Gallatin Canyon

Vicious Circle

John Briggs sat on his porch on a dreary hot August day with a glass of ice water sweating in his hand, listening to opera on the radio. The white borders of the screen doors were incandescent with mountain summer. Through them he could see the high windswept ridge above his house, where the bunchgrass could not get a hold, leaving only a seam of shale to overlook the irrigated valley.

Earlier, at the farmers’ market at the fairgrounds, he’d strolled among the pleasant displays of food and craft. A bearded youth offered handmade walking sticks; next to him, with a cage full of rabbits, a woman in Chiapas folk costume sold angora tooth-fairy pillows while tugging strands of angora from a rabbit asleep in her lap. An extraordinary variety of concrete yard animals surrounded a display of bird feeders with expired Montana license plates folded for roofs. A hearty woman with her fists on her hips offered English delphiniums, which, she explained again and again, had never been crossed with Pacific Giants, “not ever.” The Hutterites, in suspenders and straw cowboy hats, had a vast array of vegetables; their long table faced lines of people, five deep, eyes fixed upon the produce. A girl in jeans and a bustier played a harp, almost inaudible over the sounds of the crowd, beside a table selling geodes and specimens of quartz.

Briggs had a large shopping bag into which he placed his purchases: carrots, kohlrabi, baby beets bought from a woman in a Humane Society T-shirt, and Flathead Lake cherries from an old man in an “Official Party Shirt” from Carlos and Charlie’s in Cozumel. A woman with the forearms of a plumber spotted Briggs and stepped from behind a meager display of home-grown lavender to block his path. She gazed at him fixedly and, as he grew uncomfortable, asked, “Is anything coming to you?”

Briggs shook his head tentatively. The woman let out a vehement laugh with a faint whistle in it. A mirthless grin spread ear to ear.

“Is it possible,” she asked, “that you don’t remember me at all? Two a.m.? January? Roswell, New Mexico? Ring a bell?”

Trying to conceal his discomfort, Briggs said that he was afraid it was possible he didn’t remember.

“You glutton!” she roared.

He could see that the onlookers were not on his side. The woman followed him for several yards, a steady, accusing stare as he made his way through lanes of boxed produce. He heard the word glutton again, over the otherwise gentle murmur of the market. He also heard her ask the crowd whether people like him ever got enough. She was right; it was outrageous that such a thing could have slipped his mind, whatever it was. He was dismayed to have shared some potent event with this woman and be now unable to even recall it. He tried again, but nothing came. Perhaps it had been long ago — but no, she’d said January. Was he losing his memory?

He stopped to look at the midsummer light bouncing off the hoods of cars lined up alongside the park. Someone touched his elbow, and he turned to a young woman with a blue bandanna tied around her neck. She had on one arm a basket filled with parsnips, heavy August tomatoes, onions shedding golden paper in the hard light. “Don’t blame yourself,” she said shyly. “She’s asked a dozen people the same question, and they couldn’t remember either.” The woman seemed to redden. He was greatly absorbed by her gray eyes and her fine, clear forehead; it seemed to him the kind of face that only profound innocence could produce.

Her name was Olivia, she said, and she was buying vegetables for herself and her father. Not today, not tomorrow, not until Wednesday could she meet for a drink. In fact, she didn’t want to meet for a drink at all, but in the end they could agree on no convenient meeting place other than a bar. He would have to wait.

Olivia was on time. She’d suggested the Stockman Hotel, which had a popular bar and was midway between their homes. Her yellow cotton dress was stylish but out-of-date, maybe a generation out-of-date, and must not have originally belonged to her— an elegant hand-me-down. The bar was busy with ranchers, an insurance man, a woman who drove for UPS, and two palladium miners; everyone was talking, except for three men from a highway crew who didn’t know anyone and stared straight ahead, holding their beers with both hands. An empty booth remained, and Briggs led her there, trying not to appear coercive. Olivia sat quickly, clasping her fingers, elbows on the table, and looked around. She seemed happy. Her shoulder-length hair was parted in the middle and pulled behind small, pretty ears that were un-pierced. She had a sensual mouth for a shy girl, though he supposed he ought not to have seen this as a contradiction.

“Do you know something?” she said, almost whispering. “I don’t remember your name.”

“John Briggs.”

“Oh. I see. Just like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean. . it’s just two syllables!”

“I know. It’s like a dirge or a march, isn’t it?” he said.

“John-Briggs-John-Briggs-John-Briggs,” she chanted.

“Exactly. In second grade, Roland Ozolinsch sat next to me, and he had such a hard time learning to spell his own name, I became grateful for mine’s brevity. I worried about other things instead. I wished for jet black hair that would lie flat like Superman’s.” His own hair was russet brown and sprang out. He wished he’d said shortness instead of brevity. There was something silly about the phrase grateful for mine’s brevity, but it seemed to have gone unnoted.

A barmaid came to their table, in jeans and a T-shirt advertising a whale-watching boat on Prince of Wales Island; the breaching whale in the drawing was bigger than the boat, whose worshipful passengers were lined up like a choir. She knew Olivia, and they exchanged pleasantries. Briggs ordered a St. Pauli Girl and Olivia ordered a double shot of Jim Beam, with a water back.

Briggs was careful not to react. When their order was in, Olivia studied the time on her watch and then on the wall clock, before adjusting the watch. “Four forty-two,” she said.

He guessed she was nearly, but not quite, thirty, at least a decade younger than him. She wore no rings or other insignia and, in general, was remarkably undecorated, though a glance revealed possible eyeliner and just enough lipstick, the absence of which might have been odd — not pretentious, but odd. Her eyes traveled around the bar and landed on him, just as their drinks arrived. “Still hot,” she said, and smiled brilliantly.

This felt like a journey to Briggs, though he couldn’t have said why.

“Still hot,” he concurred, thinking, I need to add something. Hot plus what, Dry? Windy?

“Drought-drought-drought,” she said, much as she’d said his name, in modest march time. “We lost our well and had to drill another, two hundred feet at I forget how much a foot, but a lot. Ruined our yard, that man out there with his machine, hammering away.”

“I saw on the bank that it’s ninety-seven.” Jesus Christ, Briggs thought, tell her you saw a zebra!

As she drank, reacting to the bitterness of the whiskey, she looked straight at him. “You know what would be so sweet,” she said, “is if you’d get me a paper from the lobby.” Smiling in compliance, Briggs got up and went out. At a table in the large bay window, three young Mormons in suits craned to watch the heat-struck pedestrians. One unfurled the sports section of the Gazette; another leaned forward, holding his head in his hands. Briggs dropped a quarter into the honor-system jar and took a copy of the paper to Olivia. She had a new drink in front of her.

The bar’s manager, Jerry Warren, who was small, ingratiating, and somehow like a frog in a polo shirt, sidled up to the table. Olivia knew him.

“In September,” he said, “I’m going to Ireland—”

“Are you Irish?” Briggs interrupted.

“No, to hike the Ring of Kerry, hike all day, booze till two, feel up German girls—”

Briggs glanced at an expressionless Olivia.

“—and visit ring forts or the odd castle. The brochure promises your money back if you don’t, like, burst into spontaneous verse by Day Two, though I expect most of the poetry ends up being directed at your raincoat.” He rested his hand on the table, then slowly extended a forefinger. “Next round’s on me.”

“The trouble is, when you just want to get to know someone,” Olivia said, with surprising volubility once Warren was gone, “there’s no such thing as neutral ground. Like just now, people come up and assume. . But, well, here’s another round.” She raised her face in gratitude to the barmaid. “Jerry always tells me his travel plans, no matter how late it gets. He has some crazy jet-lag remedies you ought to hear. By the next morning, I can hardly remember what they were.”

“It’s five o’clock,” the barmaid said. “You’re entitled to all of this you want.”

When she was gone, Olivia said, “I suppose we did start before five. That woman at the farmers’ market, she must’ve had someone in mind.”

“Funny way to figure out who.”

“Or she was just, you know, revisiting the experience.”

“Anyway, that’s how we met!” But this didn’t feel right, so Briggs added, “Neighbor.”

After thinking about this, she asked, “Have you noticed that out in the country neighbor is a verb?”

This struck Briggs as a sudden move away from intimacy. Five o’clock had brought a crowd big enough to elbow up to all surfaces — not just the bar but the walls — and the air of day’s-end ebullience was infectious to Briggs, who was a loner, and tired of being one, but seemed unable to do anything about it.

“It’s kind of aggressive, isn’t it?” he said. “Usually about how someone failed to neighbor.”

“Yes.” She sighed. “And the speaker always makes you think that he neighbors even while he’s asleep.” She covered Briggs’s hands with her own. “How ’bout you?”

“I don’t do a lot of neighboring,” he said.

Olivia took this in somberly. “I must strike you as desperate,” she said. The tone had changed, and her smile was slack.

“You do not.”

“Thank you.”

She had nearly finished her complimentary double, and Briggs, on his third shell of draft, realized that she’d put away six shots of whiskey, which suddenly seemed to be sinking in; the slow movement of her eyes beneath lowered lids, which he had first taken for flirtatious warmth, now appeared to be the start of some narcosis.

“That Ring of Kerry thing doesn’t sound like much fun, does it?” she said into space.

“Oh, I’ll bet it’s beautiful there.”

“But just getting through a wet day to end up in a pub. . Is that the reward? And where did he get that about German girls?” Only now did she look up at Briggs.

“He was probably trying to entertain us.”

Olivia looked surprised. “Oh! Well. Now I’ll be grateful. I’m so dense.” At that moment, Warren passed their booth. “Hey, Jerry! That was great,” she called out.

He stopped.

“What was great, Olivia?”

“About the ring of German girls in raincoats.”

Jerry glanced at Briggs before moving on. “If I can just get through this drought,” he said, as he plunged into the crowd.

“What does he mean?” Olivia asked. “I’m missing connection after connection.” She gestured for another round. The barmaid waved back, and Olivia commented, “I really like her, but she’s a huge slut. Ready for another?”

“I don’t know if I can drink more beer. My teeth are floating.”

“Your teeth are—?”

“I’m bursting with beer.”

“Maybe you should drink something more concentrated. Beer’s mostly water. I wish alcohol came in the same size as an aspirin. You just wear out your digestion trying to cop a buzz. And this stuff”—she pointed—“tastes like kerosene. Your teeth are floating! That’s a scream.”

Briggs didn’t feel comfortable doing more to prevent the arrival of another round, but when she’d finished it, he wished he had.

“Olivia.”

“What.”

“You okay?”

“Where are we going with this?”

“I thought you were about to faint.”

“Oh, how wrong you are.”

Briggs caught Jerry Warren’s eye and made a writing gesture with his right hand on his left hand. Warren winked his understanding, and Briggs turned back to Olivia. “Let’s get outside while we have a little of this day left,” he said. He could tell that this was heard from a great distance. He stood up to enforce the suggestion and then thought to extend a hand, which Olivia took as she got to her feet and quickly leaned against him.

“Going to have to do it like this, aren’t I?”

“Not a problem. Out we go.”

Briggs escorted her through the front door so deftly that their exit was barely noticed. The one woman who stared was told by Olivia, “No worries,” in an Australian accent. Once outside, the heat hit her and she began to topple. Briggs had to take her around the corner to find a quiet spot. “I want to help you here, Olivia. You’re having a bit of trouble with your balance.”

“How did I let this hap-pen? A little birdie says it’s time for me to scoot,” she said. With her hands at her shoulders, fingers fluttering outward, she did the birdie.

“How about if you let me drive you home?”

“Bor-ing.”

“I’m afraid I require it. Where is your car?”

“A, we identify make and model.”

“Can you do that for me? And parking place?”

She looked left and right. “You know, John Briggs, I’m going to flunk that test.”

“No problem. We’ll go in mine.” He helped her into his twenty-year-old sedan. She told him they’d be lucky if the jalopy made it to her house. The car had old-style seat belts, and fastening hers across her lap produced from Olivia a languorous smile. “There!” he said briskly, to undo the smile, then went around to his side, got in, looked over at her amiably, and turned the key.

“Doesn’t look like you’re going to try to take advantage of me.”

“Nope.”

“It wouldn’t be hard. All aboard!” She imitated a train whistle.

They headed north and, just as they left town, she said, “Hey, there’s my car!” But then she was uncertain. It didn’t really matter to Briggs, unless she turned out to be right in wondering whether his car would make it. They were halfway to her house before she spoke again. She said, “Ooh, boy, this is a bad idea.”

Grassland spread in either direction all the way to the horizon. From the west, a thunderstorm, zigzagged with wires of lightning, was moving swiftly toward them, until the road ahead began to darken with rain.

Briggs drove without trying to talk until they reached Olivia’s town. She pointed out various turns and landmarks, letting her hand fall back onto her lap each time. The trees formed a canopy above the street where she said she lived, a street on which either invidious competition or the boundless love of property had prevailed in the form of one perfect lawn after another, and hedges that seemed to have been purchased in sections. At length, she said, “This is it, with the red shutters. Who else has red shutters? Nobody. Just us. Has red shutters. Have red shutters.”

Briggs made sure the coast was clear for assisting her to the house. Olivia had lost some ground since they set out, and it seemed unlikely that she would be able to walk safely. A man in bicycle shorts went by, leading a Newfoundland; there was a Rollerblader, a very old and slow woman pulling a wagon of groceries, a FedEx man delivering to the house next door, and then it was time to rouse Olivia all over again and go for it. “I’m so sorry,” she said, as he steadied her beside the car. “I see the jalopy held up better than I thought it would. Shouldn’t have said what I said. ‘Never ridicule what you don’t understand,’ my father told me.”

Briggs reached for the door but it opened before he touched it, and a severe-looking older man in a starched white shirt appeared. He had a high domed forehead and piercing blue eyes. He inspected Briggs and, speaking to him but looking at Olivia, who stood with her head hanging, said, “We’re at it again, I see.” Briggs helped her into the front hall and passed her arm to the man he guessed was her father, expecting to retreat to his car, but then the man closed the door behind the three of them and said, “Wait here,” with what, in other circumstances, might have seemed an intolerably brusque tone. Briggs stood in the hallway as Olivia went off without a word, climbing the stairs with the aid of her father. He could make out the corner of a dining-room table, a section of transom window, dark wainscoting, old family photographs on either side of the stairway.

“So sorry to leave you standing there,” the man said when he returned, guiding Briggs forcefully into the house. “I’m Olin Halliday, Olivia’s father. Not too proud to eat in the kitchen, are you?” Briggs obediently followed Halliday through swinging doors. The kitchen met more than the ordinary domestic requirements, with a freestanding chopping block, a commercial-grade stove, and a double-doored freezer. Halliday pointed to a dripping bag suspended over a large mixing bowl. “Making cottage cheese. Not ready yet. I hope you like brisket. I like brisket way too well, and I never seem to get it quite like I want it, though this time I’m close. I try to smoke it long enough to start the neighbors complaining. Then I know I’m on the right track. Like everything else, you have to put in the time.”

At last they were seated on stools at the chopping block. Halliday carved the brisket with a broad razor-sharp knife, which he wielded rapidly, each perfect slice just tipping over of its own weight as he started the next. Coleslaw, “my tomatoes,” beet greens, corn bread, and iced tea. “Should have beer but I can’t keep it in the house,” Halliday said. Then he began to eat with the absorption of a hungry man eating alone. Briggs waited a moment before following suit, the food so good it created an appetite.

“As you have seen,” Halliday said, mouth still full, punctuating with his fork, “Olivia cannot drink. Cannot but does, and shouldn’t. She is the kind of alcoholic usually described as ‘hopeless,’ but of course she is not hopeless, and I’m not without hope. Are you?”

“I hardly know Olivia.”

“There’s a difference between taking responsibility, Mr. Briggs, and blaming yourself for everything. There should be a line between the two. Olivia does not see that line.”

With every remark, Halliday scrutinized Briggs, and because of his sky blue eyes, his gaze may have seemed more penetrating than intended. Just then Olivia called down in a near screech, “Tell him what they did to me!” Halliday and Briggs looked at each other in silence, Briggs alarmed.

He said, “What does she mean by that?”

“It’s always something new,” Halliday said, looking away. “She has hung on to her job at the hospital. I’ve helped there; an argument can still be made that she’s viable.”

“You tell him.”

“I’m afraid this could go on. Have you had enough to eat?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t be worried; this is the best place she could be.”

“I hope so.”

“I’m her father, Mr. Briggs, and I’m a doctor.”

Briggs felt no urgency to respond. After a moment had passed, he asked, “Where is Olivia’s mother?”

“Olivia’s mother is no longer living. I delivered Olivia, and I adopted her. Olivia’s mother was not married.”

“Has her mother been dead for a long time?”

Halliday smiled cheerlessly. “She’s been dead almost since Olivia was born. She jumped off Carter’s Bridge and went all the way to North Dakota before what the fauna of the Great Plains had left of her was found. It was sad, it was unforeseen, and it was certainly not anybody’s fault, least of all Olivia’s, but Olivia doesn’t see it that way.”

“What can you do to help someone get over that?”

“Nothing that’s worked, as you can see. But now I’m going to try something new and, to tell the truth, I’m optimistic. Olivia is almost pathologically shy, and I’m persuaded that this is connected to the grudge she holds against herself. She is quite dependent upon me, especially financially, which has caused plenty of resentment. That’s my only lever but it’s a good one. Anyway, long story short, I am going to require Olivia to join Toastmasters International.”

Halliday watched complacently as his new idea sank in. Briggs suspected that he wasn’t the first stranger on whom it had been floated. He began to wonder what other miracle cures Halliday might have attempted on the poor girl. “I don’t get it.”

“You don’t have to get it. Olivia has to get it. I’m going to help Olivia ground herself. I want to revise her core values. You don’t know the boyfriends she’s had. I want her to learn to recognize and avoid losers. But she’s got to learn how to boldly share her message. She’s got to quit going off on tangents. I think if she looked within and learned the skills of public speaking that she would delight audiences with dynamic presentations by simply unleashing her inner self.”

“I’ve never heard of anything this crazy.”

“I take that as a compliment. It doesn’t bother me to be ahead of the crowd.”

Briggs left immediately, making his exit as rude as possible. As soon as he was under way in his car he was aware of the smell of Olivia’s perfume, which was somehow more conspicuous in her absence. He hardly had a profound connection to her, but he could not get her out of his mind. For the first time his car actually did seem like a jalopy. Halliday had surely taken him for a loser.

“I don’t have a garage,” he could have explained. “Why leave a good car sitting out in the weather?” This was the first of his imaginary dialogues with Olivia. One about drinking left him believing that she was possessed, an idea whose tawdry allure was obvious. He imagined a priestly intervention during which evil spirits were exorcised and Halliday, with his pop theories, stayed well to the rear. Briggs understood that these daydreams were meant to allay some heartache.

Briggs spent most of September making repairs on his place, getting ready to go back to work. He repainted the shutters, a maddening job because of all the louvers. He set pack-rat traps and pruned the raspberry patch. He alphabetized his library, a recurrent task since he never put books back where they belonged. He changed the water filter in the basement and removed the ghastly mushrooms that had volunteered there. The lawn seemed to have stopped growing, so he put the mower in the garage. Next to the barn was a stack of old boards that had warped and rotted beyond use; he pulled the truck around in order to haul this trash to a safe place for burning. He was nearly finished when he reached for a heavy sheet of exterior plywood, which he had to raise on its edge to drag it to the truck. As he lifted it, he felt something like the blow of a stick against his leg. He raised the plywood higher and saw the coiled rattlesnake, dropped the plywood, and backed away with a chill. He drew up his pant leg and saw where the fangs had gone in and the slight reddening around the marks. He pulled off his work gloves and decided he’d take the back way to the hospital in his truck. He wondered how bad this was going to be.

It was a half-hour drive, and the serious ache and swelling commenced. He parked close to the emergency entrance, next to two old ambulances, and limped into the waiting room. The nurse, filling out forms, was a long time acknowledging him and when she did so it was by the mere raising of her head. When he explained what was wrong, she told him to have a seat. They must see a lot of snakebites, Briggs thought. The spot where he’d been bitten was now quite enlarged and had acquired a dusky cast that worried him.

Eventually, the nurse instructed him to fill out a form, which he did with growing awareness of the pain. Then she said, “I’ll take you to your room. You’ll be spending the night.” She turned and Briggs followed her down a brown corridor with the usual antiseptic smell and stainless-steel tables on wheels. She left him in the room. He propped one foot on the toe of the other to alleviate the rhythmic ache and found himself perspiring. He reached for the remote control, turned the TV on, and then turned it off immediately.

A few minutes later, Olivia entered in a nurse’s uniform. “Let’s get rid of those pants,” she said. As Briggs lay in his shorts, Olivia bent close over the wound and studied it in silence. “Right back,” she said, and left the room. When she returned a few minutes later, she had a metal tray with a syringe on it. “I don’t like this stuff,” she said, “but the poison has spread and we’ve got to use it. It will help with the pain. We’re talking pronto.” Briggs had planned a conversation designed to crack this mystery, but Olivia was leaning over him, studying his eyes as she pressed the hypodermic into him, and with the enveloping wave he was overcome. “Feels so good,” she said quietly. “Doesn’t it?” He nodded slowly, infinitely grateful for the bite of the rattlesnake. She held his face in her hands and gazed at him as he went under. “I just know it feels so good.”

When he awoke the next morning, he doubted everything he remembered. He checked his leg to see if he’d been bitten by a snake, and thank God he had. He noticed that the pain was gone. He rang the call button next to his bed. A nurse entered, a tall, peevish woman of fifty, carrying a copy of Field & Stream. “I’m better, and I’m going home.”

“Doctor will decide when you can go.”

With Briggs’s impatience growing, it was a blessing the doctor came soon. Close to retirement age, he was a well-groomed silver-haired man, exceedingly thin, in polished walking shoes, cuffed serge pants, and a sparkling white smock.

“How do you feel?”

“I feel fine, ready to go home. I suppose the nurse is off today.”

“What nurse?”

“The one who treated me last night.”

“I treated you last night. You were sound asleep, like you’d passed out. In any case, I couldn’t wake you: I went ahead and did what I thought best. I gave you a good slug of antivenin.”

“I clearly remember a woman coming in and treating me.”

“I hope she was pretty. It was a dream.”

“Let me ask you something. Is Dr. Halliday on duty today?”

The doctor looked startled and a little evasive. He said, “Dr. Halliday lost his license to practice a long time ago. Of course, we feel terrible about it. His daughter has stayed with us, and we hope that’s some help in a very regrettable situation.”

Briggs left the hospital in the same dirty clothes he’d worn to paint and clean his yard. He drove home, parked by the woodpile, and killed the snake with a hoe, then went up to the house to read his mail and check his phone messages. He felt an incongruous sadness about killing the snake, which had tried in vain to get away. The refrigerator was still well stocked, and he started a pot of spicy vegetable soup. He smelled mothballs and remembered the blankets he’d put in storage the day before.

On Wednesday, he took three shirts and a sport jacket to be dry-cleaned. He usually went to Arnold’s, where he had an account, but it was closed on Wednesdays so he drove a few extra miles and carried his things into Bright’s. The smell of cleaning fluid was a little stronger in Bright’s, and he wondered whether that meant they were more thorough or just harsher on the clothes. To the left of the long counter, a broad woman with her back to him operated the electrical revolving rack. She said, “Be just a sec,” and compared a slip with that on several garments going past. She found what she was looking for, a tuxedo, and took it down to hang on a rigid rack next to the cash register, before turning to Briggs: it was her, the woman who’d accosted him at the farmers’ market. She recognized him first and covered her mouth with her hands. “I wondered if I’d see you again. I so have to apologize to you! I completely and utterly thought you were someone else.”

“Don’t give it a thought,” Briggs said with reserve. He added, “I gather you took a number of other people for someone else.”

This puzzled her. “No, just you.”

“I was led to think otherwise. Guess it’s my turn to apologize.”

“Can we call it even-Steven?”

He hoped to have a chance to speak to Olivia about this. So, later in the fall, when he received an invitation to her wedding, his first thought was, Of course I’ll go.

In the receiving line, Olivia, jubilant and tipsy, hung around the neck of her new husband, a glass of champagne in her hand. The wedding party was clamorous, gathered under the old trees behind the house with the red shutters. The husband was a specimen of tidy manhood, with black, tightly clipped hair, blue eyes, and ears like little seashells; he wore a perfectly tailored dark summer suit and a colorful tie that spelled out the word Montana—not the state but Claude, the French couturier. Briggs wondered if he was wrong in thinking the groom wore eyeliner. Olivia touched the champagne glass to the tip of her nose and giggled when Briggs appeared. He knew right away that he wouldn’t be able to ask his questions. He pumped the husband’s hand and wished them all the luck in the world. He meant it, even though he felt the same queer longing on seeing Olivia. It was her husband’s turn to go for a ride.

During the ceremony, rain clouds had grumbled overhead and now the shower began. The wedding party rushed to the house with hilarity, and Briggs decided this would be a good time for him to leave, but Olivia detained him, resting her outspread fingers on his shirt while the rain fell on them both. She was remarkably heedless in her beautiful wedding gown, and Briggs caught sight of the groom’s face in the hall window. “You were so good to me that time and so patient with my father,” she said.

“Where is your father?”

“We got him out of here.” She was close to him as she spoke. He felt her breath on his face and his heart was racing. “I’m glad I had the chance to”—she smiled—“to give you a lift when you were in the hospital.”

The rain redoubled, sweeping down through the canopy of leaves, and they fled to the house, Olivia disappearing into the happy crowd. Briggs didn’t know quite what to do with himself. He made his way back to the kitchen where he’d dined with Dr. Halliday. It was empty. He went to the sink and ran the tap until the water was cold, filled a glass, and drank it down. The pandemonium outside elevated for an instant as the kitchen door opened behind him. When he put the glass down and turned around, he was looking into the face of the groom, aggressively close to his own. He stared at Briggs in silence. “I hope you understand that you will never put your nasty hands on her again,” he said. “Get over it.”

Briggs looked at this handsome well-cared-for man. “It will be hard to give up,” Briggs said.

“But you will, won’t you?”

“I suppose. It was so intense, the last time, in my car, the air bags deployed. But, yes, you have my word.”

The groom reached out his hand and Briggs took it. The hand was so clammy that Briggs had an instant of sympathy. In the groom’s face nothing changed. “Have we got a deal?” the groom asked, and Briggs pretended to agonize over the decision. He let the conflicts play themselves out on his face, then heaved a great sigh.

“We’ve got a deal,” he said, his voice resigned.

As they strolled back to the party together, Briggs decided that spicing things up in this way was absolutely the last favor he would do for Olivia. He watched the groom go to her and whisper in her ear. Olivia looked over at Briggs, smiled at him sadly, he thought, and waved. Hello? Goodbye? He wasn’t sure.

The rain had stopped, and something caused the wedding party to gravitate to the stately elm shading the lawn, its leaves just starting to change color. Briggs followed until he was part of the half circle of celebrants facing Olivia, who stood on a small dais, placed there, he supposed, for this purpose. “I’d like to propose a toast!” she called out, in a voice that carried remarkably. He barely heard her words but stared, spellbound, at her wide, confident smile, the steady movement of her head as she took in all the guests, and the hand gestures that would have been clear from the nearby mountains. Her voice rang out expressively, each syllable occupying its own time and space. At the end of her toast, she clasped her hands to her chest and bowed modestly to the admiring applause and, without looking, reached out a regal hand to her new husband.