They drank coffee and talked for hours.

He’d done an acoustic album of songs recently, just voice, guitar, and piano. To her, the lyrics sounded like he was talking to God. He questioned whether his existence had a purpose. He lamented for the people he’d lost, and described them so that God would recognize them if they’d been overlooked. He thanked God for allowing him to live, despite his best efforts to destroy himself.

She liked this album especially. She thought it was moving.

Herrick said, “I thought the content would put you off. Last I knew, you didn’t believe in God.”

“I don’t believe in any of the popular Gods,” Marie said, “But I feel the presence of something larger than life, especially when I’m in the water, or in the forest.”

“What happened to you? You were the most committed atheist I’d ever met.”

“I think that when I adopted Lindsey I was terrified to be solely responsible for her. I needed to believe that she was safe even when she was not with me. So I conjured up a God. ”

Herrick said, “It may interest you to know that I lost my faith.”

“What happened?”

“My daughter lost a baby. She was eight months along, and she got a gum infection and became septic. The baby died and she nearly died. I guess I’m unable to believe in a God that kills babies.”

“Does He though? Or does the devil kill babies? I often wonder if evil is simply stronger than good. The Bible would have you believe that God is all powerful. But maybe that’s just hype. I picture Him creating things, and then sorrowing when the devil slays them. He's more of a witness to history."

“Maybe. I don’t know. I think if there is a God, he’s also the devil.”

“That’s very dark," Marie said, "Do you still play the songs off of your religious album?”

“No,” Herrick said, “It felt wrong, I felt like I was deceiving the audience.”

They talked about the relative merits of each major religion.

Eight PM rolled around. It was time for the restaurant to closed. But they still had more to say to one another.

"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 scaling them, but Herrick had to stop and catch his breath a few times.

When at last he’d reached the top step, he saw a clearing in the trees, populated by several wooden buildings: the cabin, a shed, a greenhouse, and a lean-to. It looked like some mini frontier town. On the porch sat several rain barrels of iced-over water. On the cabin’s roof, there was a solar panel.

They trudged through the snowdrifts to the front door. Marie opened it, without having to unlock it.

Herrick asked, “Have you ever come home to any surprise guests?”

“Not humans,” Marie said.

“Bears?”

“That’s classified.”

They shed their snow encrusted outer garments in the hallway.

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

“Do you cut your own firewood?” Herrick asked.

“I do,” Marie said. She flexed the muscles of her right arm and encouraged him to feel it. Her bicep was rock hard.

“Impressive,” he said.

“I have a friend who owns a wood lot. He’s wheelchair bound, so I cut firewood for him, and he lets me take home however much wood I can use.”

“Bartering - very cool.”

“All fiat currencies fail, so.”

“Are you getting ready for the end times?”

“No. Not really. I just like providing for my own needs.”

“Do you grow your own food?”

“Some, yeah. During the summer I eat a salad for dinner, and it’s all stuff I grew in my own garden. But my meat comes from the supermarket, I don’t hunt. I don’t fish. You want some coffee?"

"What the hell," he said. He had already had four cups of coffee, so there was no chance he'd sleep anyway.

She brewed some coffee in an old-fashioned percolater.

The kitchen looked like it was built in the 1950’s and had never been remodeled since. There was a salmon-colored Formica countertop, a checkerboard linoleum floor, and a steel fridge. There was no microwave.

“This is a great room,” Herrick observed, “Very Leave It To Beaver.”

“I like it,” Marie said, a bit defensively, “The only thing I’d like to change is the floor. It’s just really beat up.”

Herrick looked down and saw that the linoleum was scraped up from years of chairs and foot traffic.

“There may well be a wood floor underneath the linoleum,” Herrick said, “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."

“I’ll have it done at some point in the future. Promise!"

“Are you planning to stay here? For the duration?”

She shrugged and said, “It depends. I want to be near Lindsay. We don’t have to live in the same town, but I’d like to be, maximum, five hours away from her, so if she ever has any sort of emergency, I can get to her the same day. If she moves across the country, or to a different country, I guess I will, too. When she was little, her parents used to leave her alone overnight sometimes, or leave her with strangers. She always had profound separation anxiety, even if I was just going to another room in the house. I promised her I would always be there for her, no matter what, and I intend to keep my promise.”

He nodded and said, “My whole world revolves around my daughter and my grandson. I always thought I’d move to Skye or Mull. So when I tell my grandson stories, they always take place on a magical island, populated by dragons and fairies and water horses. If I can convince them to move with me, he’ll be dreadfully disappointed. But I’ll never move without them.” 

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."

"Was she a teacher?"

"No, you're thinking of my maternal aunt. Martha worked at the meat counter of a grocery store for forty years. She was a butcher."

“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.


She was very tired, and no amount of coffee could keep her awake.

"I have to go to bed," she said, "I just can't keep my eyes open any more. Do you want to sleep with me?"

"I would like to," he said, "But for clarification purposes, you're talking about sleeping or sex?"

"Both," she said, "That is, if you're interested."



They make love. They always had chemistry, and time hasn’t changed it. He’d been anxious, wondering if he could perform. But his fears dissipate almost right away. She looks at him as though he’s the sexiest man alive, and it has an effect. 

Marie looks just like a woman ought to look, in his opinion. She’s perfectly proportioned, designed for him.

He is amazed by her initiative and her enthusiasm. She moves his hands to where she wants to be touched. She responds to his touch with sounds of pleasure. She makes him feel skilled, attractive, wanted. 

Only now does he realize how unwanted his ex-wife made him feel. How her coldness and lack of desire for him wounded his ego.

He wants to spend the rest of his life feeling wanted. 

Curled up next to Marie, listening to her heart beating, he pictures their future together, and he feels hopeful, for the first time in a long time. 


Because of all the coffee he’d drunk that day, Herrick couldn’t sleep. He laid awake for hours. Finally, when light began to show through the window, he carefully extricated himself from Marie’s embrace. He crept down the stairs, one at a time, distributing his weight, trying to keep their creaking to a minimum. 

It was 6:30 AM. She had bragged about being an early riser, always up by 7.

He decided to surprise her with breakfast in bed. 

She had a fully stocked refrigerator and larder. Selecting items from them, he prepared home fries, scrambled eggs, pancakes, sausage and bacon. 

He sat down at the kitchen table to wait for the bacon to crisp up, and promptly fell asleep. 

He woke up, coughing – the kitchen was filled with smoke. The bacon was on fire. A flame leapt up out of the pan. Panicked, he looked around for a fire extinguisher, or something he could use to smother the flame. But there was nothing. He tried to remember – could you use water to put out a grease fire? But then the tip of the flame touched the wood cabinet above it, and almost instantly, the cabinet was engulfed.

He screamed Marie's name, and he heard her footfalls clatter down the stairs. She ran into the room, looked at the fire, and yelled, hoarsely, “Out! Out!”

She pushed past him and grabbed their coats. She ran out the front door, with Herrick right on her heels.

The coldness of the snow on his bare feet made him gasp.

They ran to the opposite side of the yard, to the little shed. From inside, they watched the house burn. Grey smoke gusted and billowed up towards heaven.

The fire illuminated the house from within. The glass windows burst outward, littering the snow with shards. The exterior of the house blackened. Yellow and orange tongues of fire licked away ate the walls until only the door and window frames were left standing. A window frame fell forward onto a snowbank, making it melt in fast motion. All at once, the roof collapsed, with a deafening boom.

Sirens sounded – the volunteer firemen were on their way. But it was too late : the house was a heap of debris.

Marie watched the spectacle before her in disbelief. It couldn’t be real! But some part of her knew that it was, because tears were streaming down her cheeks.

She looked at Herrick. He was pale and shaking.

She reached out and took his hand and told him, "It's going to be okay. I'm insured. This isn't how I wanted to remodel, but it'll be okay."

"I just wanted to make you breakfast in bed."

"It was an accident. It was an accident, wasn't it?"

"Yes, of course. I fell asleep."

"Herrick - shit happens. Nobody died. It's okay."

But he knew that she'd loved her house, that she had been proud of it, that she was nostalgic about it. And he was responsible for its being a smoldering heap of cash. Whatever had been blossoming between them, was now unquestionably dead. And he'd unwittingly deal this woman that he loved, another devastating blow.

A small crowd began to gather in the clearing – firefighters, neighbors, gawkers. People that knew Marie tried to comfort her. They asked what happened, and she told them it was a stove fire, but she didn’t tell them it wasn’t her cooking.

Someone gave her slippers, and someone else gave him a dirty pair of sneakers. They were gross, but he put them on his numb feet, with gratitude. He wondered if he would lose some toes to frostbite. And he wondered if losing his toes would assuage his guilt at all.

The volunteer firemen were able to keep the fire from spreading to the trees or the outbuildings.

A young woman appeared and Herrick knew, by her stricken expression that she must be Marie’s daughter, Lindsey. Marie and Lindsey embraced for a long while. Lindsey stroked her mother’s tousled hair and murmured words of encouragement.

He could feel Lindsey’s gaze upon him. She looked him up and down and frowned, brow furrowed.

Marie introduced him.

“Were you….” Lindsey began, but then thought the better of it.

Lindsey wanted her mother to go to the urgent care and get checked out, because of the smoke she’d inhaled, but Marie firmly refused. Finally Lindsey relented, because she knew she couldn’t win.

“You’ll come and stay with me,” she said.

“No,” Marie said, “You just moved in with Alex…”

“He won’t mind in the least…”

“It’s a very small apartment, I’ll be underfoot…”

“It’ll be fine…”

“Please,” Herrick interrupted, “Come and stay with me. I have a big empty house. You can have the whole upstairs to yourself. Please, let me do this for you.”

To his surprise, Marie said, “All right. Just for a week, though. I have this week off for winter break, but then I'll have to come back here.