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 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."

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.




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, 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. 

When he woke, there was a haze of grey smoke and his eyes were burning. The pan containing the bacon was alight with flickering orange flames. Herrick leapt up and reached out to turn off the burner, but at that moment, the oil in the pan crackled and splattered. Not wanting to get burned, he pulled his hand back. He looked around the kitchen for a fire extinguisher, but there wasn’t one. He grabbed a dish towel and flung it over the pan, hoping to smother the fire, But instead it caused a flare up. The flames lapped at the wood cabinets. 

He bellowed at the top of his lungs, “Marie!”

Her footfalls clattered down the stairs. She burst into the kitchen, saw the situation, grabbed his hand and dragged him out the door. 

They stumbled across the clearing, away from the house. Herrick gasped and coughed and retched. Marie just stood there, in her nightgown, staring at the disaster. 

The siren that called the volunteer firefighters blared. 

But by the time they arrived, the house was completely engulfed in flames. It was beyond saving. 

He cries, she doesn’t. 

He knows that she must be devastated, but her face is expressionless. He wonders if she is in shock.  

Finally she says, “Well…I’m insured.”

A crowd has gathered in the clearing, people who know Marie and are worried about her, plus some ambulance chasers, or whatever the fire equivalent is. He and Marie are given winter coats to wear. Someone gives Marie sneakers. He wishes for any kind of footwear. His feet are frozen and very painful. He wonders if he will lose toes. 

Marie’s daughter shows up. 

They speak to each other, sotto voce. They both look over at him, and then away again. 

What can they possibly be saying? Herrick wonders.

He understands that he has ruined Marie’s life, that she must hate him, that whatever had been blossoming between them, is now unquestionably dead.