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having gotten it out.
    The last part made up for the first part, which he hadn’t at all wanted to hear. At least she was doing it independently, and didn’t want his help.
    “I see,” he said.
    “Well, I haven’t done any of it,” she said. “All I’ve done is read a mystery, lie in the sun, get tan, and then get scared and act like some kind of screwball tonight.”
    Jonathan suspected that was someone else talking for her: her parents, her teachers.
    “The week isn’t up yet,” he said.
    She smiled. “You’re right! It isn’t, is it? Why am I already admitting defeat?”
    “Five more days left,” he said.
    “Sunny ones, I hope.” Then, “You see, I was right to barge in here the way I did. I feel better already. An objective outsider is always best in these matters. Rose was right about that. I can’t tell you how gloomy and damp it was over there. It’s so nice here,” she added, slung over a hassock now, and turned to look at the fire.
    Well, that was easy, he thought. No complete confessions and suffering stories faced him now. He’d said exactly the right words to forestall them.
    “I really love fires,” she said. “They seem to have lives of their own, don’t they?”
    He looked at the fire. Underneath the two logs was a silver red white ashy furnace, as glitzy as a gay theme party decorated on the idea of Dante’s Inferno. But it was lovely here, fitting.
    He wanted to ask her questions: about Jerry, about her parents, her boyfriend, her school, her life. Dan would. Dan would never forgive him if he didn’t use this opportunity. If Dan were here, he’d be pumping her for every shred of information, every detail of the Lockes’ life that he’d wondered about in the seven years they’d been neighbors in Sea Mist. But Jonathan couldn’t bring himself even to begin.
    She yawned, stifled it, looked back at him apologetically, began to say something, then yawned again and shook her head, as though to clear it.
    “The rum,” he suggested. “Tired?”
    “I didn’t think I was,” she said.
    “Want to go to bed?” he said, and immediately regretted it.
    She seemed to hear no implications in the offer. She only yawned again, like a sleepy child. “I can just lie down here by the fire. Don’t trouble yourself.”
    “We have a guest room.” Then, as she was beginning to doze against the hassock, he leaned toward her, touched her shoulder. She barely responded. So he helped her up, and along the corridor.
    “I’ll be all right,” she said sleepily, as he led her into the guest room. Jonathan felt as he did with Artie and Ken, Dan’s boys, whenever they’d stayed up too late, and had to be put to bed.
    “There are some old pajamas in here,” he said, opening the bureau drawer. A candle was burning in a dish on the night table next to the bed. “Don’t forget to blow it out,” he reminded her.
    “Can I keep it on?” she asked. And now she really reminded him of the boys. “In case I wake up in the night.”
    “Sure. ’Night.”
    “Thanks. Thanks for taking in an orphan of the storm,” she said, and waved weakly at him, a movement that was stopped in mid-gesture by a huge yawn.
    He went back into the living room and decided to put on another few logs, to take the dampness out of the house. Then he made another rum toddy for himself, and finally sat down, drink in hand, cigarettes handy, to read that biography he’d brought out in June and still had not gotten to.
    Oddly, he felt he could concentrate better now: even feel content. The rain was no less fierce, the thunder and lightning only a bit less tempestuous. Yet he did feel content. Was it knowing someone else was in the house with him? Often, after he and Dan had gone to bed and made love, and Dan had fallen asleep, he’d got-ten dressed again and come out here to work, or to read, or just to sit out on the lounge chairs on the deck, hear-ing the ocean, looking up at the starry skies, thinking. It always felt