Pastime

"And coffee?"

"Decaf," I said sadly.

"How embarrassing," Susan said.

"Caffeine, like youth," I said, "is wasted on the young."

We passed the ancient burial grounds, the little cemetery near Boylston

Street where earnest Calvinists had settled into the ground, relaxed at last.

"Are you pla

"No," Susan said. "I think I'll just have a cup of hot water, with lemon, and watch you."

"You walked a mile in the rain to drink hot water?"

"To be with you," she said. "You're better than pie."

And I turned under the umbrella and embraced her with my free arm and pressed my mouth against hers and held her hard against me and smelled her perfume and closed my eyes and kissed her for a long time in the still rain, and even after we stopped kissing, I held on to her and we stood together in the dark under the umbrella, until finally I didn't need to hold on anymore, and it was time to go across the street and have some cherry pie. Which we did.