"There was a very shrewd writer a long time ago named Saki who said a few very sensible things. For instance, a small inaccuracy can save hours of explanation."

"I like that! What's to get mad about?"

"The small inaccuracy was that the airline didn't cancel. I did."

She looked at him, frowning and puzzled.

"But why?"

"It was an impulse. I didn't want to leave you yet. I can't explain it. I just wasn't ready to leave here yet. Nothing about the place to keep me here, God knows. But it was leaving you."

She looked at him wonderingly.

"That is supposed to make me mad?"

"I lied to you."

"Roy, it was a small inaccuracy that saved hours of explanation. Now I'm ready for those hours of explanation, fella.

Take a couple of them and tell me why you couldn't leave me."

"Well "Or this way," she said, and put her arm around him and pulled him close. They kissed awkwardly, and then stood up and kissed again. It was the first time he had held her close.

There was a feminine softness a yielding, that he had not anticipated. Her mouth was sweet. She was the taller, but they seemed to fit as though designed that way. They were both breathing audibly when they stopped.

He looked at her with delight, seeing for the first time how lovely her eyes were, how crisp and handsome the line of her jaw, saw the delicate miracle of the dark hair springing so alive from the tanned brow.

"Well, I don't want to lie either," she said, 'so I have to tell you I've been wanting that to happen for a very long time, not from the day you registered, but it started to happen pretty soon after that, Roy. It really did. That marriage was so rotten, I didn't think anything like this would ever happen again, that I'd ever feel this way again. For the love of God, make me stop talking. Hold your hand over my mouth or something. I can't stop."

So he kissed her again, and they talked some more, and they walked slowly back the way they had come, holding hands.

At the door to the office he said, "The flight leaves at three thirty-five. I hate to face the whole situation up there. Could you come with me?"

She cocked her head and then shook it slowly and sadly.

"No way, my friend. Your mother-in-law and your kid have got enough trauma going on without your showing up with another lady. It would be vulgar in a way neither of us want or would intend. Okay? You go up and do the memorial service thing and get back on top of your job and spend just as much time as you can with your daughter, and hug her a lot and hold her a lot, and read to her and walk with her and all that. I had that same kind of bad time a thousand years ago and it takes a lot of hugging. Then, dear friend, next spring you bring her down here on a vacation. I'll be here. And I will take her to all the places where I did my growing up around here. And with any luck, she and I will become friends. After we do, then you and I will see how well whatever we found today is lasting. If it is, I'll be open to any suggestion at all, at all."

She went inside and watched him walk back toward sixteen, thinking how much she loved him, and how much temptation it had been to agree to fly North with him.

Brother Fred came in from the living area, eating a jelly sandwich.

"We got us a couple raggedy pilgrims in twenty-one.

Couldn't afford the rates the other side of the Interstate. You nail him?"

"Nail what? Who?"

"You pin the little guy with the mustache to your trophy room wall, Sis?"

"What gives you a dumb idea like that?"

"Look, I have been living here. I have been watching you and the little guy. Don't try to kid me or yourself."

So without warning she was crying and he put his arm around her and gave her a jelly kiss on the forehead and told her that he thought she had roped herself a real nice little guy, all man in spite of the size of him, and apparently doing okay in the world, and if she ever wanted to take off, don't worry about leaving him stuck with the motel. No problem at all. No problem at all, Sis.

Eighteen

On Thursday, Jenny MacBeth supervised the mail and money flow under the watchful eye of Finn's replacement. He seemed always to be about three steps behind her, never directly behind, but either off to the left or to the right. She kept darting a glance back to see where he was, and she had the feeling this amused him in an obscure way. He was a stringy, swarthy, hollow-chested man in his fifties. He combed his graying hair straight forward, covering the bald front half of his skull, and it was cropped in a straight line an inch above his heavy black eyebrows. With his posture, glasses with the top halves tinted, and his curiously wide jaw with bulges of muscle at the hinges, he made Jenny MacBeth think of some sort of oversized insect.

All she knew about him was that Finn had told her Harold Sherman had worked for a now defunct airline in accounting and control and had infinite patience and a talent for streamlining detail work, using time and motion study analysis. He had been around for over a year but she'd had very little contact with him.

It bothered her that he was observing her operation when, due to the unexpected quantity of incoming mail, it was not functioning smoothly. Yesterday they'd had to cease operations at quarter to noon and lock all the unprocessed materials in the big vault. Today these had been added to the incoming mail, and her people were flustered not only by the quantity but by the observer. They tried to go too fast and they made more mistakes than usual. Whenever a mistake was made, Harold Sherman was right there, expressionless, a step behind her, watching her correct matters and get the smooth flow started again.

It wasn't until three in the afternoon that she was able to let the last of her people go. She followed Sherman through the Outgoing Mail room, through the continuing roar of the Xerox Diablos to that small office which had been Finn Efflander's.

The room was bare. All personal items, all decorations had been removed. There was a desk, a table, two chairs, two tall file cabinets and a computer terminal.

He asked her to sit across the desk from him. He looked at her with his head lowered, so that she could not read his eyes through the shaded top halves of his lenses. He did not speak.

Though she was becoming increasingly uncomfortable in the silence, she vowed not to speak and then heard herself saying, "When the deposit has gone, that's when I usually have lunch."

"Of course."

"You haven't had any lunch either."

"I am quite aware of that, Miss MacBeth."

"What do you think of the operation?"

"Those shoes you wear are very strange."

These? Yes. The floors are hard. I spend seven or eight hours at a time on my feet. I have foot trouble. Mr. Efflander gave permission."

"Everything Mr. Efflander left behind is subject to review."

"I'm aware of that, Mr. Sherman."

"There are more advanced and faster letter-opening devices than those three you are using."

"I'm aware of that. We've tested some of them. The mail is so varied in size and thickness, they don't work properly for us."

"Maybe with some experimentation they can be made to work. And then you would need only one operator instead of three. Your operation is very labor-intensive."

"That would be a primary consideration if we were... out in the real world where we had to pay going wages, union wages.

But here, it really doesn't ' "Good policy works anywhere. And I was not told that you are in a policy-making position."