The sweet singer of Schubert walked into the kitchen for ice water. Lara had a respectful smile ready.
"You have an admirer," Lara told Norman as they drove home.
"Oh yeah?"
"But sure. Kristin Ahearn."
"Get outta town."
"I am not mistaken in these matters, my friend. I'm surprised you haven't noticed it."
"But she's completely a one-man woman," Norman said.
She turned and watched him peer into the freezing night. Columns of tiny flakes whirled beyond the headlights.
"Not interested?"
After a moment he said, "I wish I could believe that."
"Norman, cher ami. Believe it."
He laughed to cover his confusion.
"Hey. Kristin? I don't think so."
When they arrived at her house he made no move to go in with her.
6
ONE DAY they drove as far as the Hunter's Supper Club in Lara's car, so that Michael could get his bottle of Willoughby's and Lara could see the territory. Lara drank Coors from the bottle and played Johnny Cash songs on the jukebox. It was a Saturday afternoon and the place was filling up with locals who had come to watch college basketball. They seemed to huddle at the far end of the bar from Michael and Lara, as if she had reduced them to comic peasants from a Hollywood horror movie. Their mood was restive and hostile but they behaved. For one moment Michael thought he recognized the man he had seen in the November woods among them.
"Honky-tonk," Lara observed, setting her empty beer bottle down decisively. "Charming."
Though Michael had hoped for a glimpse of her, Megan, the barmaid, was not to be seen. An obese woman with thinning hair sold him the Willoughby's. As they walked to Lara's Saab a middle-aged man with fierce sideburns and mustache appeared in the doorway. His face was swollen, pale where it was not florid. He stared at them, licking his lips urgently, at the point of giving voice to some observation. None occurred to him. Lara waved prettily.
"So this is where you come for inspiration, Michael?"
He was driving. The Saab was a treat for him.
"It's where I come for whiskey."
It was farther into the local countryside than Lara had ever been. On the way back he drove a country road, partly unpaved, that ran through Harrison County's scrubby hills and sunken meadows. The day was sunny, snowy and bright.
"My God," she said. "It's so desolate. Desolate, desolate. So far from anywhere."
"You're in Flyoverland, my dear."
"In what?"
"You've never heard the middle of the country called that? Flyoverland. That's what they call our little corner of nothing much. On the coasts." He shifted down as they approached dirt. It was a shame to muddy the car. "At least," he said, "that's what they tell me. No one ever called it that to me."
She laughed. "Flyoverland. And what would you have done if someone had called it that to you?"
"I don't know," Michael said. He thought of the fat thug they had left drooling in the doorway. He remembered the man in the woods with the useless wheelbarrow. "Nothing much." Then he added, "It's how we think of ourselves. We don't expect much."
"But all Americans have the right to happiness, isn't that right?"
"How long have you been out here?" Michael asked her.
She shrugged. "A year."
"Do you have the impression that you're among people who think they have a right to happiness?"
"But yes," she said. "They do think it. It's why they're so unhappy."
"You're mistaken. You need a good history of the settlement."
"Maybe."
"Secrets," Michael said. "Deep melancholy. Sudden death. Those are what we have the right to."
"But no longer."
"Inside, still."
"But they have God."
He glanced at her, to judge how contemptuously she spoke. It was hard to tell.
"We don't presume on God. Now we see Him, now we don't. Mostly we don't."
"No?"
"Sometimes He flies over."
This time, he could feel her glancing at him. As though he were not joking and she might have gravely misjudged him. Thrown herself away.
"Seriously. On His way to Anaheim. From Orlando."
She punched his arm. "You bastard! Teasing me."
"It's fun to tease foreigners. It's another thing we do."
"But Michael," she said, "I'm not a foreigner."
"You're a foreign-type person."
The road beneath them changed from sealed gravel to asphalt and they came out of the poor land. "Listen!"
She turned on the radio and with hardly any trouble found what she was looking for.
"…that we have the promise of Jee-suz that he will come into our hearts and preserve us from sin! That through the day in the workplace in the street in the heart of godlessness he will be present in our hearts and we shall be armed in him and he shall be as a guide unto us…"
Michael leaned over and turned it off.
"That's new," he hastened to insist. "It's from outside."
She inflated her cheeks and puffed and fell silent.
Darkness came down on them still miles from town. He was avoiding the main road on the way in, trying to reach her farmhouse without passing the university and the center of town.
"Desolate," she said again. A sad winter dusk lingered over the snowy fields.
"Looks like prime soybean land to me."
"Did I tell you my brother died last year?"
"No. I'm sorry." He put his free hand on her shoulder.
"It was long expected," Lara said. "So I was ready."
"Are your parents alive?"
She shook her head.
"I'm going to have to go away, down to St. Trinity for the memorial service."
"When?"
"It should be around Easter break. It'll be a special sort of Masonic service. He was very involved in the rites. Then we'll have some property to dispose of."
"Will you be gone long?"
"Well, not really. But things will drag on for a week or so. It was an AIDS death," she added. "A pretty bad one. He had to be brave, you know. And he was."
"I'm not surprised," Michael said. "Was he alone?"
"No, thank God. His dearest friend was with him. A loyal, loving old friend."
"Well," Michael said, "thank God for that."
He did not question her further. When they got to her house he ordered Lara from her own bedroom to call Kristin; he did not want her to hear his lies. In a comic sulk, she picked up a copy of the New York Review of Books and went naked into the bathroom.
Sitting on the side of the bed, he listened to himself explain his absence from home, to the long silences from the other end of the line, and to Kristin's strangely soft and patient syllables.
"Sure," she said. "OK. No problem. Get here when you can."
When he replaced the phone, darkness came down on him. A loneliness he could not understand.
"It's uplifting," Lara said, emerging from the bathroom. "Sitting on the toilet seat, reading about the élan vital. Want to go home?"
He smiled in despair. "Not now. Hardly."
"You're stuck with me, eh? I'm stuck with you. It's sad."
"This," he said, "is where I want to be."
She stood, a hand on her bare hip, watching him.
"You could come with me," she said.
"What? Where?"
"To St. Trin. When I go for John-Paul. You're a diver, so am I. The diving's as good as Bonaire. When the rites are over we could stay at my family's hotel."
He stood silent, then said, "It's not something I do."
"No, but you could do it. There's time for you to set it up."
She walked over to him. Her eyes were a little wild. "You must," she said. "I need you and we'll have such fun. It'll get me through it."
"All right."