On quiet afternoons the four of them explored Beacon Hill, sharing it, wandering over it with a sense of ownership. They admired it all, the stylish old Boston orderliness of Louisburg Square, the smooth cobblestones that pre-dated politically-awarded road contracts, the pompous fat pols arguing over coffee checks in the drug store behind the State House, the lovely preserved lanterns on Revere Street, the feeling on dark nights that on the other side of the crest lay the year 1775, waiting. Always, when they returned to the raffish north side of the hill, their side, tenanted mostly by working people and a fast-growing colony of beards and weirds, they agreed it was the best side of the two, the liveliest, the juiciest.

One morning the four of them walked through a cold spring rain as fine as mist, following directions Gaby had gotten from her landlady, and found the ordinary-looking town house at 121 Bowdoin Street where an extraordinary President of the United States had maintained his voting address, and they wondered to one another what might have happened to the world if the young man had been allowed to grow older and wiser.

Dorothy turned suddenly and ran.

He went after her and caught up to her on Beacon Street, on the steps of the State House, and he put his arms around her and kissed her wet face, tasting salt.

“The governor of the whole state can be watching us right now from one of those windows,” she said.

“Let’s give him something to watch,” he said, pulling her to him so they stood tightly together, rocking slightly, on the steps in the rain.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s all right. He was quite a man.”

“No, you don’t understand,” she said. “It’s not mourning Kennedy. I was crying because you’ve made me so happy and I love you so much and Gaby and Adam are so cool and beautiful and I know this perfect time isn’t going to last for any of us.”

“It will last,” he said.

“But it will change. Nothing ever stays the same.”

There were beads of moisture on her brown skin above the upper lip and with his thumb he smoothed them away the way he had wiped away dried salt that first day on the beach. “I want things to change between us,” he said.

“Poor Spurgeon,” she said. “Is it awful for you?”

“I’ll survive. But I want desperately for things to change.”

“Marry me,” she said. “Please, Spurgeon.”

“I can’t. At least not until I finish the internship in July.”

She looked at the rain-dulled golden dome of the State House.

“Then we can use the apartment on Phillips Street, sometimes. Gaby and I have talked about it.”

He took her wet, woolly head between his palms. “I could buy them a dog. We could arrange to visit them while they walked the dog around the block.”