The bluffs were frosted with ice and snow. The sky had crude ashy strokes that were backlit and ember-orange. Pinned to the horizon was a cargo ship that had ridden out last night’s weather.

I saw below, rumbling around on the Point Road, troopers, gargantuan sand trucks, a couple of uniformed National Guard.

Raymond helped me cook breakfast. We made gallons of tea, heated biscuits and chick peas with chicken gravy.

“Something I’ve never seen,” Raymond said. “Eight industrial-sized cans of chick peas.”

Care

THE LIGHTS CAME BACK on and the TV over the bar started talking. There were cheers and shouts from all over the first floor.

“That was fast, actually,” Dottie said.

“Tell me,” said a villager. “In seventy-eight we were down for nine goddamn days.”

I went to the Admiral’s Suite, to my room, and found four kids up on the bed playing a card game.

“See if you can find your parents,” I said. “Because I think you get to go home now.”

I picked up the phone, heard a dial tone, tried my Brook- line number.

I got a ring.

“Yeah?” said a groggy Raf.

“Are you with anyone?”

“Just the triplets. What’re you doing?”

“I’ve been looking for you for months,” I said.

“You’re at the Seahorse? I tried to get out there. We had a touch of bad weather.”

“Making me call you,” I said. “I’m hanging up.”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait.”

“No. Sorry to bother you, go back to sleep,” I said.

“The fucking phone was out, in fact. And I have no ground transportation,” Raf said. “Last night, swear to God, I tried to walk to the inn.”

“Well, if that’s true, it was dumb.”

“It was love,” he said.

On my dresser stood the wine bottle Raymond had de-labeled and not drunk.

I said, “Don’t start doing this. It’s really not fair.”

“I made it to Storrow Drive, then the ninety-three entrance but nothing was moving. And I was getting disoriented, like hypothermia. My brain went white although I was sober, speaking of not fair. Then this Triple-A truck with chains picks me up and brings me back as far as Boylston and I hiked on home. Look at my fucking fingers!”

“What?” I said. “Black?”

“No, but quivering. They’ll feel a lot better once they get into your jeans.”

Raymond moseyed into the room and stood behind me in the mirror. “There you are,” he said.

“Look, Raf,” I said into the phone, and Raymond slumped. “I just don’t know any more, you know?”

Raf said, “I do. I know for both of us, is the great thing.”

Raymond hunted around the vanity table, picked up a vagrant cigarette and slanted it behind his ear.

“Paige? This goddamned storm, I mean, it was ill timed,” said Raf.

I sighed. I said, “I’ll try to make it into Cambridge. You could meet me at the faculty club.”