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“Answer one, and you’ll answer the other.” Marina laughed, though feeling a bit rebuffed. “The purpose of life, Adam”—she drew a deep breath as they were ascending a steep hill—“is to get to the top of this hill.” Adam said, “And beyond this hill?” Marina said, “I can’t see beyond this hill, yet. It’s just theory.”
    Was it a form of sex, she wondered. Adam Berendt prodding, probing, querying his friends. His women friends.
    Adam said expansively, “Beyond all hills, Marina.”
    “Beyond all physical hills?”
    “What other sorts of hills are there, Marina?”
    Marina knew. Marina knew where this was going. She was a young headstrong dog, untrained. Her master directed her, with only his voice that was kindly, hypnotic, and tireless.
    “Inner hills. Spiritual hills.”
    “Do you feel that there are spiritual hills in your life, Marina, that you have yet to climb?”
    “Yes. I suppose so.”
    Middle Age: A Romance
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    “And how would you describe them, Marina?”
    Don’t do this to me! Don’t expose me .
    I don’t need to answer you. Who are you, to me?
    Adam Berendt had come into Marina’s life unexpected. With the authority of a protector, one who’d known her from childhood.
    Knowing that the Salthill Bookstore was in a financial crisis, Adam had invested as a silent partner; often he dropped by the store to help her openly, greeting customers, shelving books and doing inventory, talking her out of becoming discouraged. (Oh, Adam sensed she was suicidal! In that way of American women, whether unmarried or married, young or not-young, brooding at twilight through windows that, as twilight deepens, become ghostly smirking mirrors of the soul.) To be discouraged, depressed, over business, mere money, when the world is a place of rapture, Marina! No . He did touch her, with his big, rather battered-looking hands. He was one to touch while speaking, smiling. Marina’s forearms, Marina’s shoulders. He might cup his hand on the top of your head, patting in approval as (for instance) he might pat his dog Apollo’s head in a similar gesture of approval, or easy affection. He might kiss Marina’s cheek, he might hug Marina in greeting, or in farewell. In Salthill, such kisses and hugs, and some of them quite extravagant, were social displays: women hugging men, and the men needing to mime passivity; women hugging women, with emotion, affection. Or the ritual display of it. Marina Troy was likely to be a stiff partner in such displays, for she felt herself insufficiently female, or feminine; and, being unmarried, she had not quite the freedom to embrace men, especially a man like Adam for whom she felt strong emotion, as her married women friends did. Oh, Adam! If I dared touch you .
    Here was a mystery. How Adam Berendt, a part-time teacher and not-successful sculptor, mostly unemployed, had enough money to help Marina repay her bank loan and to invest in the Salthill Bookstore. (And he’d invested quite a bit, Marina was surprised.) And he wanted no one to know: “This is our secret, Marina.” Adam might drop by the store several days in succession, fluttering Marina’s heart, and then stay away for a week, or more; he disliked telephones, and rarely called; if you called Adam, as Marina sometimes did, in a weak mood, his telephone might ring, ring, ring forlornly; he had no answering machine. He was one to chafe at the expectations of others. He might come to a party, but he might not. Impulse seemed to guide him. Unless it was strategy. You
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    couldn’t predict Adam Berendt, he was a master who didn’t need his subjects. Yet, in his presence, it was impossible not to think This man! He loves me, alone .
    “. . . my spiritual self? The hills I haven’t yet climbed.”
    Marina felt embarrassed, saying such things. She felt like a child, anxious yet trusting; as, in her own childhood, she’d never been, for there’d been no