Runaway

lived in the mountains.”
    While they were sitting in the room above his shop there had been a distance, and she had never feared—and never hoped— that the distance would be altered by any brusque or clumsy or sly movement of his. On the few occasions when this had happened with other men she had felt embarrassed for them. Now of necessity she and this man walked fairly close to each other and if they met someone their arms might brush together. Or he would move slightly behind her to get out of the way and his arm or chest knocked for a second against her back. These possibilities, and the knowledge that the people they met must see them as a couple, set up something like a hum, a tension, across her shoulders and down that one arm.
    He asked her about
Antony and Cleopatra,
had she liked it (yes) and what part she had liked best. What came into her mind then were various bold and convincing embraces, but she could not say so.
    “The part at the end,” she said, “where she is going to put the asp on her body”—she had been going to say
breast,
then changed it, but
body
did not sound much better—“and the old man comes in with the basket of figs that the asp is in and they joke around, sort of. I think I liked it because you didn’t expect that then. I mean, I liked other things too, I liked it all, but that was different.”
    “Yes,” he said. “I like that too.”
    “Did you see it?”
    “No. I’m saving my money now. But I read a lot of Shakespeare once, students read it when they were learning English. In the daytime I learned about clocks, in the nighttime I learned English. What did you learn?”
    “Not so much,” she said. “Not in school. After that I learned what you have to, to be a nurse.”
    “That’s a lot to learn, to be a nurse. I think so.”
    After that they spoke about the coolness of the evening, how welcome it was, and how the nights had lengthened noticeably, though there was still all August to get through. And about Juno, how she had wanted to come with them but had settled down immediately when he reminded her that she had to stay and guard the shop. This talk felt more and more like an agreed-upon subterfuge, like a conventional screen for what was becoming more inevitable all the time, more necessary, between them.
    But in the light of the railway depot, whatever was promising, or mysterious, was immediately removed. There were people lined up at the window, and he stood behind them, waiting his turn, and bought her ticket. They walked out onto the platform, where passengers were waiting.
    “If you will write your full name and address on a piece of paper,” she said, “I’ll send you the money right away.”
    Now it will happen, she thought. And
it
was nothing. Now nothing will happen. Good-bye. Thank you. I’ll send the money. No hurry. Thank you. It was no trouble. Thank you just the same. Good-bye.
    “Let’s walk along here,” he said, and they walked along the platform away from the light.
    “Better not to worry about the money. It is so little and it might not get here anyway, because I am going away so soon. Sometimes the mail is slow.”
    “Oh, but I must pay you back.”
    “I’ll tell you how to pay me back, then. Are you listening?”
    “Yes.”
    “I will be here next summer in the same place. The same shop. I will be there by June at the latest. Next summer. So you will choose your play and come here on the train and come to the shop.”
    “I will pay you back then?”
    “Oh yes. And I will make dinner and we’ll drink wine and I will tell you all about what has happened in the year and you will tell me. And I want one other thing.”
    “What?”
    “You will wear the same dress. Your green dress. And your hair the same.”
    She laughed. “So you’ll know me.”
    “Yes.”
    They were at the end of the platform, and he said, “Watch here,” then, “All right?” as they stepped down on the gravel.
    “All right,” said Robin with a lurch in her voice, either because of the uncertain surface of the gravel or because by now he had taken hold of her at the shoulders, then was moving his hands down her bare arms.
    “It is important that we have met,” he said. “I think so. Do you think so?”
    She said, “Yes.”
    “Yes. Yes.”
    He slid his hands under her arms to hold her closer, around the waist, and they kissed again and again.
    The conversation of kisses. Subtle, engrossing, fearless, transforming. When they stopped they