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“What’s happened?”

“I’m having a visit from an old friend.”

“Hank.”

“That’s what they call me. Except in Rosie’s Tavern. They have a few more colorful expressions for me there.”

“I can’t believe this has happened.”

“Let me explain it to you.” He placed the tips of his fingers together. She had never been so little amused.

Jane sat down on the old Chesterfield, the most comfortable, forgiving couch she’d ever sat upon. She’d tried to find one like it but never had. She’d even offered to buy it from Hank in case he wanted something new. He didn’t.

She sat with her handbag in her lap, and set the thermos on the floor. He pushed himself away from the doorframe he’d been holding up and sat on his rolling office chair. Stretching comfortably, he put his hands behind his head. 

“I’m a boozehound, Janey. You knew that pert dern soon from the beginning. You saw about how bad it could get. I’m not a twelve-stepper. It’s too late for me now. Cor’s gone, kids are gone. I’ve got a nice hunk of land in prime country round these parts. None of the kids want it. Hate to see it auctioned off to some conglomerate. The land.” he stopped. “I’ve spent my whole life on it, making something of it. If I’m anything, it’s this land. My blood spilled here, my sweat. My bones will go into it when I die.”

“Hank.” Jane felt pushed up against a wall of fatalism and mystery she couldn’t understand. 

“Janey.” He stood up and walked to her. He looked down at her on the couch. Without thinking she set her purse to one side. He reached out his hand. She took it automatically. In one graceful motion he stepped back as she stood up. He placed his hand at her waist, her hand at his shoulder, and before she knew what she was doing, stepping off a cliff, stepping into his arms, a smooth and confident lead, they began to waltz. She smiled at the simple perfection of their movement, the synchronicity of their bodies as they rose and fell in arcs through space. 

They had never danced together. Two people with a good sense for rhythm and timing, they were naturals for such a pleasure, as they could figure out the music inside each other’s minds, hear the inaudible tempo, but this was a notch beyond, and she realized he had been schooled in ballroom. She began adding touches as she felt more confident of him, a slow or quick turn of the head as the dance indicated, the further extension of her leg, and she could feel his approval. She felt light and deft on her feet, following his decisive lead. While maintaining her form, she found she could relax into his arms. It was as well he had an extremely long, sparsely furnished main room, with a dark parquet floor. It was dimly lit, even on bright days, and held mostly his piano, a pool table on one end, a fireplace on the other, and a few antique cabinets, including one which opened for cocktails. But in all, there was very little obstruction for impromptu dancing, up and down, back and forth. They sashayed in a zigzag motion down toward the pool table, swirled about there for a while, like rubber ducks caught at the draining end of the tub, then circled and swayed back toward the piano end of the room. When finally Hank brought them to a graceful conclusion, Jane found herself in a dip, and after a split-second, in which she saw Hank’s deep brown eyes and his sun browned skin, finely lined about the eyes, tightly fitted along his cheekbones and jaw, he kissed her.

Then she was up again, without any effort on her part, and was swirled gently back to her place on the couch. Hank was again seated on the rolling chair, closer this time. She was breathless, her heart beating uncomfortably against her sternum. One hand pressing against the middle of her chest, she looked at Hank. He looked just the same. Her eyes couldn’t help but wander to his mouth. It was just a mouth. Not thin, not thick. Not dry and cracking, like some farmers she’d seen. His hair was swept back, a mixture of silver and an almost colorless brown, long in front and very short in back. Sometimes his hair fell forward into his face, not often. He was a tidy man, but he didn’t have the standard issue buzz or bald spot of most men his age. His hair was attractive and he wore it to show it to advantage. It looked silky. Silky hair women would want to touch. What did Hank do for sex? Jane flushed.

“I’ve wanted to do that a long while. You’re nice to kiss. Thank you.”

Jane couldn’t think how to respond to this: ‘You’re welcome?’ She slumped back on the old leather couch. It enfolded her.

Hank walked over the the cabinet, the one he’d shown her years ago, which opened up with three secret doors into a drinks cabinet with frosted mirrors and embossed wood. He opened it. It clinked as he opened it to its fullest extent. “What’ll you have?”

The warning bells in her brain were overruled by the transcendental relaxation induced by the couch. “What do you recommend?”

“I have everything, my sweet. Perhaps a Forgotten Lady. Not many bartenders know that one. Only in the best circles, or the worst, will you find the Forgotten Lady. But they don’t like to part with the recipe for that concoction.” 

"How about a Dubonnet?" She was sure he wouldn't have it. But he did.

He brought over her drink.

For himself, he made another drink, in a tall thin glass. She couldn’t see what he’d put in it as his back was to her. It was the warm honey shade of amber. He now moved to sit on the other end of the couch, arm stretched along the large rounded leather couch arm, and sipped a bit.

“Cheers.” He drank off half his glass. Jane shrank into her corner of the couch, where it seemed to make a space for her, a little safe nest from the confusing goings-on. She clutched at the throw slung over the back of the Chesterfield and pulled it over her, then sipped a bit of her drink. To her surprise, it was very good. She had only ordered it because she’d heard her stepmother order one both times they had gone out to dinner; the two times she’d seen her father. To Jane it seemed like a sophisticated, adult drink. Therefore, safe. No one need know her antecedents or more about her than she wanted them to know by what drink she ordered. 

But that was not the order at hand. “Hank, I thought you were on the wagon.”

Hank was silent for a long time. He drank off the rest of his drink and got up to make another. He raised his glass at her to see if she needed freshening, but she shook her head no. He sat back down at his place on the other end of the couch.

His speech was no longer so gallant, so Noel Coward. “There’s only so many people as can fit on that there wagon. Somebody’s got to fall off to make room for the new people has to get on. That’s how it works.”

“I think that wagon can hold everybody who wants to get on it. I think it gets bigger when more people want to be on it. It’s kind of like…” Jane hesitated, not sure how this would fly with pragmatic Hank, “…like magic. It’s like when you have a baby, and you don’t believe you could ever love another child any more than you love that one. But you have another one, and your heart grows. That’s what I think the wagon is like.”

Hank looked over at her.

“Maybe. Maybe so. But I don’t have Cor. I don’t have daughters who want the place. They hardly want to come for a vacation. Their own children won’t know this land. Four generations and it’ll all be gone. It makes me dispirited, is all.”

She scooted closer to him and took his hand.

“You’re a good woman, Jane. For just a little while, I entertained a notion, a foolish one, I admit, that I could start over. That I wasn’t so old, and there were ways to make a new life, with someone who shared my values about land and how to live.” 

She let go of his hand.

“You’ll have to forgive me. I saw how the husband was never, hardly ever there, and I fancied this lady was like a lonely widow woman who needed courting. Who needed a man in her life, for herself and her daughter. I even went so far as to imagine, if she got a divorce, we got married, we could raise this girl the woman already had and have another baby, a child of our own as well. And it might happen that some one of these offspring might care for the land. It’d be a gamble, and I’m not saying my main concern, but a factor, anyway. And meanwhile, I know this younger woman would steward this acreage when I passed on, though I didn’t plan on that anytime soon. My folk are long-lived, as that goes. Tend to die in harness, too, so no long invalidism for the wife to worry over.”

Jane couldn't say anything.

“I know,” he said. 

She grabbed her bag, which had fallen to the floor, and ran from the house, the screen door's slow creak following her as the door eased shut, the spring system Hank installed preventing a noisy slam every time someone left.

The next day, when the plan with Tam was carried out, he was the same Hank Jane knew. Easygoing and full of jokes for Tam which he told with a straight face to see if she caught on. They walked in the fields around the house, Tam playing hide-and-seek with Buttermilk, who had been on a doctor recommended diet and was much sleeker and harder to catch, but also easier to carry.

“She’s grown,” Hank remarked of Tam.

“Really?” Jane said. “I can’t see it. Her pants are a little shorter. And some of her shoes have gotten tight, so it must be true.”

“That’s not what I mean, though she is taller. She’s not a little girl in the same way any more. She’s seen the outside world, and it’s seen her, and she knows it. I think she’s seen her pictures in the papers.”

“How could you possibly know that?” Jane said, getting annoyed. 

“Before she was unawares. That’s gone.”

“What do you mean? She’s self-conscious, or…” other words that came to mind were worse and she couldn’t go on. Spoiled?

“Aware of people watching her. When they are and aren’t.”

“Do you think that’s bad?”

 “I don’t know. I imagine it depends.”

Tam made a great leap into the air and clutched Buttermilk from a tree he was trying to climb to hide, as he was ‘It.’ It was now a contest between Buttermilk’s claws and Tam’s bodyweight.

“But Hank, we’ve decided. We’re going to travel with Ian. It’s more important to stay together. So she will be exposed. Not to a red carpet or anything, but she won’t be here…not until…”

“You have to do what you think is right. It's not a bad thing. Just growing up.”

“We’re coming back eventually. This is still our home base.”

“You’ve a fine family, Jane Fenn Reilly. Do what you have to do to preserve it. It’s what Cor and I did.”

Jane shut up, as she was distressed and needed to think about what he had said. They hiked on in silence. It looked like hide-and-seek was now sitting at Buttermilk 2, Tam 1. Buttermilk had the advantage of superior scenting ability, something Tam never let him forget.

At one point when Jane and Hank were returning to the house, walking single file through a forested area, Jane in front, she felt something sweep her arm, giving her tingles. She thought it was the brush of a frond, but when she turned her head and saw Hank a step behind her, she felt uncertain whether it had been a fern that had touched her or the light sweep of Hank’s fingertips. He was examining the veins of a leaf he had plucked, his face betraying nothing. She faced forward again, having not lost her stride in her quick look back, but thought it was time to go home. 

She didn’t know it was the last time. Two days later she got the letter, in a business size blue envelope, written on 8 ½ by 11 blue paper.

Jane,

I’m joining Cor, in oblivion or the vault of heaven, depending which of us was right. It’ll be nice to settle that argument with her once and for all. We will be in the same place (I hope) either way. I know I had a good many years left, my lovely Jane. But a man like me wasn’t likely to fall even once in his life. To have found Corrina Lilian Schweiger was all I could have expected, more than I deserved. Then I lost her. I figured, what’s life for? I’m a stranger to my children, my grandchildren. Cor was the tie between us. Ten years ago to this day she left this world. When she did, I dove headfirst into that wet nothing. Never did slake my thirst.

During a bout of sobriety, three years after Cor, long came a stranger, riding into town. Life turned a corner, and I fell in love again, at the age of 57, with a woman could be my daughter, or in these parts, maybe even a granddaughter, though my pride admits that’s a stretch. I fell in love with a woman and I fell in love with a little girl, the granddaughter of my heart. This pair changed me. You don’t know the sorry widower I was before you came round here. You spoke of my music, that first day you came over, when I played for you. The day you sat and listened and sang the old songs: “Summertime,” “Dream a Little Dream,” “Stardust Memories.” Never told you I liked your voice. Thought you’d get a big head. You didn’t know I hadn’t touched the piano since Cor got sick. Just since meeting you. 

I saw there was trouble between you and Ian from the get-go. I figured there was an even chance the marriage would break or make it. So I made friends and waited. My feelings grew deeper than I thought they could. I loved you in ways I hadn’t felt before, even for my darling Cor. With passion, and the wisdom of a man who’s seen what the world has to offer. I reckon everyone needs that unrequited love sometime or another.

I saw the path of destruction Ian was bent on. I believe I was mistaken in him. What I took for pride, and inattention, might have been his work, working in him. One bad night, he was honorable, when he had every reason to fight me. I’m no patsy, and I fight dirty, but he could have done me damage for the things I said. I’ve seen evidence of a blind-faced fumble toward humility in Ian. If so, he’s on a faster track than I was. 

I see the future. The bottom of a thousand bottles wait for me, lined up in a row. I made it four years longer than the bastard of a fellow liked to call himself my father. I’ve had my one and only love. And more. I believe now, you have yours. My only regret is not to see Tam grow up into the beautiful rebel I know she’ll be.