At the cafeteria counter he bought a mini-bottle of cabernet along with cheese and slices of apple. He took a table by the window and sat until it cast him his own reflection. He loved music. Mahler's bittersweet notes echoed in his mind's ear, taking their own direction, producing unvoiced melodies. Abschied. It was a Thursday night and the museum was open until eight.
Finally the wine made him hungry. He put his glasses and jacket on and prepared to go. About to rise, he realized there was a woman standing over his table. She was handsome, long-faced. The phrase "terrible gray eyes," read somewhere, occurred to him. She was forty-five or so, tall and well built. She wore a leather jacket fragrant with the rich piquant smell of hide. It was the woman he had locked eyes with in the auditorium.
"What would you say," the woman asked, "if I proposed to buy you a drink?"
He stared. Surely he must know her. She was laughing at his astonishment.
"Don't strange women often offer to buy you drinks?" She set down the tray she was holding and put wine and another glass before him.
"That's very kind of you," Bower said. "How can I say no?"
"I hope you won't. May I sit down?"
He rose from his chair to invite her. When she was seated across from him, he waited for her to speak. She looked comfortable there, sipping her own wine.
"But we know each other," Bower asked her, "don't we?"
"They say it's a small world."
He thought her smile ambiguous. Maybe a little complacent and remote. Friend or foe? He laughed to please her, though he was troubled and embarrassed.
"I'm sorry," he said. He was trying to make her sudden presence more amenable to reason. "I can't remember where we met. I'm still trying to place you."
"What if I don't place? What if I'm a complete stranger?"
It stopped him. She was not young or trying to appear so. She seemed cultivated, not at all vulgar. In the tweed skirt that decorously showed her figure and the dashing leather jacket, she aroused his dormant lust to capture. At the same time, he noticed she wore a wedding ring.
"Will you tell me your name?"
He experienced a certain vague caution. He thought she might have seen that in his eyes, because she laughed at him again. She took a business card from her smart designer bag that identified her simply as Margaret Cerwin, M.D. No specialty was indicated. As she went to buy them another wine, Frank considered her smile. It was intriguing.
"What sort of physician are you?"
"Guess."
"Might you be a psychiatrist?"
"Very good," she said.
How had he guessed right? It might have been the knowing smile, distant yet confiding. The restrained availability was ever so slightly chilling. They talked about the concert. As they chatted she conveyed a warm familiarity with Mahler's music and with music in general. She also communicated, discreetly, a certain fascination with Bower.
"I'm very curious about you," she told him, "my friend."
He wanted to ask her how he could be her friend, but out of some polite instinct decided not to. In fact, he was at a loss for what to say next.
"Really?" he finally asked. "I'm not much of a mystery." But he allowed himself to suppose she saw him that way. He was, he knew, a rather handsome fellow, or at least a distinguished-looking one. He sometimes felt the charge of a woman's awareness. And everyone was a mystery. He felt unable to focus his thoughts, something akin to panic. Still, her manner encouraged him toward adventure. All at once he thought that whatever her coming to him might mean, he ought to live it out with her. At least for a while.
"You're wondering why I accosted you," she said. "I'll tell you why."
Her stare held him bound and silent.
"Life is short," she said. "At least it seems that way to me now. When I see someone who attracts me I try to meet them. I try to see what they have to say."
"Oh," he said. After a moment he asked her, "How do you choose people?"
"You mean, why you? Because you looked interesting. I watched you listening. I may be a psychiatrist, but I'm a physiognomist too."
"Really?"
She smiled and looked away for a moment, then locked on him again. A humorous double take. It was a small felicity but dazzling. Her eyes shone, long-l ashed, seeming barely to contain their own light.
"No. Not really. I don't think there are real physiognomists anymore. Maybe in China."
"You're always a step ahead of me."
"Am I? It's because I'm leading." Her artful arrogance was irritating, but the faint sting was sweet. "Actually, I prefer to be led."
Her smile troubled him. It was somehow familiar, secretive, imperturbable, maybe a little frosty. What it reminded him of, he realized, was the expression portrayed on very early Greek statuary.
"I need a ride," she said.
In the end, they left together, passing through the monumental entrance hall. On the way out they went by a bronze horseman rising from the saddle, brandishing a saber. The plate on its pedestal read ONE OF STUART'S VIRGINIANS. It was a tribute to wealthy, Confederately sympathetic old Baltimore.
They walked across the chill, darkened parking lot to his gray Camry. Bower opened the passenger door for her. He started the car and they sat looking straight ahead, past the vapor of their breath, visible against the headlights beyond the icing windshield. Bower put his seat belt on, and after a moment she did the same.
"Where to?" he asked.
She told him she had taken a taxi to the museum and she lived downtown. He drove them slowly out of the lot. They had driven a block south when he was aware of her fidgeting.
"You're going to think I'm insane," she declared.
He hastened to assure her. "No, no." In fact he experienced a little more anxiety about what might be coming.
"Going up to you as I did. I'm restless tonight."
"I suppose," Bower said, "I am too."
"I don't think I want to go home."
"Oh," said Bower.
"We could drive into the country a bit. To the hills. Or over the bridge."
"Let's take the bridge."
Bower had a house on the bay front of the Eastern Shore where he and his wife were planning to spend the weekend. He had not thought to go there, setting out from the museum. Nor even when he suggested the bridge. Now it occurred to him as a wanton possibility.
They put the lights of the city behind them and drove through icy rain. By the time they were on Route 13 the rain had stopped and the night sky was clearing. A wind from the ocean was driving rain clouds east across the bay to show a slivered late-October moon, unaccountably bright. There were stars.
"Oh," the woman, Margaret, exclaimed, "horns to the east."
"Excuse me?"
"Horns to the east. Haven't you heard it? Don't you know what it means?" Her questions seemed almost urgent. He was perplexed.
"No."
She laughed and recited,
Horns to the east,
Soon be increased.
Horns to the west,
Soon be at rest.
"Don't know?" she asked after a few seconds. "Can't you guess?"
"I don't think so," Bower said, wondering.
"Horns to the east," she said, "the waxing moon. Horns to the west, waning moon."
It took him a moment or two.
"Ah."
She mimicked him. "Ah! Ah is right."
"Did you make it up?" He got no answer. So he observed, "A Halloween moon."
"Just what I was thinking," she said.