Spencerville

training at Fort Dix, but, instead of getting leave time, his training battalion had been given a crash course in riot control and sent to Philadelphia because of antiwar protests that had turned ugly. Again the world had intruded, as it did in time of war, but it was a new experience for him.
    He’d managed to call her from a pay phone, but she wasn’t in her apartment, and there were no answering machines in those days. He’d had a second brief opportunity to call, late at night, but her line was busy. He’d finally written her, but it took a few weeks before her reply found him back at Fort Dix. Communication was not easy in those days, and it became more difficult in a larger sense in the following months.
    Keith found himself at the farm and turned into the drive that led to the house. He pulled the Blazer around the back near the garden and sat at the wheel.
    He wanted to tell himself that everything would be all right now, that love conquers all. He thought he knew how he felt about her, but, aside from the memories and the letters and now seeing her, he didn’t know her. And how did she feel about him? And what were they going to do about it? And what was her husband going to do about it?

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    I t was seven P.M. when Keith Landry pulled up to Gail and Jeffrey Porter’s place, the old Bauer farm. The evenings were getting shorter and cooler, and the sky was that deep purple and magenta that Keith associated with the end of summer.
    The farmhouse, a white clapboard building in need of paint, sat near the road.
    Gail came out the front door and across the crabgrass lawn and met him as he climbed out of the Blazer with the wine bottles and Jeffrey’s umbrella. She hugged and kissed him and said, “Keith Landry, you look terrific.”
    He replied, “I’m the delivery boy, ma’am. But you look pretty good yourself, and you kiss good.”
    She laughed. “Still the same.”
    “We wish.” Actually, he’d only known her in their senior year when Jeffrey started seeing her, and he barely remembered what she looked like, because she had looked like a lot of thin-faced, lithe-bodied, granny-glassed, long-haired, no-makeup, peasant-dressed, barefoot girls of the time. In fact, she was still wearing a peasant dress, probably an original, her hair was still long, and she was indeed barefoot. Keith wondered if he was supposed to dress sixties for the occasion. She was still thin, too, and still braless, as he saw by the low-cut dress. She wasn’t pretty then and wasn’t pretty now, but she had been, and still was, sexy. He handed her the umbrella. “Jeffrey left this.”
    “It’s a wonder he remembered where he lived. You guys had a good time, I gather.”
    “We did.”
    She took his arm and walked him toward the house. She said, “Jeffrey tells me you were a spy.”
    “I have laid down my cloak and dagger.”
    “Good. No politics tonight. Just old times.”
    “Hard to separate the two.”
    “True.”
    They entered the house through a battered wooden screen door, and Keith found himself in a barely furnished living room, lit only by the setting sun. From what he could make out, the furniture was sort of minimalist European modern, and it probably came in boxes with instructions badly translated from Swedish.
    Gail threw the umbrella in a corner, and they passed through the dining room, which had the same sort of furniture, and into the big kitchen, a blend of original country kitchen and 1950s updates. Keith put the wine on the counter, and Gail took the bottles out of the bag. “Oh, apple wine and spiked grape juice! I love it!”
    “Kind of a joke. But there’s a good Chianti, too. Remember Julio’s, the little Italian place near campus?”
    “How could I forget? Bad spaghetti before it was called pasta, checkered tablecloths, and melted candles stuck in straw-covered Chianti bottles—what happened to the straw?”
    “Good question.”
    She put the apple and grape wine in the refrigerator and gave Keith a corkscrew to open the Chianti. She found two wineglasses, and he poured. They touched glasses, and she toasted, “To Bowling Green.”
    “Cheers.”
    She said, “Jeffrey is out back, gathering herbs.”
    Keith saw a big pot simmering on the stove, and the kitchen table was set for three, with a loaf of dark bread in a basket.
    Gail asked, “Did you bring meat for yourself?”
    “No, but I looked for roadkill on the way here.”
    She laughed. “Disgusting.”
    He asked her,