When he could, Leland still went down to the executives’ dining room under the rooftop observatory. The paintings there showed that the vista had hardly changed in the three centuries since the fur traders had come up the 170 miles from Port Smith. Leland had a business here now, and many deep attachments, but he still saw himself as a guest and, when he was near that view, a stranger. Deer were still being taken within sight of downtown, nothing so remarkable. But Leland had spent his first thirty years in Port Smith; he had never shot at an animal in his life. When he saw the river, it made him aware of how far he had come. This was his home now, but he knew that he would never feel completely comfortable. He was not unhappy, and it was not an unhappy feeling; he knew, too, that this was the most fruitful and rewarding period of his life. It was just that he would not say that he was going to be here in ten years; he refused to decide. Ten years from now he probably would still be here, but it would be because ten years of living one-day-to-the-next had passed, nothing more.

He took the five-dollar bill to the side table on which he left money for Mrs. Walsh. There, folded on a candy dish in the way a servant delivered mail, was a note from Karen. Leland knew her neat, small writing better than he knew his own. He brought the note into the light.

Midnight

Dear Joe,

Sorry. I should rouse you to say good night properly, but you’re flat on your back, not to be moved. You’re smoking too much. I can hear it in your breathing.

Tomorrow I have a meeting with the Superintendent and then lunch at twelve-thirty with a hysterical woman—I’m not the one who should talk, I know—who wants to take some books out of our curriculum, and then in the afternoon I go down to the Teachers’ College to speak on “The Emotionally Unstable Adolescent.” Don’t laugh.

At night is the presentation to the School Board, which is why I have to see the Superintendent in the morning, to get our stories straight. I’ll be home to cook dinner for Steffie and then back no later than ten-thirty. Can we get together? Any way you want. If you want to come over for dinner, let me know. You probably won’t catch me at the office, but leave the message. I just want to see you, but I really hope you can be there later.

I had a lovely time this evening. The things we don’t discuss make the others much more difficult to express. They go unsaid for too long. I had a lovely time. I mean it.