Act of God

thought I’d spend the rest of my life with, and you can’t fake that or act through it.
    A grasshopper or cricket started chirling in the garden, and Houle opened his eyes. “Sorry. I guess I kind of zoned out on you there.”
    “Forget it. When did you get back from Washington ?”
    “When? Sunday... Sunday sometime, I think. They flew me back after... after I arranged things down there. Why?”
    “Do you know that Darbra Proft is missing?”
    “Missing?”
    “She went away on vacation, maybe to New Jersey , but it looks like right after she came back, she disappeared.” Houle held my eyes for a while, as though he were trying to follow me again, then shook his head and looked back
    at the garden. “I haven’t...The last time I saw Darbra
    was when we broke up.”
    “I know this is difficult for you, Mr. Houle.”
    “Difficult. Actually, talking about Darbra is easier than thinking... about all this.”
    I took it that I could continue. “How did you meet?”
    “What, Darbra and me?”
    “Yes.”
    “It was maybe a year ago. She was in the market for a condo. Her mother’d died a while back, and she—Darbra— got some insurance from it. Had to split it with her brother, which irked her some.”
    “Irked her?”
    “Yeah. She and Wee Willie didn’t exactly get along.”
    “Wee Willie.”
    “Her nickname for the guy.”
    “Any idea why they didn’t get along?”
    “No. She told me she really hated him, though.”
    I filed that. “You sold her a place?”
    “No. No, when she found out how expensive things still were, she decided to rent. But we’d spent half a day or so together, and we... Well, it sounds so stupid, so fucking stupid now, but she came on to me, and I... responded. She was... Darbra’s beautiful, but she’s also... beguiling?”
    “You began seeing her?”
    “Seeing her. Yeah, I guess you could call it that. I’d take her out for dinner here and there, up to Rockport, down to Plymouth , far enough to be... safe. But mostly we’d just… I’d go to her apartment, and we’d... make love.” Houle brought his hand to his face, rubbing.
    I said, “You saw her regularly, then?”
    “Regularly. Yeah, once a week, once every two, if I was traveling or Caroline and I had... things to do, you know, conflicts in scheduling.”
    “Your wife worked, too?”
    “Caroline? No, she had a... bad leg. Polio. Just a limp, but she never worked. Told me I didn’t have to, for that matter, all the money she got from her father. She never had to split anything with her brother, either. Poor guy, got killed in Vietnam a long time ago, before her father died. That’s where she was going when...”
    Pd gotten that from Mrs. Thorson, and I didn’t want Houle drifting too much on me. “When’s the last time you saw Darbra?”
    “The last time? When we broke up—what, three, four Weeks ago?”
    “How did that happen?”
    A lost look. “You tell me. I still don’t understand it. She’d been acting distant for a while, kind of... distracted, maybe. We were expecting to go out that night, but she said she had to work late, could we have dinner at this restaurant by where she worked. I said sure, it was... safe, you know?”
    “As a place for you to see her?”
    “Right, right. It was down in the Leather District, and I didn’t know anybody from the store.”
    “So you met her for dinner where?”
    “This place called Grgo’s. Funny name, but I’ll never forget it.”
    “What happened?”
    “I don’t know, like I said. We’re having dinner, and Dar-bra’s acting real... distant. Kind of... I don’t know, playacting? Then she picks a fight with me.”
    “About what?”
    “About nothing. That’s what I mean. She said I made so many demands on her time, when we were seeing each other just the same as we always did, the weekly sort of thing. Then she gets mad, and it still seems kind of like she’s onstage. I mean Darbra was seething, and she throws a glass of wine in my face, and looked like she was thinking of overturning the table, except the owner, this guy ‘Grgo,’ he comes over and kind of breaks it up, and she storms out of there.”
    “And what did you do?”
    Houle exhaled. “I went to the men’s room, tried to clean the wine off my shirt, couldn’t. Then I came home.”
    “And that was your last contact with Darbra?”
    “Yeah— No, wait a minute. Not the last contact, no.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I called her, at work once after