“I’m just going to put you to bed, Vertue. It’s nice here. It’s a nice place to stop.” Sliding my hands under his body I lifted him out of the trunk. He felt heavier than before, but I assumed that was because the digging had tired me. My arms shook slightly as I carried him. The sunlight through the trees went on and off my shoes. Carefully stepping into the hole, I laid him down as gently as I could. The body was twisted a little and I rearranged it. The eyes were still open and the tip of his tongue came out of the corner of his mouth. Poor old guy. I stepped out and picked up the shovel, ready to start tossing dirt in on him. But things still didn’t seem right. I had an idea. Back to the car where I pulled the long feather from beneath the sunshade.

I slipped it under his collar. Like an Egyptian king going to the hereafter surrounded by his worldly possessions, Old Vertue now had a beautiful feather to carry along. It was getting late and I had other things to do. Quickly filling the grave, I tamped it down as best I could, hoping another animal wouldn’t catch the scent and dig it up.

That night at dinner Magda asked where I’d put him. After I described my adventure in the forest, she surprised me by saying, “Would you like to have a dog, Frannie?”

“No, not particularly.”

“But you were so nice to him. I wouldn’t mind having one. Some of them are sort of cute.”

“You hate dogs, Magda.”

“That’s true, but I love jou.”

Pauline rolled her eyes and dramatically stomped off to the kitchen carrying her plate. When I was sure she was out of earshot I said, “I wouldn’t mind having a cat.”

My wife blinked and frowned. “You already have a cat.”

“Well, then I wouldn’t mind a little pussy.”

That night, after a visit from my favorite pussy on earth, I dreamt of feathers, bones, and Johnny Petangles.

Next morning the weather was so beautiful I decided to drive my motorcycle to work instead of the car. The end of summer sat on the town. It was my favorite season. Everything summery is richer and more intense then because you know it will all be gone soon. Magda’s mother used to say a flower smells sweetest when it’s just begun to rot. A few of the horse chestnut trees had already begun dropping their spiny yellow buckeyes. They hit the pavement with a crack or clunk on cars. When a breeze blew it was thick with the smell of ripe plants and dust. The dew hung around longer in the morning because the real heat of the day didn’t start until hours later.

I have a big motorcycle—a Ducati Monster—and the evil “Fuck me—I’m a god!” sound of its 900cc engine alone is worth the price of admission. And there is nothing more pleasant than driving it slowly through Crane’s View, New York, on a morning like that. The day hasn’t started yet, hasn’t turned the sign in its front window to read OPEN yet. Only diehards are out and about. A smiling woman sweeps her front doorstep with a red broom. A young weimaraner, its stump tail wagging madly, sniffs garbage cans placed at a curb. An old man wearing a white ball cap and sweatsuit is either jogging slowly or walking as fast as he can.

Seeing someone exercising immediately inspired me to think of French crullers and coffee with lots of cream. I’d stop and get both, but there was one thing to do first.

After a few slow lefts and rights, I pulled up in front of the Schiavo house to see if anything had changed. No car was parked either in the driveway or near the house. I knew they owned a blue Mercury, but no blue cars were in sight. I tried the front door. It was still open. We’d have to change that. Couldn’t have a thief going in and stealing their painting-on-velvet of the Bay of Naples. I’d send someone over today to put temporary locks on the doors and leave a note for the elusive Donald and Geri. Not that I cared about either them or their possessions. Standing with hands in my pockets looking around, it was too beautiful a morning to have a weird little mystery like this to think about, especially when it had to do with these two jerks. But it was the job to care so I would.

My pocket phone rang. It was Magda saying our car wouldn’t start. She was the queen of I-Hate-Technology and proud of it. This woman did not want to know how to work a computer, a calculator, any thingamajig that went beep-beep. She balanced her checkbook doing multiplication and division with a pencil, used a microwave oven with the greatest suspicion, and cars were her enemy if they didn’t start immediately when the key was turned. The irony was her daughter was a computer whiz who was in the midst of applying to tough colleges that specialized in the field. Amused, Magda stared at Pauline’s talents and shrugged.

“I drove that car all day yesterday.”

“I know, Poodles, but it still doesn’t start.”

“You didn’t flood the motor? Remember the time—”

Her voice rose. “Frannie, don’t go there. Do you want me to call the mechanic or do you want to fix it?”

“Call the mechanic. Are you sure you didn’t—”

“I’m sure. Know what else? Our garage smells great. Did you spray air freshener in there? What did you do?”

“Nothing. The car that was fine yesterday won’t start, but the garage smells good?”

“Right.”

One beat. Two beats. “Mag, I’m biting my tongue over here. There are things I want to say to you but I’m holding back—”

“Good! Keep holding. I’ll call the garage. See you later.” Click. If she hung up any faster I would have given her a speeding ticket. I was sure she’d done something wicked like flood the carburetor. Again. But you cut deals with your partner in marriage; they give you longitude and you give them latitude. That way, if you’re lucky, you create a map together of a shared world both can recognize and inhabit comfortably.

Work that morning was the usual nothing much. The mayor came in to discuss erecting a traffic light at an intersection where there had been way too many accidents in the last few years. Her name is Susan Ginnety. We had been lovers in high school and Susan never forgave me for it. Thirty years ago I was the baddest fellow in our town. There are still stories floating around about what a bad seed I was back then and most of them are true. If I had a photo album from that time, all of the pictures in there of me would be either in profile or straight on, holding up a police identification number.

Unlike miscreant me, Susan was a good girl who thought she heard the call of the wild and decided to try on being bad like a jean jacket. So she started hanging around with me and the crew. That mistake ended in disaster fast. In the end she reeled away from the smoking wreck of her innocence, went to college and studied politics while I went to Vietnam (involuntarily) and studied dead people.

After college Susan lived in Boston, San Diego, and Manhattan. One weekend she returned to visit her family and decided there was no place like home. She married a high-powered entertainment lawyer who liked the idea of living in a small town by the Hudson. They bought a house on Villard Hill, and a year later Susan began running for public office.

The interesting thing was that her husband, Frederick Morgan, is black. Crane’s View is a conservative town comprised mostly of middle– to lower middle-class Irish and Italian families not so many generations removed from steerage. From their ancestors they inherited an obsession with close family ties, a willingness to work hard, and a general suspicion of anything or anyone different. Before the Morgan/Ginnetys came, there had never been a mixed-race couple living in the town. If they had arrived in the early sixties when I was a kid we would have said nigger a lot and thrown rocks through their windows. But thank God some things do change. A black mayor was elected in the eighties who did a good job and graced the office. From the beginning townspeople realized the Morgans were a nice couple and we were lucky to have them.