"I'm originally from Maine."

"Maine! Jesus." The girl laughed uneasily. Was Maine a foreign country to her? Maybe a province of Canada. She said, "Well, it's sure nice of you, ma'am, to do this."

"Please call me Marina."

Lorene frowned, not wanting to call her benefactress by her first name.

As you wouldn't want to call a high school teacher by her first name. It wasn't proper, it was maybe distasteful.

Almost shyly she said, "Marina-that's a pretty name."

"Lorene is a pretty name, too."

Lorene shrugged, grimacing. "Oh, hell." As if to say you don't need to flatter me, ma'am, you don't need to be nice to me, come on!

Lorene went to use the rest room and was gone for some time. Marina ordered two cups of coffee. She leaned shakily forward, elbows on the table, pressing her chilled hands against her warm cheeks. From a short distance there was Adam Berendt observing her. If she looked directly at him, she wouldn't see him; yet in the corner of her eye she almost saw him. Was he surprised, baffled? Wondering why Marina was here? In this noisy place, just outside Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania? Had it to do with him? But how had it to do with him? Still, Adam was pleased with her.

She knew that. He liked Marina acting impulsively for once.

When Lorene returned, sliding heavily into the booth, Marina saw

J C O*

that she'd washed her face; she'd wiped away the runny mascara, but her small bright eyes were reddened. Her face seemed boneless, her lips were thin, a glossy crimson. She might have been a mature seventeen, she might have been an immature twenty-seven. Strangely attractive she seemed to Marina, with her savagely glittering ear studs, the little pearl in her left eyebrow. Her hair was bleached in uneven streaks and fell past her shoulders, constantly she pushed it back, always she was brushing it out of her face in a luxuriant sweeping gesture. Her eyes were somewhat glassy, the pupils dilated, Marina wondered was she on drugs? or only just excited, anxious? Marina felt a stab of arousal as if she were in the presence of danger, and drawn to it.

A waitress brought their coffee. Lorene emptied two sugar packets into hers. She was sniffing, rummaging through her jacket pockets for a tissue, Marina gave her a small opened packet of Kleenex and she blew her nose, obedient as a little girl, and laughed and said, "Y'know? Ma'am?

This could be, like, a change in my life. This, tonight. It's what I'm thinking."

"That's good, Lorene. Isn't it?"

"It's got me thinking! I need to think."

Lorene spoke in a rushed rambling elated way of making new plans, it was time to make new plans, there were people she'd "kind of let down"

and she was feeling guilty, and "you, tonight, ma'am" had caused her to think in a different way, and she was grateful. Marina had the idea that Lorene had been married, was now divorced or living apart from her husband; possibly, there was a small child, somewhere; this child was living with relatives . . . Marina was about to ask more specifically when Lorene said suddenly, "What I need to do, I need to make a phone call, ma'am.

That's what I need to do." She was excited, nervous. "I need to make that call. Somebody could come get me, then." But she hesitated, as if awaiting Marina's permission.

Marina said, "Yes, why don't you, Lorene? That sounds like a good idea."

Lorene swiped at her nose, embarrassed. "I don't have any change, I guess."

Marina gave her several quarters and dimes.

Lorene said, "Thanks, Marina!" with a flashing smile. It took so little to transform her sullen face, Marina could see why men would be drawn to her.

Middle Age: A Romance *

Lorene went away again, and was gone for perhaps ten minutes, and when she returned, she shook her head, disappointed, evasive; the people she'd tried to call hadn't answered, she said. "I'd need to take a bus. To get where I'd like to go. Tomorrow, I could go. But I need to call them first."

"Where would you like to go? Maybe I could drive you."

Lorene shook her head again, not meeting Marina's eye. She doesn't trust me. But why? "I'm O.K. I'll get a bus."

"Where would you get the bus, Lorene? In Stroudsburg?"

"Oh, anywhere." Lorene's voice was vague, annoyed. "I just need to make another phone call, I guess."

Things were becoming confused. Marina knew she was being rebuffed but she smiled, and gave Lorene several dollar bills since Lorene had run out of change; and Lorene mumbled thanks, and slid out of the booth again, a big-boned, pretty girl with a tiny pearl glinting above her eye and flyaway streaked hair, and she was gone again for perhaps ten minutes while Marina drank her coffee, heedless that the caffeine would thrum along her nerves through the night. She glanced around, and her heart stopped: there was Rick Pryde entering the diner, no, it was the young man who'd cursed her, no, it was a stranger, with a scruffy black beard and straggling black hair but no crimson jacket, a tall narrow-shouldered man Marina had never seen before.

When Lorene returned to the booth she was holding an unlighted cigarette in her shaky fingers. "I just bummed this from a guy up front," she said, laughing. "Christ! I'm so fucked up. It's no smoking in here, I guess?"

She slid into the booth heavily. Her young face was flushed as if she'd been running. She laughed again, and wiped at her nose with a crumpled napkin. "I could take a bus from, like, Stroudsburg. Tomorrow morning."

"A bus to-where?"

Lorene murmured what sounded like "Pittsburgh." Her lips barely moved.

"Pittsburgh? Do you have a-relative there?"

"I got some family there." Lorene raised her eyes frankly to Marina.

See? I'm not lying.

Marina asked if Lorene needed money for the bus and Lorene shrugged, embarrassed, and murmured what sounded like "no"-or possibly "I don't know"-shifting self-consciously in her seat. She said, "See, if I can get through with this call I'm trying to make? Then maybe not."

This was ambiguous. Marina didn't understand. But Marina was

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reluctant to press the issue. "Well. I'll be happy to lend you what you need, Lorene. Please."

Lorene stared at her hands, a dull flush rising into her face. Her fingernails were polished, but the maroon polish had begun to chip. On both hands she wore a number of rings. She shook her head as if trying to clear it. "I don't accept, like, charity."

"It wouldn't be charity, Lorene. It would be a loan."

"Ma'am, you're real nice. You're kind. But I guess not, O.K.?"

"My name is Marina," Marina said, smiling.

"Well. Marina." Lorene tried to smile, too.

All this time Lorene was brushing her hair out of her face, and glancing behind Marina's head, her close-set dilated eyes perpetually moving.

She was restless as a trapped wild creature. Marina tried to draw her out but she was distracted, and seemed only partly aware of their conversation.

The effort of talking to this girl was like pushing a large unwieldy boulder up a hill, but Marina was determined not to give up easily.

"That man, the one who was threatening you-what sort of police officer is he?"

Lorene stared at Marina, frightened. "Who said that?"

"You did."

"I did! Hell."

What this meant Marina couldn't interpret. In an instant Lorene's childlike face was closed like a fist.

Marina said, "You aren't married to him, are you?" and Lorene laughed scornfully, saying, "Married to him? That'd be the day," and Marina said, "If he's threatened you, you could get a court injunction to be protected against him." Marina spoke adamantly though in fact she wasn't so sure of this.

Lorene snorted in contempt. " 'Court injunction'! Against guys like him! Know what them things are, ma'am- bullshit."

Marina recoiled from the girl's fierce scorn. She asked if Lorene would like more coffee and Lorene said irritably, "No, thanks!" and then, "O.K., maybe." The waitress came by. Marina gave their orders. She had the distinct impression that Lorene was waiting sulkily for her to do something; or for something to happen; she was both restless and passive, licking her lips, brushing her frizzed hair out of her face. Through a wall mirror Marina glimpsed a man of about forty in an unzipped windbreaker, wearing a baseball cap, staring distractedly at Lorene as he passed their booth. He Middle Age: A Romance

seemed not to know her, only just to be attracted by her. His gaze passed through Marina Troy as if she were invisible.

Marina was saying, "It's such beautiful countryside in the Poconos.

Except it's becoming so developed . . ."

Lorene stared at Marina, as if unhearing. Marina's oddly ebullient words seemed to come to her slow as balloons. " 'Developed'-yes, I guess. I don't notice too much." The waitress brought them more coffee, and Lorene quickly emptied another two sugar packets into her cup. "It's hard to remember, like, how anything was."

"Have you lived here all your life?"

Lorene lifted the coffee cup to her thin-lipped mouth. The coffee was steaming but she was impatient to drink. Distracted, she seemed about to ask lived where? but managed to murmur, "Yes. I guess." But a moment later, with an annoyed laugh, she said, "No. Just a few years." She seemed about to add more, but hesitated.

Marina said, "Where I live, in Damascus County, it's very hilly. It's beautiful but remote. My road is an unpaved road."

Lorene said, with just perceptible disdain, "Why anybody'd move here if they could live somewhere else, I mean like year-round, I can't figure.

It's O.K. in the summer, sure. And if you like to ski. But just to live here, Christ!" She laughed breathily to signal to Marina she didn't mean to be insulting or confrontational, only just matter-of-fact.

Marina said, a little stiffly, "A friend left me the property. It's a beautiful property."

Lorene said, rousing herself to take an interest, "Oh, yes? Who?"

"A man. He was very special to me."

Lorene's eyes widened in sympathy. "Uh-uh! 'Was.' He's-passed away, I guess?"

Marina nodded. That quaint tactful phrase. Passed away. She was grateful for it.

Lorene said, sniffing, but with an air of reproach, "My dad, too. Two years ago, around now. Christmas. Why I'm so fucked up, I guess. Lung cancer, and it met-as-tized to the brain. That's ugly. Daddy didn't leave us much to want to remember, y'know? Poor guy couldn't kick the habit."

Lorene lifted the cigarette she'd been half-consciously shredding.

Marina said, "I'm sorry to hear that, Lorene. Please accept my condo-lences.''

Lorene said, embarrassed, "Well. It was, like, two years ago."

J C O*

"Still. You must miss your father."

"Your friend? You were, like, in love?"

"Yes."

How suddenly blunt Lorene was, as a child might be blunt, and not rude. Marina was grateful for this, too. She smiled, not wanting to cry.

Her face burned pleasantly. No one has spoken to me like this. No one in years.

Lorene asked with genuine curiosity, leaning forward, hair swinging in her face, "What happened to him, Marina?"

Marina said quietly, "He died. In an accident on the Hudson River last summer."

How strange it seemed to her, in a way wonderful: she could speak of Adam's death in such a way, to a stranger. As if it had been an event, fixed in time. Not a condition but a single event, Adam Berendt's death.

"Like, swimming? Or in a boat?"

"A beautiful white sailboat," Marina said, with sudden emotion. Her eyes brimmed dangerously with tears but she felt her heart swell. "He dived overboard to save a drowning child. It was reckless, under the circumstances. The girl was going to be rescued by others. But Adam, he had to be the one! And it killed him."

"God. You were there? You saw? "

Marina hid her face, for the moment overcome.

As if she were skilled in loss and in speaking of loss Lorene said quickly, "That's real sad, Marina. It must've been real awful, like a nightmare. How old was he?"

Marina hesitated. "My age."

She knew that Lorene was rapidly assessing her age. A woman in her thirties who maybe looked younger than she was. Or maybe older.

Marina hadn't wanted this impatient young woman to dismiss her lost Adam as an old man.

Thinking afterward, Of course I'd be old to her too. Anyone of another generation.

Marina dried her eyes, and turned the conversation to more practical matters. What should Lorene do? She, Marina, felt the burden of a not-unpleasant responsibility. Like an older sister. For once. She brought up the subject of the bus ride to Pittsburgh, the return to Lorene's family, and offered to "lend" Lorene fifty dollars; and Lorene declined the offer; and Marina persisted; and finally, deeply embarrassed, Lorene gave in. "Well.

O.K. I guess. But I will pay you back, Marina, I promise. You give me your address, O.K.?" She smiled a quick, pained smile. Her eyes shone with Middle Age: A Romance