There was a little gust of wind which stirred the curtains around the window that Michael had insisted upon leaving partially open. He turned his head and looked out at the weather. It was beginning to snow, large, wet, deliberate flakes. He smiled. Of course, he thought. That part of his decision was being made for him. Snow country. There was a lot of snow country in the world and he was in no hurry to decide which mountains he would favor with his presence.

Soothed, confident now that his life would sort itself out, a devotee of winter, he slept.

By the time Tracy came to take him back to his hotel three days later, he had decided. Looking back upon his past, it seemed to him the calmest and healthiest period of his life had been the months after graduation from Stanford which he had spent as a ski instructor at the little town of Green Hollow in Vermont. Of course, it might have changed and probably had, as had he, but as a possible starting point on a new existence it attracted him. For some reason he had never gone back-fearing perhaps that his memories of a particularly pleasant segment of his young manhood would be spoiled by a later examination. Also, once he had started working for Cornwall and Wallace, he had been sent out often to the West, where the skiing was much more challenging and spectacular than in Vermont. Now, he told himself, hoping it was true, he was no longer interested in that kind of challenge, at least for the time being, and a winter in Vermont, in a place where there still might be comfortable old friends, might just be the thing to help him recover from New York.

In the taxi with Tracy he told her he was quitting his job and leaving the city. She nodded, almost as though she had expected it. "I was ground down to the bone," he said and she nodded again. "It took the ten days in the hospital to make me think it all out. I don't want to make a career of fighting in bars just because my nerves have given way."

"It was maniacal," she said softly. "When you got up and started with those men I swear I could hardly recognize you-you looked crazed, and in a terrible way, overjoyed. You know, I think that even if they all pulled out guns and knives you wouldn't have stopped. I have never been as frightened in my whole life. I think at that moment I understood you better than I ever had before. You really don't care whether you live or die. It's not a pleasant thing to know about a man you've loved for such a long time." Then she fell silent. There was nothing he could say that would make her change her mind or alleviate her sorrow. She was probably right. Even if the men had whipped out guns he wouldn't have been able to stop himself from throwing himself at them. So he said nothing.

The silence in the cab endured through two red lights. Then Tracy said, her voice calm, "Have a nice, peaceful winter. You can use it. And call me if you need anything."

"Thanks. When I settle in I'll give you my address, if you have to talk to me about-well," he said lamely, "well-about the divorce or something."

"I'm not going through with the divorce," she said, "unless you want to."

He shook his head.

"I can't live with another man," she said, almost whispering in the back of the cab. "At least, not for the time being. I can't live with you, either." She smiled wanly. "That makes everything just hunky-dory, doesn't it?"

He took her hand and put it to his lips and kissed it.

"Don't say anything now," she said, "you're in a weakened condition. And so am I. Better to keep quiet and both go our separate wonderful ways. And remember, the doctor said no undue exertion-physical, mental or emotional."

"Doctors give me a pain in the ass."

She chuckled. "I suppose you have your reasons. Well, if you won't listen to them, I'll try to."

The taxi drove up to the hotel and she looked at its front door with distaste. "Is that the best you could find?"

"It was close to the office," he said. "Want to come in for a drink?" She hesitated for a moment. "No," she said, "I think that would come under the heading of undue exertion."

He closed the door of the cab and went to the desk to get his key. There was a pile of mail waiting for him, but he told the clerk to throw it all away. There was no one in the world he wanted to hear from.

"I heard what happened to you, Mr. Storrs," the clerk said. "What a terrible thing."

"The best thing that ever happened to me in my life," Michael said jauntily.

The clerk was looking at him puzzledly as he went across the lobby and rang for the elevator.

When he got to his room, it smelled, he thought, like a crypt. He threw open a window and stood in front of it, breathing deeply, as the cold blast blew around him. When he turned around, the furniture, which had seemed to him to be trembling when he came in, was now steady and solid. He went into the bathroom and turned on the light and stared at his face. Only one face stared back. I beat it, he thought, I beat it.

Two days later, with most of his belongings packed into a trunk in the hotel basement, he got into the Porsche and started north. It was a windy, clear day. As he sped into the foothills of the mountains, there were patches of snow on the fields.

CHAPTER TEN.

He stopped for lunch just as he crossed the border to Vermont, at a place he remembered from the trips he had made from Syracuse to Green Hollow-what was it-fourteen years ago? It was an old Colonial inn that smelled of wood smoke and lemon furniture polish, glitteringly clean, its dining room shining in the frosty sunlight which cast spidery shadows from the bare trees outside the window. There were only a few people having lunch, an elderly couple and three young men whom he overheard talking about real estate and who were, he guessed, local businessmen from the nearby town. Because, at least for the day and probably for a long time to come, he would not have to attend any business lunches, Michael ordered a martini and sipped it slowly before his meal came, feeling like a boy playing truant on a particularly fine afternoon.

The scene with Cornwall had gone better than he had expected. Cornwall had been saddened but understanding when Michael told the old man he had to escape the city of New York. "Everybody wants to escape from something," Cornwall had said. "Very few people manage it, but God be with you. How long have you been with us?"

"Twelve years."

"I've been here for thirty," Cornwall said, "and I haven't escaped yet. They do it better in the universities. Every seven years, they give a man twelve months off. Recharge the batteries. Tell you what-let's consider this your sabbatical year. With no salary." He smiled frostily. "But when it's over, you can come back and no questions asked. Your place will be held for you."

"I doubt that I'll be back."

"Call me in twelve months," Cornwall had said and fished out a bottle of whiskey and poured drinks for both of them. It was the first time Michael had had a drink in the office with the old man. "Here's to you"-Cornwall had lifted his glass-"and mind you, keep out of fights in bars."

The climate in Cornwall's office had been the same as in his own, too warm and lacking in oxygen. Boss or no boss, Cornwall couldn't open the windows either. Michael was glad when the interview was over and he could go out into the frigid late-autumn air.

Sitting alone, looking out at the shadows of the trees on the scanty cover of snow on the lawn and eating the New England boiled dinner for which, he remembered, the inn was justly famous, Michael wondered how Cornwall had remained so lively and human after thirty years of taking the elevator up to the thirty-sixth floor five days a week.

It was almost dark, the Porsche humming along like a jeweled clock, when he reached what he recognized as the approach to Green Hollow. The car radio was turned on and a symphony orchestra from somewhere in New England was playing "The Ride of the Valkyries." He pressed down on the accelerator, smiling. Good old Wagner, he thought, he wrote automobile music before they ever invented the automobile.

He was going eighty-five miles an hour when he saw the flashing lights of a police car far behind him. He knew he could outspeed the police car, but then he would have to go right through the town of Green Hollow and not come back, so he slowed down, like a respectable citizen. When the police car came up close, its siren wailing, he pulled over to the side of the road.

The cops got out slowly and strode to the car, one on each side. The one on Michael's side was very young, with a bushy red moustache obviously grown to age him into policeman's authority. The effect was somewhat weakened by a wall eye that was focused on a point well above Michael's head. Michael smiled ingenuously at him, then stared. Despite the moustache, he recognized the man. Fourteen years ago, when Michael had spent the winter in Green Hollow, Michael had chased a ten-year-old redheaded boy with a wall eye and spanked him for throwing iced snowballs at his car. Michael grinned up at him. He even remembered the boy's name, Norman Brewster. His father had run a gas station in town.

"Where the hel1 do you think you were going?" Norman Brewster asked, trying to sound at least thirty years old and a pillar of the law.

"I was escaping," Michael said politely, thinking, I will tease my way into the town. He saw Norman Brewster's hand move toward his pistol holster, while he looked significantly across Michael at his partner, an older man with a bored expression on his face, leaning against the window on the passenger's side of the Porsche.

"Escaping from what?" Norman Brewster said.

"The old ennui," Michael said, relishing the moment when he would disclose to Norman Brewster that he had once whipped his ass.

"No jokes, mister," Norman Brewster said belligerently.

"Actually, from New York. New York City, New York, Area Code 212, Fun City, the Big Apple, etcetera. We're a fast group down there."

The older cop had the other door open by now and the window down, so he could be heard. "You were hitting eighty-five, you know."

"I didn't know, really," Michael said. "I guess I wasn't looking. Wagner was pushing me on."

"What do you mean, Wagner?" Norman Brewster peered suspiciously into the car. "Where is he?"

Michael pointed to the radio. "The music. Richard. He races the blood."

"Turn that goddamn thing off," Norman Brewster said.

Michael turned the radio off.

"And let's see your license."

Michael took out his license and handed it to Norman Brewster. He had the impression that the older cop was letting Brewster do the talking to see how he handled himself. Brewster peered at the license, using a flashlight. "No points on it," he said, sounding disappointed. "Lucky for you. This your first offense?"

"I didn't mean to be offensive, Officer," Michael said mildly. "I was just responding to the lure of the open road. It was a kind of special day for me. Don't you ever have a special kind of day?"

"Have you been drinking, mister?" Brewster asked, shining his light into Michael's eyes.

"Copiously."

"Ahah," Brewster said triumphantly, sensing an important arrest. "Driving while impaired."

"Almost everybody I know is impaired in one way or another," Michael said, pleased that Brewster was beginning to seem flustered. This is better than spanking, he thought. "Don't you feel that about the people you know?"

"I ask the questions, mister," Brewster said heatedly, "and you answer them."

"The truth is, Officer," Michael said, "I had one drink before lunch four hours ago and two cups of coffee. By the way, whom have I the pleasure of addressing?"

"Officer Brewster. And we can't stand here all night arguing with you."

"Norman," the older cop said, boredly, "don't make a Federal manhunt of this."

"Fred," Brewster said plaintively, "you said this time it was going to be my case."

"Okay, okay," the older cop said.

"Let's see your car registration," Brewster said.

Michael searched in the glove compartment but didn't find it. "Sorry," he said, "I must have left it in New York."

"Where were you heading for?" Brewster said menacingly, as though he expected Michael at any moment to make a break for the Canadian border.

"Green Hollow," Michael said. "I heard it was a charming place, with clean, unpolluted air and an upright police force."

"I don't like your attitude, mister," Brewster said. His throat seemed to be swelling above his collar. "Is anybody expecting you in Green Hollow, somebody who can identify you?"

For a moment, Michael was tempted to say that Norman Brewster might, but decided to prolong the comedy for a few minutes more. "Not that I know of," he said.

"Are you willing to submit to a blood test?" Brewster said in a voice that they must have taught him in police training school.

"I get faint at the sight of blood," Michael said.

The older cop sighed. "Norman," he said, "our tour ends in ten minutes."

"You said I could handle it, Fred," Brewster said, "and that's what I'm doing. By the book."

"The book takes too fucking long," Fred said, "but go ahead." Erewster took out a balloon. "Would you agree to take a Breath-aletor test, mister?" he said, trying to keep calm and glaring at his colleague across Michael's head.

"I stand on my constitutional right not to breathe," Michael said, mischievously.

"Get out of the car," Brewster roared.

"Norman, Norman . . ." the older cop protested gently.

Michael got out of the car.

"Now walk a straight line," Brewster barked.

Michael did so, with small, mincing steps.

Brewster bit his lip, disappointed. "All right. Now let's hear you recite the alphabet backwards."

"I hate parlor games. And even when I was in college, I never had an English professor who could recite the alphabet backward. Can you?"

"That's beside the point," Brewster said, exasperated. "And I'm not interested in your goddamn education."

"Let's hear you," Michael persisted politely. "I'll buy you both a drink if either of you can do it."

"He's some kind of nut," the older cop said. "Write out his ticket and let's get back to the office."

"You heard him, didn't you, Fred?" Brewster said loudly. "Offering us a drink if we let him go. You know how that's going to look on the report. Next thing you know he'll be flashing dough to get off. I don't care how goddamn late it is. If you want my opinion, if he's not drunk, he's on dope or something and I'm going to find out what it is." He turned toward Michael, who was leaning languidly against the roof of the Porsche. "You like to live dangerously, don't you, mister?"

"Funny," Michael said, "that's what my wife says. Ex-wife. Almost ex-wife."

"I'm going to teach you you can't sass an officer of the law. Haven't you ever heard of police brutality?" Now, Michael noted gleefully, Brewster was reduced to sarcasm.

"Not in a ski resort, Officer," Michael said. "I'm that most sacred object of all objects in a resort-a tourist."

"Fred," Brewster said, "I'm going to run him in and take a good look at what he's carrying in this fancy little car."

"Oh, shit," Fred said, lost in the generation gap.

"Gimme your hands," Brewster said and snapped handcuffs on Michael's wrists professionally. "You're under arrest, mister." "Interesting," Michael said.

"Oh, shit," Fred said again.

"I'll take him with me in the wagon," Brewster said to Fred, "and you follow me in that peewee car."

"Don't grind.the gears, please," Michael said to Fred over his shoulder as Brewster pushed him toward the patrol car. "Do you know how to drive a car without an automatic transmission?" Pure childish taunting, he thought with pleasure, remembering his bad days at recess in the schoolyard as he climbed into the back of the squad car, behind the grid that divided it from the front seats. Brewster, breathing heavily and righteously, got behind the wheel.

Brewster started the car and with Fred behind him in the Porsche drove toward town. They passed a sign that read, WELCOME TO GREEN HOLLOW, VT., and Michael said, "I return in triumph."

Brewster grunted at the wheel and tooted the horn angrily at a girl on a bicycle riding in the middle of the road. Michael grinned and gaily waved his manacled hands at the girl.

The police station was new. It had not been there when Michael had been in Green Hollow before. It was a pretty little Colonial building next to the town bank. It had none of the dingy grimness of the precinct houses of New York, which gave architectural proof of the prevalence of manifold crime and harsh and unusual punishment.

Inside, there was an old cop with bifocal glasses seated behind a high desk. As Brewster took the handcuffs off Michael's wrists, he said to the policeman behind the desk, whom Michael didn't recognize, "I'm booking this fella, Henry. Speeding. We clocked him at eighty-five."

"Naughty, naughty," Henry said.

"No jokes, Henry," Brewster said, annoyed. "That isn't all. How do you like disrespect to officers of the law? And suspicion of drunken driving?"