Lydia and Rowley jogged a cool-down lap around the Central Park reservoir track after their running class, reveling in their sore quads and aching hamstrings. “We’re masochists,” she said.

“More like lapsed Catholics,” he said, panting. “Hills are the new hair shirts.”

It was a mild April evening and the reservoir track was steeped in new green leaves, fragrant with cherry blossoms. The setting sun, blazing on the Fifth Avenue skyline across the rippling water, felt like her old life leaving. At thirty-five, after a winter of twice a week speed training classes, Lydia was in the best physical shape of her adult life, and she felt strong enough, too, for a new romantic relationship. That morning, after a ten-month separation, she’d signed divorce papers, ending months of negotiations over alimony payments, the Upper Eastside apartment, and all the other assets amassed during Charlie’s reign in the pharmaceutical industry.

She wanted nothing more than to celebrate alone with Rowley, but dull, pudgy Enrico caught up from behind and wedged himself between them as he did after every running class and again later at Flynn’s where they went for post-workout beers. She pitied him. If Rowley had wanted anything more than friendship, it would have happened a long time ago.

At Flynn’s she pushed past Enrico to grab the stool closest to Rowley’s. Seconds after the bartender took their orders, Enrico complained about a cold draft. He eyed the stool on the other side of Rowley, but someone had draped a jacket over the back of it. No way was she giving up her own seat. She crossed her long legs—her best asset—and her pink running shorts rode perilously up her thigh. Aware of Rowley watching, she removed her barrette, letting her blonde hair fall around her shoulders.

She once believed there was honor in suffering, in enduring without complaint. Saint Lydia, Charlie would call her when he’d wanted to needle her. He’d light cigars in the apartment and stay out late with his buddies, daring her to complain. Those days were over. Her marriage was kaput, and after a winter of fartleks, tempo runs, and hill repeats she’d lost ten pounds and her appetite for docility. Let the meek inherit the earth. She’d take Rowley.

The bartender set down three Guinness. “Here’s looking up your old address,” she said, leaning back for the three-way toast. Beer splashed over the rims of their mugs. Enrico handed her a napkin and she dabbed her thighs, while he mopped the bar.

“Missed a spot,” Rowley said, laughing at them both it seemed.

She wadded up the napkin and threw it at him. He ducked, and it hit the bartender in the neck, but he didn’t break his stride. She loved Flynn’s. All the noise and commotion, the stink of spilled beer, made her feel young again, as though anything could happen.

“You looked good tonight,” she told Rowley. She meant his running, but his looks were growing on her. He was two inches shorter than she was, a more compact, neater package than her ursine ex. In the soft light reflected off the dark wood bar, he appeared leonine with his wavy blond hair, flat nose, and wide spaced eyes.

“Almost busted my lungs on Cat Hill,” he said. “I saw Coach Liam pull you over. What for?”

She mimicked Liam. “For fek’s sake, move up a group, and stop draggin’ these poor bastards after ya.”

“No one likes a hotdog,” Enrico muttered.

“Keep challenging yourself,” Rowlely said. “Don’t hide in the slower group.” He shook his head. “I’m jealous. Don’t know how you do it.”

“Join me on Saturdays for long runs,” she said. “It’s the only way to build endurance. Any Saturday. Nine a.m. You know where to find me.”

Every morning, she searched for him among the other runners in Central Park. For all she knew, he ran at a gym downtown where he lived. She could ask him, but she preferred the romance of a chance encounter.

“Saturday’s movie day,” he said, looking at Enrico. “Last week we saw Cache and La Piscine.”

“I like movies,” she said, but was drowned out by a group of rowdy men entering the bar in baseball uniforms. They settled in at the other end of the long bar and shouted for the bartender to change the TV channel.

“Do you still think La Piscine is the better film?” Rowley addressed Enrico, but he kept glancing at the ball players; they were making a racket.

“Not better,” Enrico said. “More entertaining.”

“Cache makes you uncomfortable, isn’t that what you mean? You thought the Algerian was sending those tapes. Haneke got you to side with his bourgeoisie, racist protagonist. That’s why you didn’t like Cache.”

“Honestly?” Enrico tilted his head coquettishly. “I was bored. At least in La Piscine, when the plot dragged, I could ogle Romy Schneider and Alain Delon and that dreamy villa.”

She had to give Enrico credit for sticking with his lowbrow opinion. Rowley taught a graduate course in French cinema at Columbia; she would never risk his censure.

“Enrico, mon petit fous.” Rowley reached over to squeeze Enrico’s arm, and his hand grazed her nipple. Did he notice? He picked up his beer as though nothing had happened.

Patsy Cline’s Crazy was playing on the jukebox. Exhausted, she leaned on the bar. From the first night that Rowley had invited her to Flynn’s, she’d felt superfluous. But, why else would he invite her if not to deflect Enrico’s advances? The men talked around her back about La Piscine. If she were serious about usurping Rowley, she would make a study of French cinema, but at the end of her teaching day, she preferred lighter fare. Foreign films, with their confusing plotlines and annoying subtitles, didn’t provide the same escape as a good romantic comedy. The Patsy Cline song ended and started up again. She wasn’t the only sad sack in the bar tonight. She sat upright, forcing her friends to jackknife forward.

“How about Sundays?” she said, interrupting Enrico mid-sentence. “Can you run on Sundays?”

“Be right back.” Enrico slid off the stool and headed toward the men’s room at the rear of the tavern. Rowley watched him go, scratching his collarbone through the neck of his T-shirt. “You hurt his feelings,” he said.

“What? How?”

“You didn’t ask him to run—” Rowley broke off. A loud chorus of cheers had erupted from the ball players. Would she ever have his undivided attention?  He turned back to her. “Believe it or not, he used to kick my ass on the hills. Before we met you, before his mother got sick.”

Rowley’s concern for Enrico exasperated her, but it was his kindness that had attracted her to him in the first place. When she’d arrived for her first running class four months ago, demoralized by Charlie’s affair, Rowley had taken her under his wing. Was she the lost duckling, attaching herself to the first kindhearted creature to cross her path? Or did she and Rowley have a real connection?

“I didn’t mean to hurt him,” she said. After a short pause, she raised her mug. “A toast. To my divorce. Official today.”

“Fantastique.” He raised his empty mug to meet hers. He allowed himself one beer after class. “You must be relieved.”

“It’s been a tough year. Hard to believe it’s over.” She’d kept the details vague. Only an idiot would have failed to see what was going on right under her nose for a year.

“Surprised you don’t seem happier,” he said. “It’s none of my business, but from the little you’ve told me, you’re better off alone.”

She heard reproach in his words. “I may be better off,” she said, “but alone is not what I want to be.”

The men’s room door opened. She had to act fast. She touched Rowley’s shoulder. He flinched. Slow down, she coached herself, but Enrico was drawing closer. “I want to get to know you better. Outside of class.”

He looked as though a bus were careening down 86^th Street, coming for Flynn’s plate glass window.

“What did I miss?” Enrico slid onto the stool. She sipped her beer, not trusting herself to speak without betraying irritation.

“Lydia’s divorced,” Rowley said, sardonically.

“Yay for you!” Enrico said. “When you’re ready to date, say the word. I know three guys at Deloitte who’d fall all over themselves to take you out.”

She gave him a tight smile. You won’t get rid of me that easily.

Rowley scowled. Maybe the thought of her dating one of Enrico’s dull risk-management colleagues troubled him. She sent him a warm smile. To hell with Enrico’s feelings. “I’m considering graduate school,” she told Rowley. “Maybe you could tell me about Columbia’s—”

The ball players were on their feet, shouting at the TV.

“Huh?” Rowley cupped his hand behind his ear, but he was watching the action down the bar.

 

Two weeks later, after a ten-mile run in Central Park, she stopped at her favorite bagel shop on Lexington Avenue before going home. Thunder rumbled in the distance; the sky had a yellowish cast. She ordered double lox to cheer herself up. Maybe it was time to try internet dating. A stack of student essays waited on her coffee table—she taught AP English at LaGuardia High—but she craved a soak in the tub followed by a nap. As she turned from the counter, she caught a glimpse of Charlie passing on the sidewalk. Alarms went off in her head. She hadn’t seen him in tenth months. The coward communicated with her through his secretary and his lawyer. She pushed through the door and followed him down Lexington, trailing his shock of silver hair bobbing above the pedestrians. Odd she hadn’t run into him until now. What was he doing in her neighborhood when he was shacked up with his concubine, Candy, in Washington Heights?

Storm clouds gathered. She maneuvered around the pedestrians pushing baby strollers and trailing dogs. He darted across the street on the amber light, and she followed, narrowly avoiding a turning bus. He was wearing her favorite blue linen shirt. What did she hope to discover now that she’d caught him doing the worst possible thing, and doing it doggie style on her favorite antique Persian rug? She’d thanked Charlie for regularly including her gloomy cousin Julian in their weekend plans. But it was Julian’s wife, Candy, that blowzy whore, Charlie had wanted to see.

He stopped short on the sidewalk and spun around. She pretended to be interested in a shoe store display. She watched his reflection in the darkened pane, terrified at being caught, amazed he didn’t see her. He looked robust, despite his insatiable cravings, despite the omnipresent cigars, as though joi de vivre had its own salubrious effects. He backtracked, walked past her, and turned into the next shop. A warm wind picked up, lifting scraps of trash on the updraft. His cigar smoke lingered. She waited a moment before glancing in the shop. He was removing his sandals at the pedicurist’s station. He climbed onto the throne-like chair and thrust out his feet. She turned away, thinking: Rowley wouldn’t be caught dead getting a pedicure.

She hurried down Lexington, swallowing her tears. The sky heaved. Heavy raindrops splattered the street. A metallic-scented steam rose up from the hot pavement. She couldn’t face her empty apartment. She tossed her bagel into the trash and descended into the subway. The train was packed. The intimate odors of sweat, scalp, and perfume repelled her. For years, she’d been insulated from this side of city life, from the grimy fight for limited space and resources. Charlie had rescued her from all this. She grabbed onto the pole for balance, trying not to think about her ex, but that made him more present. What would Rowley—disciplined, cerebral—make of Charlie’s endless need for sensory stimulation, his resolve to eat at every new four-star restaurant and to see every first-run show? It shamed her to admit that despite the satisfaction she took in her new disciplined lifestyle, she was sometimes nostalgic for those immoderate days. But who wouldn’t prefer a hired car to this stinking subway? Daniel’s over McDonald’s? If Charlie had practiced more discretion, she might have sailed contentedly along on that luxury cruise until the final port of call.

By the time she reached her best friend’s apartment on Houston Street, she’d choked back her tears for so long it felt as though her chest would explode. When Suzanne opened the door, Lydia broke down. “I saw Charlie,” she wailed. “I miss him so much.”

“Oh, honey. You don’t miss that sleazebag.” Suzanne pulled her inside and closed the door. She led Lydia by the hand to her tiny bathroom, wallpapered with old Playbills. Friends since high school in Goshen, New York, the women had helped each other through various catastrophes. After Suzanne’s divorce in her mid-twenties from the director of her first acting job, an off-Broadway all-nude production of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, she’d moved into Lydia’s East Village walkup for a year. Five years later, Suzanne had supported Lydia during her two miscarriages.

Suzanne grabbed a towel from the shelf over the toilet. “What happened with that guy? From your running class.”

She sat down on the toilet seat, staring at the Playbills. She’d been in this bathroom a thousand times, but now she zeroed in on the Lion King drawing. Rowley. “Did I tell you he collects rare books?”

“Did you make a move yet?” she said, drying Lydia’s hair.

“I asked him to run with me,” she said from under the towel. “But he’d rather go to the movies with Enrico.” Her voice rose higher with indignation. “Fucking Enrico’s cockblocking me!”

“Oh, brother.” Suzanne whisked the towel away and locked eyes with her friend. “Are you serious about getting something started or—”

“I am serious,” she said, but after seeing Charlie, she had doubts. If Rowley hadn’t approached her at the first running class, she might not have noticed him. He was fourteen years older than she was and not her type at all. But hadn’t Charlie proved she needed a new type?

Suzanne draped the towel around Lydia’s shoulders, and then sat on the edge of the tub. “Sounds like you’re sending all the right signals. What’re we missing?” She paused. “Two single men in their late forties? Any chance they’re…you know?”

She shook her head. Years in the theater had given Suzanne an overly sensitive gaydar. Once burned, she liked to say.

“You sure? You do have a history of not seeing what you don’t want to see.”

“If anything,” she said, “Enrico won’t take no for an answer. He’s such a persistent little bastard. I’d like to—”

Suzanne grabbed her by the shoulders. “Forget Enrico. Focus on seducing Rowley. A boner is your best barometer.”

 

The sun was shining when she left Suzanne’s an hour later with her stinky running clothes stuffed inside a Chinese take-out bag. She’d borrowed sandals and a periwinkle sundress that seemed tailor made for her new fit figure. Suzanne had a date later on, so Lydia was on her own. She couldn’t face her lonely apartment, that stack of student essays, so she strolled down Houston Street, circumnavigating clumps of stalled tourists. Lost in thought, she didn’t realize she was approaching Film Forum until the marquee loomed overhead: My Night at Maude’s. The possibility that Enrico and Rowley were inside propelled her toward the ticket booth. The movie had started fifteen minutes ago, the ticket seller informed her, but she was only interested in spying. She dug inside the bag and pulled her credit card from her damp running shorts.

She stopped at the concession and bought M&Ms and a soda. Hands full, she had to prop the door open with her foot to enter the theater. Heads turned as light from the corridor poured in. She chose the last row, wedging between knees and seatbacks while holding her soda aloft. She muttered apologies, until someone shushed her. She dropped into the vacant seat and sat stock-still—eyes closed, clutching her candy, soda, and bag—afraid to move.

She dozed off, waking when her soda cup smacked the floor. A wave of annoyance surged through the theater as the coke snaked its way toward the front rows. She slid down in her seat. On screen, the actors were in bed together. She was too far behind to catch up, and the subtitles were not helping. She spent the remaining time, scanning the theater for Rowley and Enrico.

The credits rolled and the lights went up. Moving with the crowd as they funneled through the corridor, she overheard snatches of conversations. “Catholics love all that guilt shit. Makes them hornier,” someone behind her said. “It’s about choice, isn’t it? The shades of gray Pascal ignores?” another person wondered. “You think it holds up, feminist-wise?” said the older woman in front of Lydia.

She felt a hand on her shoulder. She spun around, prepared to deny everything—not my soda. When she saw Rowley, all the blood drained from her head.

“Almost didn’t recognize you,” he said, “dressed like a woman.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?” He made her sound like a cross dresser. People were staring.

“Interpret it however you want,” he said, touchily.

Jostled from all sides, she inched forward again, feeling Rowley’s presence behind her like heat. Was Enrico with him? When the crowd thinned out in the lobby, she saw that Rowley was alone.

“Enrico’s mother was admitted to Columbia Presbyterian yesterday,” he said as though reading her thoughts. “Doesn’t look good.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

They moved out of the way of the exiting crowd and stood near the wall of movie posters. All six of Rohmer’s Moral Tales were scheduled to run. She hoped he wouldn’t ask her about My Night at Maude’s.

“He lives around the corner, but he’s staying at her place uptown, so it’s easier getting back and forth to the hospital,” he said, sounding anxious. He rolled his eyes. “Italian men and their mamas.”

If they were going to waste their time, talking about Enrico, she might as well cut to the chase. “He likes you, doesn’t he?” she said.

His cheek twitched. “Sure, we’re friends.”

“I mean he really likes you.”

“I’m aware,” he said woodenly. “I’m not interested in him that way.”

She knew it: Rowley was straight. To hide her delight, she pretended to study the movie poster for My Night at Maude’s. They stood shoulder to shoulder. She wanted to ask him why he didn’t level with Enrico, but she didn’t want to make him any more uncomfortable than he seemed to be.

He said, “What did you think of the film?”

“You think it holds up feminist-wise?”

“How do you mean?” He looked ready to pounce.

“Never mind.” What else? “It’s about choice, isn’t it? All the variations of choice what’s his name ignores.”

“Pascal.” He smiled, encouragingly. “You could say that.”

Quit while you’re ahead, she told herself, but he was looking at her, waiting for more, it seemed. “Catholics need guilt to enjoy sex,” she said.

He jutted his head forward, seemed ready to speak, but she jumped in first. “Anyway, if this is your usual movie time, you can still fit in a long run, can’t you?”

“We can’t run together,” he said. She must have looked disappointed, because he quickly added, “I couldn’t keep up with you!”

She laughed with relief. “I’d run whatever pace you want.”

He slapped his forehead. “Never adjust your pace for anyone! You’ve worked too hard. You have no idea how good you are. No wonder Liam gets so frustrated with you. Why do you keep underestimating yourself?”

“It’s scary, moving out of my comfort zone,” she said, and then seeing his disappointed wince, she added, “Liam thinks I should enter a race.”

“Try the half marathon. You’re built for endurance. I could give you training pointers. I used to be pretty good at that distance…” he trailed off.  “Or you could ask Coach.”

“I’d love your advice.” She heard Suzanne’s voice in her head: Ask him to dinner. He glanced at his watch, and she lost her nerve. “I’d better get going,” she said. “I’ve got papers to grade.”

He walked her to the subway station. On the way, he talked about the challenges of the half marathon. A warm breeze lifted the hem of her dress and blew it around her knees. She felt buoyant, as though she were floating above the gritty sidewalk and noisy traffic on Spring Street. He pointed out the rare books dealer he patronized. As he talked about a first edition copy of Madame Bovary, she worried he’d expect her to say something intelligent about the novel. Was it Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina who’d thrown herself in front of the train?

“You’ll like my buddy, Maurice,” he said.

“I’m sure I will,” she replied, though she’d lost the thread of his monologue.

“His Madame Bovary course always has a waiting list, but I could pull a few strings. You could attend as a non-matriculating student, get your feet wet.”

So, he had been listening at Flynn’s. “Great idea,” she said.

“And, if you’re a good girl, I’ll show you my first edition.”

They’d reached the subway entrance. People bumped and elbowed them, but she was reluctant to say good-bye. She leaned in to kiss his cheek. He turned his head, and their lips met briefly. They locked eyes for a short, electrifying moment, before he fled.

 

In June, the best thing of all happened: Enrico pulled his groin muscle. She and Rowley were alone at running class now. At Flynn’s they mapped out a four-month training plan for Lydia’s half marathon in October. They’d moved from the bar to a table where it was quieter. He’d chosen an impossible goal for her, but she pretended she was capable of it. Next, Rowley told her, they’d address her academic career.

 

“He believes in me,” she told Suzanne. “He pushes me out of my comfort zone.”

Suzanne, curled up on the other end of Lydia’s couch, made noises of approval, but Lydia got the impression she wasn’t fully tuned in. It was a humid Saturday afternoon in early July, and they were watching Kissing Jessica Stein. Suzanne kept joking that they should become a couple like the movie girlfriends. Lydia left the couch and walked the length of the Persian rug, the same rug where she’d caught Charlie and Candy in flagrante delicto. She bent to straighten the fringe.

“Why aren’t you at the movies with Rowley?” Suzanne said. With Enrico’s mother on her deathbed, Lydia had taken his place at Film Forum.

“He’s helping Enrico with something,” she said. “I’m learning so much. Last weekend we saw The 400 Blows. We went for coffee afterward, like we always do, and he explained everything I’d missed. Oh, and did I tell you? We always kiss good-bye now.” On both cheeks, European style, she neglected to add.

“What’s wrong?” Suzanne said. “You don’t look happy.”

“I keep comparing him with Charlie,” she confessed. “We had great chemistry.”

“Stop comparing. Charlie’s a shit.”

“It’s because we’re in public that I’m not feeling the spark. I have to maneuver him into bed—”

“Maneuver? Look in the mirror, girlfriend. If he isn’t trying to get you into bed…” She trailed off, but Lydia got her meaning.

 

“I don’t want to get coffee tonight,” Lydia told Rowley. It was a muggy August night. They were loitering on Houston Street after seeing Stolen Kisses at Film Forum. “I’d rather see your Madame Bovary.” She’d registered for the Flaubert course. The novel had confused her. She needed to read it again. Was she supposed to admire Emma?

He winced. “Place is a mess. Un autre temp?”

“Not another time.” Her French and her mettle were improving with every film they saw. “Tonight!”

Without a word, he flagged down a cab. He spent the short ride to Chelsea, staring out the window. He’s nervous, she thought. Quelle cher.

They didn’t speak again until they were inside his apartment. “Nice place,” she said, looking around. His living room, she was relieved to see, was decorated with sturdy bookcases, dark leather loveseats and nubby club chairs. The coffee table was a slab of gleaming steel. She’d half expected some froufrou French décor. He offered her a beer, and she followed him into the kitchen. She sipped her Kronenborg, leaning up against the old white stove, feeling nervous.

“What did you think of the film?” he said. “You realize it’s the same character from The 400 Blows.” His tone was weirdly aggressive.

“Of course.” She didn’t remember—they’d seen so many French films. It irked her how much it mattered to him. Why couldn’t they ever see a Hollywood romantic comedy? When she’d dared to suggest one last week, he’d given her a withering look.

“I’m starting to wonder,” she said, flirtatiously, “if you really do own a first edition copy of Madame Bovary.”

He left the kitchen, and she followed him into a small, plain bedroom. He used a skeleton key to open a glass-fronted bookcase, and the faint odor of mildew wafted out. Waiting, she glanced at the double bed, covered with a thin chenille spread. She imagined lying back on it, legs open, and became aroused. He turned toward her with an old maroon book. He showed her the number one on the copyright page, indicating it was an authentic first edition. “It’s worth five thousand,” he told her.

She put her beer on the night table, and took the musty book from him. She turned it over in her hands, stroking the cover, imagining it was Rowley. She glanced at him. He seemed offended, as though she weren’t sufficiently impressed. He took the book from her and turned away, but she shoved him backwards onto the bed. He looked up with the disappointed wince she’d come to dread. Ignoring it, she climbed on top of him, straddling his hips. His mouth hung open as she reached around her back and pulled down her zipper, exposing her small plump breasts. His expression changed with a small shift of his features to one of pain that she decided to interpret as lust. His hands remained at his sides, so she squeezed and pulled on her own nipples, leering down at him. All the while, she was aware of acting the part of seductress. She was no longer aroused.

He glanced away. It dawned on her that she was sitting on a squishy mushroom. A boner is your best barometer. She pulled up her dress and left the bed.

“I’m gay,” he said, getting up. “Thought you knew.”

“So why did you let me—” she waved her hand at the bed.

“You didn’t give me a chance. And, well, you seemed to need it. I thought maybe I could…” He raked his fingers through his mussed hair. “But I couldn’t. Sorry.”

“I don’t need your pity.” She struggled to close the last inch of her zipper. The pale blue dress she’d carefully selected for the seduction felt like an ill-fitting costume.

“Let me help,” he said, reaching out.

She swatted his hand away and left the bedroom. He followed. “That day at Film Forum, after the Rohmer film, when you asked if I was attracted to Enrico,” he said. “You seemed to understand.”

She turned to look at him, realizing she’d deliberately misinterpreted his words. Just because he didn’t like Enrico that way, didn’t mean he wasn’t attracted to other men. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She reached for the door.

“Wait here,” he said.  He slipped into the bedroom and returned a few seconds later with Madame Bovary. “Show it to your class. Take as long as you need.” He thrust the book at her.

She didn’t want his stupid consolation prize, but she was anxious to get away. She took the book. She’d mail it back to him in the morning.

 

She skipped Tuesday’s running class and stretched out on her couch, watching You’ve Got Mail. Heat lightning flashed outside her window, illuminating the fresh scratches on her wood floor. Earlier, she’d dragged the couch, the coffee table, and two chairs off the Persian rug, so she could roll it up against the wall. Her arms and lower back ached, but her sense of satisfaction was as great as it would have been if the corpses of Candy and Charlie were rolled up inside. Bored with Meg Ryan, she picked up Madame Bovary from the coffee table where it had lain untouched since Saturday. She’d had no time to mail it to Rowley. She opened to the first page. This time, as she read, she sympathized with the hapless devoted husband. Monsieur Bovary, c’est mois?

Her cell rang. The number was unfamiliar, but she answered in case it was Suzanne calling from her summer stock theater gig.

“Oh, Lydia,” Enrico said. “Thank god you picked up.” He sounded breathless and frightened. Mortified, she imagined Rowley standing nearby, coaching him. She tossed the book onto the coffee table, as though they could see it. “Rowley had a heart attack,” he continued. “I’m over at Columbia Presbyterian. They’re saying he might not make it. You should come.”

 

Enrico looked haggard, standing outside Rowley’s room in Intensive Care. He’d been at the hospital since seven; it was nine-thirty. Dressed in running clothes, he smelled sour and his eyes were red. He told her Rowley had collapsed in the park during a fartlek session. Several minutes had passed before another runner could perform CPR. The doctors, concerned about oxygen deprivation, had induced coma.

“They say he might not be the same, mentally.” Enrico’s eyes filled.

She glanced inside the room at Rowley, shrunken in the hospital bed, hooked up to a respirator. To think he might be permanently incapacitated made her shamefully grateful he hadn’t been interested in her that way. Contrary to her ex-husband’s gibes about saintliness, she was not enough of a martyr to tie herself down with an invalid.

She stayed away from the hospital for two days, and then feeling guilty, she stopped in on Friday afternoon. The respirator was gone, and Rowley’s mouth hung open. She moved closer to study his ashen face, his cracked dry lips, his quivering purple eyelids. The roots of his hair were gray. She would never have guessed he dyed his hair. He was a stranger. She touched his arm, and he lurched forward, sat upright. Horrified, she backed away. He glanced around the room with vacant, unseeing eyes, his jaw working as though he wanted to speak. She pressed her back to the wall, making herself invisible, until he lay back down.

“It’s a good sign,” the nurse reassured her in the hallway. “Waking up from a coma is a gradual process.”

She stopped visiting, though Enrico called her every day with updates. Enrico’s mother had been moved to hospice, but he remained in her apartment so he could be nearer to Rowley. His proprietary tone irked her, though she had no claims on Rowley. Nor did she want any. On Labor Day, he phoned to announce that Rowley was awake and out of intensive care. She was unprepared for this news. A part of her had expected Rowley to remain comatose forever, the memory of her humiliation eternally submerged.

She waited a few days before returning to the hospital. Rowley’s room was filled with visitors—no one she recognized. They were more interested in each other than in the patient. Rowley sat up in a chair, eating with deliberate concentration. His graying hair was parted on the wrong side. In the thin hospital gown, he looked gaunt, so unlike himself. Shaken, she turned to leave, but Enrico was right behind her. He took her hand and led her to Rowley.

“Look who’s here!” Enrico spoke in the too bright tone people used with children and the elderly. Rowley’s legs were spread, exposing his angry red scrotum. She wanted to throw a blanket over his lap. She wanted to run.

Rowley peered up from his string beans—his unshaven chin flecked with gravy—and he gave her a sly smile. “I know you,” he slurred.

She saw herself through his eyes, all her defects magnified: her intellectual laziness, her stupid vanity, and her shameful, horrible greed.

“Don’t tell me.” He closed his eyes. “You teach Shakespeare, right?”

 

On a brisk November evening, she left the Columbia University campus with Maurice, her Flaubert professor. A few of the female students referred to him as Gerard Depardieu’s handsome brother. He was mesmerizing, the way he danced around the classroom like an agile bear. He asked provocative questions, and he never settled for the easy answer. He perched on the dumbstruck student’s desk, gently probing. He took clear joy in his students’ discoveries. Last week, it was her turn when he’d opened her eyes to Flaubert’s use of different time signatures. She’d lingered after class, and he’d offered to continue the conversation at the Lion’s Head. After a few beers, Maurice admitted he looked forward to seeing her every week. The other students—like her, mostly high-school English teachers—were too anxious to provide the right answers, he’d told her. “But you’re not afraid to take risks, are you?” She’d leaned into him then and felt encouraged when he didn’t flinch or pull away. Later, in the street, he’d drunkenly kissed her.

They were headed back to the tavern now for round two. Broadway glistened with the recent rainfall. Waiting with Maurice for the light, she spotted a familiar face on the opposite corner. Rowley! They hadn’t spoken since that day at the hospital. After her successful half marathon race, she’d wanted to call him, but something had stopped her. Enrico had kept her up to date with periodic phone calls. His mother had died, and he’d moved in with Rowley to help out. Rowley’s long-term memory had returned, but he still struggled with the short-term. Every day, Rowley mislaid his keys and wallet, forgot appointments. It sounded exhausting, but Enrico was upbeat. “He didn’t remember ordering a new laptop before his heart attack. Insisted I send it back. But I found the receipt in his jacket.” He sounded triumphant. She told him he was a saint for helping.

 

The light changed. She averted her face, but Rowley spotted them. “My two favorite people.” His speech was still slurry. “Maurice and—” He faltered. To save him embarrassment, she pulled him into a hug. “Lydia,” she whispered. He pulled back. His smile was different. Guileless. “I know,” he said.

As the men gossiped about a colleague that was denied tenure, she studied Rowley. He winced as he struggled to find the right words. He looked weary, at least ten years older; his hair was entirely gray. He glanced at her once, sensing perhaps that she was watching him. His flat brown eyes mirrored her own bewilderment. How had she ever convinced herself she was in love with him? When she heard Maurice inviting Rowley to join them, she smiled broadly to hide her disappointment.

“Can’t. Got to see those people.” Rowley raised his chin in the direction of campus. “You know. Those people. Insurance.”

“HR! Good luck, man,” Maurice said. “Too bad. This one—” He draped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. “This one promised to show me her first edition copy of Madame Bovary.”

Rowley looked at her, brows knitted, mouth open. She waited, blood pounding in her ears. After a long moment, his face opened into a grin. “No kidding. That’s really something.”

They all shook hands, and then Rowley crossed the street and disappeared into the campus crowd.

“Forgot you knew him,” Maurice said.

“Actually, I’m better friends with his roommate, Enrico.”

“So you heard the story. Poor guy’s on disability leave. Who knows if he’ll ever be back.”

“Enrico told me everything.” She took his arm. “So tragic.” She’d return the book tomorrow. Or maybe she wouldn’t. They strolled down Broadway, arm in arm. The traffic lights, as far as her eye could see, all switched to green.

 

Every weekday morning, Lance Dial got out of bed fifteen minutes before six as if he still had a train to catch for work. He showered, shaved and dressed –– blue Brooks Brothers shirt, cream-colored slacks, brown oxfords –– and headed downstairs, his knees cracking so loudly he wondered why the noise didn’t wake his wife, Jo, still buried beneath the comforter.  He paused and stretched in the silence and then resumed walking, the silence following him.

At the bottom of the stairs, he looked through the living room’s french doors at the backyard and the pink terrace damp with dew and uneven from chipmunks that for years had burrowed beneath the square tiles. In the dim morning light, he considered the rotted wood fence that separated his yard from woods. He could just make out the roofs of the condominiums on the other side of the woods. The condos had not been there when he bought his property a half-century before, and they were filled with people he did not know and who did not wave when he drove past them and raised a hand in greeting.

Someone had left an unsigned note in his mailbox the other day calling the deterioration of his fence a blight on the neighborhood. Dial did not deny the fence would need to be replaced one day. Boards had fallen off and it listed when it rained, but it had been a dry year and the fence had held. Dial saw no need to do anything about it now. He threw the note away.

As he stared outside, Dial noticed the fence shudder and weave back and forth. Crows scattered into a gray sky streaked with red lines. He stared at the fence, tracking the movement, until he saw a dark, thrashing shape.

“Jesus,” Dial said.

A deer had impaled itself on one of the posts. It reared back and opened its mouth and stayed like that for some time before it lowered its head, tongue lolling out one side of its mouth like a slug. Blood dripped from it.

“Jesus,” Dial said again.

He looked away. He had suffered a heart attack six months earlier. Ever since, he worried that any surprise or shock, any unexpected jolt would be the equivalent of a power surge and overwhelm his heart. He pressed a hand against his chest and sat down. He looked at the deer. It stared at the ground and then turned its head toward the house. Dial looked away, pressed his hand harder against his chest.

 

Dial had suspected nothing.  He had assumed his asthma was acting up from the heavy humidity of an unusually hot spring afternoon. However, the ache in his chest that morning persisted and by lunchtime, when his left arm began to numb, Dial called his doctor. He spoke to a receptionist and explained his symptoms. She told him to stay on the line until an ambulance arrived.

“You may be having a heart attack,” she said.

What nonsense, he thought, but he didn’t argue. The mere fact he got this information from someone he could not see and didn’t know, and whose voice was not particularly warm, intimidated him. The anonymity of it made him feel lost. He placed a hand over his chest.

“Why are you doing this to me?” he asked himself as if his body had, in cahoots with the receptionist, plotted against him.

Jo rode with him to the hospital. She held his hand. He breathed through a mask the paramedic put over his mouth and nose. Machines wheezed and whistled. He listened to the siren, imagined cars pulling over to let them through. He took deep breaths, felt his lungs expand against a great burden.

 

An electrocardiogram showed he had suffered a minor heart attack. A coronary artery was partially blocked, a doctor explained. He would receive a blood thinner through an IV. He would not require surgery but he would remain in the hospital at least three days.

Dial’s 42-year-old son and only child, Lance Jr., walked into the room as the doctor was speaking. Lance sat straight in a chair at the foot of the bed and said nothing.  Don’t slouch when you sit had been drilled into him as a child.

“Any questions?” the doctor asked.

Dial shook his head.

“Thank you,” Jo said.

The doctor left. Dial stared at the ceiling. He looked at his son and waited for him to speak.

“How you feeling, Dad?”

“Oh, I’m fine. Just a little scare.”

He forced a laugh. His son forced a laugh.

“A little scare, really,” Jo said.

Lance Jr., glanced at his watch. When he felt he had stayed long enough to fulfill family etiquette for situations such as these, he stood up.

“I should go,” he said.

Dial looked out the living room window again. The deer was struggling, shaking its head as if in disbelief. Dial could not imagine why it had not cleared the fence. Perhaps one of its legs became ensnared in a vine when it jumped. Something.

When was the last time he had seen a deer? Years. Before he built the fence, deer would wander through his backyard throughout the year. Then a neighbor sold their house to a developer and Dial installed the first line of fence. Then, another neighbor behind him sold to another developer and he added to the fence. He continued adding to it as more properties around him sold and mushroomed into condominiums. He added trees to absorb the sound of backhoes and nail guns and cement mixers and to provide a screen against the intrusive sight of “those monstrosities,” as he called the condos. He felt hemmed in, trapped in a world he had devised to keep the rest of the world out.

Dial noticed the deer raise its head, ears pricked forward. The way it looked made Dial think of a weather vane. He saw the top of the post sticking above the deer’s left shoulder. Blood geysered from the wound. Dogs barked from somewhere on the road. They sounded close but he could not see them through the brush. The deer kicked, its rear hooves breaking bark off a tree. Blood sprayed out of its mouth and it stopped moving and hung its head again.  The fence sagged beneath it. Dial watched the deer submit. He could no longer hear the dogs barking.

 

Dial’s younger brother Alan had died the previous year at 68. Alan appeared fit weeks before he was admitted to a hospital. Still ramrod straight, not a bald spot on his gray head of hair. He walked two miles a day, attended a YMCA gym regularly, rarely ate meat and played golf. On Saturday afternoons, he would stop by, lean back in a kitchen chair and kick his feet up on a corner of the breakfast nook table in such a natural and casual fashion, talking about golf, that it always took Dial a moment to say, “Alan, get your Goddamn feet off the table.”

Then poof,  Alan became ill. A little stomach upset, nothing more. Then it was nothing more than the flu. Then it was pneumonia and it did not have to become anything more.

Every day, Dial drove to the hospital to see his brother. More often than not, Alan was asleep when he arrived. He looked thin, pale and wrinkled in a blue smock as if his age had finally caught up with him. Machines clicked and beeped, and nurses walked in and out of Alan’s room in uniforms as white as the walls. They examined clipboards, flipped switches and left, their sneakers squeaking against the shined floors.

Dial couldn’t take it. He hurried out of Alan’s room chased by feelings of despair that followed him to the parking lot like a posse of woes.

 

Dial walked into the kitchen and dialed the police. A dispatcher told him an officer or a park ranger would take care of the deer. She didn’t know when.

“Do I know you?” he asked.

Before he retired, he would stop at a coffee shop on his way to work. He became acquainted with several police officers who gathered there. He had not been to the coffee shop for he didn’t know how long. What would he say when people asked him what he was doing? He’d make up something, followed by the betrayal of a nervous laugh.

“I don’t know,” the dispatcher said. “You didn’t tell me your name.”

“Lance Dial.”

“I don’t know you, sir.”

“I see. You’re dispatch. Some of your officers know me, though.”

“I’ll let them know you called, sir.”

“Thank you. One officer, I can’t remember his name but I spoke to him all the time.”

“We’ll get someone out to your house when we can.”

“Thank you,” he said.

The dispatcher hung up.

 

Dial reached for a loaf of raisin bread on top of the refrigerator and put two slices in the toaster. He tried not to think of the deer. He had called the police. What more could be done? Nothing.

He opened two faded curtains above the sink and stared out at the driveway. Two teenage boys bicycled past, disappearing behind some trees. He closed the curtains and looked at the wall clock above the oven. Three o’clock. He knew it was not that early. The batteries must have died. The toaster clicked and his bread popped. He smelled the cinnamon and opened a cabinet for a plate. He imagined the clock ticking, the hands moving in silent jerks. When would the police get here? How long had the deer been impaled on his fence? He lost his appetite thinking about it. The police should have been here by now. He didn’t like waiting. He had founded a chain of office equipment and carpet stores that he sold at a sizable profit when he retired.  Whatever he needed had always been a phone call or fax away. He had been in charge. People responded to him. He never waited.

 

Jo had urged him to volunteer somewhere after he retired but he refused. Elderly volunteers advertised to the world they had nothing better to do than mince around community centers serving lunch to people as old as them. Doing something for the sake of doing something was how Dial saw it. They seemed proud of it, almost boastful that they filled their days in this way, working without compensation or goals. Their smug self-satisfaction repelled him. He knew he had too much time on his hands, but he had earned it. He had no idea what to do with it, but he had no intention of giving it away.

One night, he overheard his wife on the phone complaining to a friend that he would never just sit with her after dinner and talk. Instead, he rushed through his meals and was off to the kitchen to clean up while she stayed at the table, ready for a conversation about the day ahead or the day just past.

He understood his behavior annoyed her but he could not help himself. He enjoyed washing dishes. The motion of swabbing them with a soapy sponge and toweling them dry relaxed him. It was part of a routine that had been with him since he was a child and told by his parents to clear the table. Once he retired, it was one of the few routines left to him.

His wife often spoke about taking a trip. Let’s go to Miami, she would say. They had been there before. Summer vacations had been a natural part of their life when Dial worked and their son was growing up. Now, the mere consideration of planning a trip against the pressure of all this vacant time wearied him into inaction.

 

“Hello, this is Lance Dial again. I think I spoke to you earlier.”

“I don’t know about that, sir. Why are you calling the Northfield Police Department?”

“Well, a deer’s impaled on my fence.  I called earlier and someone was supposed to come out and put it down.”

“I see the report here, sir. An officer has been notified.”

“When will they get here?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“I mean it shouldn’t take this long.”

“They’ll get there when they can, sir.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand, sir?”

 

Dial got off the phone and considered calling his son. Lance Jr. owned a handgun. At least he said he did. He mentioned it one evening while the news was on in the living room. The newscaster had talked about a conceal and carry proposition on the ballot. Lance supported it. Then he mentioned he had a handgun. Kept it on his night table. If anyone broke into his house, he’d get what was coming to him. Lance often spoke like this when he got worked up, as if he was still somebody and had not lost his supervisor job at the Princeton, Indiana, Toyota plant. His voice would rise until he shouted his opinions as if he were speaking to a room full of people. Well, Dial thought, if he had a gun and wasn’t just talking valium generic uk like a tough guy, he could come over and shoot the deer and be done with it.

Dial didn’t remember when he had last seen his son. Lance had been unemployed for a year. He gave all sorts of reasons why he had not found work after he’d been laid off; he was over 50 and overqualified, not enough job openings at other auto plants, lousy economy, minorities were getting all the jobs. Dial, however, suspected he was not looking for work but was content for the time being to live off his 401(k) and severance package. He lived with his girlfriend. She sold kitchenware at a high-end department store while Lance stayed home and cleaned the house, gardened and walked their dog. He liked to cook and took great pride in the salads he made from the vegetables he grew in his garden. He drank a lot, too, leading Dial to believe his son was not as content as he let on. But he said nothing. He didn’t know what to say.

 

When Lance did visit his parents, Dial and Jo would speak around his “circumstances,” as they called his unemployment. They discussed the weather. How odd it was so hot in November. Lance would dispute a prediction of rain as if he had something prove. Prove what? That he knew as much as a meteorologist? What was the point? Dial didn’t know. It didn’t make sense. After a while, Lance would settle down, and they would speak about something else. Dial endured the visit, his discomfort almost suffocating until Lance left.

Why aren’t you looking for work? Dial wanted to ask. Just put the question out there. Skip all this other nonsense. He wondered how awkward the silence between them would be. Would they fill the void again with mindless talk about Lance’s dog, his vegetable garden, his God knows what? The weather again? How many times can two people discuss the weather? Many times, Dial knew, many times if the goal was to avoid saying what was really on his mind, and he would avoid it because he didn’t know how Lance might answer: Dad, I just don’t know what to do. Is that what he might say? Or, Dad, I’ve just given up looking.

Dial had never had a conversation like that with Lance. He felt he shouldn’t have to. He had never needed such a conversation with his father. Lance was a grown man. He doesn’t need me to talk to him, Dial thought, he needs to get back to work. He was a Dial. Not just a Dial but in all probability the last Dial. There would be no more Dials unless Lance and his girlfriend had children, an unlikely event since they weren’t married and she was no younger than Lance.

“When I go, you’ll be the last one,” Dial told Lance after Alan died.

As far as he was concerned, Dial had done his part. He had been a husband, father and provider. He had bought a house, put food on the table and held a good job for 40-odd years. He celebrated holidays and birthdays and took his family on vacations. He visited his parents at least once a week until they died. He put Lance through school, attended his recitals and watched him play baseball and football. Dial had spent a lifetime doing his part. Since birth, he had been dutiful. Dutiful to his parents, dutiful to Jo, dutiful to Lance. He had conducted himself properly and fulfilled all his obligations. He raised his son the same way.

“If my father asked me to jump, I didn’t ask why, I asked how far,” Dial liked to say.

Dial’s values were the values of his parents and their parents and their parents before them. He never questioned them any more than his parents had. If he had not married Jo, Dial would have married someone else. He would have had a different family, but a family nonetheless with the same responsibility to Dial values.

He caught his reflection in the windows overlooking the driveway. He stared at himself, comforted by the shape of his nose, the curve of his mouth and the slope of his high forehead like so many Dials before him.

Lance had disregarded his family’s values. He had instead chosen to live in a manner his father could not understand and did not want to. Dial had done all he could. As a father, he felt obligated to love his son but he did not approve of him.

Dial would call the police one final time and if they gave him more of their runaround, he’d tell Lance to come over and shoot the deer. Lance could do that much if nothing more.

 

 

Dial walked into the living room. He watched the deer jerk and kick, thrashing its head back and forth. Branches entangled its antlers. The two boys Dial had seen earlier on their bikes stood behind the deer and threw stones and sticks at it.

“Hey!” Dial shouted knocking on the glass. “Hey! Stop! Goddamn you, stop!”

His heart pounded. He should go outside and stop them, he told himself, but he didn’t. He didn’t know what to expect. Children no longer had manners. The things he overheard them say, the language they used, would have been unthinkable when he was a boy. He imagined them laughing at him. Perhaps they would hold their ground. “Fuck you, old man!” Dial had heard worse. Then what would he do? What would they do? He didn’t know. He continued knocking on the glass.

“Hey!” he shouted, “hey!”

One of the boys slipped and fell and the deer kicked its rear legs and grazed the boy’s shoulder. The boy raised his head and screamed. The other boy pulled him away. They ran out of the woods. Dial watched them go, steaming the glass with his breath.

 

“This is Lance Dial calling again.”

“What can I do for you, sir?”

“I’m calling about the deer.”

“The deer?”

“A deer that impaled itself on my fence. It needs to be put down. An officer was supposed to come out here. I’ve been calling all morning.  I just chased off two boys throwing rocks at it.”

“I have the report here, sir. Someone will come out there.”

“Yes, I’ve been told that before. But when?”

“I don’t know, sir. It’s not a priority call.”

“Well, who would know.”

“I don’t know, sir.”

 

He hung up the phone. He looked for his son’s number. He looked on the bulletin board but didn’t see it. He strained to hear if his wife was getting up. She would know the number. He thought he heard something and moved to the foot of the stairs.

“Jo?” he shouted.

Nothing.

He walked up the stairs and peered in their room. She lay as still as when he had gotten up. buried beneath the comforter. He saw the back of her head, wisps of gray hair. He stepped closer, saw the small rise and fall of her shoulders, the heavy tone of her breathing against her pillow.

“Jo?” he said. “Jo?”

A weighty sadness settled over him.  He didn’t like this change in Jo. When they first married, he and Jo awakened every weekday morning at a quarter to six. She made breakfast while he showered and dressed for work. Even when he retired, they continued to get up early.

Lately, however, she had taken to remaining in bed until mid-morning. She had become so terribly slow. A slowness of batteries winding down, lights shutting off, fuses blowing.

His older sister Edith had died in a restaurant of what Dial settled on calling “the slows.” Her heart, the doctors said, had simply wound down like a clock until it had stopped. The last tick occurred just seconds after the main course of broiled salmon, green beans and cole slaw was served. Edith’s head drooped as if it were being lowered by invisible hands until it settled a little to one side of the cole slaw, snaring a bean with an earring. If she had to die in a restaurant, Dial thought, why couldn’t her heart have stopped seconds earlier so that she could have expired on a clean table cloth instead of coming to harbor in a mound of cold slaw?

Joe never tired of talking about how Edith died, and it pained him to listen to her. He felt so helpless thinking that while he was watching the news and Jo crochet, only miles away Edith had her face in her dinner plate, dying. There were moments he almost told Jo to stop talking about Edith and the way she had died, but her fascination with the manner of Edith’s death in a way kept his sister alive for him. Jo resurrected her with each retelling.

He wondered if Jo’s obsession with Edith’s death stemmed from the worry that she too might die of the slows. Jo had always enjoyed going out to restaurants, but after Edith died, she stopped nagging him to take her out. He concluded that in anticipation of her own death, Jo had decided to cordon off all paths that might lead to an undignified end.

 

“Hello, Lance, this is Dad. Your father.”

“I know who you are, Dad. What’s up?”

“I need you to come over.”

“Why?”

“A deer. A deer’s stuck to the fence. It looks like it jumped and fell on it. One of the posts is sticking through it.”

“Christ. Did you call the police?”

“I called the police but you know how they are. They’re not in any hurry. But I thought, I thought, well, you said you had a gun. You could come over.”

“And shoot it? I don’t know, Dad. I don’t know if I can just shoot it. Just wait for the police. They’ll come.”

“Well, I don’t know why you won’t just come over.”

“Because you don’t just go shooting a deer in the middle of the neighborhood.”

“What do you have a gun for?”

“Not to shoot deer.”

“You don’t know how to use it.”

“I know how to use it, Dad.”

“You don’t even have one, do you?”

“I do.”

“I don’t think so.”

Lance said nothing.

“Hello?”

“I’m here, Dad.”

“You’re sitting around not doing anything.”

“I’m not exactly sitting around not doing anything.”

“What are you doing?”

Lance didn’t speak. Dial waited and then hung up.

 

 

The doorbell rang. Dial hurried to answer it. A police officer stood on the other side. He wore a perfectly pressed blue uniform and dark sunglasses. Dial saw his reflection in the lenses refracted like a kaleidoscope of faces.

“Are you Lance Dial, sir?” the officer asked.

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

“Where’s the deer?”

Dial walked the officer around to the back of the house and pointed. The deer lay across the fence, drooped in half like a wet sock. It legs kicked feebly. The officer took a deep breath.

“Damn. Jesus, that’s sad,” he said. “OK. I have a rifle in my vehicle. I’ll call the park service to take it off your property after I’m done here. You can go back in the house. You don’t have to watch.”

Dial nodded. He watched the officer return to his car. The assertive stride of his walk offered Dial a kind of certainty that had been missing from his morning, a sense of purpose that buoyed him, and he turned with confidence to go back in the house when he noticed the deer watching him. The expression in its eyes asked a question Dial could not answer. After a moment, it released a long breath and drooped its head against the fence.

“It’s dead,” Dial thought.

He walked across the lawn, felt the grass fold beneath his feet. He heard no insects or birds or cars on the street. He glanced at the sky. Sunlight blinkered off the roofs of the condos. He stopped before the deer, hands at his sides. The brown fur patchy in spots. A musky odor. He touched its neck, felt the heat of its skin through his hand, a rippling of muscle, and the deer jerked its head, jolted and floundered violently.

Dial stumbled backward. The deer kicked and kicked and gave a great heave. The fence snapped and the deer jolted forward, head lowered, and caught Dial in the chest, trampling over him before it stumbled and collapsed on its side.

Dial lay crumpled on the ground. He raised a shaking hand to his broken chest. Shadows and lights flickered and darted behind his closed eyes. He heard the officer shout. Lance? Dial thought. Maybe he had come over after all. He could not understand what he was saying. Then he heard nothing. He waited for Lance to speak again. He waited and waited.

Between them silence had always replaced words, a silence punctuated now by the slowing beat of Dial’s heart and the passage of seconds into fewer seconds until the length of something cold ran through him. He allowed himself to sink into a vast, empty space, and his final breath mingled with that of the deer, a cloud between them that just hung there before it vanished.