Act of God

set in my ways. For years, I looked forward to my pension, and now I have it. And I sit here and I watch the ocean and I wonder, just a little, where it all went.”
    I thought about Roger Houle staring at the urn in his wife’s garden and me visiting Beth’s graveside and finally the retired cop sitting in front of me watching the boats go by. I figured I knew what Folino meant, but he looked up at me anyway.
    “Get married again, Cuddy. And don’t ever fucking retire, you can help it.”
    I thanked him for talking with me and made my way up the macadam drive to my car.

    Roses.
    “Pink ones. Mrs. Feeney said the pinks were the freshest.” So they’ll last awhile.
    “They’ll have to, Beth.”
    Because it’ll be a while before I see you again.
    “Yes. It’s not so much that I’m going away somewhere.”
    In a way you are.
    I stopped, looked down at her. “What do you mean?” |
    It’s been building for some time, John. You’re just the last to see it.
    “To see what?”
    That it’s time for you to move away from me and toward Nancy , move toward her for real.
    My jaw tightened without me saying anything.
    It’s okay, John. It’s... natural.
    “That doesn’t mean—”
    It’s right, too. You’ve been a good husband to me, in life and afterward, for so long.
    “I don’t regret a minute of that, Beth.”
    No, but at some point you would, and it’s better to see it coming than go through it once it arrives.
    I knelt down, placing the index and middle finger of my right hand where her lips might be. “There aren’t words.”
    There don’t have to be.

    Commonwealth Brewery is on a cross street between the Government Center parking garage and the Boston Garden . The street floor has high ceilings and copper ducts and crimped-copper tables for eating and a long, crowded bar for drinking. Behind the bar are massive copper kettles, though the real work is done downstairs, where another bar has glass walls onto the micro brewery, allowing you to watch the workers in the funny outfits at each stage of the brewing process.
    Nancy was standing at the bar on the street level, her briefcase off the shoulder and onto the floor between her legs. She held a pint of amber ale in her hand, talking with a guy in a suit who stood with his hands on his hips so that you could see his designer suspenders. He looked as though he had as many advanced degrees as dimples in his cheeks.
    As I moved toward her, Dimples moved away to rejoin his clones down the bar. Nancy went up on tiptoes to give me a kiss, short but sweet with only a slight pong from the ale.
    I said, “Who’s my competition?”
    “He’s just perfect, don’t you think? The guy managed to mention he has an MBA from Harvard in the second, fourth, and sixth sentences out of his mouth.”
    “I didn’t think they even bothered to call it ‘Harvard’ over there. I thought it was just ‘the B-school.’ ”
    “Yeah, but he heard my Southie accent and probably figured he had to translate for the townie.”
    “What drove him off?”
    “I told him I was your parole officer and we were meeting here because I was afraid to see you anywhere but a public place.”
    “You want I should rough him up a little before we’re seated?”
    “Save it for later, help you work off dinner.”
    I tapped the hostess, and Nancy carried her ale to a table while I ordered a different one from a traveling waitress. As I took the chair across from Nancy , she looked up at me with a glittery, half-tooth smile that always reminds me of Loni Anderson at the switchboard on WKRP in Cincinnati, even though the two women couldn’t look less alike.
    I said, “What are you thinking?”
    “I’m thinking that I like seeing you four nights in a row.”
    “We don’t usually?”
    “Not usually. Not your fault, either. One or the other of us will have something going professionally, and it’s just
    not feasible.”
    “That’s going to be true generally, you know.”
    “I know. I’m not so much complaining about that as enjoying this.”
    She reached a hand across the copper and worked her nails on me. “So, tell me about the shoulder.”
    “There’s not that much to tell, really. The doctor said the X-rays and MRI showed no structural damage, so she sent me to this physical therapist, who beat me up for a while, then tortured me on half a dozen machines.”
    “Nautilus stuff?”
    “I didn’t notice the name on them, but different functions that seemed to have