in my pockets. We're travelling kings compared with that." She paused. "But that's not what I meant. The future will take care of itself. What we've won is freedom from loneliness. That can never be taken from us. Don't you understand?"

He did understand, knew it was their mutual gift, bestowed by God, shared now. "Yes, I understand. And I'm sorry for before."

"I know." She pushed tighter against him, desperate to escape the cold.

6

On a Saturday night a few weeks later, Zach treated Allison to a fancy, high-priced meal at Hillary's up on Boylston. Still in the full flush of his renewed enthusiasm at the discovery of Cosgrove's work and his optimism at the possibility of studying under him, and nearing the completion of assembling his collection of scenes and stories, Zach had saved the tips from a couple extra rotations at The Club and quite literally raided his piggybank of the silver dollars his aunt had given him each year on his birthday (currently worth more than ten dollars apiece in the midst of the Hunt brothers' manipulation of the silver market) to pay for the meal. Allison put on a dress left from high school dances and Zach wore a tan corduroy jacket over dark brown corduroy pants and zip-up dress boots (all last worn at his senior-year basketball awards banquet) and they walked the few blocks to the restaurant in warm April twilight.

They waited in the dark foyer for the impeccably attired maître de with a French accent to return from checking on their table. Zach smiled down at Allison in the small alcove. "Ann says this is the best restaurant in Back Bay. Her brokers always bring their clients here."

Allison nodded and smiled shyly but didn't say anything.

He wasn't sure if it was the season of the year or his new-found optimism or that this was their first dinner date alone since getting married or that she was in a dress that he perhaps recalled from earlier happier times and looking especially beautiful, or perhaps a combination of all those factors—whatever the reason, he felt for just a moment, standing there in the tiny entry to Hillary's, as he'd felt when they were first dating, when the horizons for their love were boundless. And being Zach, he couldn't resist asking himself the logical follow-up: Where had that love gone? What had turned those boundless horizons into blank walls closer than these here? But he had the instinctive good grace and generosity of spirit this night not to let those questions cloud his smile. Tonight anyway he'd try to cradle that flame of long-ago passion and promise.

The maître de returned and led them to their table in the long but narrow main dining room. The restaurant was busy but not full on this weekend night, without the weekday business crowd that was their mainstay. Zach was pleased to see a fair number of moderately dressed residents like themselves to offset the elegantly clothed professionals that reminded him of the elite that patronized The Club. He and Allison were well aware that they stood out in this establishment, both for their youth and for their futile effort to dress up from an outdated and ill-funded wardrobe; but Zach was pleased to see that this night anyway they didn't stand out as much as he'd feared. The maître de invited them to sit at a square table that would've seated four but was beautifully set for just two, with a white linen tablecloth, sparkling crystal, and polished silverware. Zach had already sat down when he noticed their host holding the chair for Allison and sliding it gently under her as she sat. He blushed at his oversight (both failing to hold her chair and failing to wait for her to sit) and vowed never to make those mistakes again, if he were ever in a restaurant this nice again. The Frenchman opened the menus before offering them—first to Allison then Zach—gave a tight-lipped short and formal nod, and left without a word.

Allison looked at the menu then around the dining room. She turned to Zach—who sat beside her, not opposite her, in planned intimacy that explained what the maître de was doing while they waited in the foyer—and asked, "Are you ready for this?" She paused then added with a little frown, "I feel a little out of place."

So did Zach, though he refused to admit it, choosing instead to indulge his conviction that he could will himself—and Allison, if she'd just play along—into this elite society without paying the price of admission. He smiled reassuringly at her. "Tonight we belong here as much as anyone else. Relax and enjoy."

Allison nodded doubtfully but at least lost her frown. She looked down at the menu and noted its beautiful sloping calligraphy, all hand drawn before it was copied. That handwriting, and her appreciation of the human effort behind the art, gave her a moment's consolation. She could relate to well-crafted letters even if she couldn't decipher some of the words those letters formed.

They both ordered soft drinks from the late-twenties waiter—a grad student from BU? an aspiring musician from Berkeley School of Music just up Comm. Ave.?—who was considerably more relaxed than the setting and helped put them at ease. He answered Allison's several questions about the menu without making her feel ignorant, punctuating those explanations with a cute little half-smile and a relaxed charm that made Zach wonder if he were flirting with his wife. But even this fleeting insecurity couldn't derail Zach's intent to fill this night with memories and promise. To that end, he called the waiter, Kevin, back after he'd turned to leave and asked if they had champagne by the glass. Kevin nodded and added, "And it's very fine—light and dry with just a hint of cherries and licorice in the after-palate." Zach ordered two glasses without asking the cost.

Allison glanced up after Kevin left. "I thought you were on the wagon."

"I'll allow myself to step off for a special occasion."

"I thought we were on a budget."

"This is my treat, off the books"—though now he wondered about how much he'd just spent.

"You'll finish mine if I don't?" She hated champagne, at least the few samplings she'd had previously—cheap sparkling wine diluted with orange juice to make mimosas on Christmas morning at Zach's family's house.

Zach took a deep breath and sighed. "Allison, it's O.K. Relax. I'll not force you to do something you don't want to do." He briefly wondered if he'd already broken that promise by dragging her to this restaurant in a miscalculated gift.

She nodded. "At least Kevin helped me figure out what's on the menu."

"Good."

Kevin returned and set their soft drinks and champagne—in tall flutes rather than the broad short glasses Zach expected—in front of them then took their orders. They both ordered French onion soup gratinee and Allison requested the lemon-pepper chicken (Kevin's translation of poulet chasseur) and Zach ordered the beef Stroganoff, a special for that evening.

After Kevin left, Zach raised his champagne flute and said, "To the promise of spring."

"Promises?"

Zach had intended the singular form to be all-inclusive and somehow more literary and auspicious, but the plural would serve fine. "Promises."

She tapped his glass with hers. The crystal emitted a high-pitched and fragile but surprisingly persistent tone, almost as if the champagne were audible as well as visual and, as they discovered before the ringing had faded, an olfactory and taste-bud adventure. Allison initially made a face that quickly evolved into neutral indifference. Zach held the glass near his nose and the champagne on his tongue to absorb fully its nuances. It was indeed light and dry, though the cherries and licorice evaded his taste buds. In any case the champagne fulfilled its intended symbolism as a step outward and, for Zach at least and he hoped for them as a couple, upward.

After they'd finished their soup—which they both could agree was delicious and rich—and were awaiting their entrees, Allison looked up to Zach with an expression that was finally relaxed, her mood helped along by several sips of the champagne that she'd decided wasn't so bad after all. "So the book is almost done?"

"Just need to finish and type the last story, proof it all, then get it copied."

"Then on to Cosgrove?"

"Need to write the cover letter; but after that, yes—on to Barton Cosgrove. I got his address yesterday from the English Department secretary at Avery. She offered to put me through to him on the phone—can you imagine that: actually talking to the man?"

"He's not God, Zach."

"He almost is, to me anyway. I believe if he'd come on the line, I would've dropped the phone. I quickly declined her offer and thanked her for the address and hung up. I'll need plenty of time to prepare myself before speaking with him, if I ever do."

Allison shook her head in wonder. "I didn't know you were capable of being star-struck."

"It doesn't feel like that to me, more like someone you've never met already knows you completely."

"That sounds scary."

"In some ways it is—access to a whole world you didn't know existed."

"Like I said—scary."

Zach shrugged. "I'll take the chance."

"To what goal?"

"Inside?"

"Outside, for us. What happens after you send him your work?"

"I wait."

"And if he says yes?"

"We'll talk about that if it happens."

"I'm not sure I'm ready to move again, Zach—not so soon."

Zach looked across the now full restaurant. He felt for a moment like he was in a Victorian drawing room, an unwitting participant in someone else's drama. He looked back to Allison, returned to her familiar harbor. "We'll figure it out. First I need to finish the book."

"Will I ever get to read it?"

"I didn't think you wanted to." He knew this wasn't true. She'd asked about his writing numerous times and he'd always quietly declined to share it, fearful of exposing to ridicule or misunderstanding or abuse some hidden part of himself. That he felt this fear toward his wife, the only one in the world presently capable of inflicting grave harm on him, was either utterly appropriate or immeasurably sad—and quite possibly both.

"Only if you want me to."

"Let me finish it first then we'll see."

They were both glad for the sudden appearance of Kevin with a big oval tray loaded down with their entrees balanced on his shoulder.

Zach's Stroganoff was extraordinarily good and totally unlike the cheaper imitations he'd had in the past, in fact unlike anything he'd ever tasted before. Made with cubed beef tenderloin that had been flash-grilled to preserve flavor and juiciness then mixed with lightly sautéed chunks of mushroom and combined with a delicately seasoned cream sauce and served over perfectly cooked house-made fresh noodles, the entrée united flavors and textures both subtle and bold, a culinary adventure in a single exotic dish. Allison also seemed to enjoy her poulet—beautifully presented on the plate along with wild rice and a broccoli-cauliflower-carrot combo (that Allison left and Zach picked at to supplement his rich one-dish meal)—but not to the rhapsodic levels prompted in Zach by the Stroganoff.

Their meals completed, they leaned back in the comfortable chairs, both well beyond full with the heavy onion soup—a normal meal for them in its own right—and the generously portioned entrées. Despite being near bursting, Zach insisted they order dessert, as much to extend the evening's escape as to climax the meal. Allison shrugged and agreed. Still young and thin and of a high metabolism, she never worried about her weight or her caloric intake. She ordered hand-churned double-chocolate ice cream and tea. Zach ordered the French apple tart and a bourbon on the rocks. Allison raised her eyebrows at this last and could only laugh when Zach offered the weak excuse, "To help my digestion."

In the warm and intoxicating glow of the meal and the elegant setting, Zach asked, "A year ago, did you think we'd be here?"

Allison thought for a moment. "A year ago I was practicing hard for my band solo and writing my mythology paper. My view of the future hardly extended beyond the period at the end of the sentence."

"You must've expected something?"

"Not really, Zach. I was completely in the present, my last weeks of high school. I trusted the future to you."

"That was a mistake."

"You didn't have it figured out?" She was only half-joking; thereby, half-serious.

"Oh, I thought I did. I figured we'd be living in a hand-hewn log cabin in the middle of the Rocky Mountain wilderness trying to coax vegetables out of thin stony soil. In other words, I didn't have a clue."

"So I shouldn't have counted on you?"

"I'm sorry." He meant the apology far more deeply than her light-hearted comment required.

"For what? I like my job. I like my friends. I'm so glad to be out of Dover. I'm happy."

He looked at her with a calm munificence, could finally be happy for her through his envy.

"But you're not," she said with a genuine sadness.

"What?"

"Happy here."

He shrugged. "I never would've chosen a city—that's true. But I'm finding my way, or being led."

"Don't lead us over a cliff." She meant it as a joke.

"I'll do my best." He meant it as a vow.

Later in bed, with Zach content to lay his head alongside hers on her pillow and seek adequate physical gratification in the smell of her hair and the brush of her cheek against his lips, Allison slid her arm under his torso and urged him atop her. This near instinctive summoning had its vague origins in thanks for his kind gift of the meal and the evening, and apology for secret neglect and wandering (she'd not label it as betrayal, didn't see it as such). Whatever its origins, the climax of the sharing that resulted was unprecedented as she panted into his neck, he into her ear, each emptied into one moment's perfect melding of vastly divergent souls and hearts.

Jase and Lois never got past the Rockies, their money and their youthful determination inadequate to carry them over the peaks. Lois worked as a waitress in a truck stop while Jase searched a job, throwing his dusty arms in the air each night and swearing there was nothing but "sand and sagebrush" in the West. And Lois would say, "Patience." She was right. Jase got a job with an oil exploration company and Lois quit her job. They moved into a company trailer, their first home, part of Jase's pay.

Jase spent his days riding through the sandy hills, drilling ore samples, servicing wells. He liked the work, the newness of the country, the open spaces. And at night he would sit with Lois, each happy in the other's company. During that first month, Jase felt content, at peace with the present as never before. And Lois knew she'd found her life, had known it from the beginning.

It was a cold day in October, clear, dry, and windy, like most days. And Jase was driving home in a company truck, heading for home in the late afternoon.

Bouncing along an unpaved and empty road, he thought of his family, his mother crying, his father overburdened with work. He was startled by the vision, having long avoided thought of his family, concentrating on his life with Lois, their future. But now his past swelled before his eyes. And for the first time he felt guilt and regret at having left his family suddenly and completely. The image of his mother dominated his thoughts.

As he neared home, he tried to shift his thoughts to Lois, their present life and love. Instead of providing comfort, her image aggravated his remorse, seemed the cause of his regret.

He was confused and retreated to the void of non-thought, traversing the last miles in the relative comfort of mindless stupor.

That night they sat at a small table facing one another across empty plates, silent. The wind blew mountains' premature winter against the trailer's metal sides.

"Did you ever write to your mother?"

The question surprised her. They rarely spoke of their families. "No."

"Didn't you ever want to, or feel you should?"

"At first. I thought I owed her something. But I kept putting it off and eventually I came to understand I owed her nothing, and that my desire to write was just false guilt and a lot of loneliness. When I realized that, I no longer needed to write. That was three years ago."

He looked at her, tried to find further answers in her face. Failing, he asked, "And me?"

She expected this. "You left because of real needs. They must understand that and require no further explanation. If they don't understand, there is nothing you could say to make them understand."

"How can you say that? You never even met them."

"Jase, you left them suddenly and completely. Don't try to disentangle that. You'll kill yourself if you do."

"And if I must?"

"You'll kill me as well."

He rose without speaking and moved to the far end of the trailer. He lay on the bed and stared at the printed metal ceiling. She followed and sat beside him. She looked down at him but he failed to acknowledge her gaze.

"There's more to my story. You know what I did on that bus to New York?" She paused but he remained silent, still looking off into the dark. "I didn't cry or pound my fists (that came later). No, I calculated how much I'd cost my mother. Financially, I mean. And by my estimate it came to more than $40,000. And I tried, then and later, to figure out how long it would take me to repay her. You see, I wanted to start out clean, no bad debts. I even went so far as to save a little (the money I brought the night we left) and planned to send it to her. Then one day I knew I owed her nothing. Long nights alone had taught me there is no such thing as human debt, not in family. We are born into this world to pursue our needs as best we know how. We die, succeeding or failing, but debtless. We owe ourselves life. We owe others nothing."

She had never tested these ideas aloud before and now, finished, she wondered if they were true and accurate. In some cases, surely. But always? She didn't know. But she felt sure it was his need and had delivered the words as gift, risking accuracy that his mind might be eased. Had she been right to do so? She looked to him for answer, assurance or penalty. But he didn't move or look.

So she added this: "Jase, people don't give to others for the benefit of others. They give because they need to give, require it for nourishment. I don't love you so that you might be happy. I love you that I might be happy. It is my needs that I satisfy. That's the only way life works. And so it is with your family. They brought you into this world, raised you, for their benefit. Not that you might have life, but that they might have a better life. They took from you, not you from them. You owe them nothing. No explanation. Nothing."

She saw now that what she said was true and was absolved of earlier doubt, implicit guilt. But did he agree? Understand? Hear?

He turned his head, facing her from the grayness of the bed, and said, "What if it is my need, my obligation to myself, to justify my actions to injured parties?"

She had not anticipated this. He had never spoken of his guilt. She saw her only answer. "I hope the need to maintain our happiness is greater in you than the need to justify it."

He rolled over, his face to the pillow.

She rose quietly and went to clear the table.

The next day he was servicing a well. He finished the task of greasing joints and tightening bolts and sat down for the others to return in the truck, his back against the well.

It was an extremely clear day, the sun intense, the air cold. The snow-covered slopes of the Wind River Range, over fifty miles away, were as sharply defined against the blue as if he sat at their base. He looked across the vast plain, the sandy soil spotted with sagebrush, the mountains rising in the west, the endless sky beyond. There was peace mirrored in the vastness, comfort in open expanse. He relaxed, at ease for the first time in nearly twenty-four hours.

A rumbling truck called him from his rest.

That night he lay atop her, both spent and still panting from their release. He rolled off her and lay on his back. She leaned over and kissed his cheek, but he showed no reaction. She waited then asked, "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why this gloom after what we just shared?"

He took a deep breath and asked (the ceiling, not Lois), "Is there nothing more?"

She misread his words. "How would I know? Whatever I know, I learned from you."

He laughed at her misunderstanding. "No, I don't mean sex. I mean life. Is this alone can expect?" He cast a dim arc with his arm—Lois, the trailer, the company, the dark land resting beneath stars.

"Jase, look at what we have—each other, love, freedom, comfort. You wave your arm and brush all that away like it was crumbs on a table. I've laid awake countless nights, walked more dark fields and woods than you'll ever know, searching, hoping for just this chance. I waited. We both waited. And now we have it, you ask, 'Is that all?' What more could you possibly want?"

He was silent.

"Jase, you're wrong! You've not seen what I've seen. This world is a lonely place. All dreams, no realizations. Hunger and searching everywhere. But there is peace to be found—in mutual love, in exchanges like we just shared. You need not search beyond this bed. I will take all you can offer and give in kind. Our love is not the best answer, it is the only answer."

No response.

"Do you believe me?"

"I guess. I don't know."

She sighed quietly then leaned over and kissed him. "I love you."

"Sure."

When he finally fell asleep, he dreamed this: A room, no door, a lone window too small for exit. Images of his mother, pale ghosts from the past, floating about. And Lois, invisible, speaking unintelligible words from the dark. Desperate, he ran for the window, the lone source of light. And saw a broad plain, mountains hard in the distance, sky.

He fell beyond dreaming into empty sleep.

It was December. And winter. The snow and cold often closed down the company, leaving Jase long days in the trailer. Lois was working several days a week in a nearby diner to enhance their faltering income. This alleviated financial problems but left Jase alone feeling useless and bored.

A week before Christmas they sat silent over dinner. Six inches of snow the previous night had left Jase at home and alone, Lois working at the diner. She arrived home to find him moody and quiet, and he said little before or during dinner. Then he broke his silence.

"I'm going home for Christmas."

"What?"

"To see my family."

"How can you do that?"

"Company'd be glad to give me a week off. Never work anyways. And I've got a little money saved. Enough for gas there and back."

"And me?"

"You gotta work."

"And you'll leave me alone?"

"I need to see my family, settle what was never settled."

"Jase, assuming you get your car two thousand miles over winter roads, how are you going to approach them? What answers can you provide? Whatever their reaction was, the wound is healed and your return will only reopen their hurt."

"I can call and prepare them."

"You are avoiding the question. Why now? What good will it do?"

"I'm not doing any good around here."

She was suddenly very frightened. "And me? You'll just leave me here?"

"It's only a few days."

"Jase, you don't understand. When I agreed to meet you that night, I swore to myself that I would never spend another night alone. Three years was enough. No more. Not a week. Not a day."

"You're being foolish."

"You left your family for me. Don't reverse that now. You'll only hurt yourself. And you'll kill me." She stared at him and he turned away.

"I'm going. I have to."

"You'll kill me."

He rose from the table. "It will be alright." But he was not at all sure this was true. It just seemed like the right thing to say.

"You're wrong." She spoke to his receding back.

He awoke early, the dawn bright, the sky blue. The roads would be clear and the day held no threat of storm.

He looked to Lois and saw her staring at him, fully awake. He smiled and ran his hand along her cheek.

"Don't go."

He sighed.

She stared a moment then turned away.

At dawn the following day he was halfway to his family. The weather and the roads had been clear and he'd made good time, driving all night.

He avoided thinking while driving, turning himself into the mindless steering device he'd often used on tractors while working the fields. But now he sat in a truck stop, breakfast before him, sun pouring through the tall windows, truck motors humming beyond. He thought of his family, his destination. He still hadn't called. He rose and went to the pay phone, giving the operator the number and depositing the change. It rang three times, then he heard his mother's voice. "Hello." It was distant and sad (he'd expected that), but also forbidding, unyielding. And the words he'd prepared stuck in his throat. She said "hello" twice more then waited, her breathing, a thousand miles distant, clear and slow. He hung up and listened to his money click through the phone's hidden channels.

He stood, his mind blank, his body frozen, and waited instinct's guidance. He deposited more change and this time avoided the operator and dialed the number of his trailer phone, Lois waiting. He recognized the sporadic purr of their phone and waited for her to answer. But there was no answer. Seven, then ten rings. He hung up and was halfway back to his table when his change finally trickled into the return slot.

What he had not expected but felt now was an overwhelming sense of freedom, relief from obligation, unlimited potential in the future. He paid his bill and left the diner.

Driving without any destination, he saw a sign reading Points South. That was it. South. He took the turn, the new road wide and straight before him.

That night, the car parked in a rest area:

A woman's voice. "Have you found it?"

"Yes."

"What?"

"My life. What I once asked you for. I have found it."

"And your life—what is it?"

"Freedom. Space to fly."

A pause. A trailer truck passing in the night.

Then, "Fool. No freedom. Just loneliness, a lifelong prison."

"Why?"

No answer.

"Please, tell me why?"

He woke himself with his cries and lay still, the car's metal cool about him, the tires of a distant truck singing into silence.

7

To reward himself for getting the Cosgrove package in the mail yesterday, to fill the sudden yawning vacuum of free time, and to distract himself from worrying and wondering about the safety and destiny of his stories now released to the post office, Cosgrove, the world (he recalled his ambivalence and timidity on the release of the pheasants he'd hatched in the incubator and nurtured to adulthood—knowing each one by sight and naming most—into the fields and woods of the farm, and tried to ignore the fact that almost all of those pen-raised birds had met an untimely and often brutal end), Zach treated himself to an early season Red Sox game, a rare weekday afternoon game played in the warm sun and cool breezes of April at the recently refurbished Fenway Park. At that time, you could still get a general admission bleacher seat on the day of the game and, if you walked to the stadium and denied the temptation to indulge in the high-priced beers or hotdogs, enjoy a full afternoon of the twin entertainments playing out on the field and in the stands all for the price of admission—$2.50. (Zach considered this bargain the best kept secret in town if not in the whole world, and took advantage of the opportunity every chance he got, almost always attending alone though occasionally with one of his car-parker buddies or a basketball teammate who happened to be free on a weekday afternoon.)

Despite the pretty afternoon and the fact that the Red Sox's star pitcher, the charismatic showman Luis Tiant, would be making his first start of the season, the centerfield bleachers were nearly empty when he arrived forty-five minutes before game time, with small clusters of fans—fraternity brothers, dads with sons, military personnel on leave, an office clan or two playing hooky—scattered randomly across the broad sloping plain of green-painted, slatted wooden seats. Zach lifted his eyes and scanned across the playing field from the tunnel entrance to the bleacher seating. The sight took his breath away. Everything was so vivid—the brilliant green grass, the rich rust-color of the warning track and the infield, the deep blue of the reserved box seats, the blinding white of the uniforms of Dewey Evans, Jim Rice, and Freddie Lynn playing lazy catch on the outfield grass with its checkerboard shading. Far below, at the bottom of the bleachers, a small crowd of schoolboys were jostling one another, leaning over the railing and extending game-day programs, baseballs, gloves down into the hidden bullpen. Sporadic shouts of "Luis, Luis" caught in the breeze and made it up to where he was standing, and he knew Tiant was warming up down there, saw in his mind's eye the 180-degree twirl of his wind-up that showed the batter the numbers on the back of his uniform before spinning and delivering his trademark fastball (with somewhat less giddy-up now, at age thirty-seven) or his lazy looping change-up that seemed to hang in the air for a week before dropping across the plate for a letter-high strike. "Luis, Luis," Zach said, repeating the wind-born chant. He stepped out of the shadowed tunnel into the full sun and sauntered to a large section of empty seats near the exact center of the bleachers, where he sat and made himself a temporary home.

The game played out in its normal order—introductions, National Anthem, warm-up, start, inning cycles of greater or shorter duration—and the bleacher fans (somewhat more numerous by game time but never crowded) meandered about and acted out their requisite sideshow of boos and cheers, catcalls and bare-chested (an entire group of a dozen college boys shed their shirts and exposed their pale skin to the sun and the crowd) Tarzan thumping, sloshed beer and wolfed stadium dogs. It was late in the game, with the Sox comfortably ahead 7 – 4, and Zach had all but given up on witnessing the sort of fan fight that had enlivened all his former bleacher outings, when some guy with a crewcut and a Marine's tan uniform made what he would later claim was a compliment regarding the shapely breasts encased in the scanty halter top of a woman seated amidst a group of long-haired, scraggly bearded, bare-shouldered men in black leather vests. And that took care of Zach's desire for a sun-splashed brawl to spice up the afternoon's proceedings, as beers were tossed and a few noses bloodied when the bikers punched and wrestled the Marines to a draw before security broke it up and dragged the whole crowd—nearly ten percent of the bleacher audience—kicking and shouting out of the stadium (which is when Zach heard the guy who'd started it all tell an unsympathetic cop, "I meant it as a compliment—she really does have beautiful tits"). The Red Sox closed out the win (though not without a few anxious moments, as the Brewers closed the margin to one run and had runners on first and third before the final groundout to short) and the sun fell behind the flashing Citgo sign and Zach's afternoon and expectations were complete.

The remarkable development of this day, which Zach mulled over as he weaved his way through the triple-thick crowd of pedestrians simultaneously exiting the game, work, and class, was that for the first time he had felt completely at home in a public venue in the city. True, he'd carefully established and maintained a perimeter of a few yards of unoccupied space around him throughout the game (when a drunk girl and her leering date flopped down two seats away, he'd nonchalantly stood during the next mid-inning stretch and moved three seats down the row). And he'd not spoken to anyone the entire time and only occasionally joined the crowd in standing or cheering (though he did join in every chant of "Luis, Luis, Luis" and would hear it in his head for days to come). But these exclusions aside, vestiges of his former self-imposed isolation, Zach acknowledged with a mix of surprise and grudging satisfaction, that he'd not once felt estranged from the twenty-thousand-plus others gathered around him or intimidated by the anonymous peering of a closed-circuit T.V. audience. He could be one with the city—participate in its pleasures without fearing its encroachment or assault—at least on certain occasions, at least this one time. He couldn't help but wonder if the place had changed or if he had, and if the change were temporary or permanent.

Yet, at the same time, he was acutely aware that as he weaved through the jammed sidewalks his arms were tight to his sides, his whole body shrunk inward to avoid incidental and potentially confrontational contact; and that he was constantly glancing around him, ever vigilant to danger or threat. And he noted with both relief and disappointment how much he relaxed on crossing Mass. Ave. and entering the uncongested open space of the Comm. Ave. mall, a relief and a relaxation that lasted a short distance until an obviously gay middle-aged man nodded and smiled invitingly as he strolled past just west of Hereford. That subtle and, by any objective reckoning, harmless gesture clouded the rest of Zach's walk home and caused him to forget his recent and hard-earned sense of belonging to a city that was, truth be told, equally balanced between welcome and rejection, was in fact utterly indifferent to the battle being waged for his soul.

8

Allison sat by herself at the breakroom table looking blankly at the cream-colored Formica top splotched with coffee stains and a crescent-shaped pink smear of unknown origin or risk (to her shirt sleeve, to her health). She spun the can of cola slowly around in her loosely cupped hands, the sweat of condensation glazing her fingertips. She didn't know what to think, so she didn't think about anything—always the safest option, her default option in the midst of emotional uncertainty and challenge. She had this pause in her workday, this soft drink to occupy her. When the can was empty, she'd return to work. That was as far afield as her mind needed to go, or wanted to.

But then the world has this tendency to insinuate itself into one's stripped bare simplifications, and on its own terms and timetable.

Matt rushed into what he thought was an empty breakroom, slipped his coins into the drink machine on the far wall, punched his favored key, and caught the cold can in its slot as it came clamoring down. He was two quick strides into a return to his duties when something—her scent? her spirit's disquiet? she knew she didn't move or breathe—caused him to look over his shoulder and discover her sitting in the far corner. His mindless momentum actually carried him one more step toward the door before he stopped suddenly as if jolted awake then turned his beautiful body cased in those dark blue coveralls and shined those eyes on her.

"Allison," he said with a huge smile of what must've been genuine joy or the world's best imitation, "I haven't seen you in so long I figured they'd exiled you to 'past dues'." Past dues was an in-house joke of where management sent an employee that was negligent or overly rebellious (there was no such department). Matt set aside whatever tasks were calling and walked across the room to take a seat opposite her at the table.

She watched him the whole way—his image fuzzy, as in a dream—but didn't return his greeting.

He carefully avoided the pink smear on the table. "What happened—Barbie throw-up?"

Allison couldn't help but laugh, clearing her vision. "Morning sickness."

"Uh-oh," he said. "Trouble for Ken."

"Yeah, and them not married—poor Barbie. I'd throw-up pink too."

"Just give me fair warning."

"I will, if it ever happens."

"Where you been?"

"Around. Working. Doing what they pay me to do."

"That's good to hear. I thought maybe you were sick or something." He knew this wasn't true, as the time clock was just outside the maintenance office and he'd checked her card almost every day.

"No, just busy."

"Good. I was worried you were avoiding me because of what I told you."

"What?"

"About my mom."

"Oh, no, Matt. I wouldn't avoid you because of that. I was so sorry, am so sorry, about that."

He looked down at the table, Barbie's vomit. "I needed to tell someone."

"I'm thankful you did. And please believe me, I wouldn't avoid you because of that. I want to help." Quite without thinking she reached her hand across the narrow table and touched his knuckles loosely holding his drink.

He glanced up at her with sad but grateful eyes, those eyes that were for her the edge of a cliff.

Just then the door behind her—the back entrance, from the management hall—swung open and Ian stood above them, less than five feet away, as startled by their sudden proximity as they. In under a second—before Matt could see it, almost before Allison did—Ian replaced his frown with a neutral grin.

Allison jerked her hand back to her side of the table, grabbed her near empty can as if pulled by a powerful magnet.

He stepped up to the table. "What you do—pull a fire alarm?" He waved across the empty room.

"Nobody has time for a break," Allison countered. "Because you're working them so hard."

"And what about you?"

"I stopped listening to you long ago."

"Yeah, I know," Ian said, leaving a long pause before adding, "About the day you started." He sat in the chair between them and turned to Matt. "Long time, no see."

"Been a while."

"Sorry about your mom."

Matt nodded. "Thanks for the card. It meant a lot."

"No problem. Let me know if there's anything I can do."

"Thanks. I will."

Ian turned to Allison. "Zach get his manuscript off?"

Allison was surprised by the question and briefly drew a blank. Then she nodded slowly. "Yesterday."

"You read it?"

"Not yet."

Ian looked to Matt. "Did you know Allison's husband wrote fiction?"

Matt shook his head.

"He does. And I bet it's good, but that rascal won't let me read it either. Anyway, he's discovered this writer that teaches in North Carolina and he just loves this guy's work, won't shut up about it. So he sent him some of his stories to see what he thinks—a big step for him, isn't it Allison?"

"Yeah, a big step," Allison said dryly.

"What's his name?" Matt asked.

"Zach," Ian said.

"No, the writer in North Carolina?"

"Something Barton," Ian said.

"Barton Cosgrove," Allison said.

"That's it. The guy with two last names."

"Never heard of him," Matt said.

"Nobody around here has," Ian said. "But according to Zach, he's not only well known nationally but the best writer since Shakespeare, the cat's meow. Isn't that right, Allison?"

"The cat's meow."

"Well, good luck to your husband on sending off his manuscript," Matt said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster.

"Thanks," she said then stood suddenly. "I've got to get back to work."

"Don't leave so soon," Ian complained. "You'll give me a complex."

"My super will give me hell."

"Not a chance, nice guy like that."

"He already has," she said and left without looking back.

Ian looked at Matt after the door had fallen shut. "Wonder what got into her?"

"Can't imagine."

Dark in the City

And one day I was walking.

Blue sky. Bright sun. Pleasant breeze.

And I walked the asphalt maze.

Buildings hard and tall. Pavement stiff, warm. Noise. People.

City life.

And I walked.

And there was a sill. A concrete sill beneath a plate-glass window of a high-rise.

But there is more: On this sill, resting in the afternoon sun, there was a cross. That's right. A cross. A small metal cross with an inlaid silver figure. A silver Christ on a bronze cross resting on a stone sill beneath a tall window of a taller building in the sun. What a strange thing.

And I reached out and touched the cross. Just lightly. I touched it. And I ran my finger over its smooth sides and its silver inlay. And it was just metal. A cross, yes. But just metal.

And I stood there a moment and felt it and then moved my hand and leaned on the sill and looked at the cross. The concrete was smooth and hard.

And I thought—Take it. Luck. But good or bad? And how?

Then I turned and walked on. And left the cross there, on the sill, beneath the window, of the building, in the sun.

And I walked.

And as I walked, my face was to the sun. Yet my shadow was before me. And I looked and my shadow was behind me also. And I turned and saw the sun perfectly reflected off a glass skyscraper. And there were two suns of equal intensity.

And there were two shadows. One before. One after.

And they met at a point. At a single point in the universe those two shadows met. And that point was I.

And the one shadow grows at the other's expense.

And the cross lies naked on the sill.

9

The first week Zach didn't expect to hear anything, just passed the time in a waking daze perfectly balanced between fear and hope, a taut tightrope walk that actually left him feeling very alive and attentive to the world around him. No letter in their slim mail slot through the second week prompted a gradual but inevitable tilt toward doubt—of the world, of himself. By the time a month had passed, Zach had abandoned all hope. Allison and Ian and anyone else he burdened with his sad tale came up with all manner of benign excuses for Cosgrove's silence. But all those explanations (and he'd crafted countless additional ones within his secret heart), benign or otherwise, added up to the same realization—silence marked a crushing dead end, an unyielding brick wall into which the vehicle of his speeding hopes (Zach now perceived it in that metaphor—a car with its lights off speeding down a dark and deserted road) smashed into a thousand sparkling fragments, his hopes turned to the finest, most fragile crystal just before they shattered and were gone.

Six weeks out, he'd lost even that romantic metaphor as salve for his disappointment. Summer was coming on. His utter lack of purpose or physical demands (to affirm his purpose, and more importantly make him tired at the end of the day, with some chance at sleep) stood in sharp contrast to the endless demands of planting and first-cutting hay that had defined every spring and early summer of his life till now, activities that he knew were unfolding just a hundred miles away, that he envisioned in great detail and longing every day.

Lying in bed in that damned half-dark (the half-dark of the damned: eternally trapped between full sight and sweet blindness) and sweating under the assault of unseasonable heat and humidity, no hint of breeze ruffling the gauze curtains hanging in front of their open windows, Zach on his back said to the ceiling (not Allison, awake beside him on her back, no part of her touching any part of him), "I'm going to Wyoming for a while."

He'd been sliding downhill so precipitously these last few weeks, she expected some dramatic and reckless choice, had been bracing herself for days. But she never would've guessed this. Despite her surprise, her response rose without the least moment's pause or reflection. "I can't go."

"I know. I wasn't asking you to."

"What will you do?"

"Pete will give me work on the sheep ranch. If he doesn't, I'll find work on some other ranch. One thing I know how to do is physical labor, and I don't need much pay—just room and board. Hell, don't even need the room part. I can sleep in the truck."

"How long?"

"Long as it takes."

"For what?"

"To get my life back."

"And us?"

The oppressive heat weighted the long silence, pressed it down on them both.

"Zach, am I a part of that life?"

"Of course."

"Then why are you running two thousand miles away?"

"I'm not running."

"Then what is it?"

"Saving my life."

"By putting me aside?"

"Sparing you."

"Sparing me what?"

"Witness."

She suddenly understood his meaning, knew she should be grateful for this release. But she was still reeling from his unilateral and non-negotiable decision (she knew not to try to dissuade him) and refused to concede his choice without some resistance. "As if leaving me alone indefinitely is sparing me anything."

"It's what I have to do."

"Thanks for asking."

He lay in the spreading pool of her sarcasm, unflinching for fifteen minutes, a half hour, an hour. Somewhere during that pause, Allison's silent breathing became faintly audible; and he knew she was finally asleep. He was happy for her rest, knew how much she hated sleepless nights and the price they exacted on her work and body the next day. Let her sleep, he thought and wished. It's the best chance she has at understanding his hard choice which just now didn't seem hard at all, seemed to carry the natural force and ease of Fate's calling—"Go West, young man; go West!"

But sleep for him was still a long, long ways away; and lying here on sweaty sheets till dawn took the half-dark away would be torture. He slid out of bed, slipped on shorts, a T-shirt, flip-flops; and went out the door and down the stairs.

On their stoop the air was noticeably cooler and fresher, and a light breeze blessed this side of the building that was nowhere to be found or felt round back, least not anywhere near their open windows. He'd not expected such immediate rewards to his choice of flight and felt his taut muscles relax as his damp skin—the exposed portions anyway—started to dry.

There were no walkers out this late but an occasional car—cabbies, cops, other insomniacs—passed, headed west toward Mass. Ave. He waited till the road was totally clear, far as he could see in both directions, then jogged across to the mall. He had no strong urge to walk and certainly nowhere to go (even the bars were shut this late on a weeknight and besides he hadn't brought his wallet). So he sat on the bench directly in front of and facing their building, at the middle of the mall along the paved path.

He slowly looked all about him with eyes not full awake but not sleepy either, eyes seeing in a manner different than before—looked far as he could see toward Arlington then back the other way toward Mass. Ave., looked at the trees in fresh leaf, at the grass just starting to grow, looked up and down the path, looked at the bench, its wooden slats fresh-painted Kelly-green just last week, a green that looked slate gray in the gray dark. He didn't know what he was looking for, had no idea; but it was exactly at such moments—unlikely times of the day, unfamiliar places, new angles of sight—that he generally stumbled on his most profound visions, his freshest insights. But none tonight, despite his last two months, his last few hours, perhaps because of those freighted moments and travels. His eyes were tired, his inner vision weak and wearied—no perception rendered, no new perspective granted. He looked straight ahead at their four-story brick building, the steps leading up to the front door. It wasn't much but it was home; and it housed his sleeping wife, his two cats, the trappings of what they'd made these last nine months. It was home. And it held his sleeping wife, safe and at rest (neither condition of his doing; in fact, both despite the disorder he brought to her life). Allison safe and at rest in the building before his eyes.

He shut those eyes and drifted off into the calmest, deepest peace he'd been granted for weeks.

Into the stillness that was that empty night, draped in the damp warm fetid air looming over this flat ground that had been a marsh, an estuary birthing life for eons before being filled and reshaped as this—monuments to themselves—just a few blinks ago, God sat on the bench beside this lonely man, helpless child really, trying to see what he saw, trying to understand what would drive him from his bed and chosen mate, only chance at solace, out into this desert. All the others or almost all clung to their known holdings so tight they knotted their muscles and strangled their cherished only to see those possessions that were never really possessed taken away, slowly or in a flash, gone. But this one not only didn't strangle those gifts—as numerous for him as any, more than most—but pushed them away, and ran the harder and the farther if they came back, got close. Why? What did he see? What did he fear? What was he running from? Toward?

God from this bench looked up and down the block of buildings, crafted of brick and stone and concrete, admired their creators' ingenuity even if he regretted that they'd forgotten to love—that which they'd made but more importantly the act of making, both bold and reckless (what if what they'd made loved back? or didn't?). He looked over the broad thoroughfare, glanced at the trees stretching their limbs to the stars, to their wish for him. He looked with human sight and he looked with divine sight, and he couldn't for the life of him—life that was everything, the arms enfolding all time and space—see what this man saw, know his fears or plumb his longing. He would come to know the answer at the same rate as this child, at the same rate as the rest of the world that bothered to watch this singular drama that might be tragic or might be heroic, played out in its due time, all its order and disarray.

And with the knowledge that he couldn't know (barred again by will or, worse, folly), God left Zach to his lonely peace.

Wyoming

Zach dreamed he watched from afar, standing on a shallow rise in the sage desert looking down over the valley below—more sage brush, a rutted trail threading its way along the bottom. On that trail and all on foot a small entourage marched in solemn order—single-file and at a slow and reverent pace. As they neared, he saw that Allison led the train dressed in a loose robe that at first appeared black but then he saw was a deep burgundy dark as her hair that was gathered in a tight bun at the base of her skull, a hair style he'd never seen on her before. Behind at evenly spaced intervals of two or three strides followed women and girls, some he recognized—Mary three back, Lori (maid of honor at their wedding) five back, Zach's sister Sandy near the end of the procession—but most he didn't know, all dressed in loose robes of varying shades of somber colors, none of those colors as deep and rich as Allison's robe, all grays and browns and charcoal. The last woman in the procession—he couldn't see her face for the hood she wore, but thought he recognized her stride, the stately measured movements—carried a bundle she held forth in pale hands, held not up but out, her elbows locked at her waist, the loose sleeves of her black robe contrasting the pale pink bundle she held.

Allison passed directly below him—not that far away: he could've shouted and she would've heard, she could've glanced up and she would've seen. But she passed without seeing him, on around a bend in the trail and out of sight. And all the rest passed below, none looking up and he silent. Then the last came, the one with the bundle and the hood. She paused directly below and looked up with a featureless face shadowed within the hood, held the bundle up to him, the crying baby.

Zach woke in a terrified sweat. He recalled Allison's words the night before he left: "My period's late." And his annoyed response, "Your period's always late." He'd figured she was either trying to delay his departure or, more likely, bequeathing him with a parting worry to carry with him on his journey. Well, he'd have none of it. He'd sweated out previous delays in the onset of her period countless times, only to have that delayed and prayed for period arrive each time at the moment of its choosing or hers. Then, last fall, after his own hormones and life's needs had planted in him a longing for a child—a longing that her period not arrive, be replaced by a pregnancy—she'd rejected that request without discussion—her body, her choice.

So her news the night before his leaving—casually presented over a dinner of baked chicken and rice—seemed to him weighted with all sorts of nuances beyond the obvious. Or not—maybe Allison was just saying something to pass the time, offering a scrap of idle information to bring him up to date: the checkbook is balanced, the rent's paid, the cats got their shots, my period's late. Whatever her reasons—and even she probably couldn't say why—he'd dismissed it then (perhaps with more insensitivity than he intended) and suppressed it since—not worth worrying about now, with all his other challenges and changes looming.

Clearly his unconscious hadn't let it go. But was the dream really about the delayed onset of Allison's period, or about wanting a child, or about leaving Allison (he wouldn't label it abandonment or separation—didn't see it as such, just a little time apart for him to clear his head and get his bearings), or about the larger questions of contingency and obligation versus independence and isolation. These thoughts swirled about in his mind in the aftermath of the dream, doubled back on themselves, settled into an entangled jumble, no answer apparent. But he already knew that—had visited these and similar life questions so often in recent months that he knew enough not to expect an answer, doubted one would ever come. But these disjointed musings had at least served one purpose—they'd slowed his heart that had been racing in the wake of the vivid dream.

He took a few deep breaths then sat up on the truck's mattress. He pulled the three blankets (every one he had packed) more tightly around his shoulders against the cold. He slid one hand out of that cocoon of warmth and wiped a small opening in the dense condensation on the side window. The sage prairie stretched away into the absolute dark, the only separation between sky and land the twinkling of those infinite stars above, the land black below. The stars shared just enough light for him to make out the sheepwagon about ten feet away, its curved tin roof glowing darkly in that starlight. He'd hoped to find some consolation in that one man-made structure in all this divinely shaped eternity and infinity. But the sheepwagon seemed a frail and shaky mooring for his ego under assault by the dream and now all this open space and indifferent dark, was a reminder of all the failures of human endeavor on this vast stage—sheepherders long since departed and probably dead, hunters and hikers passing by on their way to somewhere better, he and Allison chased away just last year: everybody gone on to their lives or hopes, leaving him to fight this war alone.

He lay back down on the mattress, pulled the blankets over his head (to preserve his heat, he told himself), and was glad his few days alone out here on the Sweetwater River would be over tomorrow when he went to sheepcamp to help Pete with docking the twenty-five hundred newborn lambs.

2

The one ewe found a gap in their line and ran toward it, trailed by her bleating lamb.

Through the dust and the noise and the chaos of the furiously milling swarm of five hundred ewes and their five hundred two-month-old lambs trying to resist the five men on foot and the two on horses and the one in the pick-up and their four dogs all striving to move this unruly formless mass toward the funnel-shaped corral of slatted snow fence they'd set up at the end of the shallow draw the day before, Zach spotted this escapee and left his place in the perimeter to head her off. Despite the ewe's short legs and round body, she flew across the sandy and uneven terrain, weaving through clumps of sagebrush and shallow gullies with startling speed, her lamb close behind. By contrast, Zach kept stumbling over brush and branches and rocks, barely able to keep upright and losing ground to the speedy ewe. He changed direction in mid-stride and ran fast as he could toward a point of interception at the crest of the hill. If he couldn't stop her there, she'd be gone for good. Just as he began to get ahead of her, had almost reached the point where he might turn her back, was running and huffing and waving his arms, a small rock gave way beneath his boot and sent him sprawling face first in the dry gravel.

He quickly rolled over, spitting out grit from his mouth and brushing the sand from his sleeves and pants. From the ground he saw first the fleeing ewe and her lamb over the crest of the hill and beyond his capture. Then he looked back over his shoulder. All five hundred ewes and their trailing lambs—the entire dust-coated, cacophonous, formerly shapeless mass—had assumed shape and direction and was pointed toward the spot in the line he'd recently vacated to chase the errant ewe. He looked on in terror as the herd streamed out of the hole he'd left, the place in the line he'd been charged with anchoring.

Suddenly Vince, the Mexican camp foreman, riding Shifty, the roan horse that ate the dogs' food when they weren't looking, flew past not ten feet away, Vince's lasso rope raised high, his broad-brimmed hat flying out behind his head, bits of foam flying off the bit in Wiley's mouth. And immediately behind Vince and Shifty came Wino, the scruffy dun-colored mutt with one blind eye, and Billy, the black and white border collie with a torn ear, running full tilt low to the ground, their tongues hanging out, their eyes (the three seeing ones, anyway) focused on turning the renegade herd.

Zach sat up on the dirt and simply watched, too startled and shaken to do anything else. Vince pointed the horse straight toward the lead ewe, and together they turned her. Without a word or signal that Zach could discern, Wino went left and Billy right of Vince, Wino racing ahead to keep the rest of the herd following behind the turned ewe, and Billy intercepting the lead ewe and completing the turn, heading her now back in the direction from which she'd come, the entire herd curling around behind her lead, pouring back through the gap in the perimeter they'd so recently exited, the re-established order of the mass belying the disorder just averted.

With the paired dogs trotting back and forth behind the herd, ably filling the hole in the line Zach had left, Vince circled Shifty back toward Zach, bringing the horse alongside Zach still seated on the ground. Vince smiled down on him and reached out his hand to help him up.

Zach shook his head and stood on his own, brushing his pants off and looking at the ground. "Sorry, Vince."

Vince shook his head. "Good horse, much good dogs—we get them no trouble."

Zach looked up finally. Vince, backlit by the morning sun, looked like a radiant god on his winged horse. "I tried to head off the one."

"Look," Vince said and waved toward the crest of the near hill.

Zach turned. The ewe he'd set off chasing was walking cautiously back toward the herd, her lamb close beside her. As he watched, Wino left the herd under Billy's guard and made a wide circle to get behind the ewe then patiently closed the gap till he had the ewe and her lamb trotting back toward the herd that was now moving in the direction of the corral.

Zach shook his head in wonder and said, as much to himself as to Vince, "Easy to see who's smarter out here."

"Good horse, much good dogs—"

"—we get them no trouble," Zach finished.

Vince nodded. "You betcha!"

Zach smiled and headed back down the hill toward the herd now streaming into the corral.

Vince yipped to Shifty then whistled for Wino and the three—man, horse, dog—departed in a sudden blur of motion and puff of dust.

Once the herd was inside the three-sided corral, Zach helped Vince and the three other laborers Pete had brought with him from town (two Arapaho Indians named Tony and Henry off the reservation that surrounded Riverton and one white high school kid named Jake) closed off the open end of the corral by rolling out more slatted fencing and driving metal posts every ten feet or so to anchor it. Then they all took a short break to catch their breath and let the herd in the pen, still uneasy at all the commotion and milling around with the lambs bleating incessantly and their mothers calling in return in a ceaseless chorus, calm down a little.

Pete pulled his pick-up alongside the docking board—a sixteen-foot-long 2 x 12 board mounted atop a section of horizontal board fencing at one end of the corral—and started unloading supplies for the docking sequence.

Zach walked over and helped him drag supplies out of the truck bed.

"You looked like O.J. sprinting after that ewe."

"Kind of screwed up."

"Can't fault your effort."

"Should of let her go."

Pete stepped in front of him and blocked his path to the docking board. "Whoa."

Zach was forced to take his eyes off the ground and look at the barrel-chested man with the reflector sunglasses and the big-rimmed cowboy hat, nearly a foot shorter than him but looking all the world like an unmovable mountain out here on his ranch, his prairie. "Keep me another day?" he asked with genuine contrition.

"Keep you? That face first dive you took will have me chuckling for a week."

"Glad to keep you amused."

"Hell, if you east-coasters didn't screw up now and again, us ranchers would have no excuse to feel all high and mighty."

"And we sure wouldn't want that to happen."

"Hell no."

Pete stepped aside and together they finished unloading the truck.

Before they could begin the docking sequence, the ewes had to be separated from the lambs and moved out of the corral. This chaotic sorting was accomplished with Zach and the other three laborers inside the pen working together—that is, trying to work together—to separate the ewes from the lambs and driving the ewes toward one corner of the corral where Vince, backed by his two dogs sitting in ready reserve, controlled the gate—opening it to release the ewes back onto the prairie, keeping it closed anytime a lamb approached. At first the sorting was a challenge because there were so many animals and it was difficult to see the lambs amongst the crowded ewes. Later, as the number of ewes dwindled, the challenge came with trying to keep the panicky lambs away from the gate and the fewer and fewer ewes away from the several hundred lambs. When they just couldn't corner the last ewe—a crafty and nimble five-year-old—Vince grabbed his rope and lassoed her as she sprinted past then turned and dragged her by main force out the gate.

With the ewes all removed, they herded the two hundred fifty or so lambs into the narrow end of the corral, with the docking board to one side, and pulled more slatted fencing across the narrow end of the funnel to form a square pen about thirty feet on a side. This small pen was slam full of tiny white lambs all bleating loudly, many piled atop each other in the corners, some running about wildly.

Pete put one booted foot atop the rail beneath the docking board and swung his bulky body into the pen as nimbly as gymnast. He called Zach and the other laborers inside and the five of them stood amidst the ever moving, dust-coated sea of white wool.

Pete thrust his arm out and grabbed a passing lamb around its stomach with one meaty hand. As he swung the lamb toward his body, he grabbed the front and hind legs on its left side with his free hand then slid his other hand off the lamb's stomach and secured the front and hind legs of the other side. He held the now immobilized and upside-down lamb forward for them to see. "Both left legs in your left hand," he said, and held up those legs in that hand for them to see. "Both right legs in your right," he said, holding those legs forth. "Hold them tight or they'll kick like hell and get free. But not too tight or you might break a bone or bust a tendon." He held the lamb out to Zach.

Zach reached for the paired legs in mirror reverse—his left hand to Pete's right.

Pete shook his head. "Left hand, left legs; right hand, right. That way, when you flip them back side down, their head is toward your waist, their butt toward the docking rail."

Zach went alongside Pete and grabbed the lamb's right legs with is right hand, the left with his left. Pete let go and the lamb suddenly sprung to life, its legs kicking furiously, its back snaking from side to side, its head rolling around and its mouth releasing a mournful plea. Outside the pen, from fifty yards away, a ewe came running towards him, bleating in a panic to match the cries of its lamb. Zach lost hold of the left hind leg but wouldn't let go despite being kicked several times on his wrist and arm.

"Tight," Pete said, "but not too tight."

Zach finally caught the free leg and circled it with his long fingers. After what seemed an eternity, the lamb went limp and hung upside-down in his hands, its head loose and floppy at his waist, its tongue hanging out of its panting and exhausted mouth. Its mother paced back and forth just outside the fence, glaring at Zach with bloodshot eyes and bleating for its lamb. Zach felt sorry for both the lamb and the ewe, but also proud to be holding the lamb securely and, apparently, in the proper manner for docking.

Pete nodded. "A natural."

Santi, the old Basque herder with the shaved head standing on the far side of the docking rail, said, "And from Boss-town."

Pete winked to Zach. "Might be able to make something out of this east-coaster yet, Santi."

"Yeah, Boss," Santi replied.

"Boss-town," Zach said, holding the lamb out both gingerly and firmly, like a sacred offering.

"Let's dock," Pete said and swung himself up and out of the pen.

The word docking referred to the ancient practice of cutting off most of the newborn sheep's long tail with a red-hot, sharp-edged iron that simultaneously cauterized the cut. Removing most of the tail reduced the chance of infection or disease from accumulated feces on the rump and, more importantly, kept the valuable wool unstained. However, on the modern sheep ranch, docking referred to a series of procedures performed on lambs old enough and strong enough to survive the trauma but not so old or strong as to risk injury to themselves or their handlers during the strenuous process.

In the case of Pete's herd, the lambs were eight to ten weeks old and the docking sequence included: injecting all lambs with a broad-spectrum vaccine (Santi loaded the syringe from a vial and stuck the needle in the lambs thigh); castrating the male lambs by making a small slit in the scrotum, popping the bean-sized testes out of the sack, and biting them off with one's incisor teeth (Pete performed this honorable task—spitting the severed glands into a bucket of salted water for later cooking); notching the ears of the ewe lambs (also Pete's job—the ewes would be kept for wool and future breeding, the castrated young rams would be sold for meat); then docking (Vince cutting the tails and tending the fire with the three irons kept buried in the white-hot coals) and branding with indelible blue die (also Vince) to mark them as belonging to Pete's herd. Each of these procedures was performed on the docking board, with the holders (Zach and the three laborers) walking from station to station holding his lamb atop the board, butt end up and facing out, from inside the pen; and the three "dockers" executing their procedures from the far side of the board, standing outside the pen. Gaspard the tender of this herd, stayed off to the side, either on his horse Palomino or standing near it, watching over the herd with the dogs to make sure they didn't get too spread out or suddenly panic.

Once the holder with his fully "docked" lamb reached the end of the board, he gently (or not so gently) dropped the lamb outside the fence and watched it run in frantic leaps and bounds toward the ewes, always finding its mother within seconds and quieting almost immediately. (Zach took some consolation from this quick calming—whatever trauma the lamb suffered, it was soon forgotten in the reestablished security of the mother's presence.) Then the holder turned to catch another lamb, secure its legs and body, and take another trip down the length of the docking board.

With more than two hundred fifty lambs, this meant that each laborer got to catch and hold over sixty lambs before they finished around noon. Zach actually caught and held well more than his share, as the other laborers found excuses for frequent water and pee breaks outside the pen, breaks Zach declined to take—not once the entire morning. He didn't do this to impress Pete or anyone else (though the other laborers assumed that was his reason, and resented him for the choice) but because from earliest childhood he would never stop working while there was work to be done and daylight to do it, or while others continued to work. The task itself was the challenge, the standard against which he judged himself—his stamina, his rigor.

The morning wore on; the water in the pail of lambs' testes grew slowly redder; the odor of burnt wool and seared flesh thickened over the pen; Vince's fire slowly burned down. Then the last lamb (for this first of ten herds) passed along the board and Tony dropped him (a castrated ram) outside the pen. The three laborers all let out a whoop.

Zach stared in silence at the herd gathering slowly in the middle distance, Gaspard on his horse and assisted by his two dogs (Jimmy and Gonzo) now nudging them in the direction of water and fresh pasture about two miles away. Then he turned to Pete starting to load the pick-up, caught his eye and nodded thanks. He'd just lived more in one morning than he'd lived in the previous year, or so he felt. Pete smiled from beneath his hat and behind his sunglasses and nodded back.

3

That evening around dusk Zach walked from where his truck was parked in the small clearing off to the side to the cookshack. He paused in the middle of the drive to watch a horse and rider come trotting out of the turquoise horizon and down to the cluster of outbuildings and wood-sided barns at the bottom of the hill. Though he couldn't recognize the rider in the dim light and from this distance, he knew it was Vince riding Shifty, returning from checking on the home-farm herd that he tended along with all his other duties as camp foreman. The picture of horse and rider descending out of the big sky western twilight seemed to Zach to capture the whole day, the first of his sheep camp experience, defined in their determined trot both fatigue and satisfied accomplishment amidst demanding elements and odds that could, just might, be bent ever so slightly to human will and effort. The point out here wasn't to reshape the massive and finally immutable landscape but rather to carve out a niche just big enough for life and sustenance—like Pete's ranch of five thousand head and a half million acres of BLM-allotted summer range (the size of one's niche being relative to the size of the land—both being very big out here in central Wyoming). Zach waited till Vince and Shifty disappeared in a shallow draw on their way to the barns then resumed his walk to the cookshack in suddenly deeper dusk.

The weathered plank door stood open and lantern light poured out onto the dusty soil like a viscous liquid swallowed within a few feet by the vast dark and the dry ground. It struck Zach as odd to see this artificial light pushing out into the grays and beiges and overarching deep blue of the gathering night. He felt suddenly torn between the call of that night, the lessons it seemed to be offering, and the warmth and comfort of human company, the clatter of dishes—Santi's wife Anna at the gas stove—and the trilling purr of Santi's harmonica trapped between a siren's call to home and a mourner's lament. Zach paused at the threshold of that light, his boots still in the dusk, before stepping forward into the lantern light—a choice that was never in doubt: he was starving for the sustenance of food and conversation.

Santi stopped his playing in mid-note and let his chair that was leaning back on two legs against the logs of the far wall tilt forward onto the rough plank floor. "Boss-town," he said with surprising familiarity and affection. "I knew the smell of Rocky Mountain oysters frying would bring you running." He put his harmonica on the unfinished wood eating table and took up a Mason jar glass half-full of a burgundy liquid.

Zach noted the wine and understood now the ready welcome. That was O.K. with him—he'd accept chinks in the West's wall of privacy anytime they were offered, and for any reason. "Rocky Mountain oysters?" he asked, not sure if he was setting Santi up for a joke or a genuine explanation.

Santi set his glass down with a thump after a long swallow. He laughed with a high-pitched, disarming purr that betrayed his Mediterranean heritage more than any accent or appearance. "Didn't think we saved those lamb nuts to feed to the dogs, did you?"

Zach tilted his head above a confused half-grin, still waiting for the punch line and hoping he wasn't it.

Anna smiled from the stove and waved to him. "Come see."

He went and looked over her shoulder. Simmering in a large cast-iron frypan on a back burner, mixed with chunks of sautéed onions and garlic and red peppers, were those bean-shaped lambs' testicles—somewhat shrunk from cooking and dark brown now rather than deep red, but unmistakably the harvest of that morning's castrations. He felt momentary revulsion that merged toward nausea but did his best to hide the spasm. "How'd you prep them?" he asked Anna once he could trust his voice.

"None needed. They come pre-packaged."

Santi laughed from behind. "Just like a woman to say that."

Anna ignored him. "Just rinse them good and fry them along with the onions and garlic. Just like calf's liver only in bite-sized bits, and more tender and mild-flavored." She grabbed a pewter spoon off the prep counter and scooped a small portion out of the pan. She held the spoon out to Zach. "Try them."

Zach stared at her eyes rather than what was on the spoon. Though she was a good deal shorter and thinner than his mother, something about her manner—her efficient actions around the stove, her natural hospitality—reminded him of the mother he'd not seen for nearly a year. He wouldn't have taken that spoon from any man or most women, but he readily accepted it from Anna. After blowing lightly on its contents to cool them (and doing his best to ignore the clear knowledge that Santi was watching his every twitch so as to recount the moment in vivid detail to Pete and Vince and anyone else that wanted to hear about Boss-town's first encounter with Rocky Mountain oysters), Zach accepted the full contents of the spoon onto his tongue.

And it was delicious. He took a chance and lightly crushed one of the bean-shaped bits under his teeth. It was indeed tender, near "melt in your mouth" soft; and the flavor was almost non-existent—the taste of onions and garlic and broth with the slightest hint of the earthiness of liver. This stuff was good, really good. The satisfied, lip-smacking grin he offered Anna then Santi was genuine. "Delicious," he said with an enthusiastic nod. He gave the spoon back to Anna. "Can't wait for more."

"Plenty more where that came from," Santi said. "Still out on the range."

That thought dampened some of Zach's enthusiasm but did nothing to taint the wonderful flavor lingering on his tongue. He walked over to the table and took a seat across from Santi.

"Your first day docking," Santi said with a nod of satisfaction. "And a full one at that." After they'd finished Gaspard's herd and had lunch and a short midday rest, they'd docked Vince's home herd in the shearing pens down by the barns.

"And first Rocky Mountain oysters," Zach added with a twinkle in his eyes.

"I think you've earned a little celebratory drink."

Zach looked at him suspiciously. "Not the water from Pete's oyster pail?"

"Hell no, Boss-town," Santi cried with a slap of his knee. "I'm talking about the real deal here, the gateway to Heaven for this old Basque herder."

Zach shook his head. "Might be too rich for my blood."

"Might be," Santi granted. "Might be. But let's find out." He reached behind him and retrieved a wineskin hanging from the back of his chair. The skin was worn dark and smooth on one side, where it rubbed against the lower back of the bearer. And it had a beautifully woven wool strap in a burgundy and turquoise design. Santi cradled the big-bellied skin like a baby. "Best seasoned skin this side of the Atlantic."

Zach eyed it with sincere wonder and admiration. He'd only seen empty skins in novelty shops back east, never one that was full let alone imbued with this much character and implied history. "Looks like part of the family."

"Oh, it is," Anna said from the stove. "His real love—I'm just a passing fancy!"

"Gateway to my heart," Santi agreed. "That's a fact."

"Well, do I get a taste?" Zach asked.

Santi smiled. "Like a real Basque herder?"

"Show me."

Santi unscrewed the silver cap and let it fall to on side on its lanyard. He then raised the skin at arm's length above his upturned face and tilted it to release a steady stream of wine so dark it was almost black, the liquid thread following an arching path into the center of Santi's mouth. Santi let the stream continue for perhaps five seconds, swallowing twice to make room for more but never spilling a drop. He tilted the skin back to stop the stream and lowered the skin, his eyes shut and his face transfixed in divine pleasure.

"And the Mason jar?"

Santi returned to reality. "Anna told me that's what I had to use—for company! Like a darned city-slicker!"

"Boss-town appreciates the gesture."

Santi nodded.

"And as much as I'd like to drink from the skin—"

"—like a Basque," Santi added.

"—like a Basque. I'm down to my last clean shirt and think I'd better use a glass—"

"—like a city-slicker."

Anna was already bringing a pint Mason jar and set it on the table in front of him. Santi raised the skin high above the glass and directed a ten-second stream into its dead center while half-slouched in the chair on the far side of the table.

Zach shook his head in admiration. "The man knows his wineskin."

Anna said, "Better than his own skin."

Santi would only add, "Feels better, that's for sure." He capped the skin and hung it over the back of his chair.

"The wineskin or its contents."

"Both, Boss-town." He raised his glass. "To skins that grow younger by the day."

"And all their contents," Zach added and tapped his glass above the rough and knotty table top. He took a long swallow of the dark and pungent wine. He was no wine expert (in fact had drunk it no more than a dozen times in his life, mostly at formal dinners and in very small quantities. But against that very limited awareness, this sample was from another taste planet—thick and warm with a strong essence of tannin and other hints of pine resin and fennel and figs and leather and smoke. The one flavor that was lacking was grapes or any fruity sweetness or acidity. It was like the liquid essence of a root vegetable—that rich and earthy and overpowering. Zach knew from that "wine"—if he hadn't already known—that he wasn't in Boston anymore, or anywhere else in the tame and well-charted hills of New England. He well knew where he wasn't; what he hadn't yet figured out was exactly where he was, let alone if he'd been invited to stay, or for how long.

Vince soon joined them (Pete had returned to Riverton, to return the three day laborers and spend the night with Ruth—he'd be back the next morning at dawn) and Anna spread a feast for twenty before the three men—fried trout from the river (heads and tails still on), thick wedges of home-made goat cheese, big rounds of sliced red onion, pickles from the barrel at the back of the counter, red beans in a thick and mouth-searing tomato sauce, those Rocky Mountain oysters, fresh-sliced white bread, and a whole watermelon on a cutting board with a twelve-inch-long knife thrust into its oozing heart. Santi and Zach washed all this food down with generous portions of Santi's wine, and Vince drank water from the galvanized cooler on the table by the door.

They ate that abundant meal in the measured silence and satisfaction of end-of-the –day laborers down through time—neither hurried nor slow, reflective nor blind, sure of the accomplishments of the day finished, instinctively accumulating calories for the day to come, like lizards sprawled on a rock absorbing the sun's heat without weighing where the heat came from or why it mattered.

But after dinner, with the table cleared of all except the watermelon on its board—which Vince expertly sliced and diced and hollowed out like a Halloween pumpkin and served in bite-sized pieces on the tip of the knife to the others provided with coffee mugs to spit out the seeds—the tales of life and death on the range flowed forth like songs of heartbreak and hope, at first from Santi in an almost chanting monotone recounting late-spring blizzards claiming lives of sheep and shepherds or sudden cloudbursts turning quiet valley camps into raging churning death-traps, later from Vince in heavily accented, lively presentations that included grand gestures and even occasional dramatic recreation—crouching beneath the table of a fugitive hiding from a posse, splayed backward in his chair of a drunk passed out and being robbed of a month's pay.

Zach, surfeited with the wine and the meal, sat silently in his chair and provided the essential rapt audience for their performances, recorded in his consciousness stripped bare of past and future by this all-consuming present every word and gesture and nuance not only of the tale-tellers but also of their stage—the one-room rustic cookshack lit by the flickering kerosene lanterns and the eerie silver glow of the hissing propane lantern hung over the stove. At some point well into the night, Maria—Vince's dark-haired, dark-eyed teen-aged bride—silently entered the room and floated to the kitchen counter where Anna helped her assemble a plate of food from the remains of their dinner. Out of the corner of his eye Zach focused on the mesmerizing curves of her young body barely hid by the loose-fitting thin cotton dress, her dark and gleaming hair blanketing the nape of her neck, the dust on her bare feet, the pink polish on the nails of her girlish fingers. Even as part of him listened attentively to the stories being exchanged for his enrichment—Santi now, telling of surviving the crash of a prop plane during a coyote hunt—another part of him was called forth by an old and familiar yearning, persisting here against his wish and better judgment (he well knew Vince would slit his throat if he even guessed at these involuntary desires). He was both relieved and hollowed at his core when she disappeared back into the dark cradling the plate of food like the baby that waited her in the foreman's house.

Later that night, as he stood beside his truck in the brittle dry cold and released to the arid soil the kidney-filtered remains of the wine (still pungent now, even in his pee), Zach lifted his eyes to the vast expanse of stars unmasked in this thrilling night and thought—Now take the rest of me. After he'd zipped up his jeans but before reaching for the door handle, he actually spoke the wish, though dropping the verb and its modifier—"The rest of me." He didn't know what that meant; of course he didn't.

4

The next week and a half passed in a similar mix of intensely physical and intensely felt and absorbed sensations and sights. They docked the lambs of the other eight herds, moving some of the herds to the shearing pens on the home ranch, others to the pen they'd set up on the range. The last two herds were in such a distant corner of Pete's half million acre grazing allotment that they had to take down the temporary corral and move it nearly twenty miles to a remote draw that seemed at the base of the Wind River Range—kingly peaks with snow halfway down their slopes (and this in June) presiding over every move and minute of the lives of these mere humans and their four-legged charges. Zach at first couldn't take his eyes from those mountains, seemed pulled to them as by an inner magnet, and frequently stumbled in his tasks or missed an assignment; then he made a point of not looking up and to the west, trying to deny the dominant presence of the peaks, only to feel he was constantly being watched and judged negligent or, worse, disrespectful. He was glad when they'd finished those herds and broken down their feeble fencing, loaded it into their ramshackle trailers, and fled to less exposed terrain, their entourage trailing behind.

Midway through this period, the herder Grandee (so named for his girth not his height) had a stroke. Pete discovered him paralyzed on his left side and mumbling incoherently in the bed of his sheepwagon while doing twice weekly tending rounds. Pete picked Grandee up (a testament to his prodigious strength) and loaded him into the bed of the truck and covered him with a fleece blanket and drove him to the hospital in Riverton—a bouncy, dusty two-hour ride.

On the way, he swung by the home ranch in the early afternoon and shouted to Vince to saddle up two horses and take Zach and the dogs and go to Grandee's range, a few miles southeast, and try to find his herd. The ewes and their coyote-vulnerable lambs were nowhere to be seen from Grandee's wagon. He had no idea how long they'd been wandering or what kind of trouble they might've gotten into (the possibilities in this regard, given the hazards of the prairie and the stupidity of the sheep, were infinite).

"If you find them early enough, bring them back here, with your bunch."

"If no find?"

"You can stay at Grandee's camp, look again in the morning."

Vince frowned but didn't say anything then headed off to saddle the horses.

Zach glanced in the bed of Pete's truck and saw a delirious and stubble-chinned Grandee with his head half-buried in a rolled up wool blanket, his limp tongue hanging out his crusty mouth, one eye seeming blind with the lid frozen half-shut, the other twitching wildly in fear or confusion or involuntary static. All the dogs, though they couldn't see over the sides, gathered around the truck, pacing back and forth, some growling faintly, others cowering. Pete jumped behind the wheel and raced off in a cloud of dust under the crystal blue sky.

Vince rode up on Shifty leading the saddled Whitey by the reins. He stopped in front of Zach. "You herder today."

Zach shrugged. "I'll do my best."

Vince nodded. "Make Boss-town good herder."

Zach laughed. "We'll see," and swung himself onto the waiting horse.

At first Zach followed behind Vince. He'd ridden horses occasionally as a teenager but never often and now not for years. He wanted to reacquaint himself with the rhythms of riding, and familiarize himself with the horse beneath him—Whitey, the calmest horse on the ranch but still a thousand pounds of unpredictable muscle to be learned and directed and cajoled. Whitey seemed content in this role as trailing horse, glad not to have to lead with this too stiff, too tall rider on his back.

An hour out and long since beyond sight of the ranch, Zach felt comfortable enough in the saddle to urge Whitey to pull abreast of Shifty and trot alongside Vince. "Grandee have health problems before?"

Vince shook his head. "Muchos grandee."

Zach nodded.

"Muchos loco. Eat much, drink much, make sick."

"Herding?" It was hard for Zach to imagine over-indulging on the range, with Pete controlling all your provisions, and never providing alcohol.

"In town. One month pay, three day off—get drunk first day, no more money, sick two days, maybe jail, Pete bring back, stay my house till no more sick. No good."

"No good," Zach said.

Vince kicked Shifty and sent him into a full run up the side of a steep hill. Whitey flinched under Zach, not sure if he should follow the other horse's lead. Zach brought his horse to a stop and waited for Vince to tell him what to do. From atop the hill, Vince looked to the south and east then waved for Zach to follow. He set Whitey into a brisk trot (no need to risk himself or Whitey in a full run across uneven ground) and rode up to Vince.

Vince pointed to the east. "Grandee herd."

Zach looked where he pointed. It all looked the same to Zach—just more sagebrush beneath a clear sky. "I don't see."

He grinned. "Vince see." But then he pointed to the west, behind Zach; and his face lost its grin. "Rain. No good."

Zach turned in the saddle. There was a thin gray line above the mountains on the western horizon, barely visible and seeming insignificant compared to the cloudless blue everywhere else. "Rain?"

"No stay out tonight. Move Grandee bunch, sleep home tonight." Vince offered an assertive nod. "Home good."

Zach pictured Vince's home, Maria waiting, then forced the image out of his mind. "Home good."

Vince headed east in a trot, down the slope of the hill. Zach followed behind.

Whatever tell-tale sign Vince had seen, it was indeed Grandee's herd—more than a mile and five hills away, spread out across a shallow valley with no grass and no water, bleating plaintively. One band of the herd was moving south down a dead-end draw toward a blank cliff face. Another band was climbing the far hill, pointed east to who knows where. The bulk of the herd milled around aimlessly, not sure which band to follow or what to do. Zach didn't know sheep or herd instincts, but he sensed relief in this lost herd when they spotted the men on their horses coming down the hill toward them, the dogs already fanning out to either side. A number of ewes actually ran toward them, as if begging for food or water or guidance. Vince gestured for Zach to follow Wino to the north, to head off the wayward band moving east. Vince then took off in a full sprint after the group nearing the end of the draw. If the rest of the herd bolted in that direction, they could pile up against the cliff face and possibly injure the lambs under the crush.

Vince got to his band in time and shied them away from the cliff face, back toward the main herd. And Zach—well, really, Wino did all the work—got around his band and turned them back as well. Soon the entire herd was together and moving as a cohesive unit back in the direction Zach and Vince had just come, the men on the horses and their dogs having to do little to keep the bleating herd moving forward. Though apparently hungry and thirsty, the herd seemed in good health; and Zach saw few ewes without lambs—the coyotes had done little if any damage.

It was evening when they got back to the home ranch and combined Grandee's herd with Vince's already gathered beside a watering hole and with adequate grass in the surrounding hills to feed both herds for a few days. By then, the sky was cloaked in dense clouds and rain was in the air—but not yet arrived. Vince rode up to Zach and together they looked over the herd. Zach thought of twilights with his dad standing at the barnyard gate looking over their herd of cows spread out in the evening pasture, freshly milked and fed and settling in for the night.

Vince turned from the herd to Zach. "You herder now."

Zach laughed. "Hardly."

Vince nodded emphatically. "Herder, yes. You take Grandee bunch, herd good."

"I don't know, Vince. Lot more to learn." He didn't add but thought—lot more to decide about my life and future.

Vince shrugged. "We see." Then he pointed to the leaden sky. "Rain soon. Stay dry tonight."

"Dry good."

Vince smiled. "Home good."

Zach nodded. "Home good." They turned their horses toward that home, or at least what passed for it at the moment.

5

They docked the last herd in the morning and spent the early afternoon unloading the trailers at the open-sided storage shed. They set the big and unwieldy rolls of slatted fencing along the back wall then laid the iron posts on top. They spread the pieces of wooden fence along the side wall and set the much-scarred docking board, with its bits of dried blood and singed wool clinging to the splintered wood, atop the pile. Zach felt that some essential part of himself was embedded in that board—a tribute to the Old Testament God of deserts and wanderings, offered along with the blood of these thousands of newborn lambs. But if a sacrifice, to what promise, what sacred covenant? (Or maybe no covenant, Zach thought; maybe a sacrifice just to hold God's anger in check, his capriciousness temporarily.)

After they finished unloading the trailer and the rickety old flatbed with the bent bumper and the cracked windshield that reminded Zach of some of the silage trucks they kept on the farm, he and the three laborers walked the few hundred yards to the cookshack where Pete sat at the table with his ledger spread out in front of him and a metal box set off to the side. He summoned the workers individually, calling Zach's name last.

"Here's what I've got," he said and showed Zach a hand-written listing of dates and hours worked on each, with the total hours multiplied by an hourly rate of pay.

Zach looked it over quickly and nodded acceptance. He'd told Pete at the start that he'd work for free but didn't feel obligated to repeat the offer now. He'd earned this nominal pay even as he was grateful for the opportunity and experience. It was a two-way street, this exchange—effort expended, rewards secured: exactly as it should be.

Pete handed him a sealed white envelope with his name on the outside in a childish scrawl. "Thanks for the good work, Zach."

"Thanks for hiring me, giving me a shot."

"Hey, you're family—well, sort of. Speaking of which, Ruth said this came to our house yesterday." He handed him a pastel green, card-sized envelope addressed to him in Allison's hand, care of the Riverton address.

Zach took it, trying hard to mask his surprise and a sudden upswell of anxiety. He'd not communicated with Allison since leaving Boston over two weeks, and what now seemed a lifetime, before. He thanked Pete and turned to leave.

"Zach," Pete said and waited for him to turn around. "Vince says you're a herder."

"Vince is generous in his assessment."

Pete chuckled. "Maybe so, maybe not. Anyway, we're a man down."

"How's Grandee doing?"

"Not well. His daughter is coming up from Utah to take him back with her."

Zach nodded.

"We could try you on his bunch." He paused then added, "If it worked in with your plans." He nodded toward the pale green envelope cradled in Zach's hand.

Zach followed Pete's gaze to the envelope, both frighteningly foreign and intimately familiar, stuck to his hand, his paralyzed fingertips. He pulled his gaze back to Pete. "Can I have a day to think about it?"

Pete nodded. "Take your time. Vince can handle two herds for a while, long as he has the comfort of his bride close at hand." He laughed.

Zach knew Pete intended no irony with this comment, but couldn't help but contrast his circumstance—the comfort of his bride nowhere nearby—with that of Vince, or Pete for that matter, or just about any married couple in the world. "I'll let you know soon."

Pete nodded then focused his attention to the ledger before him.

Zach turned and walked briskly out the cookshack door. He walked past the other three laborers squatting in the shade along the wall without a word or gesture, then jogged across the bright and dusty clearing to his truck parked amongst the sagebrush beyond. He opened the door and sat on the passenger seat and pulled the door firmly shut.

His heart raced and his hand shook. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, holding it in his lungs. He was glad for the silence and the close and familiar space of the truck, the broad prairie and the infinite sky locked outside. He slowly exhaled into that familiar stillness, felt his heart calm and his hand steady. He studied the red glow that pushed its way through his tightly closed eyelids, felt in that glow the world marching onward despite his desire for pause, his intended stop.

He opened his eyes. The truck was pointed east (a fact he was reminded of every morning when he woke and rose up on his arms to look over the front seat to the faint glow of dawn beyond the windshield, the intimation of imminent day in the otherwise pervasive inky night) and thus he was in shadow, the afternoon sun behind him burning the blankets wadded at the bottom of the mattress in the back. He left the money sealed in its envelope and locked it in the glovebox.

He turned Allison's letter over in his hands. She'd always had pretty handwriting, made more careful and crisp by her recent (and ongoing, he reminded himself) night classes in calligraphy. He wondered what pen she'd used to address the envelope, and where she'd sat—at the dining table, surely: no other flat surface in the apartment except his desk (off limits to her, he presumed) and the kitchen counter (no chair to sit on). He pulled out his jack knife and made a clean slit in the top of the envelope, slid out the card (two cats sitting together—a black one and a gray one—their backs to the viewer, one cat with its paw over the other's shoulder and the word purrrr in small print underneath), opened it to Allison's handwriting on the inside (same pen, same neat script), and read:

June 23

Dear Zach,

I hope you are well. My mom talked with Aunt Ruth who said you are doing something with all the lambs. Whatever it is, I hope it is bringing you happiness and satisfaction. I know you must like being out there in the vast open spaces. They've been calling to you at least as long as I've known you.

Things are fine here though hot and stuffy. Mary calls it the dog days of June. She's stayed over a few nights to keep me company. Since it's my first summer here, I don't know if it's better or worse than normal but it's sure hot up here on the top floor. When you walk up the stairs, I think it goes up ten degrees at each landing. But I'm getting used to it. I'll be alright.

The cats aren't faring quite so well. They drag around panting and lazy and won't even chase the mouse on the string. Pisser has started sleeping in the bath tub. Bobbi rarely leaves the bedroom window sill and what little air she can find there. Ian and Deidre stopped by last weekend. Deidre was shocked at how much her "kittens" have grown. She was glad to see them and thanked me many times for giving them such a loving home. She's a sweetheart and I hope to get to know her better.

I've been thinking a lot about us since you left. When you first told me you were going to Wyoming I was shocked and hurt. I thought it was wrong for a married couple to be apart for such a long time. But now I see it's for the best. We are such different people with such different goals. I now think we're better off apart. Maybe that's what you intended all along.

I hope Uncle Pete's not working you too hard. Do you have to pee in a hole and poop on a bucket? It may be terrible hot here, but at least I have a flush toilet!

With love through it all,

Allison

Zach felt sick to his stomach. His mind shouted (and maybe his voice—he couldn't have said) to the windshield—No! That's not what I intended! That was never what I wanted!

But the message went undelivered, the intended recipient thousands of miles away across all that vast terrain.

Sometime later (he couldn't have said how long—fifteen minutes? a half hour? he didn't know), Zach stuck his head in the cookshack. Pete was long gone, back to Riverton with the laborers. But Anna was there, at the stove as ever, beginning dinner preparations.

"I've got to make a phone call, at the diner," he said from the open door. The diner was a combination restaurant-service station-convenience store-emergency stop out on the highway, maybe only eight or ten miles away, but a slow eight or ten miles across roads that were barely wagon tracks. It had the only public phone for fifty miles.

Anna looked up and took two steps toward him. "Everything O.K.? You look white as a sheet."

Zach held his hand up to halt her approach. "I'm O.K. Just need to make a phone call."

"Home?"

Zach had to think about that. What was home now? Boston? Dover? Here? His sudden confusion threatened to collapse what little stability he'd managed to cobble together to get out of the truck and walk over here.

Anna saw he was in real peril. "I mean Boston, your life there."

Zach managed a distracted nod. "Yeah, Boston. I'll be back for dinner."

"Mutton stew," she said. "And my buttermilk biscuits."

Zach wanted to follow her lead and rally, for her and her kindness if not for himself. But he just couldn't lift the weight from his shoulders, couldn't set aside the burden dragging down his face. "I'll be back quick as I can," he said, barely a whisper, before turning toward his truck, the late-day sun orange on his back.

When Zach pulled the truck parallel the curb in front of the diner twenty-five minutes later, he couldn't remember any of the sights he'd seen on the way there. It wasn't that his senses were numb or dulled by the shock of the letter. To the contrary, every nerve in his body was on edge, in a heightened state of arousal—every molecule of air felt pressing against his skin, every glimmer of sun or stark line of shadow documented in detail. But that jangle of nerve endings was moving forward in a perpetual present, not documenting the past (instinctively, he knew he didn't want to remember any of this) or anticipating the pain or challenges of the future. He stayed in the bubble of the present, and that bubble had brought the truck to a stop here in front of the open-kiosk payphone at one end of the diner's wood entry porch.

He turned off the truck and sat still for a minute to gather himself. There was no one visible in front of the diner or around the gas pumps, and there were only two other vehicles in the dirt parking lot—both old and beat-up four-wheel-drive pick-ups at the far end of the cluster of buildings: the owners' trucks. He checked his watch—6:50, 8:50 and growing dark in Boston, Allison surely home by now on a weeknight but not yet asleep. But what if she weren't home? His mind wouldn't go there, refused to open that door even as he stared at it, as it loomed large in front of him. He grabbed a fistful of change from the ashtray and stepped out of the truck and up to the phone.

She answered second ring—"Hello," her voice neither perky nor sleepy, just neutral and sure.

"Hi."

There was the briefest of pauses, then "Hi, Zach," neither surprised nor overjoyed, more like calm acceptance of an expected call. "Your voice sounds so clear, like you're just across town." She paused a second. When he said nothing, she added, "You're not across town, are you?"

He thought—Would you be happy if I were? But he said, "At the diner out on the highway—only phone for miles."

"You're O.K.?"

The many layers of meaning of that question (all in his head) collided with the many layers of possible answers (also all in his head) and balked his voice.

"Zach, you're O.K., right?"

All the layers of meaning and all the layers of responses coalesced into a single irony (also in his head)—her question and apparent concern in the face of her letter. "I just got your letter."

"Oh."

He was silent, genuinely unsure what to say next. Maybe there wasn't anything else to say.

"That was fast," she said.

He realized he hadn't thought to check the postmark. "How fast?"

"I put it with the office mail to go out Friday at noon."

Zach tried to calculate the time elapsed since then but couldn't remember what day it was. "And today is?"

"Zach, it's Tuesday! Are you sure you're O.K.?"

"Four days—not so fast."

"I guess not. Maybe I thought it would have to go Pony Express or something. I don't know."

"You wanted it to take longer?"

He heard her sigh on the other end. It really was a clear connection. He wished it wasn't so clear; he wished her words were fuzzy or garbled by a frayed wire or a defective switch. That would make it all seem much farther away, more remote.

"I didn't want any of this, Zach. You left, remember?"

"For a short break, a little time to clear my head. Not for good!"

"You forgot to tell me." Her voice remained calm in the face of his rising tone.

"I did tell you! I told you it was to get my bearings!"

"You forgot to ask me."

"Ask you what?"

"How I felt."

"How'd you feel?"

"Little late now, don't you think?"

"How'd you feel?"

"Like you didn't care about us or our marriage."

"I was trying to save our marriage!"

"By abandoning it?"

"By saving myself and taking that burden off of you."

"And that's what I see now."

"What?"

"That you're right. That we're better off this way."

"Not for good!"

"Maybe not for good. I don't know. But for now."

"No!"

"Zach, we're already apart. You made it that way."

"I was wrong."

"No, you were right."

"I'm coming back."

"Please don't."

"You won't take me?"

"Please don't force this now, Zach."

"You don't want me."

"I never said that."

"You just did." He set the receiver on its hook.

6

The next twenty-four hours unfolded in a waking (he didn't sleep the whole time, not truly) dream-state with his consciousness, his entire being, suspended between the compelling reality of his present environment and his all-consuming desire to be with Allison, back in their apartment in Boston, to try to fix the damage that had been done to their relationship or at least forestall further damage through simple proximity, separation denied.

In the cookshack over dinner, it was obvious to the others that something was wrong with Zach. Anna had told Santi who had told Vince about his sudden rush to the diner to make a phone call "to home." But, in typical regional circumspection, no one asked Zach what was wrong or if they could do anything to help. They ate their dinner—the mutton stew was delicious, the remains on their plates wiped up by Anna's fresh biscuits—under the lantern light and Santi and Vince told more stories and everyone did their best to cradle what they had, what the world had granted them—this moment in the warm and safe cookshack, the log walls holding the night and the expanse of desert and all the threats out there at bay.

Zach acutely appreciated this communal effort, hung his rapt attention on every word and gesture and cough and sigh even if he would not remember any of it ten minutes later, was grateful for the company of these sojourners in the wilderness, on the fringe of society and the world, these ones that had so readily welcomed him as one of their own—because he was one of their own. But he now saw the price of that admission and wanted to withdraw his application, his membership, if he could. But how? If this was your destined place, your trajectory in life, how did you redirect that course? And where would you end up if you did?

Lying on his back on the truck's mattress, he stared out the side window at the infinite stars. It was another cold and clear night. He watched over minutes then hours as the vapor from his exhalations gathered in the corners of the window then gradually crept from those corners toward the center. At a level beneath consciousness, he recalled his dream from the camp on the Sweetwater, felt in his bereft heart the imprint of the infant held toward him at the end of Allison's entourage. At the level of his consciousness, he thought, staring out on those stars till the moisture of his breaths clouded that view, that he was but one miniscule creature at this tail end of a line of billions of such insignificant creatures to have stared out on those same stars, with perhaps billions of similarly insignificant others staring back, and backwards in time the farther out in space—lonely inconsequence gazing at lonely inconsequence: mirrored meaninglessness in a vast drama none would ever understand, nor stand for more than a few blinks in the timekeeper's surely distracted gaze.

But this knowledge thrown into the breach of his howling pain did nothing to assuage that pain or the confusion that had spawned it. Every new breath hurt, abraded the wound. It was all Allison, everything Allison—fleeing his desperate clutch, ever just out of the reach of his heart, his calling to rest. Somewhere in the night two dogs fought in a series of ferocious snarling growls till one yelped in pain, its cries fading into the distance. This was a harsh land.

Around dawn Zach roused from shallow dosing at the roar of a single-engine plane low overhead. He tried to look out the window but couldn't see anything for the condensation that had turned to frost in some places. The plane's noise grew fainter. Then he heard two shotgun blasts in the distance. The plane circled around and came roaring over the camp again. This time he rolled down the window of the rear door just enough to see the plane pass to the east, maybe fifty feet off the ground—close enough for him to see the pilot's face (which he didn't recognize) and Santi leaning out the window of the rear seat with a 12-guage semi-automatic Remington shotgun. The plane melted into the just-risen sun then disappeared over the next ridge. Three more shots rang out across the dawning desert. This time the plane's drone didn't return, faded into the rampant stillness.

Zach pulled on his jeans while seated on the mattress then pulled first a short-sleeved T-shirt then a long-sleeved T-shirt then a flannel shirt over the thermal underwear top he'd worn to bed. He opened the rear door and swung his feet with their socks on from last night out into the frigid dawn. Normally he'd change into clean socks on waking, but this morning he couldn't face the idea of exposing his feet to these freezing temperatures. Besides he didn't have any clean socks left. He pulled his boots on over yesterday's socks and slid out into the day.

It seemed the same world as yesterday. He looked slowly in all directions. The stark huge sage desert and the endless sky still inky dark to the west and the hints of mountains along that horizon were all the same. The cookshack and Vince's house (with Maria and Carmen both no doubt still in their warm beds) and the horse corral and the sheds and the shearing pens at the bottom of the slope and the barn and the dirt road winding over the hill were all the same, and all still breath-taking to him two weeks into this venture—what had been a real venture, a chance at something, a true high-stakes wager at a life. Then he looked at his unshaven and wan face reflected in the truck window. Only he had changed—but then, that's all it took.

He poured a little water from the canteen on the front seat into a tin cup and brushed his teeth with his finger (his toothbrush buried somewhere in the back; and if he went back in there, he might not come out). He stepped around in front of the truck, out of sight of the cookshack and Vince's cabin, and peed into the dusty soil. He thought of Allison's attempt at closing humor to her devastating letter—he didn't have to pee in a hole: the desert consumed your yellow stream utterly, wherever you deposited it.

He walked across the clearing washed in dawn light. Though the door to the cookshack was closed against the cold, he smelled bacon frying when still fifty feet away. That smell seemed to have shape and motion, like some big wild animal passing from the cookshack out into the desert. Zach actually paused and felt the beast brush by.

Zach pulled the cookshack door shut behind him. The room was bright, almost too bright, in the early sun pouring through the east facing window. Little wisps of dust and grease smoke swirled silently in the steep light. Anna looked up from stirring eggs in a big white ceramic bowl. "Santi and Bruce give you a wake-up call?"

"You mean in the plane?"

She nodded.

"I was awake already."

"That's good. Leave it to Santi to do a little grand-standing."

"Coyotes?" Santi raised a significant portion of his income bounty-hunting predators—coyotes and golden eagles mostly, the occasional mountain lion (though they were all but eradicated in this area) or bobcat—for the government.

"He heard them howling night before last next ridge over. Left before three to meet Bruce and get the plane in the air before dawn. Need to catch them out in the open before they head for their dens."

"Sounds like he did."

"You mean the shots."

Zach nodded.

"Hope so."

Zach poured a cup of coffee from the pot simmering on the back burner of the stove. The coffee was thick and dark with little bits of grounds floating on the top. "Can I help in any way?"

Anna looked up, a bit surprised by his offer. "No, but thanks."

"Let me know if you think of anything." He went and sat at the table.

In those quiet minutes sitting at the table watching Anna's back and strong shoulders under her flannel shirt and smelling the bacon and the muffins baking and seeing the steep dawn sun gradually rise outside the dirty window and soften its angle of entry, Zach perceived for the first time a level of domesticity to rival the hard and harsh surroundings, a human-scale human-crafted reality carved out of one corner of the solitude and loneliness and rigor of this place. Till now it had always seemed they were barely holding nature at bay, like their slatted fencing strung across the prairie, always threatening to break under the crush of ewes and lambs, or fall down in the gale force winds that were the norm of this land. But this morning in this warm bright room with this woman's purposeful efficient efforts and confident straight back Zach saw a reality to counter the desert and the mountains and all that sky. It wasn't love that defined this counterforce so much as it was home, not house so much as hearth—the will to define and delineate a place to call one's own, if even for only a short time (always and ultimately only a short time). Joined wills, he quickly added in his mind—two or more needed: even if virtual strangers, two or more were needed to define this hearth. No chance alone; no chance.

A pick-up's racing roar in the distance broke the silence and came to a stop amidst dust and slewing gravel just outside the cookshack. Santi burst through the door and scurried over to Anna and twirled her around from behind and led her in a little waltzing dance across the worn planks.

Anna feigned surprise, holding the broad spatula aloft above their joined hands; but her laughter belied her shock. "Santi," she cried, "We have company." She glanced over at Zach.

Zach laughed. "I'm enjoying the show."

Santi released Anna and ran over to Zach, dragged him out of his chair and did a little Texas two-step with him, shuffling his old legs quickly back and forth, his bald head bobbing up and down like a big cuckoo bird dancing in time to imaginary music.

He finally let go of Zach's hand and flopped down onto the nearest chair like a tired ragdoll, done for the day. Well, actually for only about two seconds, as he suddenly sat upright and slapped the table in glee, making Zach's coffee cup jump. "Nailed two of them bastards—a big dog and a bitch. And the bitch is nursing—that's double her bounty. Break open the champagne, Manna," he said.

Anna brought him a steaming cup. "Coffee will have to do," she said as she set the cup in front of him then filled Zach's near-empty cup from the pot in her other hand.

"Caviar and saffron," he continued, ignoring her stoicism.

"How about bacon and flapjacks?"

"We're rich, woman. Rich!"

"In health and shelter," Anna dead-panned, back at the stove now flipping those flapjacks.

"Ahh," Santi said in fading voice, "No flair, woman; no imagination."

"Somebody has to hold you in check."

"You do a good job of that," he said, slumping again in the chair.

Zach asked about the hunt, heard how they'd caught them out in the open when it was still so dark they could barely see the ground or anything on it, how they'd turned them from their race to the den, got them running across open terrain just as the sun was coming up, shot the bitch on the first pass—Winchester Super-X, BB load—then swung back around and caught the dog just before he made it to the safety of the ledge overhang. The vivid details of the wild animals cut down from above made Zach feel queasy. He asked what it was like flying over the vast prairie in the early light.

"Like you're God," Santi replied simply.

Zach nodded. "Like an eagle soaring."

"Master of your domain."

By then, breakfast was ready and Anna set several heaping platters—bacon, scrambled eggs with bits of onion and green pepper, fried potatoes, flapjacks, a couple junks of stewed mutton, plenty of syrup and butter—at the middle of the table along with plates and forks. Santi and Zach quit talking and dove into the early feast. Vince came in shortly and loaded up a plate. Pete drove up and parked beside Santi's truck just outside the door. He walked in and left the door open on the still cool but warming morning. "What are you doing in here—curing hams?" he exclaimed with a big laugh.

"That's us, Pete," Santi said. "Couple sides of pork."

"Tough as leather," Pete said as he poured a cup of coffee.

"Good for fatback anyway," Santi said.

"You can say that again," Pete said and sat beside the others. He shook his head when Anna slid an empty plate his way. "Ate at home."

There were a few seconds of silence, the room filled with the clatter of tin forks on tin plates and the breathing and sighs of this assemblage of drifters thrown together in this impromptu family in this tiny room carved out of this vast land pushing in now through the open door, the family pushing back. And Zach saw it all and saw it just like that—fleeting yet somehow enduring in its determined denial of their begotten frailty.

7

After breakfast Pete loaded some vet supplies into a cooler and set it in the bed of his truck. Robert had a couple sick animals in his herd and he asked Zach to come along "in case we have to wrestle one down." Zach well knew that either Pete or Robert (short and stocky like Pete, and just as strong) could wrestle down any animal that needed containment a lot easier and quicker than he could; but Pete was the boss and if he said "go," you went. Besides, he was glad for the distraction the excursion would provide.

After riding awhile in silence across the blank sage prairie on a faint track that only Pete could spot, Zach finally spoke to the windshield the words that had been weighing on him since yesterday evening. "I think I have to get back to Boston."

Pete showed no surprise. "Allison O.K.?"

"Allison's fine. But I think it's important for me to return as soon as possible."

Pete nodded. "Whatever you have to do."

"I wish I could help you out with Grandee's bunch. I was looking forward to giving herding a try."

"You'd be good at it. You care about the animals more than yourself—that's the most important part of herding. You can't teach that."

"I'm sorry not to be able to fill in."

"We'll manage—plenty of herders out there. You need to take care of yourself and that bride of yours."

Zach nodded. "I do. I will." An idea suddenly came to him. "What if I wanted to fly back, save myself a few days on the road?"

Pete shrugged. "Frontier flies four times a day out of Riverton to Denver—ten-seater twin-props. They're rarely full. From Denver, you can catch planes to anywhere."

"And my truck?"

"If you don't mind leaving it out here, we can park it in one of the bays of the equipment shed—stay there long as you want." He looked at Zach through the reflector sunglasses. "Reserve the right to sell it after five years."

Zach laughed. "If it's here in two years, it's yours."

"And don't assume you can retrieve it between December and May—these dirt tracks can be quagmires or snowed in, sometimes both in the same day."

"I don't know when I will get back to pick it up, Pete. But I can assure you it won't be in the winter."

Pete nodded. "Want me to ask Ruth to book you a flight to Boston via Denver? I don't know the first thing about flying, but she's done it a number of times. Went to see your mother-in-law at least twice."

"I've never flown, Pete. So if she's able to help with the arrangements, I'd be grateful. But I need to make a phone call first, to be sure."

Pete nodded. "Good luck."

Zach said, "Thanks," but didn't add what they both already sensed—I'll need that luck (for the trip home and what awaited him there). That said (or, in this case, said and not said), Zach felt a sudden sense of relief, a pool of calm spreading through his tormented soul, at this decision made out here in the wilderness—their wilderness, his.

Robert's camp was deserted when Pete drove up to his wagon—no Robert, no horse (Dingo), no dogs (Judy and One-eye, that had two good eyes).

Pete shook his head in disgust. "I told him just yesterday I'd be here first thing in the morning and to have the sick animals penned and waiting. And this is how he responds," he said and waved toward the empty campsite. He honked his horn in two long blasts that seemed to Zach maybe the most incongruous intrusions into this wilderness since—well, since the plane's roar that dawn. (To Zach, any sound out here not of natural origin—even Santi's harmonica or Anna's dinner triangle hung by the cookshack door—was an unwelcome reminder of civilization, those places where human order took precedence over natural.)

Pete got out of the truck and carried a box of supplies into the sheepwagon. Zach slid off the seat and looked around the campsite. Compared with the Sweetwater campsite where he and Allison stayed last summer and he spent a weekend earlier in the month, this camp was significantly more desolate and lonely. It sat in the middle of a broad plateau that stretched off in all directions, with no tree or grass or water in sight—only sagebrush and dirt and sky. He had no idea why Robert wasn't waiting here now per Pete's request, but he knew instinctively that if this were his camp, he wouldn't be spending much time not sleeping in a place so monotonous and spirit-draining. He didn't know what sorts of terrain lay beyond the visible horizons, but it would have to be something more interesting than this.

Pete came out of the wagon holding an empty wine bottle. "Maybe now we know why he forgot my instructions."

"Where'd he get that?"

"I don't know where they get this stuff—drops out of the sky, for all I know. Hardest part about running a ranch—keeping your herders sober."

"But if he was drunk, he wouldn't be riding."

"You're right about that—usually passed out. Last week I checked on Marco's camp and saw his herd spread in every direction across the valley and him passed out on the floor of the wagon. When I threw some water on his face to wake him, he sat up and said without missing a beat, 'No sleep. Just rest eyes.'"

Zach laughed. "A good long rest. What did you do?"

"Chased him out of the wagon and told him to tend his bunch. He fell getting out of the wagon—chin first into the dirt leaving a pretty good-sized welt. But he managed to pull them together while I was unloading his supplies. Better herder drunk than most sober."

"Got to take the good with the bad."

"Got to take what you can find. Speaking of which—" He pointed to the east. A rider on a horse had just appeared on the plateau and was headed for them at break-neck speed. Pete tossed the bottle into the bed of the truck then took a few strides in the direction of the rider and waited with his hands on his hips for the wayward Robert to arrive.

Robert kept the horse in a straight on full gallop until it was so close Zach was certain he'd flatten Pete. But Pete never flinched or moved. At the last possible second (or a few seconds past the last possible second), Robert yanked back on the reins, rose up in the saddle, and jerked Dingo's neck to the side, throwing both horse and rider into a panic stop that ended with them standing broadside in a cloud of dust not a yard from Pete's unflinching figure. The dogs emerged from that cloud of dust, did a quick circle of Pete then of Zach and the truck, then jogged off to get a drink of water from the dishpan under the wagon.

Pete waited for the dust to dissipate then said, "That was a fool-ass stunt."

"Good, morning, Senor Pete," Robert said, tipping his cowboy hat. "How are you?"

"Tired of waiting. Where you been, Robert? I told you to have your herd and the sick ones here this morning."

"Herd at lake. Too far bring back."

"You could've brought them by here then taken them to the reservoir. That's what I told you to do."

"Sheep need water. Take yesterday."

Pete shook his head. "Where are the sick ones?"

"With herd. Too far bring back."

"You use that phrase a lot."

"You come. Robert show." He turned his horse and pointed back the way he'd come.

"You use that phrase a lot too."

"Robert show. Bring Senor Zach." He turned and headed back the way he'd come in the manner he'd come—at break-neck speed. The dogs, freshly watered, tore off behind.

Pete turned to Zach. "Kind of makes you wonder who's running this place."

Zach chuckled. "Got to admit, he's got style."

Pete nodded. "Style, yes. Sense, no."

"The good with the bad."

"Tell me about it."

They climbed into the truck and raced across the open prairie in pursuit of the wild horseman.

About a half-mile out, Robert, Dingo, and the dogs suddenly dropped from sight as if over a cliff. Pete slowed the truck just before he crossed onto a steep slope that was invisible until you were upon it. The truck half-slid, half-drove down the rocky incline devoid of any sagebrush or other vegetation. The angle of descent was so steep that Zach put his hands against the dash to keep from falling into the windshield (he didn't have on a seatbelt; if Pete had them in the truck, they were buried under the seat cushion). They slewed their way from side to side and dropped perhaps a hundred feet in elevation before the grade finally leveled off and they found themselves in a broad valley with a large lake bordered by green and grassy pastures at one end. Robert's herd was there, at the edge of that lake; and he rode among them now, shouting and yipping to let them know he was near—to reassure them and keep them gathered together. The dogs fanned out to either side, yipping in their own manner, letting the dumb sheep know they were here also, keeping an eye on any would-be wanderers. In that instant at the tail end of that break-neck chase and hair-raising descent, Zach perceived a fleeting glimpse of the delicate balance of trust and care that existed between a shepherd and his resources (horse, dogs, voice, experience) and his five hundred dim-witted, hapless charges. That balance required both authority and cajoling, and it was all susceptible to the myriad risks of nature and natural forces—storms, predators, diseases, injury—yet when it worked, as in this instant of turmoil turned to calm reassurance through authority and presence, it was a beautiful thing, an island of order amidst an endless sea of voracious chaos.

Pete stopped the truck fifty feet from the herd. "Thought I'd give you a little thrill to wake you up."

Zach took a deep breath to settle his nerves and nodded wide-eyed. "You succeeded."

Pete shook his head. "Robert didn't need to bring us down that hill. There's a road just a quarter mile to the north."

"Then why'd you follow?"

Pete looked surprised by the question. "Couldn't let him think he'd won."

Zach realized the looming chaos came in many forms out here, maybe everywhere.

Pete jumped out of the truck and unhooked the cooler of vet supplies (which, fortunately for all involved, had been strapped securely to the truck bed) and carried them to a level and dry spot in the pasture. He opened it up and unpacked the supplies he needed. He waved for Zach to help Robert find the sick animals and separate them from the herd.

Robert already had a ewe roped and was dragging her, her hoofs plowing four shallow trenches, out of the center of the herd. Zach circled around the ewe to push her from behind and got a swift kick to his thigh for his effort. He couldn't fault her—she was panicked and scared and probably more than a little angry. But her kick stung and made him more determined than ever to push her forward, out of the herd. The rest of the herd sensed either her fear or his determination and parted before them. The ewe tried twice more to kick him, but he was ready this time and avoided both blows, each time leaning against her wooly rump and pushing her harder. She finally gave up fighting both him and the rope and ran ahead, leaving slack in the rope. Robert quickly took up that slack until the ewe was trotting alongside him and Dingo. He led her over to Pete like he was showing her at the county fair.

Pete grabbed the rope as she trotted past and pulled her to a sudden halt beside him.

Robert jumped off Dingo and ran over and grabbed the ewe's head and tucked it against her shoulder and leaned his bulky chest against it, immobilizing her. Zach took the rope from Pete and held it tight while leaning against her side opposite Robert.

Pete slid toward her rump and leaned over to check her udder. It was swollen and red and hot to the touch. "You're right, Robert—mastitis."

"Robert know his sheep," Robert confirmed without looking up.

Pete went to the cooler and took out two plastic-tipped syringes full of pre-measured antibiotics. He put one sideways in his mouth and held the other in his right hand while holding the ewe's leg with his left. As he leaned over to insert the tip of the syringe into her teat, she managed to give him a kick and knock the syringe out of his hand. He stared at her a moment. With the syringe still in his mouth, Zach couldn't tell if he was frowning or smiling. He looked like a dog with a bone.

Pete stepped back and picked up the syringe. He tried again to hold the leg back and insert the syringe into the tender teat and received another kick for his effort. This time he took the syringe out of his mouth and handed it to Zach, then picked up the other and handed it to Zach. Then he wrapped one arm around the ewe's neck and one arm around her rump and picked her up off the ground, held her for a moment suspended at his waist, then slammed her down on her side in the grass. He planted one knee on her neck and one on her stomach and held her there till she quit thrashing around. She went completely motionless. She panted into the grass and let out a plaintive bleat.

"Robert, you take the neck; Zach, you sit on her rump. She's sensitive as hell with that infection, but we've got to get the antibiotic in her or it might go systemic and then she's a goner."

Zach and Robert did as directed and Pete injected the antibiotic into the poor ewe's udder. She struggled a few times at the pain but had little chance against the two men on top of her.

Pete finished and nodded. Robert slid the rope off the ewe's neck then looked to Zach. With his nod, they both stood at once. The ewe remained on her side for a couple seconds, either numb or shocked at her sudden freedom. Then she jumped up and ran off to rejoin the herd that was watching from thirty feet away. Many other ewes sniffed her butt and her udder, no doubt smelling the antibiotic and the antiseptic. Then they shied away from her. Her lamb, looking a little scrawny from lack of milk but a fully weaned by now, came up to her and nuzzled her face, either oblivious or indifferent to the smell that had scared the others off. The two of them drifted off toward the reservoir.

"What else, Robert?" Pete asked.

"Lamb with swole leg."

"Where?"

Robert pointed to one edge of the herd. A lamb stood off by itself, motionless but wavering slightly, like it was drunk.

Pete shook his head. "Get the dogs to bring it this way."

Robert whistled and pointed and the two dogs circled to the far side of the lamb then gently nudged it toward them. When the lamb didn't move fast enough, One-eye lunged in and gave it a little nip. "High, One-eye!" Robert shouted, and One-eye backed off. The lamb stumbled toward them. The three men and the two dogs formed an ever shrinking circle until the lamb had nowhere to go. It spun around looking for escape then stumbled and fell to the ground in front of Zach.

After catching more than a thousand lambs for docking, Zach knew what to do next. He planted his knee on the lamb's shoulder until he could secure the two left side legs in his left hand, the two right side in his right. But on this lamb, the right hind leg had a lump on its outer thigh. Rather than pick the lamb up by its legs, Zach held it down on the ground, holding the legs in his hands but keeping his knee on its shoulder. It was a young ram, vaccinated, castrated, and docked ten days before. The slit in its scrotum had healed fine, was almost invisible. But somewhere out there on the prairie this lamb had received an injury to its leg, one that didn't look good and was probably infected.

Pete squatted down beside the lamb and felt the fist-sized lump. It was very hard under the skin. "Poor young fella," Pete said softly, obviously directing the words to the lamb.

"Infection?" Zach asked.

"Don't know."

"What can we do?"

"Nothing to do but lance it, see what happens." He pulled out his pocket knife.

Zach chose to look away.

The lamb let out a small moan—not a bleat or a shriek, just a moan.

Zach looked back. Blood was squirting out of the puncture, maybe a few inches into the air before landing on the lower leg and draining onto the soil.

Pete sighed. "You can let him go."

Zach looked at him with a questioning stare.

"You can let him go, Zach!" Pete said sharply, then stood and walked over to his cooler of vet supplies.

Zach let the lamb's legs go then lifted his knee off the lamb's neck.

The lamb leapt off the ground and made two long bounds away from the men, trailing blood the whole way. Then it ran a few strides. Then it took two wobbly steps. Then it stopped, wavered, and fell over.

Zach was still squatting beside where the lamb had been.

Robert mounted Dingo and started to urge the herd away from the reservoir and toward the next pasturage. Judy loped by and sniffed the lamb once before heading off to help with the herd.

Pete loaded the cooler onto the back of the truck, strapping it down securely.

Zach was still squatting, looking at the motionless lamb maybe ten yards away, an unlikely white wool rag in the green grass. "What will you do with him?" he asked Pete without looking in his direction.

"We'll take him back to camp." He didn't add that they'd use him for coyote bait.

Zach stood and walked to the lamb and picked him up and carried him to the pick-up. Without life in him, he was surprisingly light. Without life, he was just a limp soft warm wool rag. Zach set that rag gently in the bed of the truck, laying him on his side, pulling the legs that wanted to fold up underneath the body out straight—like he was sleeping, like maybe he'd run again.

8

That afternoon Zach was in his truck writing in his journal—documenting some of the sights and sounds and events of sheepcamp while they were still present and fresh—when Santi rapped on the window. Zach jumped at the sound which made Santi laugh that open, infectious laugh.

When Zach had gathered himself enough to set the small notebook—with spiral-binding at the top edge and cardboard covers in Yale's dark blue color because he'd bought it at the Yale Coop with Allison, who loved paper and notebooks, when she was visiting campus one weekend two years before—aside and turn and roll down the window, Santi said, "I'm going to Warm Spring for a little R-and-R. Want to ride with me?"

"Warm Spring?"

"A small pool of bubbling warm water out in the middle of nowhere, just waiting for you and me to sit in it."

Zach smiled. "The pool or nowhere?"

"What?"

"Waiting for us to sit in it—the pool or nowhere?"

Santi smiled. "Can't speak for you, Boss-town; but I could use the bath and the relaxation."

Zach sniffed his shirt. "Me too. But I need to be back to make a call later."

"Back in plenty of time for your call—if we don't get pulled under by the water nymphs."

"In that case, I guess my call would be meaningless."

"Just sit back and enjoy the ride."

"You're driving."

He did, and a half-hour later Santi pulled his truck with the camper on the back to the side of a nondescript gravel road in the middle of a nondescript portion of flat sage desert.

Zach looked at him with a tilt of his head. "Need to take a leak?"

"Now that you mention it, yes. But also need to take a bath—we here, Boss-town."

"Where? Looks like more of the same to me."

"The pool!" He nodded toward Zach's side of the road—down the road bank and ahead into the desert.

Zach looked but couldn't see anything that marked a pool or any other disruption in the monotonous landscape. He shrugged. "You're the guide."

Santi was already out of the truck and relieving his bladder just behind the driver's side front tire.

Zach slid out of the truck and stood staring across the vast landscape toward the sketchy line of mountains in the far distance, looming like phantom judges over the flat prairie. He heard Santi open the camper door behind him. By the time he turned Santi was standing beside the rear bumper naked except for a beige towel wrapped around his waist and a bar of soap in his hand.

"What the hell?" Zach said in genuine shock.

"You take a bath in your clothes back there on the east coast?"

"Well, no."

"Neither do I." He strode past Zach, placing his bare feet carefully on the rough gravel, and stepped sideways down the steep road bank then off into the sagebrush.

Zach couldn't think of anything to do except follow—with his shoes and clothes still on.

Santi walked along in front of him parallel the road, headed who knows where. Suddenly, without word or warning, he stepped into what looked to be just one more clump of sagebrush and all but disappeared, only his bald head and scrawny white shoulders visible above the gray brush.

Zach ran after him, thinking he'd fallen, maybe broke a leg.

Then the rest of his body disappeared into the brush, swallowed whole by the desert.

"Santi," Zach yelled as he ran. "You O.K.?"

Silence spread across the vast open land.

Zach reached the clump of brush and peered into it. In a small clearing in the middle of the dense perimeter of vegetation, Santi's head floated atop a pool of gray water perhaps six feet across with wisps of steam quickly dispersed by the dry breeze. The towel that had formerly been around Santi's waist now hung from the branch of a nearby bush.

Santi looked up, his eyes dancing mischievously. "Come on in, Boss-town. The water's just fine."

"You scared the hell out of me, old man," Zach said, both angry and relieved.

"Good," Santi replied. "Somebody needs to shake you up."

Zach had no idea what he meant by that, figured it was probably just something for the old Basque trapper to say and let it go. "So what am I supposed to do?"

"If you don't know, Boss-town, I sure can't tell you."

Zach stood at the edge of the clearing, not so much daunted by Santi's frivolous response as by the anomaly of this hidden pool out here in the middle of nowhere, all but invisible till you fell into it.

"Well," Santi continued after Zach had failed to respond or move for maybe ten seconds, "You can stand there with all you clothes on looking at the shriveled up flesh of an ugly old man like he was some sort of sexy pinup girl, or you can take those clothes off and climb down in here and keep that old man company."

Zach hesitated. "Is there room enough?"

"Come on, boy—I won't bite!"

Zach shook his head. Of all the weird and unprecedented events and sights of this Wyoming adventure, this had to be the strangest. What the hell? he figured finally. After a quick glance behind him along the road empty of all except Santi's truck, he began to peel off his clothes, starting with the several layers of shirts then his boots and socks and jeans, hanging the clothes on the brush and sliding his boots safely under the clothes. He looked hesitantly down at Santi then turned his back to him as he slid off his striped boxer shorts. As he stood upright and laid the boxers atop his jeans, he felt both incredibly vulnerable and exposed (which of course he was—exposed to the desert and to the old man no doubt staring at his lily-white butt this instant) and somehow fundamentally changed. He wanted to read this feeling of change as freedom but sensed in his heart the change wasn't liberation but transformation, into a new reality with its own set of contingencies and constraints. You could be naked to the world, liberated of clothes and social expectations; but there was still the sun, the sky, the wind, the dirt, the water—all crowding in, all imposing their rules. And then there was the penis, now flopping lazily between his thighs in a rare—no, unprecedented—total exposure to the outdoor world, the one part of him that seemed to have its own will and needs, however much he'd prefer to ignore that rogue's desires. It too entered this new reality with its own set of requirements and, he could hope, restraints.

All that flashed across Zach's mind in the few seconds before he turned toward the pool and Santi, tender-footed across the few feet of gravel between him and the water, and stepped into the murky, smoking cauldron. The water was warmer than he'd expected, perhaps ten degrees warmer than his body—perfect bath temperature. His feet followed the sandy bottom to its lowest point, maybe three feet deep, and he carefully sat down, trying hard to avoid touching Santi but still brushing his gnarly feet with his left hip.

"Sorry," he said as he settled his bare butt onto the bottom of the pool.

"Boss-town, if I bit, Anna would've thrown me out long ago."

"I ain't Anna," Zach reminded him.

"I can see that," Santi said with a wink.

Zach just shook his head.

In the few minutes of calming silence that followed, Zach closed his eyes and let the warm water juxtaposed to the warm sun on his head and shoulders, sheltered from the cool wind above by the bushes and the roadbed, ease him toward a momentary peace that trusted not so much the old man whose leg brushed his under the water as this vast land and the creator that shaped and drove it, the only one who could conceive and manage something so massive and indifferent and immutable. For the first time in his life, and the only time for many months to come, he released himself into the arms of the universe and its master. Given his absurd circumstance—all of them—he had no other choice.

"If you fall asleep in this pool," Santi said quietly to his closed eyes, "They take you away for good."

"Who?" he asked, keeping his eyes shut.

"The water nymphs."

"Then lead on," he said without hesitation.

Boston

The rollercoaster ride to get here will be nothing compared to the landing, Zach thought as the wide-bodied jet taxied to the waiting arrival gate at Logan.

He'd risen at dawn on the windswept Wyoming plateau, but that was hardly new—he'd been doing that every day for the past three weeks. What had been unusual was that he'd woke in a mattress bed in Riverton, peed in a flush toilet and brushed his teeth in a running water sink. Ruth had prepared him a gargantuan breakfast of bacon and sausage and eggs and pancakes and toast and juice and coffee then driven him out to the Riverton airport west of town. (Pete had left earlier, while he was still eating that breakfast, bidding him farewell and thanks with a firm handshake and a prolonged clasp of his shoulder as he said again, "Good luck," his eyes not shaded by those reflector sunglasses this time, looking intently at him but also seeming somehow beady and smaller inside the close confines of the house, without the sunglasses on and the broad open prairie behind.)

He had checked his duffel packed with a few clothes (washed by Ruth the night before and all neatly folded before he slid them into the duffel) and toiletries (everything else he'd left in the truck parked in the shed at sheepcamp) at the one ticket counter in the one-room terminal beside the small paved apron and the endlessly long runway disappearing into the distance on the even more endlessly long flat and open sage desert. He'd given Ruth an awkward hug and thanked her for her hospitality and help in securing his tickets then walked across the open tarmac and past the propellers whirring in a blur and boarded the surprisingly small and frail looking plane with the six other passengers for the ten seats.

The take-off (his first) had been unremarkable (he'd been told by Allison that the take-off was the scariest part) but the fun began soon after as their little plane was tossed from side to side and up and, most disconcertingly, down by the powerful and unpredictable thermals as they did a steep climb to get above the Wind River Mountains with their snow-coated peaks glistening not so far below. With this white-knuckle initiation into the realm of flight, Zach found himself confronted with a choice that was both intellectual and visceral (with that huge breakfast being tossed around and upward in his stomach)—he could be frightened or resigned. He chose, as he invariably did when confronted with what he perceived as fate-driven circumstances beyond his control, resignation. With that choice, he settled back and enjoyed the flight and the breath-taking views out his port-side window, even as his fellow passengers, all apparently frequent fliers, grimaced beneath pale visages as they struggled to hold down their own breakfasts, one hand cupped over their mouth and the other holding the paper air-sickness bag at the ready.

He'd made his way through the bustling but easily navigable Denver airport (the old Stapleton Airifeld, some years before they opened the sprawling Denver International that was either the eighth wonder of the world or a government boondoggle, depending on whom you asked) and boarded the massive jet that could've held a dozen of the twin-props inside its generous cabin. They'd taken off (this one even smoother than the earlier one) on time in the early afternoon under crystal clear skies. Zach was again mesmerized by the landscape passing below—this time much farther below, with rivers seeming blue threads, interstates black line, and quarter-parcel cornfields pale-green (their plants only recently sprouted) boxes edged by tan borders that were in fact broad access roads. He especially liked the green circles of wheat-field irrigation they passed over Nebraska, those circles stretching out in all directions like some child's idea of a pretty picture—which was maybe exactly what it was, or was meant to be.

Just beyond the Mississippi River (appearing anything but mighty from way up here) they entered dense clouds and a little choppy weather for the balance of the flight, nothing but close gray damp outside his window the rest of the way into Boston. Zach didn't sleep (he could never sleep in a public setting) but he did drift into a shallow doze, the hum of the jet engines the only sound in the sparsely filled cabin. In that doze he felt Allison's presence nearby, but he couldn't see her for the fog in his brain, the fog outside the jet. Was she really there or just a figment of his imagination? He knew—the still awake part of his consciousness knew—that this question was of critical relevance and importance to his life at the moment: where was Allison? Was she beside him? Totally gone? Somewhere in between? The fog seemed to suggest the latter and he'd assume as much, had been doing so since the letter. But he also knew this might be just wishful thinking on his part, his will and desire reshaping (as it all too often did) simple fact, as in his misplaced hope to study with Barton Cosgrove, as in his dream of homesteading. Maybe Allison was just one more such impossible dream, shattered to splinters on the shoals of adulthood and its rigid constraints, its treacherous fog-bound future.

They'd emerged from the clouds when the jet began its descent into Boston. They came in out of the south, following the coastline over the suburbs of Braintree and Quincy as Zach recognized the winding line and heavy late-day traffic on the Southeast Expressway. He wondered where down there Ian and Sean and Peter and Mark were as they passed over what must've been Milton, Mattapan, Dorchester. At the last minute, just before crossing over the Harbor, Zach recognized the boxy building of the New England Aquarium and saw from above the narrow strip of wharf on its backside, one of his sacred hiding places. From up here it looked part of the whole, integral to the rest of the city spreading out around it, not a good place to hide or escape. But then compared to Wyoming or all the vast open spaces he'd crossed over these last hours, there was nowhere for miles to hide or find true solitude. And it was in that moment, suspended a few hundred feet above the Boston Harbor, that Zach fully realized what he'd come back to, the challenges that lay before him, made all the more daunting for what he'd seen and experienced the last three weeks.

Allison wasn't waiting for him at the gate. She'd claimed work obligations in their brief phone conversation the day before, but he well knew that Ian would've let her have the whole day off to meet him, let alone leave a few minutes early (and she wouldn't have even had to do that—he was getting in at 5:50 and she could've left work at five and fought the rush-hour crowds to get here in time if she'd really wanted to). He understood her absence as an extension of her passive protest to his sudden return. She'd not directly opposed his simple statement, "I'm planning to fly back tomorrow." Sometime in the twenty-two hours between their phone conversations, she'd realized she couldn't stop him from coming back. "Your name is on the lease, Zach. Your clothes are still in the closet," was what she'd said in response, seeming to him rehearsed in its measured resistance. "But do you want me to come back?" he'd asked in a reckless direct confrontation born of the reckless risks of his recent past (all failed ventures, he might've realized if he'd taken the time to consider them—which of course he hadn't). "Since when did my wishes enter into your choices?" she'd responded before hanging up—on him this time.

He'd retrieved his duffel from the baggage carousel and found his way, with only two wrong turns, to the train that connected to South Station hub. From there he shouldered his way through the rude rush-hour crowds to the Red Line trains and had to wait through two trains to finally get a crammed in standing spot on a train headed north. After two stops he tiny-stepped his way toward the train's doors and was disgorged onto another jammed platform at Park Street Station. At this point he'd had enough of this sudden immersion into the dehumanizing murk of rush-hour subway transit and skipped the transfer to the Green Line train that would've carried him to Back Bay. He followed the part of the crowd that was rising up the stairs to some real breathing room, Boston's version of fresh air and open space in the Common.

In the plaza outside the subway entrance, he stood still for a moment and let the crowds part around him, his duffel strategically placed in front to give him just a little more space, a little sliver of open air and freedom amidst this crushing mob. The evening was gray and humid and close, the smog thick. Compared with the air he'd been breathing these past weeks, it was almost suffocating. He instinctively looked up for a far off horizon, some mountains in the distance. Of course, there were none to be found, just a ring of grimy buildings swallowed in the near distance by the dirty haze. What the hell was he doing here? He finally lifted his duffel and used it as a prow to cut through the sea of humanity toward the walk that bisected the Common and fed into the Gardens and Back Bay.

He felt like he should've knocked but didn't, just used his key and opened their apartment door. Bobbi had heard him from his perch on the window sill and come running, confirming his unique footsteps with his scent flowing beneath the door. She rubbed back and forth against his ankles as he stood in the entryway. Pisser had heard him also, known him by his approach, and had responded, as was her way, by sitting on the couch and watching his every move.

He waited a few seconds then said in normal volume, "I'm home."

Allison emerged from the kitchen, sliding sideways past the refrigerator door and out into the entry, holding a pot and stirring the powdered cheese into the cooked noodles and margarine and milk of boxed macaroni and cheese. "Welcome back."

He leaned over to kiss her. She offered her cheek. He kissed that cheek with dry lips.

"Just making dinner," she said, holding the pot out as an excuse for her actions of the moment. "Hungry?"

"Is there enough?"

"I'll boil a couple hotdogs to stretch it out."

"If you don't mind."

"I don't mind."

He unpacked his few things while she finished dinner preparations. The apartment appeared unchanged from when he'd left three weeks before except it was hotter and stuffier. He said as much while he waited in their living room and she responded that it was actually quite a bit cooler than it had been though still very humid.

They sat at the dining table and ate their simple meal in the warm living room with the gray evening and the hum of city life pressing through the open windows. Allison asked about Ruth and Pete and life on the ranch. Zach asked about work and Ian and Mary and the Red Sox. They'd caught up on all their news before they'd reached the bottom of the brown bowls holding their macaroni and chopped up hotdogs all topped with generous amounts of ketchup. So they finished eating in silence.

After dinner Allison worked on a calligraphy project—a verse about a sleeping cat in elegant cursive script and surrounded by an ornate design that she planned to gild with real gold-leaf. Zach wrote in his journal at his desk, writing down more of his memories and impressions of life at sheepcamp. The whole experience was already beginning to feel like a vivid dream—a part of him yet somehow detached and remote, on the far side of an unbridgeable chasm. The bigger, more insistent question that danced around in his head was not what was on that far side—it was done, finished—but what was on this side, in his life now and going forward. It was a question he couldn't begin to answer, didn't even know where to start.

Well, he did know where to start, where he must start; but he didn't expect her to like it.

"Why did you want a separation?" he asked while standing at the foot of the bed in nothing but his boxers, ready to climb into that bed (he was physically exhausted) but needing permission, permission he hoped might come through this line of questioning, however resistant she might be to it.

Allison sighed and set aside her book. She was clothed in a dark blue tank top with no bra and lime-green skimpy shorts over pink panties, the bedsheet clumped down around her knees to let whatever air the open window offered reach her skin. Despite her coolness Zach found her incredibly sexy, felt himself pulled toward her by an urge that had been bottled up for nearly a month.

"I didn't want a separation. We had a separation, created by you. I was simply expressing my agreement. Can we not talk about this now?"

"I thought I'd made it clear I wasn't leaving you. I was looking for myself. There was nothing wrong with us; it was all inside me."

"Zach, if you're that miserable and I can't help you, then there's something wrong with us. And it's not like we hadn't tried to figure it out and fix it. We tried, but it wasn't working. That's why you left, and that's why I said it was O.K. for us to live apart for now. I don't understand why you were so surprised and hurt, had to rush home like I was dying or something."

"You weren't dying—I was!"

"Why?"

"Because I was afraid of losing you."

"No more than you already had."

He stared at her for several seconds. "I didn't know I already had."

"Zach, in all your struggles, did you ever ask yourself how I felt?"

"I thought you were happy with your job and your new friends and your hobbies."

"I mean with us—did you ever ask yourself how I felt about us, our marriage?"

"I figured there wasn't anything wrong with our marriage that I couldn't fix if I fixed myself."

"Fixed yourself how?"

"By finding purpose and meaning for my life."

"You don't exist in a vacuum. Your depression and anger take a toll on those around you, and they take a toll on me."

"You never complained."

"I'm doing my best to enjoy my life. I don't want to be sad or unfulfilled all the time. I don't want to have conversations like this all the time. I just want to enjoy life. That doesn't seem too much to ask."

"It's not too much to ask."

"Around you, Zach, it is—at least sometimes."

"That's why I went to Wyoming."

"And that's why I said it was O.K."

"I'm sorry to be such a burden to you."

She shook her head. "You flew all the way from Wyoming to tell me that?"

"No, I flew all the way from Wyoming to prove I love you."

"That's something you shouldn't have to prove."

"Two days ago, I didn't think I had to."

"Maybe you weren't paying attention."

He headed for the dark living room to sleep on the couch.

She made no move or statement to try to stop him.

2

Allison dressed in the bedroom as quietly as she could manage then carried her sandals in her hand as she tiptoed through the living room on her way to the kitchen.

She needn't have bothered. The cats had discovered him at dawn, with Pisser stalking this hulk along the back of the couch until she finally pounced when he shifted his shoulder ever so slightly. Bobbi came in low, creeping under the couch and along the floor, peeking over the edge at his feet under the afghan, then jumping on those feet, curling her body around them and subduing them with a series of devastating rabbit kicks.

Zach didn't mind. He'd been awake since well before dawn and was actually glad for the company, glad some living creatures in this apartment desired his presence and treated him like he belonged there. He silently played with the cats and listened to Allison as she tried to ready for work without disturbing him. He closed his eyes and feigned sleep as she passed on her way to the kitchen, opening them just a sliver as she crossed closest to his head, her sundress glowing lemon in the thin light and generating just the slightest breath of air washing over his face, carrying with it the scent of her skin and deodorant. He'd traveled a long ways for that scent. He'd travel a lot farther to fulfill the calling it made to his body and heart.

But that scent—gone in an instant, quick as the wisp of air that had brought it, the passing proximity of the body that marked it—recalled in him a festering question, an irresolution that was so deep-seated and significant that it had almost become a part of his essence, his identity. He lay on his back on the couch (the cats had leapt off at Allison's passing, chasing her and the breakfast she guaranteed, ever slaves to their stomachs' craving) and let the deep-buried question rise to his surface till it prickled his skin now naked everywhere (the afghan clumped at the foot of the couch) except his groin (still in his boxers that he'd put on twenty-four hours earlier in Riverton), tingled his skin like the brush of nettles before they raised the welt, before he began the furious itching. He of course wished it not to be so, wished the question and its associate longing would go away, return at a more opportune time (if such ever came).

But no. There it was, all over him—an obsession of the most urgent need, a fixation that he knew would not leave now it was out until it was resolved.

He met her at the entry hall, stood under the arched plastered opening between that hall and their living room, the afghan thrown over his shoulders despite the warmth in a token of modesty, some small attempt to cover his vulnerability.

"Oh," she said in feigned surprise, her brown bag lunch in one hand, her keys in the other. "Hello."

He nodded, tried to speak but seemed to have forgotten how.

"I wanted to let you sleep," she said. "You're still on Wyoming time, right?"

That freed his voice. "I don't know what time I'm on. It doesn't matter."

She shrugged. "Well, I'm on Boston time; and I'm late for work." She turned toward the door, just like that.

"What happened?"

She turned back. "To what?"

"Your late period?"

She hesitated a fraction of a second—as if forgetting something, or remembering. "That was nothing."

"Nothing?"

She nodded. "I shouldn't have worried you. I'm sorry."

It seemed the air was sucked out of the room. Zach closed his eyes for a second. He was sure when he opened them he'd be flying out the window into the alley, slammed down on the hood of some beater Ford up on blocks in the disarray far below.

But when he opened them they saw only Allison, staring up at him from the close space of the entry hall—their entry hall, their home: first and only thus far. He leaned over suddenly, let go of the afghan and put his arms around her waist—that supple small waist, lemon-clad in the thinnest of summer cotton—and pulled her against his body and kissed her lips hard, tasted on their edges or her teeth the blackberry jam of her breakfast.

She didn't return his embrace—she had her lunch to think about, those sharp keys—but her lips returned the kiss, somehow couldn't help themselves. She missed his skin as much as he hers. Too bad there was all this other stuff in the way, her mind thought (those actual words) even as most parts of her flowed toward him in the sort of reckless abandon that had gotten them here in the first place.

He leaned back from her after seconds or minutes, foolish enough to hope she'd follow.

She held her ground. "See you after work." She turned and left, not bothering to lock the deadbolt.

He stood in the arched opening to their living room, the afghan pooled at his feet in the gray torpid dawn.

Hoping for Red in the Black

It was hot lying there. The streetlights cast oblique shadows on the walls and ceiling. It never got dark in the city.

The window was open and the smells drifted in on sultry air—car exhaust, garbage stink, sewage swelter. But it wasn't the smell so much as the feel, the feel of inescapable oppression on a hot summer night in the city.

He looked out the window. There was a dull glow hanging in the sky, an orange-gray haze emitted by frustrated humanity crammed together purposelessly. And that sound, the endless dead hum of mankind gone astray, of insanity in the offing. The unexpressed frustration of millions gaining release into the sweltering dark. Only to be renewed at sunrise.

The room was gray. Never the blessing of blackness, true dark. Just gray. He looked about without moving his head.

He thought, "Why the hell doesn't it just come?"

The room did not answer. There was only the hum of the city.

"What the hell." More thoughts. "I didn't even break any rules. Everybody breaks the rules and gets away with it. I didn't even break the rules. Son of a bitch."

She lay on her side, her legs bent, her breathing slow. She was only a week late, but she'd never been late before. She lay quiet, her skin pale in the gray haze, her hair black. He looked away.

"Son of a bitch. All this worrying over a little redness, a patch of crimson wet. It's a joke," he thought. "All the world's gone mad and all I can think about is a spot of red. What the hell."

He looked out the window at the jaundice sky. "Maybe if I pray. Maybe God will help." Maybe.

"Screw God. He can go to Hell. I'll be damned if I'll pray to him. I spent my whole life praying. What good did it do? No good. No damn good at all. He can go to Hell. Pray. Hell. Screw it. Screw it all."

He lay still, the sweat rolling down his cheeks. His teeth were clenched. His fingernails dug deep into his palms. Above the hum of insanity he could hear her breathing. The slow, soft, peaceful maintenance of life floated precariously over the dead murmur of futility.

His jaw loosened and his fists relaxed. He gazed straight ahead at nothing. He quivered slightly and his cheeks were coursed with hot tears. Life was so tragic.

The next morning the sky was clear, the sun bright. A breeze ruffled the curtains and the air was cool, fresh. He lay still.

She came out of the bathroom and stood in the doorway.

"I got it," was all she said before disappearing into the kitchen.

He stared at the vacated doorway. And wept.

You see, it was too late.

3

Over the coming weeks they settled into a routine that was not tense but was not close either. They were almost like roommates that slept in the same bed—rarely touching at all, and never touching in passion or sharing their bodies and the consolations (and hazards) they might've found in such contact. Zach, now acutely aware of Allison's sensitivity to his moods and frustrations, did his best to hide those sinking spells from her, practicing to perfection a neutral if vapid gaze which became his stock expression when in her presence. That such a stilted relationship was untenable, especially in light of their youthful hopes and expectations, was a fact known to them both but suppressed for the moment. Perhaps something would change—miracles, they were told, did happen. And if not, there'd be time later to bring the issue to a head, deal with it as it must be dealt with.

Zach fell back into his former routine—writing each morning for a few hours, either working lunches at The Club (it was like he'd never left) or spending time along the river reading, doing the household chores later in the afternoons: planning dinners, grocery shopping, preparing dinners. They'd go to Jimmy's on Friday nights with people from The Hancock, have a picnic along the Charles or go window shopping or maybe to a Sox game on the weekend, spend most of the weeknights together in the quiet apartment. To casual observers (their neighbors across the hall, for example—a young newlywed couple that couldn't keep their hands off each other), they would appear to be in a calm and stable relationship, no hint of the pressure steadily building from within.

Part of that pressure arose from Zach's writing. That act of writing itself was not the problem—it continued to allow him to process and externalize some of his deepest doubts and despairs. The problem arose when others asked how the writing was going. Since assembling the collection of his work to send to Barton Cosgrove, he had made his writing and the hopes associated with it public knowledge; and now acquaintances regularly asked how his writing was going and, by implication (in Zach's mind at least), if he'd placed any of it. Zach did send some of his stories to literary journals (none accepted, none returned) and sent proposal letters and inquiries to the larger magazines (The New Yorker, Yankee, Esquire), to no avail. In his heart of hearts, Zach wasn't particularly concerned with immediate publication of his work (which may have explained why publication wasn't particularly concerned with him); but the world (or at least the small cadre of friends surrounding him) seemed to expect something to come of all his efforts, and thus part of him came to expect likewise. His lack of success became a regular reminder of failure and the larger issue of the absence of purpose and plan for his life.

Late in the summer, three events occurred that both augured and instigated a breakdown in the silent stalemate that had taken hold of their lives and relationship. The first was their attendance at a concert by the group Renaissance at the Orpheum Theater. Zach had stumbled on the music of Renaissance on an alternative rock station while at Yale. He promptly embraced the group and shared his passion with Allison, who also fell in love with their music. Renaissance was one of the most successful of the so called "art rock" groups of the mid-70s, mixing orchestral elements with the soaring five-octave range of their lead singer, Annie Haslam, to produce a sound that was both haunting and cerebral. The group's handful of albums were the centerpiece of their record collection and when Allison saw that they were coming to town she stood in line to buy tickets as a surprise treat for Zach. While she was not of a nature to weight her choices or actions with hidden motives, somewhere beyond the level of conscious intent she may have harbored the possibility that this concert might remind them both of how much they shared, the foundation of common interest they could build on.

The concert in the intimate and ornate (if aging) theater was powerful and far-reaching though in ways that neither would've anticipated or hoped. From the opening hypnotizing harmonies of "Prologue" through the full repertoire of the group (all of which Zach and Allison knew by heart) including "Can You Understand," "At the Harbor," "Ocean Gypsy," and "Mother Russia," to the dazzling climax of an extended version of the title track of their first album and their most famous song, "Ashes Are Burning," the concert wove a spell over them both, but a spell that they didn't share and that, ironically, took them in divergent directions.

For Allison, Haslam's beauty (she was dressed in a shimmering white full-length gown that magnified her sandy blonde hair and flawless skin), pure soprano voice, and grace-filled presence as the focus of the group and the concert defined a standard of empowerment and independence that she'd been instinctively pursuing and shaping in her own life since landing in Boston a year before. She had no desire to be famous or hugely successful or a ground-breaking feminist. She simply wanted to be herself, free to respond to her desires and needs, whether impulsive or calculated, without the impediment of overbearing outside expectation or constraint. These constraints she did not associate solely with Zach (her mother's face loomed large when considering such external limiting forces). In fact she was secretly grateful that Zach had granted her as much freedom as he had, whether from innate munificence or due to the distraction of his own heavy challenges. But in Haslam's powerful performance she felt affirmed in her choice and desire. She'd not cave in to the artificial demands or expectations of an early marriage that may have freed her from one set of limitations (her parents, family, small town) only to mire her in another (whatever it was Zach wanted from her, if he could ever decide—and if he couldn't, the quicksand constraints of confusion and discontent). Allison was not aware of any of these subtle effects. She was not a deep thinker (the first of her freedoms), but the concert worked on her deeply.

For Zach the potent mix of sights (the music was accompanied by at well-matched light show) and sounds intimated the vast possibility of art, hinted at its full potential to alter lives, change the universe he knew into something different, better. It wasn't enough that art could go inside the soul and change from within (as with Cosgrove's fiction). Art could also surround from outside, physically encase and transport to another realm, a world where there were no limits, no chains of fear, no shackles of doubt. What's more, not only was this realm accessible to him, he might one day contribute to it. This chance, this noble purpose—however vague or remote—became known to him that night, stood in sharp contrast to the floundering banality that had characterized his life over the last year. He resolved to pursue this ideal wherever it led.

Though they exited the Orpheum Theater together, sharing their excitement and rave reviews, Zach and Allison were set now on separate paths or, more accurately, had the separate paths they were already on secretly and irrevocably confirmed.

The second key event of the late summer was that Zach got a full-time job. One of his favorite lunch regulars at The Club—a tall, silver-haired, impeccably dressed gentleman named Ed Denning whose interest in Zach may have had erotic overtones (a possibility Zach chose to ignore as long as the generous tips kept coming)—owned a chain of small bookstores in and around Boston. One of those stores, Denning's Den, was located downtown and needed a manager for its hardcover department. The fact that Zach had no experience in book-selling or retail didn't seem to faze Mr. Denning. He recognized Zach's conscientiousness and work ethic and offered him the job one afternoon while trading a five-dollar tip for the keys to his Mercedes. Zach laughed and said, "Are you serious?" "Absolutely." When Zach hesitated, Denning added, "Why don't we both give it a four-week trial, starting next Monday? At the end of that period, either one of us can back out with no hard feelings." Zach still hesitated. "I'll even ask John to hold your car-parker job till then," he added as a final sweetener (John Ashton was the manager of The Club). What could Zach do then except nod yes? Denning extended his hand. "Good. See you at eight Monday morning. We're at the corner of Franklin and Arch." Zach shook his soft hand. "I know. I've bought plenty of books there." "Hardback?" "Mostly." "Forty percent discount for employees." "That'll help." Zach showed up on Monday, tried the job, enjoyed it, worked hard. The four-week period passed without either of them mentioning it, though after that Zach did notice a new parker working at The Club on the rare occasions he was in Back Bay at lunch time.

The final significant event of this seemingly mundane but in fact powerfully transformative (like a butterfly in its cocoon or the acorn sprouting and sending forth its tendrils beneath the thick layer of rotting leaves—Zach would shake his head and smile at these baroque metaphors) summer occurred on the Sunday before Labor Day. They were sharing sections of The Sunday Globe (Zach liked the sports and the front-page, Allison the comics and Style) after breakfast. As the rainy morning stretched out in front of them with nothing to do outdoors and little to occupy them indoors, Zach began to sift through the unread parts of the paper in hopes of finding something to fill his time—more coupons to cut out (though Allison had already snipped her way through on a first pass) or a crossword puzzle to wrestle with (though he loathed their waste of time) or some article to catch his eye and engage him for maybe a few minutes. As he quickly flipped through the Magazine section, past all the full-page color ads for Filene's of beautiful women in seductive poses (selling perfume or intimate apparel), he was arrested by a black and white photograph of a craggy-faced old man with a piercing stare. That stare stopped him long enough to discover that the face belonged to a man named Deegan Mallory—writer, editor, publisher of Icarus (a small literary/pacifist quarterly), and owner of Clear Spring Press in the Massachusetts Berkshire Mountains.

Once he detached his eyes from the riveting gaze (though it hung on the wall of his memory for months and later on the wall of his study), Zach discovered in the article that Mallory's roots in literature dated to the thirties when he published in an earlier rendition of Icarus such well-known writers as Moseley and Bennington along with numerous lesser known authors. In the wake of the depravations of the late 60s and early 70s, he'd revived Icarus in hopes of providing a forum for pacifist writers being ignored by commercial publishers and periodicals. He was quoted in the article as saying, "I welcome correspondence from any like-minded soul. I'm one of the last great letter writers, and I'll respond to any sincere overture as long as I have energy to move pen across paper."

That afternoon (it was still raining), in the lingering glow of the Renaissance concert three weeks earlier and the fresh confidence of his first full-time job ever (a managerial one at that), Zach sat down and wrote a long letter to Mallory, telling him of his trials as a young writer and thanking him for shining a ray of hopeful light, however frail, into the darkness of his current world. He dropped it in the mail the next day. After his extreme disappointment with Barton Cosgrove's lack of response, Zach refused to let himself hope for a reply despite Mallory's bold assertion—a claim that could certainly be excused as an aging Irishman's flamboyant rhetoric.

So imagine his surprise when he received the following letter five days later:

Dear Zachary Sandstrom—

I was both moved and heartened by your letter and your full embrace of serious literature. These are indeed benighted times in the human struggle toward truth and freedom, which is all the more reason to cradle what flickering flames we can find. I'm sending via the cheaper Book Rate a past issue of Icarus for your perusal. Be sure to read the closing paragraph of Tanauer's last letter from prison, dated April 29, 1919.

As for "advice or suggestions to an unpublished and often discouraged writer," I can only suggest you reflect on the lives of writers like Thoreau and Whitman and Agee. These and many other noble lights received little if any attention from commercial publishers in their day. (And consider all the smothered voices suffering under the weight of Soviet or Chinese or South African censorship and oppression, with no hope of ever reaching a public audience.)

I hope you will find an opportunity to visit our farm one day this fall (or if not this fall, next spring—perhaps best to avoid winter travel in these hills). I can have someone meet you at the bus station in Greenfield if you give me a few days' notice.

I'll hope to see you. In any case, keep in touch. Your correspondence means much to me.

With all good wishes and hopes—

Deegan Mallory

Zach's tears of joy splotched the letterhead before he blotted up the drops with the sleeve of his shirt.

4

Zach trailed along behind Allison as she engaged in her newest hobby—photography. She'd gleaned enough dollars and cents off the top of their sparse financial reserves (it was, after all, her income—most of it, anyway) to purchase a top-quality 35 mm camera and was taking a class one night a week on photographic composition and lighting. The instructor (a dark and handsome, bearded thirtyish man that Zach hoped was gay but probably wasn't, probably preyed on his more attractive and naïve female students) had a darkroom in the basement of his Somerville house and agreed to process his students' film (mainly into slides, though occasionally into prints, for an added fee of course) at a nominal charge. Zach had little knowledge or understanding about photography, but he could tell from the slides spread out on her home-made light table that Allison had a good instinct for balance and line and shadow in these early efforts. Her photographs were all of inanimate, human-made objects—guardrails, windows, doorways, light poles, walls—played on, even massaged (though Allison grimaced when he used the verb) by natural or artificial light pouring in or channeled or shaded from outside the frame of the photo. Early on, Zach asked her why she didn't photograph anything living—even a flower, or blades of grass tilted in the wind. She'd shrugged and said, "Because they always move and mess up the shot." The chasm between them was wide, and growing.

It was a beautiful clear morning in late September—the sun bright and warm enough for them to keep their jackets in the closet, the summer's rich leaves just starting to turn. Allison kept running ahead along Comm. Ave. then stopping suddenly, squatting down, looking through her SLR viewfinder at a set of stairs descending to a basement apartment, a flower box (with no flowers) in front of a divided-lite window, a wall-mounted mailbox casting a long early morning shadow across the raised panels of an oak entry door. Sometimes she'd snap a picture after a few seconds' adjusting of the camera's settings; most times she'd shake her head, stand upright and jog on, saving her precious film for some better frozen portrait.

They reached The Gardens and Allison turned right just inside the gates, following the little used path that wound around toward Boylston. She seemed fascinated, almost mesmerized (Allison? mesmerized?—Zach marveled as he followed behind, both watching her and watching around them to guard against bums or hooligans or any other of the innumerable potential hazards) by the morning sunlight illuminating the black iron fence and casting sharp and vivid shadows on the Arlington Street sidewalk beyond. She invested four frames on an assortment of angles and exposures of the fence in this special light.

She stood upright and shook her head as if suddenly slapped awake and snapped the faux leather cover over the lens and body of the camera. She looked up at Zach sheepishly. "I guess I got a little carried away."

He smiled, that same sunlight full on the right side of his face. "Something captured your heart."

"My eye anyway—like a magnet. But I can't waste a whole roll on one fence."

"Why not?"

She laughed. "It just wouldn't be right."

He'd moved ahead of her and stood now in front of a bench at the edge of the path—his bench, one of his hidden in plain sight outdoor refuges in the city. He'd never told Allison about this spot and didn't tell her now, but he gestured for her to sit. She hesitated then nodded—her picture taking was done for the day (only three exposures left, saved against any sudden inspirations, should such appear). She sat down on the bench. He sat beside her, leaving maybe a foot of clear air between them.

A large willow oak on the far side of the path cast shade across their faces and upper bodies, but sunlight played around their legs and feet, dancing when the breeze rippled the branches on the tree. Zach stared through the tunnel in the vegetation to the glimpse of the end of the pond. It jumped out at him, almost alive, amidst the dark green border of thick leaves and needles and grass. There were no boats today—already packed away for the season—but the water still seemed infused with life, still seemed to hold within its patient warm embrace the ridged wake cast forth by the hidden rotating paddles, the murmur of recumbent passengers taking a break from their busy lives, the excited shrieks of schoolchildren. This was his portrait for that day, the rest of his life.

"You deserve to be happy," he said to the framed pond.

She turned to him. "I am," then added, "Happy enough."

"I deserve to feel like I make you happy." He faced her then, surrendering the pond's tether to his inner certainty.

"And you don't?"

"You know the answer to that."

She looked ahead, in the direction of the pond. It was too bad she couldn't see what he saw, and that he couldn't for whatever reason help her to see it.

"I know I'm trying," she said softly.

"I know you are, and I'm grateful for that."

Her eyes seemed frozen open, staring straight ahead. Zach wished he could see what she saw. It was a great sadness to him that he couldn't—one more crippling sadness among the many.

"So what do you propose we do?" she said finally, still facing away.

"I can move out, give you the freedom you asked for."

"I didn't ask for it then." She faced him finally, returned his neutral gaze with an inscrutable one of her own. "I'm not asking for it now."

"But you think it's for the best?"

She stared patiently at him. This man was so full of surprises. How could one live with a total stranger, a stranger that held your life hostage with his unpredictability? "I suppose."

"We can try it, see how it goes."

She nodded, turned back toward the pond.

He looked that way also. Sometime in those few moments, the pond had gone dead, no life in its blue depths slowly turning gray.

Lost Seasons

I look out the window across the endless tarred roofs and brick chimneys, and watch the seasons turn. A year compressed into a second, the days flash by and time is a blur. And the seasons? Obscured. But they are there, somewhere. Hiding between traffic-jammed streets and climate-controlled rooms, they are there. Somewhere. I will try to find them.

Storm drain plugged, the rain falls and gathers and turns to ice, endless ice. People fall, sprawl, and swear to the heavens "I'll sue," and get up and fall again. And somewhere a car is stuck—engine roars, tires whine, but the vehicle stands still. The tickets gather on the windshield. The storm, and a city stands paralyzed. Horns honk, fenders clash, and the plows cannot get through. Storm fed, city dead, and the tow truck rumbles in the night. But the room is warm. Dirty snow to dirty slush, and the drains are cleared. But where are the street sweepers? Human garbage and dog droppings wrestle in the mud, and that limping tomcat limps no more. And somewhere a car whines on the ice.

Coats and sweaters are stowed away and the heat comes on only at night. The street sweeper has returned and the tomcat is buried. Park pond refilled, ducks return, and lovers walk in the night. Windows open, car chains off, and the plants in the shop blossom to life. Bars and stores and outdoor cafes. The pavement warms underfoot. Concerts, kids, and lots of beer. Cans clutter, but that's O.K. The street sweeper has returned.

Windows close again and air conditioners roar. People sweat and curse and the murder rate jumps. Temperature's rising. Sweltering sun, sleepless nights, the air conditioner is on the blink. "Damn machine! Where is the repairman?" Fireworks burst over the water. The tree across the alley casts no shade. Air sticky and thick, a green-orange glow at night. And the voice says, "Pollution level—Unhealthful." Breathing is hazardous to your health. And more sweat and swearing and overcrowded beaches. The bums sleep in the park. Will it ever end?

Windows open again and the heat comes on at night. Cold rains in the dark. The air clears, the sun shines bright, and "Thank God, no more sleepless nights." And people cry, "Where did the summer go?" The pavement cools and the beaches are empty. The frost comes, the coats reappear, and the heat is on all the time. A new tomcat limps past and wails in the night. The tree across the alley turns colors and loses its leaves, into the waiting mouth of the street sweeper. The park pond is drained and the ducks are gone. Hard cold comes, the first flake falls, and a new car whines in the dark. But where do the bums go?

Thus the seasons swirl and merge and fade away. They are so blurred. But most don't mind because they know no different. But what of those who do?

5

Zach rented a room at a cheap boarding house on Beacon Hill, not too far from the bookstore. It came furnished with a bed and an armchair and a small desk, and had a wall-hung sink, a hot plate and a dorm-style fridge. There was no window, and only a bare bulb fixture on the ceiling and a beat-up lamp with a torn shade on the stained nightstand. The bathroom was down the hall, shared by the six other tenants on this floor—all men. The building wasn't much to look at but was in a safe neighborhood, and the price was right for Zach's limited income--$28 a week, payable in advance. He had no furniture (agreed to leave everything with Allison—she'd made most of it), no savings for a security deposit, and no desire to go through the effort of setting up a second apartment so soon. Part of him (a very large part) hoped he and Allison could work their way through this rough spot in their relationship and get back together. And if not, he could always save a little money and set up an apartment (or leave town under cover of dark) at a later date.

He moved on the first Saturday in October. Allison helped him carry his few boxes of clothes, books and writing supplies, and eating utensils down the four flights of stairs to the truck parked out front (Lonnie let him use The Club's loading space, since it was empty between lunch and dinner). He left a good deal of his stuff—most of his books, his summer clothes, his cold-weather gear, his record albums—at the apartment with the understanding that he could get it anytime he needed it, provided he called first. He also kept a key to the apartment, in case of emergency, also with the understanding that he'd not show up unannounced (most especially—this unspoken but emphatically implied in Allison's grave stare—in the middle of the night and drunk).

When everything was loaded they stood together on the sidewalk, neither of them sure what to say or do. Zach finally looked at his watch then at Allison and said, "Well, I guess I should be going if I want to get unloaded before dark."

She looked up at him with what seemed genuine sympathy and regret in her eyes. "You sure you don't want me to help you move in?"

He shook his head. "There's not much stuff, and only one flight of stairs. I'll be fine."

She nodded. "See you around, then?"

"See you around."

She reached out and brushed his near hand.

He bent over and gave her a chaste kiss—lips to lips, though neither could swear they actually touched.

He finished unpacking around dusk (though who could tell the time of day in this room?), sat down in the slightly lumpy armchair, and twisted off the cap of a bottle of beer from the six-pack he'd laid in to the fridge earlier that morning. He took a long swallow of beer and looked around the room with guarded optimism. Ever the minimalist in his possessions—keep few things but keep them all in good condition and working order (guidelines he'd always had trouble maintaining in the crowded and competitive household growing up, and then with Allison, and later the cats, this past year)—he felt a vague sense of satisfaction at having finally achieved a stripped down life. Everything he needed—cold beer, a bag of chips, two books marked for resumption, a spiral-bound notebook for fiction, another for journal entries, a chipped coffee cup with a generous supply of No. 2 pencils and a sharpener beside—was within reach or a single long stride. The clutter of most people's lives—pictures hanging on the walls, unread magazines collecting dust on unneeded coffee tables, knickknacks crowding windowsills—was nowhere to be seen. He wasn't sure if the moment marked an accomplishment in austerity or simply the beginning of an experiment in simple living. Only time would tell.

He picked up his beer and took another long swig. In the fraction of a second before swallowing, he felt something crawling around on his tongue, swimming in the warm beer.

He spit out the large cockroach so violently that it hit the wall on the far side of the room. It fell to the wood floor and scurried under the radiator before he could jump up to squish it. He remained frozen in the chair, staring down at the bottle with a sense of betrayal, his stripped bare life now permeated by the smell of beer.

After what might've been seconds or minutes, he sighed, shook his body as if coming back awake, held the brown bottle up to the bare-bulb light to examine the liquid remaining inside, then took another (albeit cautious) drink. Milestone or experiment, this big new step would not be without its surprises.

A Semblance of Continuity

It had been a long night. The white-washed hallway was blank and sterile. The stairs creaked remorsefully in the hum of silence. I heard her close and then lock the door, the tumblers latching in metallic finality. I looked up once then continued down the stairs. The front door loomed ominous. I reached down and turned the knob. I stepped outside and the door closed. The concrete was cold and hard against my feet. It was over.

The pre-dawn urban stillness swirled around me. I instinctively began to walk. The air was fresh and cool, having arrived on the heels of glaring lightning and clapping thunder. The streets were still wet. But the sky was clear and pale blue, lightening to orange then gold in the east.

It was so quiet, a city as near peace as a city would ever be. The parallel rows of brick buildings were silent shadows, no light, no life. The air was still, the occasional trees motionless. I continued through the stillness. Above me a traffic light flashed yellow then red, the computerized control box clicking loudly to my left. But no one stopped, for there were no cars.

The sun had not risen as I came upon the building I shared with a dozen other faces. I stood motionless in front of this silent structure. The asphalt stretched long and straight before me, endless in the cool gray. Countless lights flashed tricolored up and down the thoroughfare. That was all.

I looked to the heavens. The azure stretched rich and full in all directions. Gulls floated in and out of the dawn, their whiteness glowing against the blue, their forlorn cries piercing the stillness. Eternal.

Only the morning star lingered, shining bright in its solitude. I stared at the star resting beyond the asphalt and the brick. It twinkled peacefully. I gazed at it for a long time. Then I closed my eyes. There was blackness. I floated in the void, drifting aimlessly. Then I saw it. There was a huge meadow of tall grass stretching uphill. And then there were trees, big and green. And beyond the trees was rock, gray and cold. Finally, above and beyond all else, there was an endless expanse of snow glowing white. It was all there before me. The grass swayed in a gentle breeze.

I opened my eyes. The star shined brightly, silent above the silent city. A bright glow in the east signaled the imminent arrival of dawn. I looked once more at the star then turned and walked up the steps and into the building. The door creaked then closed loudly in my wake.

A few blocks away, a light flashed yellow then red. A lone car came to a reluctant halt.

6

When Zach proposed the trial separation to Allison, the suggestion grew first and foremost out of a sense that Allison was unhappy in their marriage. Since his return from Wyoming, they'd not closed the gap that had opened between them. In fact, it seemed to him that Allison had grown more distant and cool—no overt hostility or argument, but maybe that was exactly the problem: little feeling or emotion from her of any sort. He wasn't sure if this chilliness was rooted in a fundamental flaw in their relationship or simply her way of proving that she was right, that he should've stayed out west. There seemed no way to discover the answer to that question except through a separation.

But he had a second strong reason behind proposing separation. Though he tried his best to grant Allison freedom and space to grow, he sensed that she felt trapped in adolescence by his mere presence, that part of her would always be to him (and when around him) the fourteen-year-old child he'd first dated. She needed to finish growing up, and maybe he did too, outside of their tradition-laden, habit-driven teenaged relationship. Their surroundings and their circumstances had moved beyond—way beyond—their closed adolescent world, but maybe their relationship hadn't. Zach hoped that an intentional separation with them still close enough to interact—as opposed to an unofficial one with him in Wyoming—might allow them to grow outside of each other's influence while still giving them the chance to remain in contact and support and, perhaps, get together again once their maturing was completed, once they'd discovered their independent adult selves.

So he entered the arrangement with optimism and genuine good hopes. It did not represent immediate or imminent failure (which was what he felt when he'd received her letter in June). Rather, it seemed an adult decision (maybe their first) with adult goals and possible rewards. He realized it would be a challenge to him, but he was ready for a challenge. The separation became the purpose he'd been lacking (with the exception of putting together the book for Cosgrove) since arriving in Boston. He'd sought out and rented the room (O.K. maybe it wasn't the plushest of accommodations, but it was adequate to his needs and a not unwelcomed reminder of dorm life). He vigorously embraced his responsibilities at the bookstore, putting in long hours to plan and prepare holiday displays and promotions for the hardcover department. He tapped his few pre-existing friendships (with Ian and Sean and others from the basketball team, with a couple car parkers) and forged new ones (mostly with fellow bookstore employees and some with customers he met there). He regularly patronized one restaurant for lunch—Gino's on Milk St. with the world's best eggplant sub (not even a close second)—and another for dinner—The Plaza on Tremont with a half-pound of grilled sirloin smothered in sautéed onions, peppers, and mushrooms and peddled as Beantown's Bestburger. He picked up The Globe from Elvin the street vendor on his way to work and The Herald from Janice on his way home, exchanging pleasantries or jokes each time. He went to occasional movies (usually alone), even tried a play once. In short, he put together a full and stimulating life for a young unattached man in the city. He had every reason for high hopes at the success of his venture.

And within a few weeks he realized it was all a hopeless failure. The thing he didn't factor in because he'd never known it in his twenty-one years was loneliness. It wasn't that he lacked for company—he saw more familiar faces on a daily basis, exchanged more words and greetings, than at any time since high school. What he lacked was a core companion, someone that was there in body much of the time and in spirit all the time. He'd of course had Allison as that companion for the last five years; prior to that he'd had either extremely close friends—Jimmy just before Allison, Peter before Jimmy—or his brother Justin as those core companions. He didn't know how to act without that alter ego, without that ever-present affirming reflection in the face of another.

He'd not anticipated this need because he'd not known it existed let alone how important it was. But now deprived of that interpersonal gyroscope, his inner life faltered and began to implode. The first sign of this breakdown came when he stopped writing. Initially he dismissed it as the inevitable result of too many other demands on his time and psyche. But as days stretched into weeks and his notebooks remained unopened, he realized something more empirical was going on. Then he began to have nightmares, vivid dreams that would sometimes extend into semi-consciousness as noises in the boarding house or shadows in the room took on terrifying alternate identities—that yellow glow under the door a poisonous gas, the hammer in the pipes someone beating down his door. Even when he'd waked sufficiently to disarm these false illusions, the adrenaline flowing through his veins kept him tossing and on edge the rest of the night.

His growing lack of sleep and his self-imposed frenetic schedule caused him to lose more weight (he'd already lost ten pounds since Wyoming) despite token efforts to eat heartily. Even though he was a regular at Gino's and The Plaza, he almost always skipped breakfast (it was all he could do to pull himself out of bed and wait in line for the well-used hall shower) and more and more often didn't bother with lunch on weekdays or dinner on weekends. The basketball league started again and Sean asked him to play, but he wasn't the same dominant player as last year. With his weight loss and restless nights, he didn't have the same stamina or strength, and got pushed around by smaller and less-talented players. A rumor went around the league that he had cancer and less than six months to live. This caused opposing players to take it easy on him (and some actually avoided getting near him, for fear of catching whatever he had) until Ian debunked the rumor by telling them the truth, that Zach was going through a difficult separation; then they resumed beating up on him and taunting him, more than before.

One night after getting drunk alone in a sleazy bar a block off the Combat Zone—he rarely went to the Zone anymore: the beer was too expensive and the scantily clad girls too alluring—he returned to his room and collapsed on the bed with his rumpled clothes still on. Sometime in the middle of the night he roused from his stupor to hear someone messing with the lock of his door. At first he tried to dismiss the sound as another fabrication of his unconscious. But the rattling of keys in the lock continued. He stood, wavering from the alcohol still in his system, grabbed the only weapon he could find—a dinner knife off the back of his wall-hung sink—and stepped to the door. The rattling of metal in the lock suddenly stopped. He waited in silence by the door. Nothing—no further sound or movement. He thought he saw a shadow move in the light from under the door. He reached to the doorknob with one hand, clutched the knife in his other. He swore he heard someone breathing just outside. He turned the knob and opened the door.

Trevor, an old drunk that lived down the hall when he could beg enough money to pay for a week, stood bleary eyed in the dim light of the hallway, holding a familiar looking set of keys out in front of his face.

"Left your keys in the door, man," Trevor slurred. "Don't want to do that in this neighborhood."

Zach grabbed the keys from the old drunk. "Thanks for finding them." He started to close the door.

"Need to get hold of your life, man. It's a long way to the bottom."

Zach didn't know whether to embrace him or punch him. So he did neither. He just shut the door. Then he walked over to his wall-hung sink and threw up.

7

One day in late October he sat in his cubicle at the center of the hardback department with next week's Ingram order on the desk in front of him and his thoughts far, far away—in a dry swamp with Gina quartering the mix of hummocks and polkweed and purple aster, the sun on his back, the over-under shotgun on his shoulder, the river flowing silently just beyond the bank that rose to his left.

Behind him, Allison said, "Boo!"

And he jumped—not at her voice or exclamation but at the realization that he'd been caught in his escape, that there was (as usual) someone watching his every move (or daydream) in this crowded city. He turned in his seat with a gesture caught between annoyance and surprise.

"Hah," she said triumphantly. "Caught you."

"Caught me at work at 12:20 on a Thursday afternoon."

"Caught you daydreaming—probably hunting pheasants back on the riverbank."

He couldn't believe the uncanny instincts, or blind luck (was there a difference?), of this girl that didn't seem to have an observant bone in her body or cone in her retina. "What brings you down here to harass me while I'm trying to work?"

She gave him her patented exaggerated pout. "That's not a very nice welcome for your oldest friend, who also happens to be your wife."

Zach stared up at her, thoroughly confused by this uncommon playfulness. "My estranged wife," he said sternly as Emma, one of his employees—a perky redhead who was taking night classes at BU—walked past, trying to pretend not to listen in.

Allison shrugged that reproach off. "Who today is your mailman—well, mailgirl." She extended a plain white, business-sized envelope.

"What's this?"

"A letter that arrived at the apartment yesterday."

The envelope was addressed to him at the Comm. Ave. apartment (he'd not alerted anyone to his new residence—didn't think anyone wanted to get in touch). The return address had the hand-written word Cosgrove above the pre-printed words Avery University, Shefford, North Carolina. It took a few seconds for Zach to realize what he was holding. Once he understood, his hand started to shake.

Allison smiled down on him, basking in her second surprise of Zach—one who prided himself on never being caught off guard or unprepared—in under a minute. O.K.—so maybe she cheated a little to gain her victory. She could've called ahead or given him some sort of warning. But she meant well, wanted him to be happy and to share, at least remotely, in that happiness. "You can thank the messenger," she said after what seemed an interminable pause. (Why wasn't he jumping up and down?)

He looked up at her finally. He was pale as a sheet. "Thank you for bringing it by."

She nodded. "I brought it soon as I could."

"I would've come to get it."

"I know. I wanted to surprise you."

"You did."

"I did." Zach could take the fun out of almost anything. "Well, are you going to open it?"

Zach could smile now, a thin wan smile. "In a while."

"Not now?"

"In a while."

"Don't you want to know what he says?"

"Yes. But I've waited this long, I can wait a little longer."

She took a deep breath as if to protest but swallowed the words unspoken. After a few seconds she released that breath as a quiet sigh—either of understanding or surrender, maybe both. "Whatever it says, I hope it's what you want to hear."

"And what's that?"

She shrugged. "Your secret."

He shook his head. "The world's."

"Everything doesn't have to be complicated, Zach."

"Everything is."

"No, it isn't." Her face had long since lost its playfulness, had put on the old Allison expression of neutral forbearance. "Call me if you feel like sharing any news."

He nodded. "I will."

She took several strides toward the door before stopping just beyond the shelf of biographies. She paused a second then returned to fill the narrow opening to his cubicle. "Or you could come by for dinner tomorrow night and tell me in person."

He thought for a minute, as if mentally leafing through the pages of his blank (and non-existent) datebook. "That'd be nice."

She smiled again—the muscles of her face relaxed, her eyes with just a hint of youthful sparkle. "You'll be amazed at how much Pisser and Bobbi have grown."

What he was amazed at was how much her smile directed toward him lifted his heart and spirits. "Can't wait to see."

"Good. Seven o'clock?"

"Fine. Can I bring anything?"

"Yourself." She paused. "And any news you want to share." She nodded toward the letter still in his hand.

He followed her gaze, having briefly forgotten what he held, and what it might hold for him. He looked up again, nodded. "I'll bring both."

8

He set the letter aside on his desk, amidst all the other clutter of special order requests, return lists, return confirmations, advance reviews, inventory counts, and the like. He'd hoped that putting it there might temporarily quiet the roar it was producing in his mind, free him to continue his work until his lunch hour came around—always at 2, after Deena (his other full-time employee, a young blonde newlywed who thought it good training to watch over and mother her faltering boss) who went from 12 to 1, and Emma from 1 till 2—and he could go off somewhere and unpack its contents in private. Despite his gesture, the sealed letter remained a palpable presence in the cubicle. It seemed to glow white hot out of the corner of his eye, and the roar that had begun when Allison handed it to him continued unabated. Though he hated to work at checkout, he was delighted this day when Valerie, their chief cashier, called him to the front and reminded him that he had agreed to run the register while she went to a doctor's appointment (for "female trouble" she'd told him when making the request—he'd not pressed her for further details but since she was twenty-four and single and liked partying with boys of a faster sort than Zach, that trouble likely was related to an active sex life). From his seat behind the cash register, and distracted by a slow but steady stream of lunch-hour walk-ins, he was able to almost forget the potent missive waiting him in his cubicle.

When two o'clock rolled around (Valerie wasn't back but Gail, their paperback manager and a thirty-something career retailer with her eye on a mall-store manager's slot, came up from downstairs to tend the till), Zach threw on his tan corduroy sportcoat, stuffed the letter in its left-side inner breast pocket, and headed out the door with only a cursory nod to the curious glances of both Emma and Deena.

He headed up Franklin and Bromfield in the gray, cool day to his newest hidden-in-plain-sight hideaway—an iron bench in the far corner of the cemetery next to the old Park Street Church. It wasn't really hidden in plain sight, since the bench was in full view of Tremont Street and all its passing cars and pedestrians. But what Zach had quickly discovered after his first couple brief stops on the bench (once to get out of the hot late-day sun, another time to escape a belligerent vagrant) was that if you were sitting alone and contemplative in a graveyard, people assumed you were in mourning and left you alone. Whether they did this out of respect or fear mattered little to Zach (and he was after all carrying a burden that felt like mortal loss). What mattered is that no one, not once, bothered him while he was sitting on that bench.

So naturally he headed for that spot with his new burden (or would it be freedom?) burning a metaphorical hole in his breast pocket. Under normal circumstances, today would've been too cold to sit in the shady and damp graveyard clothed in nothing more than his sportcoat over a button-down striped Oxford cloth shirt with a burgundy wool tie (Ed Denning demanded that all his male employees wear a shirt and tie) and khaki pants. But Zach didn't feel the chill in the air or the cool slats of the bench that dampened his butt. All he felt was the letter—first in his pocket then in his fingers as he tore a ragged opening in the envelope's top edge and removed the single sheet of linen stationery that had been folded in perfect thirds. He unfolded it to reveal a page of single-spaced typewritten text with only the salutation and the closing signature hand-written in a black-ink deliberate scrawl.

Dear Zachary Sandstrom—

Please pardon my tardiness. Your generous letter and manuscript arrived at a time when I was buried under a mountain of term papers and tests. They promptly became buried under their own mountain of ensuing correspondence only to be unearthed this morning by my faithful housekeeper, six months to the day since you sent them. Again, my apologies for the delay in responding; and my thanks for your letter and the stories and scenes.

I like your writing. Its intensity and gravitation toward what matters—toward the moments and words and actions that change lives—show great promise and natural skill, the sort of skill that can't be taught. The intensity is so great in fact that it gives rise to my main reservation about the work I've seen—it's too intense, tries to pack too much feeling and lesson in too small a frame. You may wish to consider dampening that blaze and letting that fire burn across a larger expanse of time and emotional terrain—a novel, perhaps; or a narrative poem (there is much about your prose that is but one step removed from verse). But there is vigorous life on all the pages I read; and I wish you much luck with your work.

As to your final question regarding studying with me at Avery, I must first grant that my tardy response may have resulted in its withdrawal. Your circumstances may have moved you beyond such a wish or possibility. However, if you are still interested, please note that I teach two courses one semester each year—one course in literature, one in writing. Currently, the writing course is in long prose fiction. Based on this sample of work, you would be a good candidate for that class.

However, I know nothing about your age or academic background, or if matriculation at Avery would be appropriate for you at this time. If this letter finds its way to you, and if you are still interested in studying with me, write back and give me a little information about your background and goals. I'll respond—promptly (I promise)—and we can explore these possibilities further.

In any case, warm thanks for your interest and good hopes for your future.

Sincerely,

Barton Cosgrove

Zach read the letter through twice then carefully refolded it and inserted it back into the envelope. Looking at the ragged tear, he suddenly wished he carried a pocket knife that could've made the opening more neatly. He slid the envelope back into the inner pocket of his coat.

And he spent the remainder of his hour—some forty-five minutes now—sitting silent among the silent graves, the world passing by on Tremont Street beyond the fence, the murmur of voices, the hum of cars, people leaving him alone out of respect or indifference.

9

Zach stood in the entry alcove and rang the buzzer to their apartment. He did this despite having a key out of respect for Allison's privacy and in acknowledgement of her current "ownership" of that space. It was only after ringing the buzzer, as he waited for Allison to stop whatever she was doing and descend the stairs to let him in, that he wondered if she'd interpret the gesture as petulance rather than respect, his forcing an inconvenience on her in return for her forcing a painful separation on him. But who had forced the separation on whom? These unsettling ruminations all fled his mind as soon as he saw Allison gliding down the bottom flight of stairs and skip across the foyer in bare feet, jeans, and a cowl-necked white sweater that set off her dark eyes and beautiful shoulder-length auburn hair. She was beautiful as his wife; she was even more beautiful as the unfamiliar stranger he was dating for the first time.

She swung the door open. "You didn't have to buzz, Silly!"

"I just—"

She grabbed the bouquet of red roses out of his hands even before he had a chance to offer them. "They're beautiful, Zach. Thank you so much." She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. "I can't remember the last time you brought me flowers."

Zach followed as she headed back up the stairs. "Never."

"That's not true," she said from four steps ahead. "You brought me that bouquet of violets after the band trip."

He laughed. "Our first separation—I was so heart-broken." When he realized what he'd just said, he regretted both the statement and the admission. He wished he could take it all back; but there it was—out in the open (or in the anonymous stairwell—he was glad she was well ahead of him, her eyes directed up, not back).

She waited at the top of the stairs for him to catch up. "So these aren't my first flowers."

He nodded. "True, but I'd picked those violets."

"Which made them even more special." Now it was her chance to squirm a bit. "Not that these aren't special. They're really pretty—must've cost you a fortune."

"Janice cut me a deal."

"Janice?"

Zach laughed. This dating your wife was a loaded minefield. "The girl—woman—at the newspaper kiosk. They have a few bouquets for the convenience of their customers—not cheap but cheaper than finding an open florist on a Friday night."

Allison gave him a sly smile. "She cut you a deal, huh—in return for other favors?"

Zach frowned. "Other favors like buying a full-priced paper from her every night of the week."

"I'm just teasing, Zach. They're lovely, however you got them. Thank you for thinking of me." She pushed the unlocked door open and headed for the kitchen to find something to hold the bouquet.

Zach followed and closed and locked the door behind. He hung his coat on the nearby wall hook and stepped into the living room. Though it'd been only two weeks since he'd been here last (a brief visit to pick up two sweaters from the dresser and a Stegner novel from his bookshelf) and Allison had changed nothing far as he could tell, the space still felt much altered, simultaneously grander (the ceilings higher, the dark night beyond the drawn maroon crushed-velvet drapes more ponderous) and more intimate (the candles she'd lit on the mantel and the dining table casting a flickering, living light, the dark-stained furniture feeling more Victorian than he'd ever noticed—a proper sitting room for improper secret assignations). He treaded lightly across the waxed oak floors and the area rug and sat in the one chair with its wooden arms and cushion seat and back supported by canvas slings.

Allison emerged from the kitchen with the roses in a wine carafe salvaged from a long-ago New Year's party at his parents' house. "Best vase I could find," she said.

"Probably the only one."

She laughed. "Well, this or the brown plastic pitcher from Wyoming." She set the arrangement in the middle of the dining table.

"You made the right choice."

"Thank you. Would you like a beer?"

"Yes, please."

She handed him the brown bottle she'd been carrying, hidden by her side, in her far hand. "I guess I should offer you a glass."

"No thank you—the bottle's fine."

"I figured. I need a few minutes in the kitchen then dinner will be ready. You can wait here or come on back there."

He chuckled at the thought of him trying to wedge into the tiny kitchen beside her. "I'll wait out here. What are we having?" he asked, though he already knew from the distinctive smells in the apartment.

"Lasagna and garlic bread and salad," she said.

Zach nodded approval. "Sounds great." It was their dinner-party standard, a recipe they'd discovered together and made together numerous times. This would be the first time she'd made it on her own. Or was it? he wondered suddenly. She did seem surprisingly comfortable with this entertaining routine.

He pondered that question as he sat in his familiar unfamiliar apartment with the beer in his hand and the candles casting a flickering glow. After a few minutes, Bobbi appeared from the bedroom and jumped on the back of the couch and watched him cautiously. Allison was right—she had grown a lot, mainly in thickness, steadily losing that adolescent litheness. Pisser remained hidden. Both cats treated him as a stranger now, somehow understanding and enforcing his changed status. He wondered what other strangers they'd watched in just such a way since his departure a month before.

Allison ferried the food from the kitchen to the table—the lasagna in its baking dish, a small tossed salad in a wooden bowl, the bread still wrapped in foil on an oblong plate—then invited him to the table.

She served him a large square of lasagna and instructed him to serve himself bread and salad. She then filled her plate in likewise order and poured a glass of red wine for each before finally sitting.

He'd watched her calmly throughout these ministrations; but it wasn't until she'd sat, looked quickly around the table to be sure all was in order, then released a long slow sigh, that she finally met his eyes.

"What?" she said.

He smiled. "This is beautiful. You're beautiful." He hadn't planned that last and blushed along with her.

"Thank you," she said quietly as she looked down at her plate.

He quickly bowed his head to match her gesture and said a brief and unprecedented—in their married life, at least—grace. "Thank you for this food and the one who prepared it."

Allison looked up at him with a quizzical grin. "Amen?"

He looked back at her and nodded. "Amen."

They ate in mostly silence—in part their old comfortable selves, in part their new estranged ones. (Or had they long been both—comfortable and estranged? If so, when had the merger occurred?) The silence was occasionally broken by idle conversation about events at work or gossip about mutual friends. Zach wondered if she'd forgotten about the letter or just waiting for him to bring it up.

After dinner—and Zach's seconds, then thirds: he couldn't believe how hungry he was and Allison couldn't believe how thin he'd become, a condition she noted with no conscious sense of guilt though she was pleased to see him eating so heartily—they ate Allison's simple and favorite dessert, Steve's Hand-churned Chocolate Ice Cream in brown bowls while seated together on the couch, Zach at one end sitting up straight, Allison at the other end with her legs curled up beneath her and Pisser splayed out on her lap and Bobbi sleeping against her thigh.

"So what did Cosgrove have to say?" she asked as she scraped the last bits of rich chocolate cream out of her bowl.

"That he liked my work. That he wants to know more about me."

"And that he just happened to forget to write back for almost a year?"

"Only six months, Allison. And he apologized for that."

"Six months of more pressing matters?"

"Maybe."

"To leave you and your life twirling in the wind?"

"The direction or schedule of my life is not his responsibility."

"And mine?"

Zach chose to ignore that. "I'm not going to dwell on the past. I'm focused on the future."

"Which is?" She set her bowl on the end table and picked up Bobbi, snuggled her face into the cat's chest. Bobbi looked annoyed at being arbitrarily roused from sleep.

"I'll send him a letter describing my background and goals to begin the conversation about the possibility of transferring my Yale credits to Avery."

"And he'll get back to you in six months?"

Zach laughed at her peevishness. "He said he'll write back promptly."

"And you believe him?"

"Yes, Allison, I do. I don't believe this man would begin this correspondence if he didn't intend to follow through on it."

"To what end?"

"To whatever end makes sense to all involved."

Allison nodded slowly as she set Bobbi in her lap beside Pisser. "Better late than never, I guess."

"Everything in its own time."

"Slower down south."

"Maybe. We'll see."

"I wish you luck." She slid both cats off her lap, stood and collected their empty bowls and carried them to the kitchen.

"Can I use you bathroom?" Zach asked through the walls.

"Of course. I think you can find the way."

As he walked through the bedroom headed for the bath, he noted the neatly made up bed (with dimples in front of each pillow where the cats had laid) and the well-ordered toiletries and knickknacks on the dresser top. Even his desk top seemed more ordered than he remembered, but maybe he was just imagining that.

After washing and drying his hands at the vanity sink, he opened the right-side drawer (his drawer) to check on some spare razor blades he thought he had there (or was that really the reason for opening the drawer?). The razor blades were indeed there, and so was a box of condoms, tucked all the way in the back, that he'd bought on returning from Wyoming but never had cause to open. But now the box was open, and one of the condoms gone.

The rest of the evening—it didn't last long: he excused himself after maybe a half hour, claiming weariness from a full work week and wanting to let Allison get her rest—passed in a haze.

Allison noted his coolness and distraction but attributed it to her lack of enthusiastic support of his Cosgrove/Avery plans. While she knew how important those prospects were to Zach, and of course wished him well with them, she was not currently prepared to commit herself to being held hostage to these uncertain arrangements. For now, she'd let her implicit reservations stand, even if it disappointed Zach and clouded the end of an otherwise pleasant evening.

Zach collected his coat, and they stood for an awkward moment in the entry hall. After exchanging mutual airless thanks –for the delicious dinner, for the beautiful flowers—they tolerated an interminable silence till it threatened to consume them both whole, spit them out in little pieces.

Zach finally mumbled, "See you around." He felt he should touch her but didn't want to. He feared his shudder of revulsion would be too obvious. He took her right hand and shook it lightly, then turned and was out the door and down the stairs before she could say or do anything in response.

Allison stood four floors above staring at the space this new stranger had recently occupied. Then she closed and locked the door, turned and went into the kitchen to wash the dishes before bed.

10

He knew it was hypocritical, an unfair double standard. He knew he was being narrow-minded and old-fashioned, and despised himself for it. But he couldn't help it. He was prisoner to his heart, and his heart had just been run over by the Mac truck of perceived betrayal.

In the days leading up to their separation, Zach had made a point of telling Allison that they both should feel free to date other people. Such freedom was essential for the separation to work. How could they grow, discover their inner selves and needs, without the option of meeting and engaging, as appropriate, members of the opposite sex? Truth be told, Zach—in self-preserving myopia—saw this freedom as mainly being explored from his side of the equation. Allison, he thought, had agreed to the proposal with reluctance. He now realized otherwise.

But what was wrong with that, he asked himself time and again? If he'd dated and bedded (or did date and bed in the future) some girl he met in a bar or at work or on the street, would he feel guilty toward Allison? Would she be within her rights to feel betrayed by him? Of course not! So why should he feel betrayed at her actions? Why should he feel that she'd been unfaithful when she'd only done (once? twice? twenty times?) what he'd told her she should feel free to do, what he wished—throughout his long solitary nights and during most minutes of most days, especially at the sight of some alluringly dressed female between the ages of eighteen and thirty—he'd been doing himself? Given the indefensibility of his feelings, he eventually channeled all his hurt through two slightly more rational objections—1) so soon and 2) with my condoms. Well, to be precise, condom, singular. But it made him feel better to feel worse by thinking condoms, as if she and her mysterious faceless (may he always remain so) paramour had run through the entire box in one lust-filled hedonistic weekend (weeknight? daytime?) debauch.

On Sunday afternoon he sat down at his rudimentary desk in his rudimentary room in a building surprisingly quiet for a weekend afternoon, lacking the typical hubbub of tenants going back and forth with laundry, groceries, family or friends visiting, the noise of their movements not only originating in his hall but heard from rooms and floors above and below through the paper-thin walls and uninsulated floors and ceilings. He took advantage of the rare quiet outside himself and a momentary quiet inside himself (first since the dinner with Allison, really since the letter or maybe weeks before or months) and took a sheet of yellow, college-ruled writing paper and a sharp No. 2 pencil and wrote his response to Cosgrove's letter.

While he knew the basics about his life and academic background Cosgrove was requesting could easily be summarized in a paragraph or less—twenty-one years old, born and raised on a dairy farm in Connecticut, withdrew in good standing after two years at Yale (was "fifth in his class at withdrawal" germane or boasting?) currently living in Boston (was "married" relevant or crippling to this discussion, and how would "separated" sound?)—his current self-absorption and cult of suffering (could this all be his choice? would the world or God permit such cruel irony?) compelled him to chronicle his life in great detail, really more for himself than Cosgrove—an affirmation of a past identity that seemed to be disappearing before his eyes, maybe was already gone, leaving only this dim reminder of a person that once was, like those dust-filled wagon tracks along the Sweetwater, left by homesteaders more than a century earlier while passing through on their way to other lives, eventual death.

Whatever his mix of motives, Zach lost himself in drafting the letter, his first writing in nearly a month. He didn't raise his head till two hours and six pages later (after choosing to include the "married" part, leave out the class-standing part—the admissions office would get that info on his transcript if it came to that). He read back through the life documented on those pages (after the grateful and obsequious opening paragraph and before the hopeful and deferential closing one). That biography seemed simultaneously the life of a stranger and a disclosing of his innermost secrets. He had no idea how Cosgrove would view it. He had no inkling how he should view it himself. So he surrendered to a habit he'd fostered since leaving home—he accepted what lay before him (in this case, the two letters—Cosgrove's and its response) as God's will or Fate's, not to be tinkered with or questioned. He folded the yellow pages in thirds (not near so neatly as Cosgrove or his secretary had managed) and stuffed them in an envelope. He wrote Cosgrove's Avery address on the outside, using permanent pen this time. (Would his pencil scratchings on yellow acidic paper survive the trip to North Carolina? Beyond? He thought of the words Keats designated for his tombstone: Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water. Water indeed!).

11

Late the following week Ian called Zach at work (possibly at Allison's prodding?) to invite him to join the team on an outing this Friday night to Mirrorball, one of numerous discotheques popping up around Boston in response to the Saturday Night Fever craze currently sweeping the nation. Though Zach never danced and didn't much care for disco music, he was happy for the chance to get drunk in friendly company, and who knows what one might find out there in the wide world of alcohol-enhanced nocturnal wanderings. That he'd futilely trolled those fishing banks many times over the last year little dampened his secret hopes as he accepted Ian's invitation.

"Good," Ian said. "We're going to meet up at O'Leary's and carpool into town. You can come by O'Leary's or meet us at Mirrorball."

Zach couldn't imagine entering a disco unaccompanied—all those judgmental eyes and unfamiliar rules and expectations. "I'll come by O'Leary's. Might as well get half-buzzed on cheap booze."

Ian laughed. "You sure you ain't Irish?"

"Swedes know their way around a glass too."

"Yeah, if you can ever get them to talk about it."

Now Zach could laugh. "What time?"

"O'Leary's at eight."

"I'll be there."

And he was, riding the Red Line out to Central Ave. and walking the ten blocks or so through the brisk clear fall night to that neighborhood beacon. From the big smiles and even bigger gestures—arms thrown in the air as if he were the appearing Messiah not emaciated Zach arrived from downtown, back-slapping that threatened to knock his breath out, shoulder-punching that staggered him sideways—it looked like most of the team had arrived hours earlier and were well past half-drunk. After a moment's initial shock and intimidation at the boisterous greeting—and with the rapid-fire help of a shot and a beer and another shot—Zach settled into this comfortable camaraderie of young guys gathered on a Friday night doing what young guys so gathered have been doing for centuries: drinking and shouting and shoving and hoping to stumble across some member of the opposite sex willing to ignore their drunk loud crudeness and freely offer up some bits of her sacred skin. Of course, none of them really expected to find such a female (or females, given the size of their troop); but this secret realization was kept secret, well buried beneath all their noise and booze.

At some point in those hours at O'Leary's ("The easy chicks won't be at the disco till past eleven," Peter announced confidently while they were discussing the night's schedule), Zach found himself alongside Ian at the crowded bar. At first their conversation focused on the Celtics and Bruins and BC basketball (they sometimes played pick-up games at a gym out in Chestnut Hill where BC players wanting to boost their egos hung out and took the hapless townies to school).

But eventually the conversation wound around to work—The Hancock, the bookstore—and that drift inevitably found its way around to Allison. (Was it inevitable, or had Ian in his laconic way scripted this? Zach was already too drunk to ascertain his motive or, he thought, to care.)

"So how are you two doing?" Ian asked while studying the mug of beer on the bar before him, a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth.

"I don't know that we are."

"Are what?"

"Are 'doing' anything—married, friends, acquaintances. Sometimes it seems like there's nothing there."

"That bad, huh?"

"Bad? Good? I don't know, Ian. Maybe it's for the best. You tell me."

Ian studied him for a minute, his eyes squinting ever so slightly. "For the best."

"What?"

"You asked."

"And—"

"And I think it's for the best. You deserve better."

Zach flinched at the pronouncement. His hands impulsively clenched into fists. In that moment he came closer than at any time in his life to taking a first swing at someone, and a friend no less (but then, isn't that generally the way?).

Ian saw all this and was prepared to duck if the swing came.

But it didn't. The spontaneous fury flowed out of Zach as fast as it had arisen, like water down a drain, piss into a urinal, replaced by—nothing. "Tell me why you think so," he said finally, empty of everything except words.

"Let's just say I think so and leave it at that."

Zach nodded to the bar, the dark thickly varnished mahogany worn smooth by countless hands like his surrendering hopes and dreams to what had been a living tree once but no more, not even seeming wood in its clear cosmetic glaze. Well, so be it—surrender was surrender, whether to a person or a tree or dead wood or clear varnish.

So Ian knew. How many others know, and for how long? Mary (surely)? Sean (maybe)? It didn't matter. He was way beyond what others knew mattering. "It doesn't matter," he said.

"What doesn't?"

"Any of it."

Ian sighed. He knew it was time to stop talking, maybe a few sentences past that time.

Behind them Peter said, "Who's drunk enough to drive into town?"

Glancing around, Zach figured there were a lot who met that qualification. But then he didn't care, remember? He surrendered his fate to all those drunks that would be driving into town, or at least to the one who would be driving him. He was glad he didn't have a car to worry about.

They all somehow arrived intact in three cars and parked in a municipal lot directly beneath the sign that read no night or weekend parking. Jack said his mom worked in parking enforcement and would tear up "any tickets a donut-munching cop felt like writing." Somebody said, "But what if they tow us?" Peter said, "We'll shoot the tow truck driver." Ian said, "We can all stay at Zach's." Zach was silent. That was the current tenor of their conversations.

They walked en masse (seventeen total, all male) to the entry to the disco. Somewhere between O'Leary's and Mirrorball, a half dozen of the guys had swapped their townie clothes for sleek disco outfits, complete with open-chest polyester shirts, tight pants and slick dancing shoes. Jimmy Curley was so done up in a white suit—his dark wavy hair combed straight back, his eyebrows neatly plucked—that he could've passed for John Travolta himself. Where had they donned these outfits? Had they changed in the backseats of the crowded cars? In the trunk? Zach looked at his own mundane attire—dark-brown pants and a plaid flannel shirt under Allison's father's full-length camel-hair coat resurrected from the 40s. Well, screw it, Zach thought—they can take me as I am or throw me out. He was drunk enough and resigned enough in his drunkenness not to care how people (even girls) regarded his attire or appearance. He was at that moment truly beyond caring about anything, a condition that was dangerous to himself and those around him.

The woman collecting admission—tough-looking despite her sequined mini-dress and coifed hair, and backed by a burley bouncer in a black leather vest over a black T-shirt—ignored their pleas for a late-night or group discount; and they each grudgingly paid their ten-dollar cover, with Peter muttering to Zach as they made their way through the crowd "If I don't get laid for that price, I'll take my business to Angela next time." Zach said nothing in response; but seeing all the dressed-to-the-nines women around him, he secretly wished he'd taken his business to Angela this time. At least he knew he had a chance with her.

Their gang secured a corner of the large hall over near the restrooms, far from the dance floor and most of the noise and action and women. And Zach secured the corner of their corner, standing against the wall sipping on the bottle of beer Ian had bought him in token apology. The thing was, at that moment (and for a good many moments now, since they'd left Dorchester), Zach felt no anger toward Ian, no need for him to apologize. Zach felt nothing toward anything. If his life were lost (which it most certainly was—even drunk he saw that, maybe saw it clearer because he was drunk), then he might as well just turn himself loose on the prevailing winds of the world, drift wherever those winds might take him. He blankly watched the various and sundry dramas being enacted before him without judgment or curiosity. Where he would've typically seen the humor or tragedy or fire or frostiness of this pick-up line succeeding, this other failing, of this girl baring her thighs, that one her heart, that one her soul; tonight he only saw a swirl of bodies bumping against each other or sliding past, out there somewhere—not even skin or touch, shouts or whispers, tears or laughter. Just bodies floating through time—like him but beyond his reach or concern.

She backed up from where she was standing in line to use the bathroom to let an exiting woman pass and lost her balance on her high heels and fell into Zach. He nonchalantly caught her with his free arm and supported her from behind until she was able to steady herself.

She turned and smiled sheepishly. "Sorry."

He smiled back in his new dispassion and shrugged as if to say "No problem" but actually said nothing.

She tilted her head and studied him for a few seconds, startled by this easygoing aloofness among all these rampaging and desperate hound dogs.

Zach returned her stare with a calm and steady one of his own, pleased to have this moment's gift of a beautiful woman with crimped brown hair and sparkling eyes standing so close before him for however long the gift lasted.

From behind her a blond said, "Linda, your turn."

Linda blushed. Zach found that truly charming—blushing in this place at this hour. She said, "Nature calls."

Zach smiled. "Your friend is named Nature?"

Linda grinned. "I'll need to try waiting in restroom lines more often."

"Or falling backwards out of them."

"That too." She turned and disappeared down the narrow hallway.

A few minutes later, she came out. Zach was already gazing back across the room and didn't notice her. She walked silently over and stood beside him against the wall, brushing up against his left arm, the one that had saved her from falling. Still he didn't look toward her. She gently pressed her head against his forearm. She was a lot shorter than he.

He'd smelled her first, when she was still a few feet away. He wasn't sure if it was her perfume or shampoo or hairspray—not strong but nonetheless intoxicating to his stripped bare senses. And when she brushed his arm with hers, pressed her head against his shoulder some gateway inside himself opened and what was left of his essential self flowed toward the blank ease she was so freely offering.

At some point—seconds? minutes?—with still no words exchanged since she'd returned, he lifted his arm from between them and draped it loosely over her shoulder. At some later time (however it was being measured in the world outside their world) she slid aside his open wool coat and nestled inside its folds, pressed her face up against his chest. He bent and lightly kissed the top of her head. Her scent was of every dream of rest, every longed-for home. She slid her arms around his waist, hooked her fingers in his belt. He set his empty bottle on a nearby shelf then brought his right arm around to close the circle surrounding her. At this point, she was virtually enwrapped by his big coat and long arms, with only small portions of her short white leather jacket, red mini-dress, and black tights visible to those walking past. They'd somehow managed to swallow each other up—him her with his big bony body and bulky coat, she him with her mesmerizing scent and supple touch—in the full sight and presence of this crowd. And while their melding made no attempt to be subtle or discreet (those words ceased to have meaning the moment they laid eyes on each other), neither was it lewd or flashy. In fact, in that crowded room for the hour or so they were together, their two bodies molded into one with their clothes all still on were perhaps the least conspicuous or ostentatious or obscene of the multitude of couples chasing their goals and engaged in their heated transactions on the dance floor or under the tables or in the restrooms. But none of that mattered to Linda or Zach either, not in their lost world.

Later Ian drifted by. "We're out of here," he said quietly.

Zach nodded.

"You make it home all right?"

Zach nodded again. They were less than ten blocks from the boarding house and he felt suddenly as sober as a judge, claimed by a different intoxicant.

Ian smiled and nodded. "Have fun" then mouthed you've earned it.

Zach shrugged, pushed his face back down into the world of Linda's hair, her enshrouding cave. What place did entitlement have here?

Ian shook his head in amazement and left.

Awhile later, after last call and the final raucous floor-filled-to-the-max hands-everywhere-but-at-one's-side dance, the lights came up, everything suddenly made stark and all too real. Zach tried to stay down there in Linda's cave, tried to push his face deeper into the nest made by her body and his coat.

Blond Nature stood before him with an indulgent grin on her face. "Do you have Linda buried somewhere in there?" she asked, pointing at his coat and the shreds of white leather and red dress peeking out.

Zach said, "I don't know. Let me look." He spread his arms and the coat fell open and Linda looked out sleepily from leaning on his chest.

"Time to go home, Cinderella," Nature said.

"Do I have to?"

Nature nodded. "I think you should."

Linda looked from her friend to Zach.

Zach shrugged—partly in continued passivity, partly because he knew his options at the moment were limited: that is, nonexistent. He had no intention of walking this dream into the yawning nightmare of the boarding house. There was no level of desperation in the world that would make him do that.

She smiled up at him, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed his lips (first time their lips had joined). "You are the sweetest, gentlest guy I've ever met," she whispered.

Zach nodded, grateful that for once he'd strayed into a mutual kindness, or been granted it.

Linda dislodged herself from the folds and wrinkles of his body, pulled a pen out of her tiny purse (where'd that been all this time?) and jotted a phone number on a cocktail napkin on the shelf. She stuffed the napkin in the pocket of his flannel shirt then turned and walked briskly across the room accompanied by blond Nature.

Though his mind wanted to focus on Linda's receding figure, in the absence of her magnetic scent Zach's eyes couldn't help but focus on the beautiful long legs and alluring backside cased in the tight leather pants of her blond friend. Zach, it seemed, was returning to the real world of longing and obstacle.

It was only after they'd disappeared out the door that he realized Linda had never asked his name.

12

She couldn't have said when it happened, wouldn't have said there was a turning point. Allison didn't view her life like that—in terms of past influences or future trends. But at some point she stopped focusing solely on her needs and independence and started considering, ever so gradually, Zach's well-being and her role in his life. She worried about him, and not only his weight loss. He seemed to have given up on life and lost hope. Even Cosgrove's letter failed to rally him much. While she accepted no responsibility for causing his malaise (since when did she have any influence on his choices?), she began to consider how she might help him out of it.

This shift in her outlook did not arise from nowhere. While she'd transitioned easily to living alone (recall she'd had some practice early in the summer) and enjoyed her single status, after a month or so she began to question where her single life was headed. While work and the big city beyond it offered lots of opportunities, there was no one career or purpose that caught her attention. Like Zach (though now more than a year delayed) she'd spent so much time and energy focused on leaving home that she'd neglected to consider what she wanted to do once that goal was reached. Without that purpose, her comfortable single life began to feel—ever so gradually, ever so slightly—hollow.

And then there was Matt. When she'd let him know that she was separated (through Mary, who'd long since gotten over her jealousy and the related sympathy for Zach) Puppy-eyes (as she'd started calling him, much to his chagrin) quickly swooped in. Frequent lunch dates (flaunted in the face of the disapproving Ian) evolved into occasional dinner dates which ultimately led to that one night, after several glasses of wine with dinner at The Chophouse, she invited him up to her apartment. She was actually naïve enough to think they'd limit their exchange to more of the frisky groping and sloppy kisses they'd sampled in secret (storage closets at work, restroom hallways at bars, any available alley) during the previous weeks. She acted like, and thought like, a high school kid dating for the first time—which in some ways was exactly what she was.

When they'd ended up on the bed with their clothes scattered all over the floor and Matt whispered "I didn't bring anything," she pointed to the bathroom and said, "Right-hand drawer." Afterwards she felt empty and disappointed. And just like that, Matt disappeared from her life—scarce at work (they both did their best to avoid accidental encounters), non-existent outside of work. She wondered if she'd been played by him from the start, over a year ago. Manipulation and scheming were not a natural part of her thinking. But then she realized, in a moment of maturity, that she'd unconsciously played him at least as much as he'd played her. In the end, she didn't feel guilty. She didn't feel heart-broken or used. She just felt relieved that that experiment in independence and self-fulfillment was over and Zach had never found out.

She stood in the doorway to Ian's office at five minutes to five, her work done for the day.

He didn't say anything or look up from the notepad he was writing on.

She just stood there and waited. She knew he knew she was there. She liked watching him squirm, returning the favor for all the times he'd done it to her these past weeks. She also knew he knew that she and Matt were over. He had to be happy about that.

He said without looking up, "Do you have something to ask me or should I just dock you five minutes for wasting time—ten minutes if you add my time to it."

"But I haven't wasted your time—you've been working away. Or are you admitting to faking it?"

"I can work and keep an eye on you at the same time."

"So I'm not wasting your time?"

"O.K. You win," he said, finally looking up with his sweet grin that Allison took as forgiveness for more than wasting his time. "I'll dock you only five minutes."

"But I have a question. An employee can ask her supervisor a question without being docked, right?"

"Depends on the question."

"Would you miss me?" She thought she saw his eyes flinch with surprise, maybe just a touch of concern.

"Miss you how?"

"If I didn't work here."

Ian shrugged. "Probably see you around."

"If I left Boston."

"Maybe visit."

"If I moved to North Carolina."

"When?" he said, clearly caught off guard.

"I said 'if', maybe never."

"I'd say you should stop playing games with Zach's future."

"I don't play games."

"There might be one or two people in this building who would claim otherwise."

"You don't know what you're talking about." She was angry now, her voice rising. "Besides, that had nothing to do with Zach."

"It all has to do with Zach, Allison. You're the center of his life, or at least were."

"You're wrong, Ian. He's always had a lot more than just me. That's been part of the problem."

Ian shook his head in disgust. "Leave him alone, Allison. Now that he has a little space, let him find something better than you to lean on."

In all the emotional trials of her fifteen months in Boston, Allison had not shed one tear. But tears were streaming down her face as she left his doorway and tried to find her way to the time clock then on to her apartment, empty save two cats.

13

If he'd had a little more experience in dating, or objective and wise counsel, or a shred of confidence and self-esteem, Zach would've never called the number on the napkin, would've realized that whatever he'd shared with her in that dream cut out of time would not survive the transition to the real world. But Zach did not have the advantage of any of those assets. What's more, he was drowning in confusion and despair; and she seemed his only chance at staying afloat—which was of course a tremendous amount of hope to attach to a number written on a cocktail napkin.

"It's Zach, the guy from Mirrorball."

"Oh, hi. How are you?"

"I'm fine. I enjoyed meeting you the other night."

"Me too, I guess. I never do stuff like that."

"Like what?"

"Like what we did. I don't want you to get the wrong impression."

"I don't have any impression."

"That's good."

"I'd like to see you again."

"O.K."

"Can we meet for dinner or a drink?"

"When?"

"Whenever works."

"Friday after work?"

"Sure."

"Where?"

"Where do you work?"

"Back Bay."

"I used to live there. How about Friday's on Exeter at six?"

"Friday at Friday's," she said.

"Sounds like a good omen."

"Let's hope."

It wasn't—a good omen, that is; or a good decision or choice or plan, or anything with any chance of success, given the circumstances and the background.

When he got to the crowded restaurant promptly at six, he wandered around for about five minutes—two full circuits of the dining room and bar—looking for her. He wasn't even all that clear on her appearance—his memory from that night was foggy. So he concentrated on looking for a dark-haired single woman. But there were quite a few of those in the bar, and several that looked sort of like how he remembered her. But each of them frowned in response to his welcoming smile and looked at him like he was on a pick-up troll. He twice passed a table with five people seated and one of the women in the group looking up at him. But he ignored her glance and never met her eyes, figuring she was just wondering what this tall guy was doing cruising around the restaurant.

The third time he passed the table, the woman grabbed his coat sleeve. "Are you ever going to say hello?" Linda asked.

Zach must've blushed scarlet. "I didn't expect you at a table full of people."

She nodded but her eyes retained some of their reproach. "These are my friends from work. We saved you a seat."

Zach nodded and did his best to smile in the direction of all the eyes staring at him and his embarrassment.

Linda introduced all four friends.

Zach pretended to listen, nodded in the direction of each individual; but he didn't remember any of the names or faces, failed to meet their eyes. He was still reeling from the twin shocks of not recognizing Linda and finding himself in a group gathering, not the private dinner he'd expected and planned.

The date went downhill from there. The only good news for either of them was it didn't last long. After he'd ordered a drink but before it arrived, she asked him why he was so uptight, so "different from the other night." He asked her why she'd brought along half her office. She said it wasn't half her office, just a few friends. She said she'd figured they'd start out in a group and then maybe get a table for themselves but now she wasn't so sure. He asked sure about what? She said sure about wanting to have dinner with him. He asked why? She said because he was acting like a jerk.

Then she got up and said she was going home.

He dropped ten bucks on the table to pay for her drink and the one he'd ordered but not gotten then ran after her.

He caught up with her over on Newbury. She was walking incredibly fast and ignored his shouts to wait. He finally sprinted to catch up. She wouldn't acknowledge his presence, kept walking fast on the sidewalk, looking straight ahead. He got in front of her and walked backwards at a clip to match hers. It was a miracle he didn't stumble and fall backwards and crack his head open. He asked her to give him another chance. She said she was going home. A car full of drunk townies cruised by. Someone rolled down the window and yelled out, "Give him hell, girl."

Zach finally stopped walking backwards, stood directly in front of her.

She side-stepped him and kept on her way.

He said without turning, "Can I call you later?"

She didn't respond.

He never called.

As low as he was before, that humiliation pushed Zach to levels of self-loathing and debasement he'd never known before, would not have thought existed. That night—bone-chilling cold, cloudy, damp—he walked all over the city until the eastern sky showed a smudge of lighter gray behind the clouds, seeking out and finding seedy neighborhoods and dangerous dark alleys in hopes of encountering someone foolish enough to cross him. No one did. Even the muggers and drunks and bums knew when to leave someone alone. The next day he never got out of bed except to pee in his sink. The following day, Sunday, he never got out of bed except for a trip to the toilet down the hall, stayed in the shabby room all weekend until the alarm rang on Monday morning and he stumbled off to work without showering or shaving.

In the days and weeks that followed, Zach, with some unexpected help, cleaned up his act enough to keep his job. Emma started bringing him breakfast every morning—coffee, various kinds of pastry and donuts, sliced fresh fruit. One day Deena returned from lunch with a Filene's bag, handed it to him and said, "Go to the break room and put these on please." He glanced in the bag at a dress shirt, tie, and pair of pants, all from Filene's discount basement across the street. "What if Bub's in the break room eating?" (Bub was their middle-aged, slightly retarded mailroom clerk.) "Ask him how they look," she said with unbudging determination. He did as told. The clothes fit perfectly (though, thankfully, Bub wasn't there to watch him change or offer his opinion). A couple days later, Deena brought him another outfit, then the next week another. Emma collected his worn clothes that she found stuffed in those reused Filene's bags under the desk of his cubicle. She'd return them the following day washed, ironed, and on hangers, dropped off at his cubicle along with his breakfast.

And so his two employees managed to keep him fed and in clean clothes through the month of November, provided critical support at a critical time, kept his life from passing the point of no return.

14

Later in the month Allison discovered a letter addressed to Zach amongst the day's mail. She saw Cosgrove hand-written on the return address corner. After the awkwardness last time, she decided to leave the letter in the mailbox. She called Zach the next morning from work and told him it was there for him to pick up, or she could bring it by later in the week. He said thanks, he'd pick it up—which he did, during his lunch hour while she was at work. He opened it (with a shiny steel letter opener he'd brought from work, stored like a weapon in the inner pocket of his coat) and read it while sitting on the bench in the middle of the Comm. Ave. mall looking at the building that held the apartment he used to live in.

Dear Zachary,

Thank you for that full account of your life and dreams. In the interest of making up for some of my past tardiness, I'll get directly to the point. With your two years' credits from Yale, I'm guessing you'd be a promising candidate for undergraduate transfer to Avery. In the event you were accepted—and understand please that I hold no sway with the Admissions Office—you would have the option of taking the course requirements for an existing major (I'm presuming your choice would be English). Or you could arrange a self-directed course of study in what's called Program II, where the student in consultation with an advisor proposes a curriculum that combines regular courses and independent study work. This proposal would need to meet certain guidelines and be approved by the Dean for Undergraduate Studies. While you seem to be leaning toward some form of independent study under my guidance, I would suggest you at least consider a traditional English major. However much you've read, it never hurt any writer I know of to read more, lots more, in a rigorous academic setting.

That's an outline for your transfer options at Avery, at least as I understand them. If you enrolled, I will be happy to work with you within the bounds of my commitment to the university. But I do not wish to give you unrealistic hopes or expectations. Last time I checked, I still had to put boots on to walk across the creek at the bottom of the hill. I would hate for you to redirect your life, and that of your wife, only to be disappointed in me or Avery. Lawyers call that "full disclosure," don't they?

Anyway, thank you for your interest to this point. I'll let you contact the Admissions Office for further details in the event you are still interested. Let me know if I can be of further help.

All best wishes in your life and life choices.

Sincerely,

Barton Cosgrove

Zach sighed as he refolded the letter (again perfectly creased) and slid it in to the neatly slit envelope. This move, if it ever happened, was not going to be simple or easy. But then what in his life these days was? He slid the letter into his coat pocket, now holding two objects that might find their way to use for harm or good, or nothing at all.

15

Emma invited him to her house (she lived with her parents and two younger siblings in an upscale town on the north shore) for Thanksgiving dinner. He thanked her but declined.

"Why?" she protested. "You can't be alone for Thanksgiving!"

She was a year older than he but decades younger in her naïve idealism. At a different moment in his life, that innocence might've captivated him. As it was, it generated only an indulgent grin. "I won't be alone—plenty of cockroaches and rats to share my boil-in-a-bag turkey and gravy."

"Zach!"

He chuckled. You had to give this girl credit—she was pure from those cute feathery red hairs at her temples to the red-painted toenails peeking out of her open-toed flats. "I'll be fine, Em. I could use the break after the long hours we've been putting in. Probably sleep all day."

She shook her head. "At least let me buy you lunch—probably the only decent meal you'll have all weekend." She was off for the long weekend, and he'd be on his own for meals.

She had persistence and purpose alongside her innocence. That combination might take her a long way—till the hammer came down. If he believed in prayer, he'd pray that the hammer not come down on her life. "Won't crimp your day?"

"We don't have our feast till the evening, after the ball games are over."

"How about noon at Café Monmartre? They'll be open for brunch."

She nodded with wide-eyed enthusiasm and just a touch of victory glint.

He was waiting for her at the top of the stairs to the Dartmouth Street subway stop as she came walking up. She pointed a big smile his way from about halfway up all the way to the top, and he wondered in those few seconds if this lunch might be more for her than two coworkers sharing a casual meal on a vacation day. Perhaps more to the point, was it more for him? His recent deep pain in matters related to the female sex had hardly stopped him from longing for companionship and intimacy from that sex, or at least certain members of it. But Emma had always seemed a sister to him. He'd first protected her in her early days of employment, cajoled her through some mistakes (she'd priced a whole box of top-dollar new releases as remainders and they were all sold before he discovered the costly mistake, and absorbed the full-brunt of Ed Denning's fury) and the occasional harassment or demeaning comments of obnoxious customers. And then she'd protected him, and in more ways than bringing food and clean clothes. In her unfaltering innocence and will to save him, if even just day to day, she came to represent not only the net to arrest his fall but the start of a way out—a glimmer of hope in humanity and their complex and always challenging relationships. How could she ever be more than the twinkling star lighting his path to salvation? How could she ever be less?

She reached the top of the steps and they stood together in an awkward silence, inches apart but not touching. Finally she extended her hand. "Happy Thanksgiving."

He burst out laughing and took that warm soft hand. "For all except the turkeys."

She winced. "I know."

They walked together through the bright day and the empty streets to the restaurant. It too was all but empty, surely a disappointment to the French family that owned it and miscalculated the total shutdown of the city on this uniquely American holiday. But at least it meant they'd have attentive service and freshly prepared dishes. They took a table at the front, beside the floor to ceiling window looking out on the corner of Dartmouth and Comm. Ave. It was almost like they were eating at a sidewalk café, only without the cold or the wind or the intrusion of passersby. That location also kept them in the full public eye—from inside and out—guaranteed that their gestures, or thoughts, wouldn't wander too far into the realm of intimacy. At some level, they were both relieved to have that constraint.

They toyed with the idea of champagne or mimosas to start the meal but both finally elected to skip the alcohol this early in the day for fear they'd be dosing off before the meal was over. They each ordered fresh-squeezed orange juice, and Zach got coffee, Emma tea. Zach got the crepes with a blueberry and brandy sauce and Emma got eggs benedict. When their juice arrived they toasted the day and their friendship with quiet clinks of their fluted glasses. They quickly shed their initial unease and were soon talking like the close fraternal friends that they had become and would stay.

Emma told him about her coursework at BU. She was taking two entry-level classes—one in history, the other in sociology—at night school and planned to switch to full-time enrollment next fall. She wasn't sure but thought she'd like to major in International Studies, maybe one day work for the State Department or the UN. She'd probably commute from home at first to save money but hoped to one day get an inexpensive apartment with several roommates in the city. Hers were the dreams of so many young adults her age—all looking forward, all vague.

Zach talked about life on the farm, chopping corn in the fall, hunting. He talked about playing basketball, going to the state tournament, everyone in town knowing who he was, cheering him on. He talked about how he once thought he'd be a homesteader, living in the wilderness, communing with nature. His visions weren't like those of any young adults either of them knew. They were all looking backwards, and all quite vivid in their recall of loss.

"Walden Pond isn't far from where I live," Emma said. "We went there on a field trip in high school."

"What was it like?"

"Disappointing. I went expecting undefiled nature, some perfect serenity. And I was assailed by civilization at every turn—all these tourists talking, busses honking their horns, cars out on the highway, jets overhead. I made my disappointment the subject of the paper we had to write about the trip. My teacher wrote at the end of the paper 'You're halfway to Thoreau's truth.' When I asked her what she meant, she said 'That serenity can't be found outside the soul.' I'll always remember that."

Zach laughed. "What did you get on the paper?"

"A C-plus. Most valuable C-plus I ever got."

"Guess the teacher wanted you to explore the other half."

"Guess I want you to."

Zach looked at her in surprise. He hadn't seen that coming. Beneath his knee-jerk defensiveness, he was truly impressed.

"What are you going to do about your writing and Avery?" she asked between dainty bites of her eggs.

Zach said, "I don't know. Cosgrove wrote back but seemed lukewarm to the idea of my uprooting my life just to study with him."

"He doesn't want to disappoint you."

"That's exactly what he said."

"But he won't. You'll love working with him, and all the other opportunities you'll find there."

"It seems like a lot of hassle applying to school all over again, all the forms and deadlines and transcripts and interviews, not to mention the classes and tests and papers if I get in."

"That's part of learning, Zach; part of the process."

"I can save myself all that trouble and do my reading and writing here."

"Are you?"

Zach was silent.

"And even if you were, would it be the same as writing under the guidance of someone whose work you respect, surrounded and supported by others facing the same challenges?"

"Are you a recruiter for Avery?"

"I'm an advocate for Zach. You've got way too much to offer to be looking backward in your life at the age of twenty-one." She finished the last bite of her eggs and ham. She laid her fork on her plate. "There," she said, "I've finished my meal and my speech." She looked up at him with the sweetest self-deprecating half-smile.

He leaned halfway across the table to kiss her then stopped, slowly retreated to his chair.

Emma nodded. "Thank you."

"I didn't do anything."

"Yes, you did."

He smiled, nodded, sent the letter requesting transfer application materials to Avery the next day.

16

Allison called Zach in mid-December and invited him to go with her to a Christmas party at Sharon and Dave's house the following Saturday.

"Sharon and Dave?"

"Sharon's a manager in another department. I've become friends with her over the last few weeks. I've never met her husband Dave, but it sounds like you'd like him—he plays basketball and loves pheasant hunting. They live out in Braintree and invited us to their third annual Christmas party."

"Us?"

"Yes, Sharon specifically said for me to be sure to invite you to come with me."

"She knows about us?" Zach had seen Allison only once since the lasagna dinner, to pick up his Yale records (he didn't tell her what for, but presumably she could guess). They'd talked three times on the phone (once about the Cosgrove letter) but only to exchange pertinent information. Zach felt he'd lost her, their marriage over; and he didn't want to risk revealing the full depth of his hurt and loneliness.

"She knows we're separated but still friends. She wants to meet you."

Zach was silent, truly at a loss for words.

"Zach?"

"I don't know what to say, Allison. You know I hate parties where I don't know anyone."

"You'll know me and I'll watch out for you."

Still he hesitated.

"Take a chance on me for once, Zach."

For the millionth time, he thought; but said, "O.K."

Sharon had shoulder-length blond hair and an open face and bubbly personality. She said, "I'm so glad to meet you" and pressed her cheek against Zach's. "Allison has told me so much about you."

Zach looked at Allison. She grinned and shrugged.

Dave had a more down-to-earth, quiet manner; but he seemed friendly enough. He took Zach into the master bedroom and showed him his shotguns in their cabinet. He had a twenty-gauge over-under and a twelve-gauge side-by-side, same as Zach had back home (it was against the law to keep unlicensed weapons within the Boston corporate limits).

Allison asked, "So what do you think?" when they returned to the living room.

"Anyone who limits himself to two shots at a time is a good guy in my book."

Dave smiled and nodded. "If you can't bring the bird down with two shots, you don't deserve another chance."

"Are their guns that hold more bullets?" Sharon asked.

Dave and Zach looked at each other, rolled their eyes, and laughed.

Sharon said, "What'd I say?"

As the other guests steadily arrived (maybe twenty in all), Allison and Zach were politely sociable as they sipped their drinks (carefully avoiding the slippery slope toward drunkenness) and nibbled on the tasty but typical hors d'oeuvres (stuffed mushrooms, mini pizzas, onion dip). At some point Allison got cornered by someone from work and Zach quietly slipped off to a corner in the den by the fire. He sat in a Queen Anne armchair and looked over the selection of books on the mahogany shelves to either side of the stone fireplace. There were a few titles that he recognized—mostly biographies and histories along with Wouk's recent blockbuster War and Remembrance alongside the earlier Winds of War. But many of the titles were unfamiliar—volumes on leadership and management, and assorted travel guides. In any case, it didn't look like many had been read recently—they were all too well dusted and neatly arranged. Zach wondered what it would be like to own a house like this, live a life like Sharon and Dave's.

Allison said, "Found you!"

"I wasn't hiding."

"Could've fooled me—over here in the corner by the fire." She sat on the hassock by his knees.

"It's warm and quiet here, best seat in the house."

She nodded. "Figured you to find it."

He smiled. "I have my talents."

"Never doubted that!" She looked directly at him from a few feet away with a broad smile and glittering eyes.

Zach returned her gaze with a cautious one of his own, not sure if her words and her look were genuine or teasing.

"So how have you been? I feel like I haven't seen you in forever."

"It's only been a few weeks."

"But that was just for five minutes. I mean really seen you with a chance to talk."

Zach looked skeptical—since when did Allison want to talk. "I've been fine, really busy at work. It's that time of year—Ed says eighty percent of our gross."

"I've missed you," she blurted out.

He stared at her for a second then looked away. He might've closed his eyes, wasn't sure—the room got dark then light again, seemed to be slowly spinning. He wished he had something stronger to drink than the watered down gin and tonic sitting on the end table next to his right elbow.

She put her hand on his knee. "I guess I needed some time by myself to realize just how much you meant to me."

Zach finally calmed enough to return his gaze to her. What he discovered there shocked him. He'd never seen her face so vulnerable, her eyes so open-hearted and hopeful. That look dissolved whatever residual fear and hesitation lingered within him. He was again slave to his heart, prisoner of her love and attention.

"I want you to move back in with me, Zach, if you're willing." She lifted her hand back off his knee, would wait his response with no part of her touching him, make him close that gap with words or touch—if he so chose. And if he didn't? That possibility hadn't crossed her mind till just that minute. Well, she thought, it'll be a long and frosty ride home if he declined.

He reached out and took the hand she'd just removed, lifted it up and toward him, sliding his butt to one side in the narrow chair. She followed his lead and sat on his lap (bonier than she'd remembered—but then of course it would be), leaned into the winged back he'd uncovered for her. She cradled his head against her chest, felt the warm tears soak through her shirt above her breast.

17

So Zach moved back into the Comm. Ave. apartment just before Christmas ("Best Christmas present he'd ever received or would ever receive," he told a beaming Allison), eleven weeks after moving out. He'd never been so happy to leave any place as he was to put that boarding-house room in his permanent and buried past.

The next several months passed in a blur, as they both sought the best mix of old habits and new experiments. Zach was very attentive to Allison's memorably expressed wish "to enjoy life" and found himself ever looking for ways to help her fulfill that desire. To that end, and now with two incomes not weighed down by keeping two residences, they began spending their money much more freely, some might even say recklessly. This profligacy included frequent dinners out, concerts and movies, jewelry for Allison and trinkets for Zach; but it was mainly realized through the purchase of clothes. Zach took to stopping by expensive boutiques (though he looked mainly at the sale racks) and surprising Allison with ornately wrapped boxes holding beautiful dresses and blouses. Allison returned the favor by dragging Zach into upscale men's stores and helping him pick out the finest in shirts, pants, and ties, and even got him to stand still long enough to be fitted for a tailored gray wool suit from Copley's. They were no longer saving any money, but then that wasn't their calling of the moment. They were enjoying life, had earned the right after seventeen very trying months.

At the bookstore, Emma and Deena marveled at Zach's irrepressible smile and positive outlook. Neither would've thought such airy optimism possible from the manager they'd nurse-maided through the fall. Emma sometimes confided (to Deena, never Zach) her reservations that this resurgence was centered on Allison (who remained cool to them on her frequent visits to the store) and not on his writing or academic future; but she always followed those concerns with the statement "But it's sure better than where he was."

At The Hancock, Allison spent more and more of her free time with Sharon; and she and Zach frequently double-dated with Sharon and Dave ("the old marrieds" they called themselves). Allison eventually made up with Ian, but they were never again as close as they had been. And she spoke to Mary only in passing, and never acknowledged Matt on the rare moments they failed to avoid each other. The Friday night outings to Jimmy's in the Pru were a thing of the past, at least as far as Zach and Allison were concerned.

Zach didn't return to the basketball team following the Christmas break. He told Sean he was worthless in his diminished physique (though he was already putting some of those shed pounds back on), but what they both understood was that he wasn't going to risk his nascent reunion with Allison on frequent nights on the ball court and in O'Leary's afterwards (and if you couldn't go to O'Leary's, why play?). Sean, ever understanding and polite, called him "pussy-whipped" about five times but sounded sincere when he wished him good luck before hanging up.

And without basketball or Jimmy's and the pinball machines, Zach didn't see Ian anymore, and Allison didn't mention inviting him over and Zach didn't question that choice. They did, however, get together with Deidre on numerous occasions—having her over to dinner several times, going to movies together, a couple times to clubs. She seemed genuinely thrilled to be included in these eye-opening adult adventures; and they loved sharing them with her. She was so sweet and pensive and watchful—"like an utterly charming little bird" Zach said—that both of them fell in love with her, in a perfectly healthy way. She was also a lot safer than her brothers, and didn't bring along the tainted past they embodied through no fault of their own—well, maybe just a little fault on their part.

In late May, with Zach's acceptance to Avery in hand and both of them recently resigned from their jobs and awaiting the move south, they used what little savings they had left to rent a beautiful waterfront cottage on the Cape from one of Ann's broker friends. Though it was the off-season and Alan gave them a bargain-basement rate, it was still a lavish expenditure for two now unemployed kids facing the impending expenses of setting up a household in a new state and paying the tuition costs of a private university. But, they wanted to enjoy life—and when would they have another chance to vacation at a waterfront cottage on the Cape?

The cottage was gorgeous and private, sat on a point with the ocean in front and empty beaches stretching in both directions. Inside it had freshly finished hardwood floors, plush pastel upholstered furniture, and a fully stocked gourmet kitchen with cherry cabinets and granite countertops. It had five bedrooms and four baths (though they only needed one of each) and a huge stone fireplace at the center of the house. But it had no central heat. That fireplace, and a modest supply of wood on the patio, was the only source of heat in the uninsulated cottage. And the weather on the Cape in May was still cool, the sun (when it appeared) low in the sky, the ocean preserving the winter chill.

The afternoon they arrived was foggy, cool, and damp, with the atmosphere permeated by something between a mist and a drizzle—like a drizzle that hung suspended in the thick air. After they unloaded their meager supplies from the truck, Allison wanted to curl up with a book inside one of the beautiful quilts draped over the loft railings, sprawled out on the plush lime-colored couch. But Zach declared they hadn't driven all this way and spent all this money to sit inside doing what they could just as well do back in Boston. He all but dragged her in her shorts and T-shirt under a light sweatshirt out onto the enshrouded and deserted beach.

They strolled for a long time along the waterline, couldn't guess how far as the fog cut off sight and perspective just a few yards ahead, a few yards behind. They hardly spoke at all, as if words were not welcomed in this gray and still dreamscape. They held hands occasionally, then Allison would let go and wander out to her calves in the calm surf, picking up shells and rinsing them off, stowing the prettier ones in the pouch of her sweatshirt, dropping the others back into the sea.

After maybe an hour (though neither of them had worn a watch, and it was impossible to mark the passage of time in this soup), Allison said, "Zach, I'm cold."

He was too, had been thinking for some time now that they should turn back but was reluctant to suggest it with Allison so engaged with her shell hunting and he content to be in this ponderous domain cut off from time and the rest of the world. "We should go back," he said, and they turned around.

Within a few hundred yards, he was surprised to lose sight of any trace of their tracks out, wiped away by the incoming tide and the steady drizzle that was now falling earthward, soaking their heads and clothes and bodies and the sand at their feet. Soon thereafter, Allison started to shiver, her tremors cyclical and fairly subtle at first by eventually swelling in severity to a non-stop uncontrollable whole-body shudder. Her teeth rattled together like those of the walking skeletons in Saturday morning cartoons. At first Zach laughed and tried to make light of it. But when the rattling didn't stop, when Allison said "I can't stop!" through purple-blue lips and Zach touched her and could distinguish no difference between the temperature of her skin and that of the air, he began to worry. He grabbed her elbow and tried to get her to walk faster; but she kept slowing down, seemed powerless to get her legs to move any quicker. And they walked and they walked and still no sight of the cottage. This shrouded silent dreamscape had turned into a nightmare from which there seemed no escape; the fog and the cold held them tight.

Then Allison fell to her knees in the wet sand. "Zach, I can't lift my legs. I'm so tired. I need to rest a minute." She suddenly collapsed to the sand in a dazed state.

Zach was terrified. Though near-frozen himself and weary to the point of collapse, the sudden jolt of fear woke his muscles and his will. He bent over and scooped up the floppy Allison. She roused enough to put her arms over his shoulders and lock her hands behind his neck. He stumbled along in the thick wet sand with her cradled in front of him. At first he was walking fast, then jogging, then running. He couldn't have done what he was doing if he for one minute thought about what he was doing—her weight and the thick sand should've been too much for him to jog let alone run. At some point her eyes opened and she giggled. "You look so silly with the water dripping off your nose." Another time she said, "Just put me down. I'll be alright." Most of the time she was silent with her eyes closed, her head rolling slowly from side to side.

Finally the cottage came into sight. Warmed some by his body which was well-warmed (and well-worn) by his exertions, she managed to stand when he set her down on the side stoop, clinging to his shoulder with one hand, the door frame with the other. He unlocked the door and guided her inside where it was somewhat warmer and—thank God!—dry.

But she was still shivering and drifting in and out of coherence—sometimes clear-headed, other times babbling nonsense. There was no phone in the cottage, no chance to call for help. A drive to town would waste precious time. He made an on-the-spot decision to stay here, knowing full well its potential ramifications.

He moved toward the bedroom and its bath with her hand in his, but she folded down to the floor. He scooped her up again. She seemed noticeably lighter in this dry space and on this solid floor. He carried her into the bedroom and laid her on the bed and began peeling off her soaked clothes—sweatshirt, T-shirt, bra, shorts, panties. As he slid her panties down over her knees and saw—for the first time ever so fully exposed—her pubic hair and seamed vulva pale and vulnerable in the dim afternoon light, he glanced up to see her grinning down at him. "That's for later, Silly."

"After your bath," he said.

"Later than that," she said and flopped down on her back on the bed, naked from head to toe and chilled through, half-delirious.

He ran into the bathroom and started the water running—full hot at first till he realized that it was scalding and he could hurt her even more by burning her. He adjusted the water temperature until it was just warm on his wrist. He hoped his wrist, still chilled from the outdoors, was an accurate thermometer but couldn't wait to double check. He returned to the bedroom and picked her up and carried her to the tub and set her gently in the rising depth of water.

She purred at the warm sensation and stretched her legs out in the tub. "I'll walk with you anywhere for this."

"Not for miles in a cold damp drizzle," he said as he grabbed a wash cloth off the wire towel-rack and began to squeeze warm water from the spout over her hair and head.

"Anywhere," she repeated as she slid her torso down into the water, leaving only her face and forehead above water. Her hair billowed out to both sides like a mat of brown seaweed. She looked rather like a beautiful, and very pale, mermaid.

She stayed in the tub for a half-hour. He would occasionally drain off some water as it cooled and replace it with hot water. He rubbed her face and arms and hands and legs and feet with the wash cloth until pink color slowly returned to them. She stopped talking and moving around and just lay in the tub as if she were asleep or dead except her eyes were open and directed at him above a grateful and reassuring grin. When she finally slid to a seated position, he wrapped one arm around her to help her stand and pulled a towel around her with the other as she stepped out of the tub. He found a hair dryer under the sink and he spent many minutes drying, and further warming, every inch of her body and, at the last, her thick wavy hair. She let him do all this for her partly because she enjoyed the ministrations but mainly because she still felt a little woozy and didn't want to risk releasing her hold on the vanity top. Finally, when she was fully dry and actually beginning to feel hot, she reached out and gently took the dryer from his hand and switched it off.

She walked out into the bedroom, peeled the thick down comforter back, and slid naked between the sheets. They were quite cold but that almost felt good after all that heat. He stripped off his clothes—the same ones from the walk, though they were all but dry now after his exertions and the hair dryer's effects—and slid in beside her.

"Now you're the one that's freezing," she said as his feet touched her calves, her first fully clear-headed words since midway through the walk.

He was, he suddenly realized, and just that instant started shivering.

She laughed. "Now let me warm you," she said and pressed herself against him, wrapped her arms over his shoulders and pulled him tight to her, each on their sides facing each other. He lay his head on her shoulder, she hers on his neck. And they fell asleep that way, didn't wake till after dark when Zach rose and built a fire in the fireplace before starting dinner, Allison joining him later draped in a terrycloth robe over flannel pajamas and two pairs of socks on her feet.

A few nights later, the last of their stay, after the weather had cleared and the days brightened but not warmed much, with the hypothermia incident well forgotten (or maybe not) and Allison's offer of her body for "later" still not fully realized, Zach turned off the TV with its late-night news fading in and out in snowy shadow, drained the remains of his third Jack Daniels on the rocks, and headed for bed where Allison had preceded him maybe an hour before.

He undressed completely without turning on the light and slid into bed. Unlike Boston, night was real night here; and with the moon not yet risen, the bedroom and the bed were pitch-dark. Zach lay unmoving on his side of the bed until he was able to feel the warmth of her body and hear her shallow breaths and thereby gauge her distance from him. He slowly slid his hand flat on the mattress till his fingers felt the loose flannel of her pajama top. He used the guide of the fabric to raise his hand above her stomach, still not pressing on her skin, feeling only the loose cloth. He found the opening between two wide-spaced buttons on the shirt and slid his fingers between them, finally feeling the full and welcoming warmth of her skin radiating across the half-inch gap to his fingers. He held his hand there unmoving for what seemed a very long time, receiving her warmth across that slice of air, reveling in it, thankful for it.

Then he carefully, ever so lightly lowered his fingers to brush the tight skin of her abdomen. The feel of that flesh, both taut and pliant and oh so warm, seemed all he could ever hope for, the return on months of pain and suffering that should've been remote by now but in this isolated cottage in the total dark of night and with those several drinks in his stomach suddenly seemed very close at hand.

Then she rolled away. His hand slid out of the gap in her shirt and flopped down on the mattress like some tossed aside by-catch (he thought of it like that after watching a grizzled fisherman at the docks in South Orleans do just that with the trash fish still gasping in his net). He wasn't sure if the gesture was conscious or unintentional, if Allison was awake or asleep or somewhere in between. But at just that moment, in his current state of mind pressed down by the weight of all he'd seen and discovered and felt and suppressed since returning from Wyoming nearly a year past, it didn't matter how conscious her rejection was. It was still rejection in a moment when he needed welcome.

He rolled out of bed, not trying to be quiet but not being loud either, dressed quickly and efficiently, walked out into the kitchen, grabbed the half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels off the counter and his coat off the wall peg, and headed out into the dark night. He walked the mile along the twisty and dark two-lane road to the crossroads store (deserted at this hour though the light over the payphone recalled another payphone's intersection with his life) and the mile back to the cottage, slowly consuming the whiskey in frequent small sips, thinking about nothing, feeling nothing, not one emotion or thought traversing his storm-wearied soul.

God stood over the sleeping Allison in the pitch black room beside the pitch black sea with the room not dark at all to him but glowing in the light of his love and forbearance and the black sea not black at all to him and not even the sea but his slow breathing of life into his one living planet, into this one moment in time that was for him all time and not time at all but simply his will to create and so willed done and so done them moving now in their own faltering way.

God stood there with her that she not be alone, that she be watched and cherished in the way her husband should fulfill, had promised to do but wasn't, was lost out there somewhere, beyond his help, outside his will. And God wondered, as he watched this one sleeping child, what it would take for the other to find his way home, to a permanent home: to know full love—the love of the creator for his created, the love promised all, including the desolate searcher, though so rarely accepted. What would it take, he wondered? What would it take? He waited to know.

18

Deegan Mallory rushed across the clearing with a sharp-eyed stare and his body tilted forward before Zach had even turned off the car. They were on the way to North Carolina and had left their packed truck on the farm and borrowed Zach's mom's car for this trip to West Greenfield and dinner with Mallory and his wife Rachel. Mallory had written to Zach earlier in the spring and insisted they stop for a visit before heading south. He'd accepted the invitation to dinner but declined the offer of an overnight stay, citing prior commitments but in fact uncertain of Allison's openness to this Bohemian and his iconoclastic world. So here they were, in the placid Berkshires on a bright afternoon in early June.

"Zachary Sandstrom!" Mallory said with gusto as he shook Zach's hand vigorously. He was a short man, maybe a full foot shorter than Zach, but somehow seemed to be looking at Zach at his eye level.

He turned and rushed to Allison just now coming around the front of the car. "And his lovely wife Allison!" He cradled her two hands in his and bowed ever so slightly. "Welcome to Clear Spring." It was the name of the farm and Mallory's press, but it might just as well have been the name of the day and this moment in their lives—victors over (or survivors of) the harsh trials of the dark and dirty city, bound for a new world of light and learning in the welcoming southland. "Come," he said, "And see my press, my little ray of light shined out into the darkness." And with that invitation he turned and rushed off toward a building down the drive beyond the house. Zach and Allison had to all but run to keep up.

No surprise here, Mallory (he told them to call him Deeg) was an intense, high energy (despite his seventy years) opinionated life-long radical that asked direct and probing questions about one's beliefs and politics and listened carefully to the answers before kindly but methodically dismantling or at least thoroughly dissecting those views and exposing the flaws (in his humble opinion) in them. This glaring intensity might've been entirely too much for most people (though Zach, somewhat prepared for it through his correspondence with the man, found it both amusing and invigorating and not the least bit threatening or intrusive in light of the fact that he was leaving the area and his sphere of influence, not signing on for an extended tenure) except that it was nearly perfectly counter-balanced by the quiet watchfulness and grace of his charming wife.

Rachel met them at the back door of the house after Deeg had given them the full tour, not only of the press but of the barn and outbuildings and large garden just recently plowed, still waiting planting. She shook their hands with a gentle and reassuring calm that countered his forcefulness. Despite her full head of snow-white curly hair, she was clearly a good deal younger than Deeg and had somehow managed to preserve an unfurrowed brow and serene gaze behind those dark soulful eyes despite decades of tending, and picking up after, her outspoken and controversial husband. "Now that Deeg's thoroughly worn you out atop your long drive up here, why don't you come in and rest over a cup of tea or glass of lemonade?"

She stood aside, revealing a toddler who had been hiding behind the folds of her long denim skirt. "Oh," she said, as surprised as the toddler by the child's sudden appearance, "This is Lizbeth, our precious and precocious granddaughter. Look fast, as she's likely to disappear in a wink. I've taken to calling her Tinkerbell."

But, contrary to that prediction, Lizbeth locked her eyes on the smiling Zach and, after just a moment's hesitation, stumbled toward him on tottering legs and wrapped her arms around his knees, her face against his thighs.

Both Rachel and Deeg stared at Lizbeth, open-mouthed and dumbfounded. "She's never done that to any stranger," Rachel said when she'd found her voice. "It's hard enough to get her to stand still for family."

Zach gazed down at the little girl wrapped around his legs, deeply moved and utterly charmed. He'd known for some time now that he'd love a child, especially a daughter, with every ounce of his being. But he'd never had one show such love in response. He squatted down carefully to her eye level, to those beautiful soft blue eyes. And when she didn't flee or flinch, he opened his arms and hands before her.

She fell into that embrace, kissed him lightly on the cheek with her child's dry lips then disappeared quick as a wisp into the dim shadows of the kitchen beyond the anteroom.

Zach stood slowly.

Deeg clapped his hand onto Zach's shoulder and gave him a sharp shake. "Knew from the first sentence of your first letter you had a kind and compassionate heart, Zach. Glad to see another in this family has such prescience." He kept his hand firmly attached to Zach's shoulder as he led him into the large open kitchen-dining area.

Behind them Rachel stood looking at Allison. "Does your husband always have that effect on children?"

Allison shrugged. "News to me," she said as they turned and followed the men inside the house.

The rest of the afternoon and evening passed in a surprisingly relaxed and comfortable sharing of conversation, food, and drink. This tone was set by the hosts, who were clearly practiced at making strangers feel welcomed, and accomplished at playing to each other's strengths. Zach and even insecure Allison were quickly put at their ease and soon felt honored to be so readily and gracefully welcomed into this household. Neither said it, neither thought it in so many words, but both subconsciously realized that this was the first time they'd been treated as full adults by an adult couple they admired and respected and couldn't he but like. After maybe twenty minutes of informal chatter around the table, Rachel took Allison to the kitchen, just twenty feet away through an opening in the natural wood cabinetry, to begin preparations for the dinner while Zach and Deeg faced each other across the simple Shaker table.

"So what'll you do with Avery?" Deeg asked, the words backed by that unyielding stare.

"Don't you mean 'at' Avery?"

"You'll shape the place as much as it will shape you, mark my words."

"I'll hope so—in a positive way, that is. But right now I'm just hoping to survive the transition and fit in."

"Be bold, Zach; don't hold back. Wrap those long arms and that big heart around whatever life you find. Don't fear, son; don't fear!"

Zach had never heard such words and such conviction directed toward him, and didn't know quite what to say or do. "I'll write a lot, under Cosgrove's direction; and read a lot—I'll be doing a four-year English major in two years."

"And I'm guessing that doesn't intimidate you."

Zach smiled. "Rather looking forward to the challenge."

Deeg nodded. "You've come a long way from that first letter you wrote me."

Zach looked down at the table, blind-sided by the reminder of that dark period. "That was near the bottom, Deeg. I didn't think I could go on, had no purpose worth bearing the pain and confusion. My letter to you was a cry in the dark." He looked up from the table, directed a calm and unwavering stare of his own at the weathered face that seemed just then chiseled granite. "Your letter may very well have saved my life by giving me hope."

Deeg's gaze faltered, the stony visage slowly softened to pale and vulnerable skin, and Zach thought he saw liquid pooling at the corners of the eyes. The old man stood without speaking and scurried down the hall.

Sitting alone at the table, Allison and Rachel chattering in the kitchen behind him, Zach suddenly realized that he loved Deegan Mallory, not just for what he'd done for him but also for what he represented—seventy years of willpower to stand for justice and freedom. He doubted he'd ever meet another to match him, or even come close.

Deeg returned and gave Zach a hand-printed broadside of what appeared to be a short poem. "D. H. Lawrence wrote those lines a few years before his death. Frieda gave them to me in the late thirties and allowed me to print a limited edition." He then stood at the head of the table and recited the lines from memory in an uncharacteristically soft and sonorous voice. At first Zach read along as he recited. But shortly he set the broadside on the table and closed his eyes and listened.

Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, cancelled, made nothing?

Are you willing to be made nothing, dipped into oblivion?

If not, you will never really change.

The phoenix renews her youth

only when she is burnt, burnt alive,

burnt down to hot and flocculent ash.

Then the small stirring of a new small bub in the nest

with strands of down like floating ash

shows that she is renewing her youth like the eagle,

immortal bird.

And so Zach received the epitaph for his former life.

The simple vegetarian meal—ratatouille, bulgur salad, home-grown asparagus, and yeast rolls with farm-churned butter—was a challenge for Allison's narrow palate; but she managed well-enough by picking the spring onions out of the salad, declining the asparagus, and eating lots of the delicious warm rolls. Zach felt in many ways like he'd found a spiritual home—the farm commune built around principles greater than competition and survival, a furtherance of human ideals through honoring nature and sharing its bounty of food and insight, both essential forms of sustenance.

Sometime during the course of the evening, Zach realized that Mallory's frequent letters and unrelenting invitations were but a thinly veiled recruitment, attempts to get him to join their cause, to visit Clear Spring and stay, labor in the rocky soil of the Berkshire hills and human injustice. That he couldn't do so, had chosen or been given a somewhat different path, caused him a moment's regret and doubt. This was a life he knew and a family he could join, a purpose he could don as easily and naturally as rubber mucking boots or a canvas field coat. Then he spied Allison, returning from the kitchen after ferrying an armload of dirty plates to the sink. This wasn't her world. As game as she'd been this afternoon and evening—and she seemed to like Rachel a lot—she would never be happy here. He was far from certain what would make her happy, but he was certain this wasn't it. So they'd jump into a new Great Unknown together, see what it held for them as individuals, as a couple.

Following dessert—home-made buttery shortcake smothered in sliced fresh strawberries picked down in the valley and topped with a generous dollop of cream ladled off the top of their Guernsey cow's milk and wire-whisked to soft peaks—Deeg went to the sideboard and returned carrying a hand-painted metal tray holding four small glasses and a big-bellied bottle with no label, a cork stopper, and a smoky brown liquid inside. He set the ensemble in the middle of the table and sat down without a word.

After a prolonged pause Rachel chuckled from her seat opposite him. "Ever the theatrical flair," she said quietly.

"And the pregnant silence," Zach ventured.

Deeg returned a playful grin and twinkling eyes to their questioning glances. When he felt sure he'd secured their rapt attention (as if he'd lacked that for even one minute over the course of the evening), he stood and announced, "Single Speyside Malt from the finest distiller on the island, aged in oak casks, harvested at peak maturity, suitable for only the most auspicious of occasions."

"The good stuff," Rachel translated.

Though he was not a fan of Scotch (at least the cheap blends he'd sampled at O'Leary's, probably a far cry from whatever awaited in this daunting cruet), he nodded a silent thanks in advance and hoped Allison didn't decline or, worse, spit it out.

Deeg leaned over, uncorked the bottle, and reverently filled the small straight-sided glasses little bigger than shot glasses. When he got to the glass facing Allison, she held her hand out and said, "Just a taste."

Deeg smiled and barely covered the bottom of her glass with the dark spirits. "A prudent lass," he said as he recorked the bottle.

He took the glass closest to him and stood. Rachel gently cupped her glass, then Zach and Allison theirs. Deeg quietly looked over his guests and his lovely wife, seemed to be taking in the whole table, the whole day, maybe his whole life. There was something poignant, both tragic and heroic, in one who'd cared so much for so long and could still care so passionately for these youngsters passing through this twilight.

When he finally spoke it was with a deep-voiced mix of awe and determination that seemed to return him to his own unfettered youth. "To Zach and Allison on the threshold of their new life: May the fair wind carry you far, and deliver you safe the other side; may the summer crane guide you by day, the unmoving polar star by night; may the inevitable storms that rise, leave in their wake clearer sight; may the love that flows forth from your hearts, flow back in fuller swell; may the passions of your youth, age with the fire and richness of this spirit; and may the hope and promise you shined on this one old man, shine back on you a hundred fold, a thousand." He raised his glass to them, but was looking only at Rachel, beyond the candlelight at the far end of the table. "Godspeed. Godheart."

They all drank. Allison winced only slightly as she drained her thimble full. Zach didn't enjoy the smoky, earthy flavor but would never forget it.

"And may y'all not learn to say 'y'all'," Rachel chimed in, prompting much relieved laughter.

At just that moment, Lizbeth emerged from the hallway clothed in flannel pajamas with sewn in slippers against the cool night and house, and trotted toward the table.

Her mother Isabelle, the wife of Deeg and Rachel's resident son Jonathan, held back in the passageway but whispered, "She insisted."

Lizbeth went first to Rachel and gave her a gleeful hug and got a big smootch in return. Then she ran to Deeg, giving Allison's chair a wide berth, and threw her arms around her granddad, producing a typically unrestrained roar of glee. Finally she ran to Zach and hugged his waist and laid her head against his side. Zach patted her head gently, brushed her feathery blond hair.

Rachel looked to Isabelle. "Would you have ever thought?" she said in wonder.

Isabelle shrugged and smiled. "Already a slave to the heart."

Zach wondered at Isabelle's words—her or me?—but saw Lizbeth's hug as a blessing more auspicious than Deeg's beautiful toast, Rachel's bounteous hospitality—a gift that struck to the heart, wherever it had originated.

Lizbeth released him and ran to her mother then off to bed.

They made their way home over dark and serpentine country roads emptying into a dark but wide and straight-laned interstate leading to one night's sleep cramped in his old bed with his old dog acting aloof and indifferent even as she curled at their feet and Pisser and Bobbi acting—well, pissed in their blanket-lined cat carrier beside the bed.

Then onward tomorrow to North Carolina.

The End of Book One
