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keep in touch.
    June didn’t believe him. June thought he sounded wishful, like he was trying to talk himself into something. Time
annihilates
, she thought. Something is there and then it isn’t there anymore. My mother is gone, she thought, my father, my husband. This is what time
does
. This is how it works. She was not so much angry at Howard Emerson as angry in general at the workings of the world, the continual theft and promise.
    A bright clear afternoon, anyway, with a few high hazy clouds. It was not autumn yet but it would be soon. Back to school, back to life. They walked through the dry tall grass at the edge of the hayfield and back toward the house, Howard first in his tall hat and his big waterproof boots, June following in her long skirt. She felt ladylike and landed as she had wanted to, an Englishwoman in the West. Maybe she would offer him tea when they got back to the house. Maybe she would toss him out. But she had invited him in the first place, a friend of a friend who could tell her ballpark what the place was worth, and English ladies do not throw out their guests. She would make him tea, and watch him filter it through his enormous mustache.
    August, afternoon, lemonade, dresses. Tennis. The mood made her nostalgic, remembering high school, her own long legs.
    In the front hall, though, in the big mirror, in her sporty sandals and short practical hair, she thought she looked like a lesbian, one of the outdoor cheerful practical lesbians she knew from the hospital. So much for the mood. She offered him beer, which hedeclined, and then lemonade, which he took. A glass of white wine for herself. When they went inside, Howard Emerson took off his hat, and immediately shrunk, not just the inches the hat gave him but half his girth and stature. The top of his head was white and soft as a baby’s ass and his mustachio loomed enormous, out of place. June had a vision, first the hat and then the boots and then the coat and jeans, by the time you got him naked there would be nothing left, a tiny larva.
    Do you want to know? he said.
    They sat at the dining room table, afternoon sunlight across the wood floors and a little breeze to ruffle the curtains. Old appraisals and tax records and plats between them.
    Why wouldn’t I?
    It might change the way you feel about things. Might make things harder.
    I doubt it, June said.
    All right, then.
    He shuffled the papers on the table in front of him and pursed his lips. When he looked up again he was a little angry, a little sharp. He had tried to be understanding and she had spurned him.
    Two and change, he said. Two-two, maybe two-three.
    Two million dollars.
    * * *
    Two million two hundred thousand dollars, he said. Could go a little higher, as I say, and it might go for less but I doubt it. There are not so many parcels this size left in the valley. Thank God for Hoerner Waldorf, right? You held on through the stink of it, when nobody else wanted to live out here.
    It was never that bad, she said again, but this time dreamlike, an automatic repetition. She was dazed by the prospect of money. The places she could go, the shoes she could buy, the time, the days unending to herself … June touched the papers on the table, like the magic was contained in them. Howard Emerson was watching her. There was a person behind those blue eyes, she saw it all at once. A person. This came as a surprise. Not a doctor, not a predator. June kept her distance, fed her fear, but thought now that there was maybe nothing to be afraid of. His eyes looked kind and tired and they looked directly into her own.
    That’s a bit of luck, she said.
    Good luck, bad luck, he said gently. It’s all fine until you’ve got to pay property taxes on it.
    I don’t mind paying taxes.
    Howard didn’t believe her.
    No, really, she said. She didn’t know why but it felt important to explain herself. She said, Schools and sidewalks and firemen, I’m all for them. As long as everybody’s paying