Empire Falls

exactly leave empty-handed.”
    Another silence, and Miles could not bear to look up from his martini. “What I came away with—” He sighed, his voice barely audible even to himself. “Was a date with Cindy Whiting. For tomorrow, in fact. We’re going to the football game.”
    Confessing this was so painful that he’d forgotten he was holding Charlene’s hand until she gave his a squeeze. “That’s really sweet, Miles. That poor woman could use a little joy in her life. I think it’s a real nice thing you did.”
    “To my brother it will be further evidence of my natural propensity for shit-eating.”
    “He went too far tonight, Miles. I’m sure he’ll apologize tomorrow.”
    “He’s wrong about one thing,” he said, meeting her eye this time, “if he thinks I don’t know what I want.”
    Though he hadn’t intended it, the statement had the effect of making them both aware of the fact that they were holding hands in a dark booth, Miles, a man not yet divorced, and Charlene, a woman divorced many times over. To save her both embarrassment and the need to respond, he let go of her hand, though it would have pleased him to sit there holding it all night. To his surprise, she leaned over and kissed him on the forehead, a kiss so full of affection that it dispelled the awkwardness, even as it caused Miles’s heart to plummet, because all kisses are calibrated and this one revealed the great chasm between affection and love.
    “Oh, Miles, goddamn it,” she said. “It’s not like I don’t know you’ve had a crush on me forever. And you know how fond I am of you. You’re about the sweetest man I know, really.”
    He couldn’t help but smile at this. “That’s another of those qualities that’s not very attractive in a man, isn’t it.”
    “No”—she took his hand again—“it’s very attractive, actually. And you know what? I’d take you home so we could make love, except I couldn’t stand how disappointed you’d be. And you wouldn’t be able to conceal it, either, not with that face of yours.”
    When she reached for her coat, Miles slid out of the booth, then helped her on with it. “If I thought you wouldn’t be disappointed,” he told her as they headed for the door and the waiting night, “I’d insist.”
    “It would be nice if we could get that damn liquor license, Miles,” Charlene said when they were outside and she was unlocking the door to her Hyundai. “If I was making decent money, I could put this wreck out of its misery.”
    “I haven’t given up,” Miles said, surprised to discover that he hadn’t. And it came to him that a smart man might take Cindy Whiting out to dinner at the restaurant tomorrow after the game and make her an ally in this cause. If he was going to go around falling on grenades all the time, there was no law saying some good couldn’t come of it.
    He was about to get into his own car and drive home when he heard the door at the Lamplighter’s entrance bang shut and saw Horace coming toward him.
    “Thanks for the drink,” Miles said, shaking his hand. “I get stopped for drunk driving on the way home, I’m going to tell the cops whose fault it is.”
    Saying this, Miles thought to check the parking lot for Jimmy Minty’s Camaro, but it was nowhere in evidence. Though this wasn’t to say that Jimmy Minty wasn’t sitting somewhere out beyond the reach of the parking lot’s lights.
    “Sorry about the commotion in there, too,” Miles said, knowing that Horace was far too well mannered to ask what it was all about, or even to allude to it, for that matter. It was strange, Miles now realized, for a man who instinctively respected people’s privacy to become a reporter. Too bad it didn’t happen more often.
    Horace was groping in his pockets for his keys. “Family,” he said, as if this one word accounted for all aberrant behavior.
    “Where’s yours?” it occurred to Miles to ask. The man came into his restaurant nearly every day, but Miles knew very little about him.
    “My family?” Horace looked surprised. “Everywhere. We don’t stay in touch. That sounds sadder than it is, actually.”
    “It does sound sad,” Miles admitted.
    “I’m not a big believer in all that myself,” he admitted. “Blood. Kinship. So what?”
    “Home is where when you have to go there, they have to take you in,” Miles said, quoting Frost.
    The newspaperman unlocked his car, got in, thought for a second, then looked up. “Good fences