Jane strolled back into the house. Desmond looked down at the lawn, the carriage house, and back at the skyline, grabbing at easy observations that might lead somewhere. Everything he said was answered with an enigmatic comment that was clipped enough to sound unkind without being specific enough to be insulting. She was the physical opposite of Jane, a meticulously slim woman with two pencil slashes for eyebrows and a dark purple bow of a mouth. Everything about her was so tight and smooth, she looked as if she’d been zipped into her pale skin. She was holding her wineglass in a limp-wristed grasp that suggested debilitating ennui. As the evening wore on, it became obvious to Desmond that she’d decided that appearing to be completely uninterested in almost everything somehow made her more interesting, probably a manifestation of low self-esteem, but an irritating one. She ran her eyes up and down Desmond, then turned away, leaving him feeling as if he’d been given an exam and had flunked with flying colors.

“Jane tells me you’re teaching out at Deerforth with Thomas. I suppose it’s hideous.”

Desmond felt a pang of sympathy for his colleague, not to mention himself. “As a matter of fact, the campus is gorgeous,” he said.

“Yes. That’s what I meant.”

Professional jealousy, Desmond assumed. The Boston University campus appeared to be made up of subway stops and traffic lights with a few Burger Kings thrown in for atmosphere.

“It’s been great having Thomas out there to help me settle in. He’s extremely kind.”

Rosemary shrugged. “It’s easy to be kind when you’re as depressed as he is.”

He was tempted to follow her down this path until they were taking open swipes at each other, but in addition to the fact that he was getting a little long in the tooth for this kind of boxing match, he couldn’t be entirely sure she wouldn’t report back to Jane on her opinion of him, and he didn’t want to sour what looked like a promising relationship. It was always hard to judge female friendships, which, in most cases, turned out to involve a good deal more intimacy and exchange of information than most marriages. It was usually safest to assume you were talking to a small discussion group, even when you were one on one. “So,” he said, “how many books is it you have in print . . . now.” The “now” was tossed in at the last minute as a way of suggesting that no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t keep up with her output. Hopefully she wasn’t unpublished.

“The three collections of poetry, the book of stories, and of course, Dead Husband.”