When they turned off the highway she put an arm across the back of the seat.
"I wonder," she said playfully, "if we're going somewhere." He glanced at her and in the extraordinary light of the crescent moon saw again the archaic smile. "Where are we going?"
She, he thought, was the one who wanted to be led. He considered wildly, decided nothing. Then he said, "I have a house near Calverton."
"Really?"
"Yes, I do."
"I see. Could that be where we're going?"
"If you want to."
He was encouraged by her silence. Twenty minutes after they had passed through the decorous empty streets of old Chesterfield he pulled over to the shoulder. The road was wooded on both sides and it was possible to make out the POSTED signs on the near tree trunks. Then the persistent storm closed over the moonlit sky and it began to rain hard again.
"I have to make a call. Do you mind?"
"Certainly not."
He called his wife in Roland Park while Margaret sat stiffly beside him, listening equably, it seemed. He had not gotten out to make the call because of the rain. He looked into the dark dripping pine woods — anywhere but at his passenger — and declared to his wife he would be late. Offering no reason. When she asked for one he was reckless, a little unhinged by possibility.
"I felt out of sorts. I went for a drive in the country."
His wife asked if he was certain he was all right. He told her that, as far as that went, he was fine. When he turned to Margaret on the car seat beside him, he saw her bent forward, hands across her eyes as if in remorse or simply seeing no evil. He experienced another moment's panic. The wrong woman!
"Do you," he asked, "do you need to call anyone? I mean, to make a call?"
She shook her head and said nothing for the remainder of the ride. Shortly, they turned off onto a dirt road and followed its turns and doglegs past a few mailboxes at the head of dark driveways. The houses that showed lights were deep in the woods, far from the roadway. Overhead, the horned moon had appeared again, visible through bare wind-driven branches.
They parked in the clearing around Bower's house. Once out of the car they faced the salt-sour-scented gale off the bay. In the darkness they could hear its waves crashing against the unprotected shore. The house was shingled and square, a dignified practical house, unadorned except for a weathervane on the roof. It was impossible to see what the weathervane represented.
She had folded her arms and turned away from the wind. From her posture, Bower thought she seemed a little hesitant and subdued.
"Very nice," she said.
Bower pulled his own collar up against the chill. Now he was thrilled by his own impulsiveness and the stormy night sky, clearing again. Finally it seemed he was leading. He conducted them inside, his steadying hand lightly touching the sheath of leather that encased her. Bower turned on a lamp and raised the thermostat. Then, as she watched, he laid a fire and started it. His guest kept her coat on.
"Aren't you afraid of the house watch?"
"House watch? Not out here. A little more wine?" he asked her. "Madder music?"
The look she gave him was steady and flat, unamused. A little puzzled, slightly ashamed of his fit of brio, he went into the kitchen and opened a bottle of St. Emilion. He carried it out on a tray and poured for them.
"The good stuff this time," he said. She took a glass, but her look made him feel fat-witted and overcheery. "Like it?" he asked.
She only nodded without drinking. Suddenly it seemed the burden of discourse was his. She was looking, a little sadly, around the room.
"All these beautiful things," she said.
There were beautiful things in the room for people who knew how to look for them. Bower's wife collected early-American paintings and furniture. He had grown to appreciate them too. To keep the play of the evening alive, he began to give Margaret the tour.
The house itself was old, not quite Colonial but early nineteenth century. The front door opened directly on the living room, as it sometimes does in old houses. In that room stood a Mennonite chest with a sunburst painted on its front. The wall above it displayed a Kentucky quilt. The fireplace was equipped with fittings of old wrought iron. A table and chairs in a recessed dining area had the imperfect symmetry of rough joinery. Three of the wall paintings were genuine American primitives, and one was an attributed Robert Feke. Outside his computer workspace hung a later painting, a gloomy nightscape his wife thought might be an Albert Pinkham Ryder, but it lacked a provenance.
Margaret followed Bower's exposition of the room. She seemed to display little interest. From time to time she sipped the wine he had poured for her. Though the house had warmed, she kept her coat on.
"It's all very nice," she said, distantly polite.
"My wife has the eye," he said, as though Margaret were a casual guest and not the object of a particular seduction.
"Your wife? Isn't she afraid to leave all this out in the country? Isn't she afraid of losing what she has? Her house? Your attentions?"
Bower was very uncomfortable at having to explain his wife's personal qualities, but Margaret seemed to think she had a right to ask questions.
"What's here isn't all that valuable."
He watched Margaret set her empty wine glass on a place mat, sparing the finish of a dark mahogany table. A moment after setting it down, she touched the table's surface with two fingers and brought them away quickly, as if she were repelled by the dust on it.
"Oh," said Margaret, "I see." She looked around the room again. "What's her name? Would I like her?"
"I think so. Yes. I suppose. Her name is Jane."
"Jane. I'll bet I would."
"Please," Bower said, "take your coat off."
"I suppose she comes here with you?"
"Most weekends." He was growing impatient with her. "Is that some sort of problem?"
The look she gave him was again level, dead-eyed and stone-cold. He had rankled her. The antic animation of the last hours had somehow drained away.
"This isn't right," she said after a moment. "It would be wrong." She appeared suddenly stricken. "Another woman's bed!"
"What?" Though Bower knew her not at all, he thought there was a serious chance she might be joking.
"We can't," she said with surprising firmness.
"Oh."
"No, Frank. Sorry."
Bower was extremely disappointed. But edging his interior horizon, on a different quarter, appeared the faraway contours of relief. He tried to swallow the humiliation.
"You're a mercurial character. Aren't you?"
"Yes, I am," she said.
"I see."
"And here we are," she said. Suddenly she laughed, and for a moment she was lively and humorous again. "Out in the sticks. Don't you believe it's a woman's privilege to change her mind?"
"Oh, come on, Margaret." He was unsettled by her laughter and the cliché. She showed the expression he had learned to dread. The smile.
Driving her home was an embarrassment. He thought of switching on the car radio but decided it might only make things worse. Music would be irony. A stranger's voice would sound like mocking witness.
When they were back in the city, heading downtown along St. Paul Street, she told him brusquely that she lived in the Belvedere. It was an old hotel near the Washington Monument that had faded and then turned condo.
Margaret offered no goodbyes when they pulled up before the tastefully renovated entrance. They parted in the welter of Bower's shamed silence. Setting out for his own house in Roland Park, he kept his eyes on the road. As a result, he failed to see her climb into one of the cabs that always waited in front of the gay bar and club catty-corner to the Belvedere.
In the cab, Margaret made a call to her daughter. She was fatigued from the drive and irritable.