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."

"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, they came to a clearing in the trees. In the middle of the yard was an oven made of stones. 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 realized he'd overstepped his boundaries.

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

“Yes.”

“Did I ever meet her?”

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

“No, I never met her.”

“She was one of my favorites. 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.”

“And she left you this camp.”

“Yeah. Do you want a tour?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said.

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

“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.”

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.