Because Barbara was tall, because she had perfect posture even when she was sitting, she was able to look at me over the top of her computer screen. And I was able to look directly back at her. Her face was so often worked up in emotion that it was hard to remember it was startlingly pretty when, like now, it was in repose.

“Want me call her for you?”

7

.

IT WAS ARRANGED THAT I WOULD MEET HER AT BREAK A’DAY, A coffee shop across the street from Pogo’s. The meeting was to be at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday morning. I got there at 9:30 to make sure we got a table. Break A’Day was not a large place. In the summer, Break A’Day had tables with umbrellas outside on the patio, but this time of year the seating was only on the inside and it was crowded with locals and weekenders. There was a counter for twelve and another twelve tables that would seat two to four people, depending on how much you were willing to be jammed together. Nine-thirty on a Saturday morning, it turned out, was too late. All the tables were taken and the waiting list was forty minutes.

The hostess was a small woman with a round face and dark skin, her hair pulled back in a careless ponytail. Her name tag said Di. I gestured for her to move closer. She did not, but she allowed me to lean forward enough to whisper in her ear. “I’m meeting one of the Gregorys here at ten. It’s a business matter, and I really need one of the tables, preferably in the back or one of the corners.”

Di made a noise with her lips, pulled her head, rolled her eyes, all of which was meant to show my request was inappropriate; famous people came in here all the time, and we could wait in line like everybody else.

I leaned in again. “You don’t want there to be all kinds of commotion, people coming up to her, trying to talk to her, clogging things up while we’re standing around waiting. So if it would be at all possible to kind of move us up if something opens—” I tried to slip her five dollars and she reacted as if I were trying to hand her a toad.

A couple got up from a table along the far wall. I looked. Di looked. She lifted a clipboard, called the name of the next people on the list, and directed them to take their place. At this point, I had not even given her my name and was not sure what I should do. She walked off with her clipboard to greet some new arrivals. Two more times she called out names to replace departing customers and then she walked by me and threw her arm toward a newly opened table in the far corner. “Take that one,” she said, and I had what I wanted.

At 9:55 a large black man entered. There was nothing unusual about that, in and of itself, except this man was ebony black, wore a blue topcoat, had a shaved head and a diamond stud in his ear, and in general was not the kind of fellow one usually saw on Cape Cod, at least in the off-season. He looked around the room, looked at each and every person sitting there, looked no longer at me than anyone else, then turned and left. By bending various ways, I could see him outside on the patio, talking on a cell phone. Then I could see him walk to what looked like a large Jeep, get in behind the wheel, shut the door. But it was not a Jeep. It was a Hummer, and it did not move.

At exactly 10:00, the door opened, the people waiting for their tables parted, and Cory Gregory, smiling and saying, “Hello. Hi. Hi. Hi,” made a beeline straight to my table. “Hi, Georgie,” she said, grabbing my hand and kissing me on the cheek before I was halfway to my feet. I melted back into my chair.

She was dressed rather mannishly, wearing a pair of what we used to call “white ducks” for slacks, a white polo shirt, and a blue pullover windbreaker. On her feet were a pair of two-tone suede shoes that would not have been out of place in a bowling alley.

“I love this café,” she said, picking up her menu, bouncing around in her seat.

And I loved her. I didn’t say that. But I felt it. I also felt the burn on my cheek where she had kissed it. Cory Gregory had kissed me. And now she was sitting directly across from me at this tiny table, where anytime I wanted I could reach out and lay my hand on top of hers, maybe slide it along her forearm, feel that slender but no doubt powerful wrist honed by chip shots and spinnaker raisings.

“This is so exciting,” she said, leaning across that very same tiny table, bathing me in breath that was imbued with honey, locking brown eyes on me that said I was the only other person in the universe despite the fact that everyone in the little café was looking at us, “to hear about Paul. I didn’t know you knew him.”

Paul. Of course. McFetridge. She didn’t know I knew him. She had met me one time, across a table, in a brew pub, and she was surprised that hadn’t been revealed.

“We were roommates in college,” I explained.

She was listening, I’m sure, but she was also taking off her windbreaker, pulling it over her head, getting it caught in her hair. I had the briefest glimpse of her breasts poking through the cloth of her polo shirt, breasts the size of sparrows. Delicate little things.

“Fraternity brothers,” I gasped.

“Oh, at Cornell.”

“No. Penn.”

The slightest furrow appeared in her brow. I had the irrational fear that we might be talking about two different Paul McFetridges, and I quickly played my trump card. “He and I went down to Florida one time, hung out with your cousin Peter.”

“Oh, Petey. He’s such a big bear.”

With that, the image of Peter Gregory Martin looming over Kendrick Powell filled my mind. I stopped feeling so giddy.

“That’s what I used to call him,” she said, “Big Bear.” She was the one sounding giddy.

The waitress appeared next to us, pad in hand. “Good morning. My name is Maxine.” She looked at Cory with frank curiosity. “All the muffins are fresh this morning,” she told her, ignoring me. “Corn and bran are the best.” She said “cahn” for corn.

“I’ll just have coffee,” Cory said, handing back the menu without even glancing at poor Maxine. “Decaf.”

I ordered coffee and both the muffins Maxine had suggested.

“That it?” she wanted to know.

I nodded and she went away disappointed, apparently having been laboring under the impression that a Gregory and her companion would be issuing multiple orders for eggs Benedict, eggs Florentine, eggs with oysters and big chunks of lobster.

“So,” Cory said, smiling at me, just at me, only at me, “what is it you can tell me about Paul?”

“Well, no. I’ve lost him. That’s the thing.”

I stopped because Cory appeared confused. Her distinctive features molded to ask what “the thing” could possibly be.

“I tried reaching him through his mother,” I said. “I got the impression she hadn’t seen him in some time.”

I stopped again because Maxine was already back with the coffees, a pot in each hand. I waited until she had finished displaying her ambidexterity and meandered off. I watched as Cory filled her cup to the brim with cream, lifted the cup toward her mouth, and the mixture slopped onto the table. “Whoops. Umm. Ahh,” were some of the sounds she made before she put the cup back down.

“Mrs. McFetridge,” I said, feeling a little more uncertain about my love than I had a minute ago, “said he was off in Idaho somewhere, working as a river guide.”

“You’re kidding!” Cory said, thrusting her upper body forward, her voice soaring.

That movement, the jolt against the table, not only spilled more coffee but seemed to bring the general hubbub of the café to a halt. Cory, however, was oblivious.

“You know,” she said, “he always liked the outdoors, but …” Like Mrs. McFetridge, she did not want to appear too judgmental. “In a way, that kind of explains everything.”