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supposed to represent.
    “He’s
eating quiche,” I said quietly to Steve.
    “Artistic type,” Steve mumbled.
    Raising my voice, I said, “I’m sorry I dragged you here. Rita said I had to do penance for waking you up at two o’clock in the morning by taking you to the most romantic place in Boston. I thought this was it.”
    “The most romantic place in Boston is your bed,” Steve said. “With you in it.”
    “That’s not what the guidebooks say.”
    “Little do they know.”
    “Do you want to go home?”
    He just smiled. Then he asked how my book was coming along. I remember talking mainly about Geraldine R. Dodge and her husband. I also remember how noisy the café was.
    “Mr. Geraldine R. Dodge had money, too?” Steve asked.
    “Lots. Not as much as she did, but he was still loaded. His grandfather was the head of Remington Arms and some other companies. The grandfather was Marcellus Hartley. His daughter Emma married a man named Norman White Dodge, and for a wedding present her father gave them a house right next to his. He lived on Madison Avenue. Anyway, Emma died in childbirth, and the grandfather raised the baby, his only grandson. And then when Marcellus Hartley Dodge was a junior in college, at Columbia, when he was only twenty, his grandfather suddenly died, and he inherited everything. He became the head of the family and the head of the companies and everything.”
    “Did he know about her when he married her?” Steve asked, meaning, of course, Geraldine R.
    “I’ve wondered,” I said. “Even then, she must have been a little, uh, eccentric. She was always crazy about animals. But she had other interests. She was a very important art collector. It’s a miracle, when you think about it, that her paintings and things weren’t chewed up by all those dogs, but lots of them were shepherds, and she was very fussy about temperament and training, so maybe they weren’t destructive. And, of course, it wasn’t as if her husband had had to pay forher, uh, extravagances. She had essentially unlimited funds. And they stayed married until he died.”
    Steve smiled. “She got another dog, and he died of apoplexy?”
    “Actually, I don’t know what he died of. I guess it could’ve been apoplexy.” I paused to eat some salad. “What is apoplexy, anyway?”
    “A stroke.”
    “Well, I can’t imagine that another dog would’ve bothered him. He must’ve been used to it by then. Besides, they lived in separate houses. As far as I know, they were both perfectly happy with the arrangement. I mean, I do sort of assume that he was driven out by her dogs, but after that, I think maybe they had quite a happy marriage. I’ve wondered whether the death of their son might not have brought them together. He was their only child. It must have been a terrible loss for both of them. They donated lots of things in his memory. He went to Princeton. There’s a gateway in his memory there, a great big monumental arch, and I think they both gave that. And the Madison, New Jersey, town hall. The entire building.”
    “What did she look like?”
    “The
Times
called her ‘outdoorsy.’ Or something like that. Big. Heavy by today’s standards. When I first saw her pictures, I thought she was homely, but the more I know about her, the more I see her as imposing. She looked powerful. And gracious.”
    To hear each other over the din of the crowded café, Steve and I had been leaning over our plates. Since we hadn’t been discussing anything private, at least for a while, we hadn’t been paying attention to whether we were overheard. Consequently, when I finished my lunch and casually looked around, I was surprised to find the art student at the next table regarding me with a piercing look I couldn’t read. Anger? Suspicion? Something unpleasant. I couldn’t imagine what I’d done to arouse his attention.
    After we left the café, we went to the museum shop. There Steve bought me a beautiful guide to the