“Crowded in here.”

“It’s supposed to be crowded. This is a reception. Our first concert of the season.”

“I didn’t know you were—so good.”

“I’m only a fiddle player. Second fiddle. Besides there’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

“I know. Let’s get out of here.”

“Don’t you want to meet my mother?” A smiling woman stood beside them, looking at her daughter, then up at Henry. She too was beautiful, more beautiful than her daughter: taller, elegantly slender, refulgently blond, with the patrician nose and dramatic cheekbones of an actress.

“Not really,” Henry said.

The woman laughed and elevated her little gloved mitt toward his lips. “But now you must.”

Blushing, he took the hand in his huge paw, looked down at the thing, squeezed it gently, bent and kissed the fingers.

“Such a gallant ranger. I am Mrs. Mellon. My name is Grace.”

Claire said, “Now aren’t you sorry? Wouldn’t you rather have a date with my mother?”

Slowly, with difficulty, Henry herded his wits together. “You’re both beautiful. Let’s all three get out of here.”

“That’s better,” the mother said. “Let’s do that.”

Shit, said Henry. Silently.

“Soon as I make my good-byes,” said Claire, moving off. He watched her exchange a smiling kiss with the concertmaster, then bounce on to the drummers, the trumpeters, the little men with the slide trombones. Swine, all of them.

“Claire loves people,” the mother explained. “She’s the most popular girl in the orchestra.” Taking Henry by the elbow, she began guiding him toward the nearest exit. “We’ll wait for her outside.”

Under the portico, in the cool October air, she took a lengthy cigarette from a gold case in her handbag. She paused. Henry produced a wooden kitchen match from his pocket, ignited it with his thumbnail and lit Mrs. Mellon’s cigarette.

“Thank you.” She puffed and inhaled and expelled. “That was clever. What else can you do?”

Silently, Henry produced a second match, tautened his right trouser leg by lifting his right knee and struck the match on the seat of his forest green twill ranger pants.

“Dear me….”

He produced a third match and struck it on his teeth. They both stared at the yellow flame.

“You are a clever young man. And how young are you, Mr. Lightcap, if I may ask.”

About forty-four, he explained.

“About forty-four. Good. You don’t look a day over forty. My age.” For a moment she mused over the ironies of life. “Claire’s new young man. And I understand that you work as—a park ranger?”

Only in the summer.

“Only in the summer? Good. And in the winter…?”

He rested.

“I see. Marvelous. What a marvelous way to set one’s course through life. You have a family, Mr. Lightcap?”

He mentioned the Lightcaps of Stump Creek, West Virginia.

“Really? West Virginia? Why we’re practically neighbors. My people live in the Old Dominion.”

East Virginia?

She laughed. She had a fine grave well-modulated laugh. Highly musical. “And your wife, Mr. Lightcap?”