Affliction

12

WADE DROVE THE LENGTH of Main Street, halfway to the prison north of Concord, then turned around and drove all the way back. Specks of snow were coming down. It was two forty-five, and Wade felt himself drifting swiftly toward a familiar form of hysteria: a tangible panic. His particular desire, to conduct a successful custody suit against Lillian, now looked like a naive delusion, and his more general and long-lived desire, to be a good father, was starting to feel like a simpleminded obsession. There was a waxing and waning connection between the two desires, he knew, a hydraulic connection, so that when one was strong, the other weakened. When both weakened, however, as now, Wade dropped through the floor of depression into panic.

To fight off the panic, he decided that he wanted to see Jill. What the hell, it was a Saturday afternoon, he was coincidentally in Concord, and he needed to explain some things to the child. Why not call up and arrange to spend the rest of the afternoon with her? He also hoped that, after the fiasco at the Halloween party, she would be able to reassure him somewhat. Surely, his company was not so bad, so boring, that she could not enjoy herself with him. It was more or less a communication problem. They had missed each other’s signals the other night; that was all. He could apologize, and she could apologize, and everything would be swell.

Besides, it was his right, goddammit, especially after Lillian and her husband had driven up to Lawford Thursday night and taken her away from him. When you take a man’s child from him, you take much more than the child, so that the man tends to forget about regaining the child and instead focuses on regaining the other — self-respect, pride, sense of autonomy, that sort of thing. The child becomes emblematic. This was happening to Wade, of course; and he dimly perceived it. But he was powerless to stop it.

He called from a phone booth in the parking lot of the K mart in the shopping mall east of Main Street. The snow was coming down harder now and might amount to something, he observed, thinking warily of the drive home. The afternoon sky had darkened and lowered, and the day seemed to be easing into evening already. Shoppers, mostly women and children, occasionally a man, hurried back and forth between their cars and the store.

He let the phone ring an even dozen times before giving up. Hell, it’s barely three, he thought: too early to head back to Lawford and see Margie, but still early enough to wait around awhile and then take Jill out for supper at a Pizza Hut. She would like that. Meanwhile, he decided, he would go someplace for a beer, maybe try one of those fancy new bars in the renovated old warehouses behind the Eagle Hotel he had heard about, where there were supposed to be lots of single men and women hanging out, swingers or yuppies or whatever the hell they call them these days. He would not mind a look at that. Then he would try to call Jill again.

He parked on North Main Street in front of the hotel and, passing under phony gas lanterns, strolled through the bricked-over alley to The Stone Warehouse in back, walked in without hesitation or a preliminary look around the place — as if, though not exactly a regular, he came here frequently — and, using tunnel vision, zeroed in on the bar. He ordered a draft from a tall good-looking youth with slicked-back hair and then turned, glass in hand, and slowly perused the place.

The room was large, with mostly empty booths and rough tables covered with red-and-white-checked tablecloths. Large potted ferns, ornate brass coatracks and spittoons cluttered the aisles, and on the walls old-fashioned farm tools had been hung, scythes and sickles, hay rakes, even horse collars, and elaborately framed pictures of New England couples dead a hundred years, dour and disapproving. Who would have thought junk like that could look good? But it did.

The place smelled of raw wood, beer and roasted peanuts, a downright pleasant smell, he thought. Not like Toby’s Inn. Wade looked down the bar, where a pair of young large-bellied men were watching the Celtics on TV and munching peanuts, and then he noticed that the floor by the bar was covered with peanut shells. A waitress approached the bar, and the shells crackled under her feet like insects.

Next to him on his right, three young women were seated and talking intently, smoking cigarettes with a kind of fury and every few seconds sipping in unison at their large beige drinks. Wade studied them, slyly, he thought, and tried to overhear their conversation, which he soon discovered concerned a man whom one or all three of them worked for. They were in their early thirties, he guessed. Two of the women wore jeans and plaid flannel shirts and cowboy boots; the third also wore jeans, but with tennis shoes and a washed-out yellow tee shirt with GANJA UNIVERSITY printed across the front. When Wade saw that she was not wearing a bra, he tried not to look at her anymore. She was a long-haired blond; the other two were brunettes and had short hair. Wade thought that maybe those two were sisters.

He ordered another beer. The Celtics were leading the Detroit Pistons by twelve at the half. Maybe he ought to try calling Jill again. He pulled his coat off and hung it on the brass rack behind him and went looking for a pay phone, which he found at the bottom of the stairs leading to the rest rooms.

Again, he let the phone ring a dozen times, in case she was just coming in the front door, he thought, and then realized he had visualized not Jill but Lillian, visualized her unlocking the front door, her arms wrapped around grocery bags, key in hand, the phone ringing. He hung up and came back to the bar.

He cast a glance at the breasts of the young woman in the yellow tee shirt, then asked the bartender for a basket of peanuts and started to concentrate on cracking them open and popping the nuts into his mouth. The women, he realized, were talking about the size of a man’s penis. He listened closely: there was no doubt about it: three attractive young women were laughing about some man’s small penis! He did not dare look over; he just bore down on the shells, splitting them open between his thumbs and sweeping them onto the floor, faster and faster, as if he were ravenous.

Two of the women, the blond and one of the brunettes, had slept with the man, whoever he was, and they were regaling the third woman by comparing his organ to a thumb, a mouse, a clothespin — a peanut, for God’s sake! “I mean, you could’ve knocked me over with a feather when I got a look at it!” the blond said. Wade pushed the basket of peanuts away and ordered another beer.

“He’s sort of amazing, though,” the brunette said. “I mean, he gets a whole lot of mileage out of that thing. Wouldn’t you say?” she asked the blond.

“Oh, jeez, yes.” She laughed. “Miles and miles,” she added, and then she shrieked, “Except that you think you’re never going to get there!” They all laughed loudly, and then one of the brunettes noticed Wade and hushed the others. Wade turned on his stool and tried to see what was happening with the Celtics.

“How’s Bird doing?” he called down the bar.

One of the big-bellied pair at the end turned slowly and said, “Oh-for-seven, three fouls.”

Wade said, “Shit,” as if he cared, got up and took his beer to the end of the bar and sat down. “Whatsascore?”

Without turning around, the man said, “I dunno. Seventy-something-sixty-something. Celts by six or seven.”

“Aw right!” Wade said, and he checked into the game with the same intensity he had devoted to shelling the peanuts. He lit a cigarette and tried to concentrate on the game, but his tooth was starting in again, a low throb that threatened to build quickly, and he was feeling once again like a double exposure: everything the other people said and did was half a beat off the rhythm of everything he said and did, so that the others seemed almost to be members of a different species than he, as if their species had a slightly different metabolism than his and relied on a related but different means of communication than his, so that everyone else in the room seemed to be sharing everyday knowledge and secrets that he was biologically incapable of experiencing. Knowledge and secrets: everyone had them; and Wade Whitehouse had neither.

He looked into the mirror behind the bar and tried to watch himself, as if he were a stranger, look strangely back, and then he saw over his shoulder and behind, coming into the bar from outside, where it was snowing hard now, his ex-wife, Lillian! She brushed snow off her shoulder in that quick impatient way of hers, as if taking the snow personally. He kept her in view in the mirror, saw her ask something of the woman at the cash register and then disappear down the stairs toward the rest rooms.

She must have come in to pee, Wade thought. Maybe Jill was waiting outside in the car. He checked his watch: four-twenty: still plenty of time to take Jill out for pizza. Wade slid off his stool and walked to the cash register and started down the stairs after Lillian, when he saw the back of her long lavender coat and realized that she was using the phone. He halted several steps above her; he moved out of her line of sight and listened.

“That doesn’t matter,” she snapped. “I’ve only got a couple of hours and that’s it. So please, ” she said, and her voice had shifted into a tone that Wade recognized and swelled to: it was intimate and soft, almost sexual. “I’ll be in the lot behind The Stone Warehouse. In the Audi,” she said. And then she said, “Hurry,” and Wade spun and moved quickly up the stairs, crossed back to the bar and resumed watching the mirror.

A second later, he saw Lillian emerge from the stairwell, nod and smile quickly to the woman at the cash register and leave. Wade grabbed his coat and hat and signaled to the bartender that he wanted to pay. The bartender flipped over the check—$8.25! Jesus H. Christ! — and Wade gave the man his ten-dollar bill and made for the door. It took him a moment to determine where the parking lot was and how to get there from the front of the Eagle Hotel, and then he jogged back to his car.

The traffic was light — a few cars sloshed past, windshield wipers clacking and headlights on. Wade made a U-turn on North Main and drove back to Depot Street, turned left and left again and drove past the parking lot, where he spotted the silver Audi in the far corner.

He did not think she could recognize his car in the snow, but even so, he went beyond the lot a ways and parked it out of sight beside a big green Dempster Dumpster about fifty yards away. He was on a slope above the lot now and facing the backside of the Audi. The rear window was covered with wet sticky snow, and he could not see inside, but he was sure she was there, waiting. For what, goddammit? For whom?

With the motor and wipers off, his own windshield was quickly covered over, and he felt suddenly as if he were inside a cave, looking at the walls. He opened the door and stepped out, moved to the other side of the Dumpster, lit a cigarette and waited. Like a cop, he thought. Well, why not? He was a cop, was he not? Damn straight. And Lillian, was she a suspected criminal, or was she just his ex-wife meeting some guy on the sly, and if that was all, then was Wade merely perversely curious, a kind of Peeping Tom?

He knew it was a man she was meeting, no doubt about it: he had heard it in her voice: “Please, ” she had said, and “Hurry.”

The pain from his tooth was cutting like a bandsaw up the side of his face, and he placed the palm of his hand against it, as if to shush it, keep the noise down, while he moved carefully away from the Dumpster and then down the shallow embankment to the parking lot, where he slipped along the side of the building to a darkened doorway, the back door to the restaurant upstairs, and stepped in out of the snow. He had a good angle on the Audi from there and could not be observed from the car without some effort: he was still behind the vehicle, but to the side now and only thirty feet away; he could easily see Lillian sitting behind the wheel, smoking.

Was she smoking? But Lillian did not smoke anymore, he remembered. In fact, she made a big deal of it, told him repeatedly and with disgust that she could smell it in Jill’s clothing and hair whenever she came back from being with him. He looked closer. She was smoking, all right, but it was not a regular cigarette; no, sir, it was not tobacco. He could tell from the way she held it between thumb and forefinger and then examined it after she had inhaled that she was smoking marijuana.

He was shocked. And suddenly he was panting, and his legs were watery with an eroticized rage that confused him. There was nothing wrong with smoking a joint; hell, he did it himself now and then. Whenever someone offered it to him, actually. But the sight of her doing it now, combined as it was with her waiting in a parking lot to meet someone he knew must be her boyfriend, her lover, made him feel sexually betrayed in a very peculiar way. It was peculiar, Wade knew, that he felt betrayed at all, as if she were stepping out on him, her ex-husband, and not the man she was married to (a decent enough guy, Wade thought for the first time, though still a bit of a jerk), but it also turned Wade on sexually. It was as if he had inadvertently come upon her secret stash of pornography. Manacles, dildos, whips. He was thrilled, erotically charged, and he was enraged, and he was ashamed.

He closed his eyes for a few seconds and leaned against the cut-stone wall behind him, and when he opened them he saw a car ease through the falling snow into the parking lot. It was a dark-green Mercedes sedan driven by a man who, Wade knew at once, was here to meet Lillian. The car drew up next to Lillian’s Audi, and she instantly got out, walked purposefully around the front and got in.

The headlights reflected off the wall of the warehouse and cast light back into the car, and Wade could see Lillian and the man clearly, as if they were up on a stage, while they kissed. It was a long serious kiss, but slightly formal too, done without their arms around one another: they were a man and a woman who had been lovers for a long time and who knew that their kiss was only a preliminary and did not have to stand for everything else. Then, when they drew apart, Lillian handed what was left of her joint to the man, and he relit it and inhaled deeply, and Wade realized that he knew him.

The man backed the Mercedes away from the wall, and his face disappeared into darkness again, but Wade had seen him; he knew absolutely who he was. There could be no doubt. The face was one Wade would never forget: it had shamed him, and then it had haunted him, and Wade had come to despise it. The face was smooth and symmetrical, as large as an actor’s, with square chin, wide brow, long straight nose. The man’s hair was dark, with distinguished flecks of gray, combed straight back. And he was taller than Wade by six inches, at least, and appeared to be in good condition, the kind of condition you buy from a health club, Wade had once observed. His name was Cotter, Jackson Cotter, of Cotter, Wilcox and Browne, and he was from an old Concord political family, and no doubt he was married, had three beautiful children and lived in a big Victorian house up on the west end. And here he was having an affair with Lillian, who three years before had been his client in what he no doubt regarded as a simple but slightly unpleasant upstate divorce case.

Jackson Cotter turned his big green Mercedes around and headed out of the parking lot to the street, turned left and disappeared. Wade realized that his mouth was open, and he closed it. He felt wonderful. Jesus, he felt great! He was standing alone in a darkened doorway next to a restaurant parking lot in downtown Concord in a snowstorm, and he felt more purely cheerful than he had felt in years. Maybe ever. He clapped his hands together as if applauding, stepped from the doorway and strode into the falling snow.

A minute later, he was back in The Stone Warehouse shoving a quarter into the pay phone at the bottom of the stairs. This time, after three rings, someone answered: it was Lillian’s husband, Bob Horner; he caught Wade by surprise. Wade pictured the man with an apron tied around his waist and almost laughed, but he quickly recovered and said in what he felt was his normal manner of speaking to Horner on such occasions, “This’s Wade. Is Jill around?”

Horner was silent for a few seconds. Then he said, “Ah… no. No, Wade, she’s not here.”

“Jeez, that’s too bad. She out with her mom someplace?”

“No. No, Jill’s with a friend.”

“You expect her back soon? I’m in town, you see. In Concord. And I was hoping maybe I could scoot by and take her out for a pizza or something.”

Horner hesitated, then said, “It’s kind of late, Wade… and she’s… Jill’s staying overnight with a friend tonight.”

“Oh-h.” Wade hoped he sounded disappointed.

“Yeah, well, maybe if she’d known you were going to be in town…”

“I didn’t know myself,” Wade said. “But next time I’ll call ahead,” he offered.

Horner said that was a good idea and he would tell Jill that he had called. Then he said, “Wade, maybe I shouldn’t mention this, but I was wondering…”

“What?”

“Well, I don’t want to stir things up again, but… look, I lost my hat the other night up there. In Lawford. I was wondering if maybe somebody picked it up. You didn’t see it, did you? After we left.”

Wade said, “Your hat? You had a hat?”

“Yes.” His voice had turned cold; he knew Wade was lying. “A green felt hat.”

“Jeez, Bob, I don’t remember any hat. But I’ll keep an eye out for it. Maybe somebody else snagged it. You never know.”

Horner said thanks and then hurriedly got off the phone.

Smiling broadly, Wade hung up, mounted the stairs and stood at the cash register for a second. He noticed that the three young women and the two guys at the bar had left; the place was almost empty now. There were only a few diners sitting at the tables, and the waitresses were standing around in the back, talking to one another.

The cashier, a stout middle-aged woman filing her nails, said to him, “How much snow out there?”

“Oh, inch or two, I guess. Not much.”

“Enough to keep everybody home, though,” she said.

“Yeah. Which is where I ought to be getting,” Wade said.

“It’s too early for winter,” the woman observed.

“Yeah. Yeah, it is,” Wade said, and he pulled his watch cap down over his ears. “But I like it,” he said, and he waved and went out the door.

“Drive careful,” the woman called after him, but he didn’t hear her.

Making love with Margie that night was especially easy for Wade. Not that it was ever difficult; it was just that sometimes Wade would rather be left alone to think his own thoughts, to use his skull as a wall that kept him in and other people out.

But being in bed with Margie made Wade feel safe and free in ways that he rarely felt — not at work, certainly, thanks to LaRiviere, and not when he was at home alone, either, and not when he was with Jill, and not once with Lillian in all those years of being married to her. When he was drinking late at Toby’s he sometimes got to feeling safe, but never free.

No, it was only with Margie, and only in bed with her, that he felt the way he imagined he should have as a child but could not, because of his father, mostly, but also his mother, who could not protect him. And thus, when he lay down beside Margie and they began to make love to one another, he often hesitated, held back slightly, as if loitering, while she plunged on ahead. Then she would grow impatient and would urge him to hurry up, for God’s sake, let us not hang around here any longer than we have to, my friend, and he would come forward toward her, and that would be that.

Tonight, though, he loitered not at all. He had arrived at Margie’s house around eight-thirty, his drive north from Concord slowed somewhat by the snow. All the way up, he had pictured Margie naked and turning softly in her bed beneath him, her arms flung back, mouth open, legs wrapped tightly around his hips, her sweet soft skin smooth and pliant, her large slow body suddenly vulnerable, swift and intrepidly intimate, the way Wade believed only women could be, and when he walked across her back porch into the warm kitchen, he was already tumescent, oh boy, ready to go; and she was ready too, perhaps having numerous times that afternoon and evening imagined him naked and in bed as well, his tough thick body arched intently over her at that exquisite moment when he first entered her, so mysteriously male and powerful in that precise way, in the way of his maleness, that to give herself over to the power, to succumb willingly to the sheer physical force of his body, was to enter deeply into the mystery, which she did instantly, for that was where she wanted to be.

They had talked awhile in the kitchen: she served him a bowl of beef stew and chunks of the homemade bread she was so proud of and that Wade loved; and while he ate and she sat opposite him at the table, watching, he told her what had happened in Concord, his disappointing meeting with the lawyer (he neglected to mention the wheelchair) and his exhilarating discovery later. He did not tell her about his phone conversation with Lillian’s husband.

And then they went straight to her darkened bedroom. He lit the candle by the side of the bed, as he always did, and in seconds they both had their clothes off, the covers kicked back, and were wordlessly wrapped in one another’s warm skin. She came quickly, and then a minute later came a second time, more powerfully, gulping and crying out several times, until he, too, was inundated by the orgasm, and he suddenly found himself coming and heard himself moan along with her and then sigh.

They lay on their backs — feet, hips and shoulders touching — in silence for a long while. Finally, in a low flat voice, as if talking to himself, Wade said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about Jack Hewitt. I’m worried about him,” he went on. “About that business yesterday, with him and that guy Twombley.”

Her voice, too, came from a distance, from another room in the large old house. “Jack’s sort of sensitive, I guess. More than most. But he’ll be okay in a few weeks. Maybe even sooner.”

“There’s something funny about that shooting. There’s lots funny about it, actually.”

“I heard he was drunk as a coot last night and got into a big fight at Toby’s with Hettie when she wanted to drive him home. He got mad and drove off without her. Left her standing in the parking lot.”

“I’m sure, I’m positive, that it didn’t happen the way Jack says it did. It could have, of course, but it didn’t. I know he’s lying.”

She went on as if she hadn’t heard him. “Jack’s turned into one of those men who are permanently angry, I think. He used to be a sweet kid, but it’s like, when he found out that he couldn’t play baseball anymore, he changed. He used to be so sweet,” she said. “Now he’s like everyone else.”

“I’ve been wondering if maybe Jack shot Twombley, instead of Twombley shooting himself. I’ve even been wondering if maybe Jack shot him on purpose.”

Now she heard him. “Wade! How can you even think such a thing? Why would Jack Hewitt do that, shoot Twombley on purpose?”

“Money.”

“Jack doesn’t need money.”

“Everybody needs money,” he said. “Except guys like Twombley and that sonofabitch son-in-law of his. People like that.”

“Still, Jack wouldn’t kill somebody for it. Besides, who would pay him to do such a terrible thing?”

“I don’t know. Lots of people, probably. Guy like Evan Twombley, big-time union official and all, he’s probably got lots of people want him dead. Believe me, those construction unions are full of mean motherfuckers. Down in Massachusetts all those unions do business with the Mafia, you know. My brother told me some stuff.”

She gave a laugh. “The Mafia wouldn’t hire a kid like Jack Hewitt to do their business for them.”

“No. I guess not. Still… I just know Jack’s lying about how it happened. I can tell. He just seemed too… too tight or something, too slick, when he told it. I know that kid, I know what he’s like inside. He’s a lot like I was when I was his age, you know.”

“Yes. I suppose he is. But you never would’ve done something like that, shot somebody for money.”

“No, I guess not. Not for money. But there were times back then, when I was a kid, when I might’ve shot somebody if I’d been given half a damned excuse. I used to be pretty fucked up, you know.”

“But you’re not now,” she said, and she smiled in the darkness.

Wade lapsed into silence and for a moment thought about his recent days and nights, wondering how to characterize them. Fucked up? Not fucked up? What kind of life did he lead, anyhow? What kind of man had he become in his forties?

He rolled over onto his side and, propped on one elbow, rested his head in the flat of his hand and studied Margie’s broad face. Her eyes were closed. She breathed lightly through her mouth, which curved into the residue of an ironic smile. To him, her face was wide open, bravely unprotected; her mouth was relaxed, and her lips parted, so that her upper front teeth protruded slightly and looked like a schoolgirl’s new teeth to Wade; the two vertical lines that usually creased her forehead were gone, as if erased, and she might have been a mischievous child pretending to be asleep: her skin seemed to glisten in the half light of the room, and Wade reached over and brushed away a moist strand of her hair, then leaned down and kissed her on the exact center of her forehead.

“I can see what you looked like when you were a kid. Exactly,” he whispered.

She kept her eyes closed and said, “You knew me when I was a kid.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I did, but I never knew what you looked like. Not really. I mean, I never really studied your face, like now. So I never was able to see you as a kid, a little girl, when you actually were a little kid. Until now, this way.”

“What way?”

“After making love. I like it. It’s nice to be able to see that in a grown-up person. And strange,” he said, and added, “It’s scary, sort of.”

“Yes. It is nice. And strange,” she said. After a few seconds, she added, “I don’t think it’s the same for women, though.” She opened her eyes, and the vertical creases in her brow reappeared, and Wade’s view of her as a child got blocked. “I mean, women can see the little boy in the man pretty easily, you know. But I think we see it mostly when the man doesn’t know we’re watching. It happens when he’s paying attention to something else. Like watching sports on TV or fixing his car or something.”

“What about after making love?”

“Well … I think mostly men try to hide the boy in themselves. They think it’s a sign of weakness or something, so they try to hide it. Maybe especially when they’re making love. You, for instance,” she said, and punched him lightly on the shoulder. “After we make love, you look like you just climbed a mountain or something. Triumphant. The conquering hero! Tarzan beating his chest.” She laughed, and he laughed with her, but hesitantly.

“Oh, you try to be cool about it,” she went on, “but you’re proud of yourself. I can tell. And you should be,” she added, and she punched him again. “Frankly, though,” she said, and she peered out from under her eyelashes, “frankly, though, you needn’t be proud. Because I’m easy. Real easy.”

“For me.”

“Oh yes, only for you. Very hard for anybody else.”

Wade laughed and slid out of bed and padded barefoot and naked down the hall to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of Rolling Rock. By the time he got back to the bedroom, the bottle was half empty. “Want some?” he asked, and passed it over to her.

She said, “Thanks,” propped herself up and took a delicate sip.

Wade lay on his back, folded his arms behind his head and peered into the cloudy darkness above him. The candle beside the bed was guttering; on the wall the flickery shadows of his elbows and arms looked like tepees and campfires.

Margie sipped at the beer and studied the shadows and decided once again, as she always did at times like this, when Wade was peaceful and sweet and smart, that she loved him.

“Do you still think,” he said, “do you think I ought to forget this custody thing? After what I saw tonight, with Lillian and that lawyer of hers? Illegal drugs and illicit sex, you know.”

Margie was silent for a moment. She sighed and said, “Wade, you got to be able to prove those things. But really, I don’t know what I think. It’s not me who’s the father, it’s you.”

“Yeah, I am. And that’s the whole problem in a nutshell,” he said. “I’m supposed to be the father, but I’m not able to. Not unless I make a huge fight over it. A goddamned war. Thing is, Margie, now it’s a war I believe I can win.”

“You’re obsessed with this, aren’t you?”

He thought about the word for a few seconds—obsessed, obsessed, obsessed—and said, “Yes. Yes, I am. I am obsessed with it. It may be the only thing I’ve wanted in my life so far that I’ve been clear about wanting. Totally absolutely clear.”

She took a sip of beer and said, “Then… I guess you have to go ahead and do it.”

He was silent. Then he said, “There’s another thing I’ve been thinking a lot about lately,” and he took the bottle from her hands, finished it off in one long swallow and set it on the floor beside the bed. He slipped one arm under her head and reached around her with the other and heard himself say words as if a stranger were speaking and he had no idea what words the stranger would say next. “I don’t know how you feel about the idea, Margie, because we’ve never talked about it before. Maybe because we’ve been too scared of the idea to talk about it. But I’ve been thinking lately, I’ve been thinking that maybe we should get married sometime. You and me.”

“Oh, Wade,” she said, sounding vaguely disappointed.

‘I been just thinking about it, that’s all,” he said rapidly. “It’s not like a marriage proposal or anything, just a thought. An idea. Something for you and me to talk about and think about. You know?”

“All right,” she said. And she waited a moment and said, “I’ll think about it.”

“Good.” He kissed her on the lips, then rolled away from her and blew out the candle. When he lay back down, he could hear her low slow breathing, and after a few seconds, he tried catching her rhythm with his, as he did when they made love, and got it, so that soon they were breathing in harmony, walking along together, stride matching stride, brave and in love and crossing a grassy meadow together with blue sky overhead, drifting puffs of white clouds, soaring birds above and sunshine warming their heads and shoulders, and neither of them, ever again, alone.