animal's mix of caution and mysterious purpose. The first time he came, she watched him climb fearlessly up his chrome extension ladder to cut away a dead branch, and she was impressed by how thoroughly he appeared to have married his simple work. He sawed the branch with quick delicate strokes, and when it fell he descended the ladder and carried the branch to his truck with a certain tenderness, as if it were a pet that had died. His black hair was cropped close to his skull; he wore yellow work boots and a green plaid jacket. Susan felt the romance of him, a sturdy competent man who had only this one ambition and who, she suspected, could take you into the woods and tell you the names of everything you saw. He whisded; he drove a truck with his name painted on the door in bright blue letters.
It happened on his second visit. After checking the tree, he came to the house for his payment. She offered a cup of coffee, he accepted, and they stood in the kitchen talking about the miraculous deliverance of Susan's tree. There was only that one subject. “It's a strange thing,” he said in his soft monotone. “There's no pattern, no pattern at all. A tornado can level a house, level it, and leave one wall standing with a shelf full of china cups. China cups. Not one of them even cracked.”
“I guess that's where religion comes in,” she said, and he shrugged, embarrassed by any reference to the otherworldly. He was probably a man who acknowledged only the real. As he was preparing to leave, Susan shook his hand and he looked questioningly at her with his soft, feral eyes. He was discreet. All she needed to do was drop her eyes and withdraw her hand. But she hesitated, and softly, with deliberation, he drew her close to him. He was scarcely an inch taller than she. He knew, somehow, not to kiss her lips. He kissed her cheek with a gentleness that was almost chaste. Then he kissed her forehead and hair. If he'd tried to court her, she'd have refused him. If he'd been aggressive, if he'd grabbed her or pinned her against the wall, she'd have ordered him out and called Todd at the office. His manner was what made it possible, his simple and slightly apologetic friendliness. Sex, he seemed to say, was the obvious and correct thing—it was what two people in this position would naturally do. She went along the way she'd have followed an unexpected turn in a conversation with someone older and better educated than she. They stood embracing in the foyer and he whispered, “Let's go upstairs, what do you think?” She hesitated. There was only one way to say it. “I don't use birth control, I don't have anything in the house.” “That's okay, it's okay,” he told her. “We won't need that.” She paused again, conscious of the bentwood coatrack, the striped wallpaper. She nodded. As they climbed the stairs, it seemed to her that she did not lead and did not follow. His hand rode the small of her back but didn't press her forward. He seemed only to want to maintain contact, as if the loss of it might mean the loss of all their aims. She was excited and nervous but she walked with purpose down the hall and into the guest room. She did not take him to the bed she shared with Todd. As she stood with him on the rag rug amid the odd furnishings—the guest room was a catchall for leftovers—it occurred to her that she was only twenty-nine and was the owner, half owner, of this house, a three-bedroom colonial on a full acre, probably a more substantial house than the one Joel would own. She was the mistress and the willing victim of everything that happened. She let him unbutton her blouse. Her head was clear. She knew what was happening. If she'd ever thought of anything like this she'd imagined it as an extended swoon, a turmoil of drink and passion. But now she watched with almost clinical composure as he took off her clothes and then removed his own. She felt neither proud nor ashamed of her body. Her body was a fact, it had the inevitability of the elm outside, the same unquestioned privilege. His own flesh was solid, sparsely haired, not as muscular as she'd imagined. She