This story has nothing to do with 'MONA,' the previous chapter.  It's another mature short story set in contemporary times, the melancholy tale of a love lost in difficult circumstances.   The text contains some mentions of domestic abuse (stalking) although no graphic content is included.

     A TRYST

     Funny how it goes these days; the six-pack abs, the plunging cleavages, the tattoos all over the news, the beach, the online hookups or porn; kinda' boring actually.  Make a call, send a text, peruse your scent inventory and you are good to go; nearby there's a room to rent at a reasonable rate, hopefully safe from prying eyes and the bedbug curse.  Not quite so easy here in the country a few decades ago, but much easier than say, Joy's journey behind a pack of Huskies in Jack London's story 'The Race for Number Three.'  We didn't trample the landscape on snowshoes around these parts anymore, we had wheels, four-wheel drive automobiles or truck.

     I had one, a beat-up pickup able enough to get me anywhere there was a road within the fifty-mile range of my coverage of dying towns for the local bureau of the state daily.  And, of course, I was that far away when I first saw her at a local town meeting, tall, willowy, arguing a point above a spread of baseball hats and hunter-orange caps.  I do recall that the issue was about library books and that the head selectman dismissed the topic as costly hippie bullshit. So I duly set out to record the opposing point of view.

     Most of us, I hope, have experienced this moment of instant attraction, that surge of lust so skillfully unveiled by Nicole Kidman in Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece 'Eyes Wide Shut.'  Unlike Tom Cruise in the film, I was lucky enough to notice perhaps a shared interest from my interviewee.  I was taking notes while she articulated her dislike of television impact on children's development and spoke with passion about the cash needs of schools' and public libraries until she paused and we happened to be looking into each other's eyes with neither showing any intention to part with the experience, so she quickly added that she was to argue for her cause two weeks hence at the regular County Commissioners meeting and she thanked me for my interest.

     A thick snow was flying while I listened to the metallic cacophony below my seat as my jalopy was negotiating the first frost heaves of the season on my way home.  Observing the flakes dancing and bouncing on the windshield I caught myself hoping the County Commissioners wouldn't have to reschedule their meeting on account of the weather.  Did I get me a date, I thought?  Oh, come on, came the answer, and the deer that appeared close enough to the headlights to project its shadow on a quarter of a mile of snowy road obliterated without hope of restoration my mental imaging of the woman's long fingered hands waving as she spoke.  Did she wear a wedding band?

     "Yes, but not for much longer," thought the colleague at the radio station whose report on the book story had gotten me there.  She was married, they had two children, the sheriff had been at their home; some drinking involved, no charges levied.  That was a concern.  I had been in rough places on this beat, I was not worried about violence, but there were children in the middle of that story.  I would have to be a neutral party, stick to the library books, but keep my eyes open.

     I had flagged with a red marker the County Commissioners meeting date.  Normally the bureau chief took care of those, the courthouse was only minutes away, but he gladly let me have it.  He was an interesting man, a believer.  "The angels will lay their swords in the path of the enemy," he once told me.  "Okayyy," I said, Khrushchev was still in charge at the Kremlin, but the chief also taught me everything I needed to know about writing a newspaper story: "It's easy," he said.  "First paragraph, you summarize the story.  Next few paragraphs you explain the story.  Last paragraph you tell the story again, that way people get it."  He was right.

     However the story to come would need a lot of explaining.  The meeting agenda was dominated by a new industrial wonder that was coming to the county:  green, renewable power. Simple; the county had lots of trees; cut the trees; chip everything, trunk, branches, bird nests, whatever; burn the chips in a power plant, you get green power, renewable power; it only takes fifty years to renew.  Meanwhile, the benefits would roll in; jobs, lower taxes; same old, same old.  It hasn't worked so far, natural gas is cheaper.  But the chipping continues as I write and there is a new twist to the concept.  The chips will go to Europe, Japan perhaps, after they go through a process which will heat them enough to kill the bugs they carry.  I kid you not.

     The speakers drone on, but I knew all about it anyway.  I wrote down a few names, a few notes and I escaped the meeting room to sit in the hallway with the waiting champion of Literature.   We talked books of course, she had just re-discovered 'Gravity Rainbow.'  Way out of my league, I could handle Asimov or Dune, drive eighty miles to watch Blade Runner, but we did find some common grounds.  She had her lunch with her when the commissioners called a recess and I walked out in the snow to make us a thermos of coffee and swipe the last of a box of donuts at the office.  The afternoon was more of the same and when she finally was called it was getting dark and the commissioners did not really care to consider whether or not Pikachu had completed its epidemic rotting of kids' brains, or the notion that libraries were the soul of villages and schools.  I watched her things and her notes while she hunted for a phone she could use to call her husband and tell him she had to wait for the end of the snowfall, the heater on her little truck wouldn't clear the iced over windshield.

     In my truck the heater was the opposite.  Full blast, it would drive you out in the snow, but that afternoon we needed it bad after sitting for hours on the outdoor benches stored in that drafty hallway.  We finished the coffee and cleaned out the last of the donuts, felt much better it seemed.  She even had some acid words about the county commissioners but, perhaps thinking of her wasted time, who knows, perhaps her wasted nuptials, she leaned on her knees.  Head down, she cried.  I put my arm around her and hauled her up for her head to lay on my shoulder while beginning the usual panicked male litany that accompanies such circumstances and offered the usual "there, there dear" soon to culminate in the totally lame "don't worry be happy" finale, but I did not get that far.  The snow had built up on the hood and the load from the top of the cab was sliding down.  I was watching a widescreen-like panorama of the snowy space across the road lit orange by the sodium street lights and the display windows of the ten-years closed Five-and-Ten with its glaucous mannequins in dustcovers and floppy hats under the mercury neon tubes, all looking at me as a brusque motion landed on my body while I experienced the deepest kiss I had ever known.  Surprising as it was the moment was enjoyable in spite of the chorus of the mannequins appearing to bellow "there, there you fool, that's what you wanted isn'it?"

     The event was epic.  The old fashion pickups had two doors and a straight bench in between and, with the steering wheel in the way whatever we did in there was a feast of gymnastics, not to mention the necessary partial disrobing.  And that in the Courthouse parking lot at the sidewalk edge of Main Street.  Granted, traffic was light and the windshield mostly obscured, but the town cop who must have driven by at least once could have come over for a safety check.  In retrospect I thought he chose not to.  He knew my truck, could easily radio the license plate number of the only other vehicle on the lot and probably filed the information to memory for gossip or merry talk with friends.  Back in our duds, we did not say much.  The snow had gone to flurries and with a quick hug we parted, with me thinking the expected, 'When can we do this again.'

     It was not to be a piece of cake.  They had long privately agreed that the marriage was over, but the nitty-gritty of physical separation, children custody, monetary issues and residence was not to be easily resolved.  She signed up for a once-a-week University Art Class in town after which we met at my house for a quickie, or sometimes just conversation.  There had been some gossip.  When he took charge of the kids on every other weekend, he dropped them at friends' house and sought her at her meetings or simply dinners with friends.  She was exhausted, wanted to be with me for a peaceful evening.  He wasn't stalking her when she was with the kids so she thought we would meet at the summer camp of an uncle of hers after she had put them to bed.  She drew me a map to a dirt road dead-ending on a shore and that Saturday night she drove there early, leaving no trace on the frozen road.  On my way later on I ran into spitting snow flying in from the ocean.  I stayed long enough for a kiss and a piece of apple pie and I had to go before I left telltale tracks in the snow.  It was a tense ride on that dirt road, scared of seeing an approaching set of headlights.  On the tar, I took a left turn, away from trouble.  Two days later I received a letter from her.  Yes, he had come to the camp, they drank wine and they had sex.  She did not want to see me ever again.

     She had her way in the end.  I heard news.  Every other Friday nights without the kids she partied with a rough crowd, smoke cigarettes and grass, slept with one or another, went home Sundays afternoon, hung over, untouchable; she had dangerous friends.  It went on; winters at some banged up double-wide in a trailer park, summers off logging roads, camping on remote lakeshores.  Her husband found himself a place and they kept on sharing the kids, him carpentering as before, her waitressing or picking blueberries in the summertime.  Eventually she shacked up with a talented woodworker, a heavy drinker.  He died.  She moved back to her books in her old house, raised chicken and Mohair goats to get by, enjoyed her cats, I heard.  One day I was driving by her village and I was curious.  I knocked on her door, she rushed me for a hug and when she stepped back with opened arms, I saw her long-fingered hands, no wedding band.  We don't see each other very often, the distance, you know, but we are loving friends again.  No hanky panky though, too much water has gone over the dam.