Chapter 15 / View

“A small electric heater was on in one corner of the bathroom, which was good, because the room was tiled and cold as a crypt. Annie had set out a towel and a toothbrush, still in its plastic package, so I brushed my teeth, looking at the photos on the wall. San Pedro. Her cotton-picking brigade. 

“Back in the living room, Annie and Chloe were sitting on the couch. The dog was chewing a rawhide bone the size of her head and Annie was drinking her tea. She got up immediately. I’ll show you the upstairs room, she said. 

“I’m sure I can find it, I said. I couldn’t stand the thought of her butt, in her little black pants, leading me up the stairs.

“OK, she said. I turned on the electric heater up there. You can leave it on all night—it’s safe. 

“Before she could move away, I kissed her. Three kisses—top of her head and each cheek, thanking her for the dance, and the driving, and the room upstairs. I held her for a moment, to feel all her various curves and muscles, before she said good night and pulled away. 

“That was it, Warren. I stayed upstairs. The heater was on, but it was a very subtle heater, a sort of scat singer of a heater, and the room felt like it was outdoors. Really—there was ice along the bottom edge of the window. The only furnace heat had to come up from downstairs, through a grate in the floor. I wanted to look around, check out the books, but the ceiling was so low I couldn’t stand up straight, and my jacket was downstairs. I thought about getting it, but I didn’t want to make her nervous, so I just went to bed. I took off my pants and shoes and that was it. Then I decided I was being ridiculous, so I took off my sweater and spread it over the comforter as extra insulation. 

“A spray of light from the living room came through the grate until Annie turned it off, and then the house went black. She closed the bedroom door. I listened, not breathing, and it seemed to me that she locked it. I lay there thinking about her feeling safer behind a locked door and that I wouldn’t argue with a locked door, but I especially wouldn’t if I froze to death, and I wondered if she kept the house so cold in order to shrivel me up, and I fell asleep. 

“I dreamed we were at an aquarium. Something like the Miami Seaquarium, where I interviewed the source the day before I met Annie on the plane. The tanks were huge, as if we were walking at the bottom of the ocean, and we stopped at the reef fish, watching them sparkle in the aqua water. We were happy, walking around the tanks, which made a loud humming noise, and I woke up to hear a truck rumble by. A plow. I closed my eyes again, tried to get the dream back. I liked the feeling of traveling somewhere with her. The plow drove by from the other direction. I hoped it was still snowing, that they wouldn’t get the road cleared. 

“Later, still dark, there was a lot of truck noise in the driveway and lights flashing, and I sat up, thinking Jesus, what now. A pickup truck, plowing her driveway. Damn. My ears and nose were freezing. I put the extra pillow around my head. 

“Much later I smelled coffee. Nine o'clock, and the windows completely frozen over on the outside. 

“Downstairs, the house was empty. She’d left a note by the coffeemaker: Walking Chloe. Back soon. Coffee mug, milk. Down here you could see out the windows. I drank some coffee looking out at the road, at a day that glittered—bright sun, glistening snow, the sky a deep marine blue, every particle visible in crystal-clear air. I stood at her desk, in the utter stillness, and I could feel what it was like to live there, the bay window, the road, the woods . . . 

“Then Annie entered the view from the right, running down the hill. She wore a hat with earflaps, a furry hunter’s hat with a visor and a strap under her chin. She was trying to get the dog, Chloe, to pull her, with some success. They slid past the plowed driveway, both of them grinning, the hound grin, the girl grin . . . and I thought, this woman does not look bereaved. 

“She wanted to know if I had slept OK. 

“It was more like suspended animation, I said. I don’t think that heater works. I could feel the coffee raising my core temperature. 

“It works, she said. And I didn’t turn the thermostat down as low as I usually do. I’m sorry—do you want some toast?

“Not right now. 

“OK. I have to go to church soon. It’s in Schuyler. I’ll drop you at the hotel and after the service I’ll treat you to breakfast at the diner. 

“Annie, there was a blizzard here last night. We’re lucky not to be lost in a snowdrift.

“If my road’s plowed, all the roads are plowed. And I’m reading the lessons. We rotate readers, it’s my turn. 

“Later, in the hotel, I thought I would have liked to hear her read. She’s a tenor, with a gently definite way of speaking. January . . . she was probably reading something about Moses and something from Paul, and they probably sounded as good as they ever had. At breakfast, I asked her which lessons. 

“Paul exhorted people, and the Old Testament was Exodus.” 

“Rootless, wandering . . . 

“—Yes. They’re camping in the desert and dying of thirst and they get pissed off at Moses and he goes to God, who gives them water from a rock.  

“What’s the point?

“The Lord is among us. 

“Despite all the evidence to the contrary.

“Andrew, I’m not going to argue theology with you. I don’t remember anything I learned in Sunday school and I just went back to church a couple of months ago. I said the Lord is among us. God is not a puppet master in the sky. 

“Why did you go back to church a couple of months ago?

“. . . Mostly to keep every day of my life from being exactly the same, a combination of work and chores. To make myself sit still for an hour once a week. And the lessons sounded interesting. I’m what passes for a religion editor at the paper, since if someone calls in and says the lesson this Sunday is from Ephesians I don’t faint with confusion and I know how to spell Ephesians. 

“The paper publishes which lesson will be read?

“And the sermon topic. In 6 point. If you call it in on time. We’re the community newspaper, Andrew. And up here, church is community. 

"The waitress poured us more coffee, and Annie followed her thought. And evil is among us too. As you said, it would be easy for the United States to help Cuscutlan have clean water, everywhere. Then they’d be healthy, and they’d love us. 

“And we’d have all those healthy little Cuscutlano babies to deal with. 

“Exactly. It’s an evil spirit, not a guy with a tail and a pitchfork, that prevents that. 

“So you pray against it. 

“I pray for the Cuscutlanos. And I told you about our Amistad group raising money for Malpaisillo’s new water system. People here were very generous, even people who barely knew where Cuscutlan is. They knew it was the humane, human thing to do. 

"She stopped, then went on. I know I’m ridiculous, Andrew. 

“You’re not ridiculous.

“Especially to someone like you, who’s seen the evil up close, and I know I’m stupid and ineffectual.

“No, you’re neither.

“I can only do what I can do. I haven’t spent much time in Cuscutlan, but we’ve made some good educational headway here. 

“I told you, Annie, Amistad’s sending a miniature coffin, inscribed with the name of a dead Cuscutlano civilian, to your Neanderthal congressman once a week for two years, was brilliant. That was an excellent educational effort.

“She smiled again, remembering. It was fun, too, she said. 

“I would have liked to stay. I would have liked to wish a year away and find us both ahead of where we were. I couldn’t do either. So I took the train back to New York, and at the station I said, what are you doing next weekend?” 

Copyright © Debby Mayer

Chapter 14 / Blizzard

“The babe,” says Andrew with a shrug, continuing his report. “I got lucky—the next song was a slow one, and I threw myself into Annie’s arms. Really. I wanted to see what it felt like. It felt—” Good. “Normal. And I am not blowing this, the first night, for some guy’s wife.” He laughs briefly, at himself. “See how well I’m taking the meds.” 

“Beautifully,” says Warren. 

“OK. Annie forgave me for sounding patronizing, and we stayed for the second set. They did some great covers—‘Respect,’ that kind of thing. And the lead singer—Viki—would say something like, OK, now Tommy’s gonna help us on this number, and some contractor in a T-shirt who’d been dancing his ass off would stand with her at the microphone and belt it out, pitch perfect. And I thought, that’s what I want to do. 

“At the break we went back out for air. And discovered that the little roadhouse, with its tiny, steamed-up windows, was in the middle of a blizzard. You couldn’t see the other side of the road. 

“Shit, said Annie. We’d better go, she said, apologetic, as if I were going to argue. She drives a Honda hatchback the size of rickshaw. It’s good in snow, she said of the car. And she’s a good driver, she uses the shift, the mirrors. I manned the towel on the windshield. We hadn’t gone more than a few miles—we were starting back over the mountain—when we came upon a dead deer stretched across our lane. I expected her to duck into the other lane, around it, but if we skidded, we were dead, so she stopped. An SUV chugged by us, spraying snow, half burying the deer. 

“We should move it, said Annie, sounding apologetic again.

“Stay in the car, I said, as if I knew what I was doing.

“Be careful she said, and just as I got out there, in my loafers, a big pickup stopped behind us. A young guy got out—need some help, he said. Sure do, I said, feeling right in the middle of Prairie Home Companion. We each grabbed a back leg of the deer and dragged it off the road. Ten-point buck, he said, dusting off the head. You want it?

“Was he crazy? It must have weighed as much as her car. 

“You guys OK? called Annie.

“He wants to know if you want the deer, I said into the car window. 

“No, she said, as if it were a normal question. He can take it. You might help him put it in the truck. 

“He had a tarp for the truck bed, which was covered with snow anyway, and we slung the deer onto it. There was hardly any blood—the thing died of a broken back—but I did have a flash, just a second, even in the snow and with my neck soaking wet, of piling the bodies into Carlos’s pickup as fast as we could, of trying to get away with our dead and wounded so they wouldn’t get their balls cut off—but I took a deep breath and looked at the kid in front of me, no beard, a contractor in training, took care of his truck, and I said thanks, thanks for stopping, and he said no problem, and we headed for our vehicles. 

“Annie leaned out her window and called to the kid, we’re going to need a push. He waved OK, and when our tires spun, he came up behind us and, very gently, pushed us. Where the deer had been, the snow wasn’t so deep, so she got some traction and we roared up the hill in first gear, the kid behind us, ready to push.

“After what felt like five minutes, we got to the top and started down, and she gave a huge sigh, like expelling a balloon full of tension. 

“You all right? I said. 

“She nodded, her eyes on the road. She was thinking, hard, and then I remembered. Her house was about 15 minutes from here, on a dry day. My hotel was 15 minutes past that, same dry day. Tonight, we were looking at an hour to the hotel and then a half-hour for her to get back home. Alone. It was one o’clock, and snowing. 

“Listen, I said, I’ll sleep in the car. I’ll sleep on the porch. I’ll sleep in the doghouse. We can’t go back to Schuyler. 

“It might not be so bad there, she said, closer to the river. Lower elevation. But we have to decide before the parkway. I’m afraid I won’t be able to get up my hill, but if we take the parkway, then we can come at the house from the other direction, down the hill. 

“I vote parkway, I said. 

“Me too, she said.  Miserably. She didn’t want me at her house. She wanted to be by herself, she didn’t want to worry about some mental case in the attic. And I would spend the whole night thinking about not jumping her. But we couldn’t go back to Schuyler.

On the parkway, we came up behind a plow and followed it. Fifteen miles an hour, for five miles, but our path was clear, we could relax a little, until her road, which hadn’t been plowed. Someone had been through, a bigger car, but she had traction on one side so we inched down the hill, slithered into the driveway.  

“Her house is small and painted in the colors of Mexico. The dog is weird . . . like having a small fox in the house. Chloe. Apparently Chloe had never expected to see Annie alive again. Chloe sat down, pointed her nose at the ceiling, and howled. I thought, maybe I will sleep in the car. 

“Do you want a cup of tea, Annie asked. In the kitchen light her eyes looked burned out, with dark circles under them, and what I wanted was to sit her on my lap, but also I wanted her to stop doing things for me, so I said I would make her a cup of tea. 

“She took the dog out into the yard. There was a red teakettle on the stove, so I put some water in it and turned on the gas. It looked safe enough, so I went outside with them. Annie was shoveling a little path in the yard, toward a bird feeder, so Chloe could get out there and squat. Then she came back onto the deck and stood with me under the roofed part by the door. Everything—bird feeder, fence, trees—was larger than life, rounded up with snow, which was still falling, with a kind of hissing, breathing sound. 

“Again, except for the snow, the place felt as remote as a house on the outskirts of a Cuscutlano mountain village. Facing west, we couldn’t see any other houses. There was no sound except for the snow, and the only light came from the house. We stood farther apart than we’d been all night. She was as skittish as the dog, which was now hopping through the snow, looking for mice, I guess. I had a cigarette and we watched the snow change the planet. 

“Back inside, the dog was still wired. I was pouring water over a tea bag and Annie was moving something in the living room. OK, Chloe! she said, and the dog started running. Annie’s bedroom is in back of the living room, and the dog ran in from the bed, through the living room, through an orange plastic Hula Hoop Annie was holding, then around a rocking chair and back toward the bedroom. I had been going to ask her why she kept a Hula Hoop next to the fireplace tongs. She was smiling at the dog and saying, good dog, Chloe, good girl!

“Chloe did it again. Bed-door-hoop-rocker, 40 miles an hour, with this completely demented look on her face. 

“Do you want your tea? I said. 

“Come in for a minute and stand over there, she said. 

“So I stood near the alcove where Annie has her desk. And Chloe did it again, Annie raising the hoop a little and cheering her on, as if the dog had done something wonderful. At first Chloe wouldn’t go near me. She reached the end of her run, panted a little, looked at me. Get Andy! said Annie, and Chloe ran away from us entirely, back to the bedroom, where she turned around on the bed three times in about three seconds, a fox dervish, then charged back out to the living room. This time she tapped my foot with her paw before she ran away. 

“So I became part of the course. Chloe did this four more times, Annie cheering her on, raising the hoop, me not saying anything, not wanting my voice to throw the dog off, Chloe jumping through the hoop, tapping my foot, circling around Annie to race back into the bedroom, turn circles on the bed, and so on. It was two o’clock in the morning. Finally Chloe stopped, panting, her sides heaving, then drank about a quart of water.” 

“What were you thinking while the dog ran around?” asks Warren, sounding genuinely curious. 

“—Not much. Well . . . I was glad when Annie told me to stand near the desk. Made me part of the game. The dog was funny, and Annie was smiling, not looking so worn out. Out of the snowstorm, in a tiny house with two skittish females . . . I guess I was happy.”

Copyright © Debby Mayer

Chapter 13 / Dancing

“When she said yes, we could meet for lunch Saturday in Schuyler, I was  . . . pleased. It was a date! I got my hair cut. 

“After lunch, when I asked her if she’d show me around the city and she said sure, I felt lucky. 

“But when I asked her, what do you do here at night? and she said, do you like to dance? I turned to milk. I was hers.”

Andrew is telling Warren, his psychiatrist, about his visit with Annie. He often talks to Warren in stories. They both know he’s distancing himself from his life that way, but the fact that he talks at all about his feelings is a breakthrough, and so they made a deal: he can tell stories as long as each word is absolutely true. 

“After that,” says Andrew, “we lived a whole life in 24 hours. Everything but sex,” he adds quickly, looking Warren in the eye, for they sit facing each other in two slightly, but not completely, comfortable chairs, and he wants Warren to know that he has found a person, not a new receptacle. 

“She dropped me off at the other hotel in town, the one that isn’t a welfare hotel, and went back to her house to take care of the dog. I got a room and then I walked around, bought a toothbrush, a razor.” 

“You had your meds?” Warren’s voice is just audible, more an afterthought in the narrative than a question.  

“I had my meds,” says Andrew. “I took each pill the second I was supposed to.” He pauses. “I had figured to keep things spontaneous by not bringing a toothbrush, but I was not going to have to go home because of those fucking pills. 

“Anyway, then I sat in a little park across the street from the hotel and had a cigarette. It was cold, but I figured I could last long enough for a butt. 

“During that time—the length of one cigarette—a black Isuzu Trooper, with Bronx plates, coupla dudes in the front seats, passed me twice, and another guy, in a gray hooded sweatshirt, found reason to walk through the park twice. No one made eye contact. We just knew we were there, me sitting, like someone who might be waiting for something, them casing me, trying to figure out if I were undercover, or, better, maybe needed something. 

“A small rat popped out of his hole and ran across the street, and I thought, this place is OK. No way can you think you’re in East Hampton, or northwestern Connecticut. In fact, even though the light was wrong, and the temperature about 40 degrees too low, there was something about the place that reminded me of towns in Cuscutlan. I could have been sitting in the plaza in San Pedro, or Maria-Teza. The level of traffic, the guys who wanted to sell me something, even the hotel, which was nice enough but two years late in replacing its carpets. 

“For dinner we drove east out of the city, then north to a roadhouse that had revamped its menu so I could get a steak while she got fish. She knew people there—an older guy, a doctor, and his wife stopped by our table, and later a couple of guys. She introduced me.” 

“Everybody’s checking you out,” she said. Sly smile was like a wink.

“Who are they?” I asked. 

“The Bennetts are part of our Amistad group; Tom and Bruce I know from church.” 

“Church, I said. 

"She nodded. I go to church. The Episcopal church, in Schuyler.

“I said, can we talk about church another time, and again she said sure, as if . . . it was easy.” 

He pauses, decides he doesn’t need to tell Warren every single detail, like the sweet way her top lip draws over her teeth when she smiles.

“To go dancing," he says, "we drove south again and then east, over a mountain lit up for night skiing, to our second roadhouse of the evening. She said leave your jacket in the car, and we trotted up to the little red door through a snow shower.” He pauses again, watching them in his mind’s eye. 

“Inside, the place was packed. There were tables along one wall, but they were filled, and everyone else was just milling, while the band set up. I got her a beer and me a ginger ale, but that was just a courtesy—the bartender would have never known we were there. 

“Again she knew people, nodding, saying hi. 

“Who are these people? I asked her. 

“The guy over there is on the town board of a town I cover for the paper, she said. He’s a contractor. Probably most of the guys here are contractors. That woman—she nodded toward a babe in a tank top—used to be a friend. She’ll hit on you before the end of the first set. 

“Did she hit on Ed? I asked and she started a little smile, like a wink, but at that second there was motion at the door, and everyone turned. The singer was there, she was going enter from the front door. She waited until everybody quieted down, and then she sang—"

For this part Andrew gets up—since he can’t smoke during the sessions, he is allowed to move around—

“O-per-a-tor”—he stands up straight and extends his arms, palms out. He has a good baritone, and he gives the word everything the singer did, figuring no one is in the waiting room yet. “She holds that for about a minute Warren, honest, then—

“Give me, in-for-ma-tion—

“and then the band starts up—she’s got this amazing blind piano player—and the two backup chicks start their thing behind her, and they all wiggle up to the stand, everybody making room for them. And there we are, in the middle of nowhere. Dancing our butts off, to music that rocks. To gospel words.

“Think white soul, Warren. She’s one of these little bullet-shaped women with a nose like a pug who can really belt it out.” 

He sits again. Warren waits, quiet, as dark as Andrew is blond. In more than 200 sessions, Andrew has never told a story like this.  

“Annie’s a good dancer, and I brought back my Cuscutlano dancing, but kept it clean. The babe did come over—peck on Annie’s cheek, then, to me, May I have this dance. Where’s Tony? says Annie, and the babe says, home with the kid. We never go out together.” 

She tugged me so she could whisper in my ear. Don’t forget who’s takin’ you home. 

Take me home, and I’ll never forget it. 

“At the break we went outside so I could have a cigarette. It was snowing a little, but it didn’t look dangerous. People were lighting up and laughing and talking. I said to her, so is this what people do when they’re happy. 

“She’d understood everything I had said until then. But now she looked at me with her eyes narrowed and said, What do you mean?

“I mean, I wouldn’t know unless you told me. I mean, this is the best thing that’s happened to me in five years. That’s all I mean.” 

“What have you told her,” asks Warren, emphasizing the have. 

“She knows about the meds. I told her Sunday. Whether she understands the total bionic nature of my new emotional state, I don’t know. But she may. And she read my book, Warren, remember? When. It. Came. Out. I should fall in love with her for that alone. But anyway, she knows that stuff, like what a dork I can be. 

“So. Subjects still to be covered—” he looks Warren in the eye—“Molly. Jail. Hospital. Girls.”

Girls? Warren’s eyebrows go up microscopically. Andrew resists, unblinking, as firmly as if they were arm wrestling. “I’ll say prostitute when I tell her,” he says. 

Warren nods slightly.

“I have to tell her everything?”

Warren is startled, gives a slight shrug. 

“OK,” says Andrew. They have worked together long enough for him to expect an answer that’s a question. What do you want? It depends on what you want.  

“You haven’t heard about the blizzard and the dead deer,” says Andrew.

“Or what happened to the babe in the tank top,” says Warren.

Copyright © Debby Mayer

Chapter 12 / Twinkle

“Excuse me, is this seat taken?”

He didn’t wake, or even shift. Annie reviewed her options: repeat the question, louder; move the newspapers on the seat next to him, which might be his, or not; pretend she didn’t see the newspapers and sit on them; or return to her assigned seat two rows back and have her kidneys battered all the way from Miami to New York, as the little boy behind her kicked her seat. 

“Excuse me!”  

He still didn’t move. She sighed, torn: not worth it /  kid would drive her crazy. 

“Wake him up!” said a wiry, leather-tanned woman in the seat in back of him. “Hey! Wake up!” She reached between the seats and slapped him on the shoulder. “Lady wants to sit down!”

“Oh—sure.” He swept the newspapers onto the floor in front of him. 

“Thank you. Sorry to wake you.” She got out her book, to indicate that she wouldn’t interrupt him further. 

“That’s all right . . . are we there yet?”  

“No. We’re still here.” 

He smiled, revealing a twinkle of gold at the side of his mouth, and nodded at her copy of The End of the Affair. “You like that?”

“Very much.” 

“Do you think he’s dead, when she sees him after the air strike?”

“—Yes. I reread it. The description is very clear.  . . .  You don’t?”

“No.” He drew in his breath slightly, a reverse sigh. “No miracles.”

“This is a work of fiction. It can hold miracles.” 

He smiled again, with a flash of gold. “I’ll owe you—I mean, I’ll send you flowers or something—if you’ll change seats with me so I can sit on the aisle.” 

“Why didn’t you ask for an aisle seat?” 

“—Good question, Ms.—“

“Annie.”

He offered his right hand, tilted slightly, palm out. “Andrew Logan.” She grasped his hand—large, warm, dry—just long enough to be polite. 

“Ms. Annie. I didn’t ask for an aisle seat because I’m borderline entropic and my company made the reservation for me and probably thought I had kept my childlike wonder all these years. If you prefer the aisle, keep it.” 

“I always ask for an aisle seat. If you go into spasms later, we can switch.” 

“Very fair.” 

He wanted to talk more, she could tell, but she had so looked forward to finishing the last fifty pages of the book and she didn’t want to be picked up anywhere, but especially not on an airplane. Still, his face—long and lean, fair-skinned, with pale blue eyes—was familiar, along with his name. The shape of his head, his dark blond hair . . . had she seen a photograph? It nagged her as she read, just beyond her mental grasp, she would think of it later today and kick herself for having kept her nose in a book. 

By the time breakfast came he had skimmed through the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel and El Neuvo Herald and was at work on the Times. He put it aside to eat. 

“What’s new?” she said.

“SOS,” he said, and she nodded, unable to think of anything more except that gold tooth. 

“I need some dental work done. Do you recommend gold?”

A laugh rumbled up from him; she’d been right to wait till he had nothing in his mouth. “Yes. It makes people remember you. Who taught you to ask questions?”

“—No one. No one at all. Until about four months ago, when I took a job with the local newspaper. Now I can ask questions all the time.”

He asked her which newspaper, where it was, what kind of stories she wrote. She thought he was just passing the time until she realized that he interviewing her: asking a question, and then a follow-up question, and then another follow-up. 

“They can’t be too bad if they let you take a long weekend in your second quarter,” he said.

“I’m being docked for it. But my stepfather’s been ill. My mother bought me the ticket.” 

“I’m sorry about your stepfather. But you need a union, Ms. Annie.”

“Forget it, Andrew Logan. They’d close the paper.”

“They all say that,” he said, but she was on another thought. Using his name made it come clear. 

“You’re a writer, aren’t you,” she said. 

“A reporter. I ask questions.”

“The New Yorker. They devoted a whole issue to your report of the massacre in Cuscutlan.” 

“You have an amazing memory, Annie. That was years ago.” 

She opened her mouth to tell him that she had saved the issue, unable to discard it even after his book was published. But that might sound obsessive, so she said, “I was working with our local Central American solidarity group.” She paused, embarrassed; out loud, sitting next to him, the word solidarity smacked of limousine, or in this case, Honda liberalism, but his long face was open, listening. “We all read it, as part of our education. And your book, we all read your book, not that one but the earlier one, about living with the guerillas—” 

“You read that book?”

“Yeah, I still have it—”

“You all read my book?” 

“Well, six of us. The ones who read.” 

“Did you all read the same copy?”

Now she laughed. “No, we each bought a copy. To support the author.” 

“I’m overwhelmed,” he said. “That doubles the number of people who read that book. Where the hell did you get it?”

“The Marxist bookstore in the Village. The one on 10th Street.” 

“Jesus . . .  I hope you didn’t write a check.” 

“Those who wanted to be followed up by the FBI wrote a check. Those who didn’t paid cash.” 

“Your first real smiles, Annie . . . don’t look away, it’s just a reporter’s observation. For me, too, those were glory days.” 

“It was a good group.” 

“Defused now, deflected?”

“It was easy to keep a high level of rage in the ‘80s. People—”

“Well said. Did you come up with that?”

“No, Ed did. He was the articulate one. Jaime thought up clever demos. I wrote our press releases.” 

“Public education is crucial.” 

“That’s what we thought. Think. A few of us try to keep the spirit going, but people’s lives change. They realize they’d better pay attention to their children, or get a job. It happened in Cuscutlan, too.”

“It did . . . “ He seemed ready to speak, then changed course. “Ed your husband?”

“—Was. He died.” She could feel her chin lift.

“I’m sorry . . . cancer?”

“Car accident.” 

“I’m really sorry.”

They were silent for a moment, the ghost of Ed tucked between them. 

“Kids?” he asked.

“No. Dogs.”

“When did Ed die?”

“Last September.”  

The captain came on the intercom to alert them of their landing. They stored their things as instructed and she felt silly, not a real reporter, because she had been reading a novel, not the daily papers. Traveling, she and Ed had always bought the local newspapers. 

When it came time to file out of the plane, she said, “My bag is two rows back. Good luck with your post-election analysis.” 

But he waited for her, looking out the window, his legs stretched sideways, just short of the aisle. He didn’t speak again until they were walking in the airport.

“Are you dating?”

“No.” 

“Do you have good friends?”

“Of course.” 

“I mean, male good friends.” 

“Yes. From before. Our friends. People I’ve known for years.” 

“—I’d like to get to know you, Annie. I won’t ask anything of you. We’ll talk, like we did today. I could—” he looked away. “No. That’s it. We’ll talk. Books, the news.”

Standing, he was even taller than Ed, and his stride was long, like Ed’s. She had been telling herself  she didn’t have to keep up.

“Do you ever come to New York?” he asked.

“—Sometimes. Not often. I have the dog, the consuming job.” 

“Let’s do this. Next time you come to New York, call me, OK? I’ll take you to lunch. Here—” He gave her a business card that consisted of his name and a telephone number.  “Call me.” 

“Shake?” he said. They shook hands and parted. She could feel his card in her coat pocket. She would never get to New York, but the card was a nice souvenir. She would call Jaime tonight . . . remember the guy who wrote about Cuscutlan? 

And there he was, by her side again. She turned awkwardly, startled. 

“It occurred to me,” he said, “that since this is my idea . . . I should visit you. Can I come calling next weekend?”

“I have to work.” 

“The next weekend then.” 

She paused. 

“I’ll call you. I’ll take the train up for lunch. If I can sit through lunch, I can’t be too psychopathic, right?”

A twinkle from his gold tooth, and he was gone. 

Two days later an envelope arrived for her at the office from him, marked personal . . . a plain business envelope, return address in the west 40s . . . he must have called, to get her last name. She put it aside, took it home, ate dinner, went out to cover a meeting, came back to the envelope, examined it again, made herself open it. Inside were two pieces of paper folded around four $100 bills and one $50. “I figure they docked you $205, and you’re worth at least twice that to them,” said a note scrawled in black ink. “Take it. I’ll call you.” 

Take it. 

Take it, and she owed him. 

If he sent her $450 a week, it wouldn’t be enough. 

He was Guild, he lived alone, probably had plenty of money. It was meaningless to him, this money, her lack of it. 

No, it wasn’t. He was precisely right about how much they had docked her and he knew, exactly, how much that cut hurt. She put the envelope in her sock drawer. 

Copyright © Debby Mayer

Chapter 11 / Lists

In January, on the plane to Miami, I made two lists. 

Things I Miss

Having someone to talk to.

Having someone to take a walk with.

Exercise in general, everything I used to do with or without him, running, swimming, riding my bike. 

Our family excursions. 

We’d take the dogs to Random Harvest, and after shopping we’d all sit on the porch for coffee and scones. People knew us, and the dogs, and they probably thought we were crazy dog people, which we were, but they liked us, and the dogs. 

Once a week we all went to the dogs’ agility class. They were so good at it, leaping the bars, skittering up the V dog walk, braving the tunnel. Good dog! we’d say, good dog! And they would grin their hound grins. 

Dancing. What I really miss is dancing.

We weren’t great dancers, but we both loved music and the idea of dancing, so we took lessons. The lessons always required us to learn the cha-cha, which was a silly dance, but they also gave us an excuse to practice the waltz and the fox trot, dances where you held each other, and of course the tango. Few occasions call for the tango—cruises, I suppose, and Ed wouldn’t have set foot on a cruise—but we got really good at the tango. 

For a couple of New Year’s Eves Ed put on his tuxedo and I found a way to combine black silk long underwear with my black velvet dress and we went dancing. Then we found a roadhouse on the Massachusetts border where a band we loved played for dancing, and we planned our lives around it. The joint was packed; all you had to do was get up and sort of wiggle, and that made it easy, thought-less, care free. We’d stay for two sets, before Ed started to worry about the dogs. 

Things I Don’t Miss

Ed worrying about the dogs. We had agreed we didn’t want children, and then he changed his mind, sort of, but I didn’t, and he got even with the dogs, two beings completely dependent upon us who would never learn to make themselves a sandwich. 

Shopping at Guido’s in Great Barrington. Ed loved Guido’s. I found it a long ride for an expensive store filled with people I would never invite to dinner and the feeling was mutual. 

Spending my evenings washing dishes. Ed was a great cook, and I knew I should be grateful, but some nights I felt like Cinderella.

Trying to sleep with the light on while he read at night. I read him a line from a Phil Schultz poem: “The edge of sleep is not sleep,” but it made no difference.

I stopped. I was writing quibbles, about the man I loved, although I was aware that now, when I wanted the light out at night, it went out. 

Together, we had disdained microwave ovens, but when I saw one at a church rummage sale for $7, I decided to try it, and it changed my life: hot food in minutes, and no pans to wash. 

A lack of discretionary time did simplify the life. Would I rather drive to board meetings on winter nights, all over the county, or to Great Barrington? I put the question aside. Things were what they were. Except for my mother, who was flying me to Miami because my stepfather needed bypass surgery, anyone who wanted me to hold their hand for a few days had to come to me, and then they could take me out for dinner. Bring a dress, Ma said, I'll make  dinner reservations. 

This life couldn’t last—I wasn’t earning enough, and Tina’s abuse, along with my ancient car, keep me constantly anxious—but I was managing it, day by day. I put away the lists and got out The End of the Affair, by Graham Greene. Soaring briefly above the job, the house, the dog, I had time to read a book.

Copyright © Debby Mayer