“I didn’t … they told me you weren’t coming.”
“I didn’t think I was.”
She shifted left and right, like me in the grip of an urge to flee. “Well. I’m glad you did.”
“So am I. You look great, Libby.”
Her laugh was terse and deprecating. “After I decided to come, I doubled my aerobic schedule and lost ten pounds. If I’d known this was going to happen, I’d have lost five more.”
I was flattered but didn’t know what to do about it. “So how are you?” I mumbled, shifting about so avidly I pricked my elbow on a thorn. “I mean, you know, has life been gentle with you and all that?”
She frowned and looked away, toward the chapel lordly on the hill above us. “It’s not supposed to be, is it? ‘Do not go gentle into that good night,’ remember?”
“You always were too literary for your own good. All I meant was, are you happy?”
A brow lifted as she regarded me the way she had regarded the yellow rose. “Now?” She shrugged. “Not particularly. But I have been, on and off. And I hope to be again.”
“Is it something you want to talk about?”
“With you? Here? Now? I don’t think so.” Her smile turned firm, then crumpled. “About a year ago I wanted to talk to you so much it became an obsession. I was hysterical about it for some reason—I got out all the yearbooks and looked at the pictures and dug out all the letters we exchanged the summer before senior year, and, well, it was crazy. Monomania or something. One night I downed three shots of bourbon, then looked up your number and dialed it, then hung up the second you answered. I did it four times in a row before I got control of myself. You must have thought I was the CIA.”
“I wish you’d persevered.”
She met my eye. “Then why didn’t you call me?”
“You’re married. Or were.”
“That didn’t matter.”
“Yes, it did.”
The exchange revived the taste of our final weeks, when conversation inevitably rose to confrontation, when our views of everything were disparate, when we’d seemed compelled to hurt each other. At the time, I hadn’t understood why we’d suddenly become so alienated, but in retrospect the cause seems simple—we were afraid of what was coming next, and each blamed the other for that fright.
As I was remembering how hurtful our qualms had made us, Libby tried to lift the mood. “It’s a moot point anyway,” she said airily. “My second divorce was final a month ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be; I’m the one who filed. It’s what I wanted; what I needed, even. It’s just that I still seem to be … ‘reeling’ would be a good way to put it.”
“Divorce is never easy.”
She frowned. “I didn’t think you’d married.”
“I haven’t. But I’m around it a lot. In my work, I mean.”
Her smile slid toward a sneer, or maybe I was just projecting. “Keyhole peeping.”
Since I’ve had a lot of practice, I didn’t take offense. “Not quite. But too close for comfort, sometimes.” I scrambled for another subject. “I don’t even know where you live,” I said finally.
“Baltimore.”
“Like it?”
“It has its good points. How about you? Still in San Francisco?”
“Yep.”
“Like it?”
“Less and less.”
“That’s pretty much true of everywhere, don’t you think? I mean that nowhere is as nice as it used to be?”
“I suppose not.”
“Though actually Baltimore has gotten better in a lot of ways.”
“That’s what I hear.”
Irritated at our turn toward irrelevance, Libby took a breath, looked at the rose or maybe at the thorns, then shook her head as though to derail her train of thought. “God. I spent lots of nights hoping this would happen and lots of days praying it wouldn’t. Now here you are, and I don’t know what to say to you.”
“Me, either.”
“Maybe we should retire and consider the options.”
“Maybe so.”
“And convene later and report our conclusions.”
“Sounds a lot like independent study.”
For the first time, her smile was an expression I’d seen before, an expression I’d once cherished. “Right,” she said. “A term paper. ‘Love Later On,’ we could call it. Libby and Marsh, thirty years thereafter.”
“Twenty-five.”
“Twenty-nine, actually. We met the first week of freshman year.”
“Barely.”
“Barely for you, maybe; I’ve thought about you every day since I drew your name for the sack race during orientation.” She made a face at her hyperbole. “That’s a lie, but the truth’s not far from it.” She shook her head and sighed. “I hope they’ve gotten rid of that sack business. It was very demeaning to women.”
I wasn’t in the mood for feminism. “When do you want to meet?”
She shrugged. “Tonight? There’s a dance or something, isn’t there?”
“Sock hop. Gym.”
“You don’t seem enthusiastic. But then you never were.”
“Not about dancing, at any rate.”
“Not about much of anything, as I remember.”
“Enthusiasm gets tempered by good sense on occasion,” I rebelled. “How about if we meet by the stadium? The ticket booth.”
Libby stuck out her tongue. “I know what used to go on in that place, don’t think I don’t. The bleachers by the tennis courts?”
“Fine.”
“What time?”
“I have to see Seth at nine, so … ten-thirty?”
She nodded. “Ten-thirty’s fine. I’ll take a nap.”
“Great. See you then.”
“How’s Seth, by the way?”
“He seems to have something on his mind.”
“What?”
“I don’t know; I’ll probably know more when I see you.”
“So will I,” Libby said simply, then waved good-bye and disappeared behind a hedge, leaving me with a bleeding elbow and an ochre rose and a host of reckless emotions about a woman I hadn’t laid eyes on during the most recent half of my lifetime.
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About the Author
Stephen Greenleaf (b. 1942), a former lawyer and an alumnus of the prestigious Iowa Writer’s Workshop, is a mystery and thriller writer best known for his series of novels starring PI John Marshall Tanner. Recognized for being both literate and highly entertaining, Greenleaf’s novels often deal with contemporary social and political issues.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1992 by Stephen Greenleaf
Cover design by Drew Padrutt
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2512-6
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