They drank coffee and talked until 9pm, when the restaurant closed.

"Are you driving back to Syracuse tonight?" Marie asked.

Herrick said, "My night vision is lousy."

"You can stay with me, if you like."

"I’d like that," he said.

"You should leave your car here," she said, "there’s nowhere to park near my place."

"Oh. You think it’ll be okay?"

"Yeah," she said, "you won’t get a ticket. There’s no law enforcement, so really, there’s no law."

"What do you mean, there's no law enforcement? You don't don't have any cops?"

She nodded.

"So who do you call if you have a problem?"

She shrugged, and said, "You call the sheriff. And he’ll show up eventually. Maybe not the same day."

"But you don’t have car thieves around here."

"No," she said, "what are you driving?"

"A Jaguar e-pace."

"That’s stupid posh."

He grinned.

They went out to the parking lot at looked at the Jag, gleaming under the streetlight. He told all about its features, and she pretended to care. Then they walked the couple of miles towards her place.

They arrived at a set of stairs that seemed to go straight up a cliff.

"I hope this isn’t it," Herrick said.

"It is, though."

Marie had no difficulty with the stairs; she was used to them. But Herrick kept having to stop and catch his breath. When finally they arrived at the top of the stairs, there was a clearing in the trees. On the edge of the clearing was Marie's cabin. It was a small wood building with a peaked roof and a chimney.

In the middle of the yard was an oven made of stones. It was a distribution point, Marie left meat and vegetable scraps in it for the wildlife. In the snow, all around the oven, there were raccoon prints, possum prints, fox prints.

"Do you have bears around here?" Herrick asked.

"Yeah," Marie said, "but I don’t see them very often."

"Oh, okay then."

He sounded disapproving, but she could tell that he was enjoying his foray into her rustic world.

They trod through the thigh-high snow drifts to her door, and she pushed it open without unlocking it.

"Are you kidding?" Herrick said.

"I carry a gun," she said, "but I’ve never needed it."

The door opened onto her kitchen. She put on the lights and threw some logs into the woodstove.

They stripped off their snow-encrusted coats and boots, and set them before the stove to dry.

Marie brewed some aromatic coffee in an old-fashioned percolater.

"This is very nice," he observed, "very Leave it to Beaver."

"The cabin was built in the 1952, and it’s never been remodeled since."

"I don’t know how in the hell you’d get the formica out of here," he said, "that shit weighs a ton."

"I guess I could cover it up, if I disliked it. Which I don’t. I’m not married to the linoleum, though."

The floor was black and white diamond checks, but the white parts were scraped up from years of use.

"There might be a hardwood floor underneath. Have you ever checked?"

She said that she hadn’t. Using a knife, Herrick pulled up a piece of the linoleum at the corner of the room and indeed, there was a wood floor under it, and it looked to be oak.

"This could be amazing," he told Marie, "you’d have to refinish it, but it would be worth it."

"Is that the kind of thing I could do myself?" she asked.

"I could do it," he said.

She shook her head and said, "No, I don’t think so."

He said, "I'd do it because I'd like to do it, not for you. Not everything is about you."

She knew that she probably sounded defensive and territorial. But it had been difficult for her to make the house her own. Her dead aunt's presence had pervaded the place - she'd filled every available surface with knicknacks. When Marie moved in, she gotten rid of a hundred and ten Hummel statues, over forty decorative plates with labradors on them, and a number of corny signs that delivered wisdom like, "If you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie and wipe the seatie."

It took Marie a couple of months to rehome her aunt's stuff. She'd then attempted to establish herself by painting over the wallpaper, installing plants on the windowsills, and hanging artworks her daughter had done. Now that the place felt like hers, she wasn't willing to cede an inch of her territory. But she knew Herrick was trying to be nice, so she said, "Maybe at some point in the future."

"Well, that's what I meant. I don't happen to have a sander on me."

The coffee filled the air with a delicious scent. She poured to cups, and he doctored his with cream and sugar.

“So, this was your Aunt’s camp?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Did I ever meet her?”

“You might have. She used to visit my parents sometimes. She was about four foot nine, stout, shellaced helmet hair, cat eye glasses, always laughing. Always smoking a cigarette. Very raspy voice.”

“No, I never met her. I think I'd remember her if I had.”

“She was one of my favorite people. And I was one of her favorites. We were simpatico. She was a butcher. She worked at the meat counter at Hapanowicz’s for forty years. “

“Sometimes I feel like you’re pulling my leg.”

Marie laughed and said, “No, all facts are 100% true.”

“So your midget Aunt was a laughing butcher.”

“Well...yes. I mean, when you put it like that..."

“I'm sorry I missed her."

She thought that he probably meant it.

“Do you want a tour?” she offered.

“Yeah, sure,” he said.

On the first floor, there was a living room, a screened in porch, a bathroom, and a pantry. Upstairs, there were two small bedrooms.

“This is such a wonderful place,” he observed, “you remember the Beatrix Potter book about the two mice that live in a dollhouse?”

“Sure.”

“That’s what this place is like. Everything is in miniature."

She had worried that he might look down on her humble abode, because he was wealthy and probably lived in a big fancy house. But of course he liked it. He had an easy time liking things. He was still the same in that respect. 

They sat on the couch and talked about different people that they both knew from their shared past. So many of their friends and acquaintances were divorced.

"Do you know anybody with a really happy marriage?" Marie asked.

Herrick thought for awhile, and said, "Yeah. I know two couples who are happy. One is my godparents. And the other is my friend Claude. He married this girl, excuse me, this woman that he met at a Star Trek con."

"What do the two couples have in common?"

"I think that both couples appreciate their spouses."

"That's so hard to do!" Marie protested.

"What? Why?"

"It's just not encouraged in our society."