Ada liked to drive slightly below the speed limit. All the other traffic rocketed by in the left lane, but she had yet to pass another car. She was on the new highway, with its four lanes and flat terrain, so different from the old hilly two-lane road she remembered from when she and Owen had been dating, and he would drive down to Lawrence and often drive her back to the city on their dates. She had always felt guilty about the amount of driving he'd had to do -- two round trips, over a hundred miles -- but he claimed to like the drive. This new road was faster, but less interesting. It bypassed the little towns -- DeSoto, Eudora -- and she didn't see the Wakarusa, either, though she must have crossed it.

This was a day of firsts: the first time she would take the new road to Lawrence; the first time she would drive a car in Lawrence; and the first time she would see Wyatt's house. She had finally found him through the alumni office. They'd been willing to forward her letter because Owen was a generous donor. Wyatt had called a week later, and they'd agreed to meet the next Sunday.

She attended Oread Friends Meeting first, hoping to see old friends. She hadn't been there in years; she attended Penn Valley now, because it was close to her house. The Meeting was still very small: only three people attended, and one of them she didn't know. No one was led to speak for the entire hour.

In the car afterward, she took the map of Lawrence from her glove compartment, read the instructions she'd copied down, and charted her route. Finding his house was surprisingly easy. Wyatt lived on 15th, across the street from the nursery in which Ada had whiled away many hours as a student, admiring the plants and dreaming of the day she would have a garden of her own.

The trees and brush were so thick they screened the house from view. A good place for Wyatt. She couldn't see anything until she pulled in the driveway. Wyatt was sitting in a lawn chair, reading a Sunday newspaper. A table and another lawn chair were next to him. He raised a hand in recognition and stood. She carried the album from the car. He leaned forward, as if to kiss her, and she raised the album to ward him off.

"What a beautiful place," she said. "It's perfect for you."

"Nothing like yours."

"Better. I like this better. A big yard, but not too big. A funny house just the right size for a single man." She had stumbled off the safe path. She handed him the album.

He inspected the cover. "You don't see many of these," he said. "This is the original. They changed the cover a month after it first came out." He turned the sleeve and slid the disc out, the edge against the palm of his hand, and inspected the wear. "He's played this a lot," he commented, and slid it back in. "Come inside."

The front door opened directly into a room. There was a door on the far wall, and another on the left. There were no windows; every inch of space was occupied by built-in shelves filled with record albums and books. There were three pieces of furniture in the room: a reclining chair, a battered grand piano, and a piano bench. In one corner was a stereo and tape deck. The speakers were in opposite corners. The piano top was closed, and covered with handwritten sheets of music. The room felt crowded.

"I'm not set up to entertain people," he said. "Come back to the kitchen."

She sat at the table in the bay window while he rummaged in the drawers near the stove for a felt-tip pen. Finally he went to the basement and came back with a laundry marker, and signed the album in a large scrawl.

"There." He handed it to her. "Would you like to see the house?"

He had a gymnasium in the basement, with weights and an assortment of exercise machines she'd never seen. The ground floor, in addition to the kitchen and music room, had the bathroom and bedroom. The bedroom, like the music room along the front of the house, contained a bed and dresser, and backpacking equipment, and such a welter of his belongings that most of the walls, and some of the windows, were hidden behind them.

"I don't have everything done yet," he said. "I haven't been here very long. I had a foundation poured and the house moved onto it. I'll knock out the wall there," he pointed toward the music room, "so this is like the original. Then I'm going to build two stories on top of this one. This was a wide cabin with one room, and that's the way it's going to be again. Somebody divided it into this room and the one where I have the piano now. Look how ugly that wall is, and how the bathroom doesn't fit. It'll all go. The front room will look like it did, and the back room -- they made it the same size when they added it on -- will have the stairs to the second floor. See how deep the windows are? Log walls. Three feet thick. Floors are pegged. This house survived both times the Bushwhackers burned Lawrence. They overlooked it, twice. I don't know why, I had to have this place. Just had to."

"You need someone to share it with."

"Don't."

"You can't be alone forever."

"Why not?"

"Even I found someone," she said.

"Lucky you. Have you eaten?"

"No."

They went back to the kitchen.

"This is the biggest kitchen I've ever seen," Ada said.

"It's a strange old house," he said.

He made two cheese and vegetable omelettes and poured enormous glasses of fruit juice.

They ate at the table in the big bay window, the breeze blowing the white lace curtains against her, brushing her arm and leg. The curtains were a pale yellow lace, and Ada wondered whether they were a girlfriend's legacy. She looked out the window at an overgrown hedge, where a young rabbit was peeking out. Then it hopped onto the lawn and began nibbling a patch of clover. She glanced up and saw a bird's nest under the overhang of the roof.

"It's a robin's nest," Wyatt said. "They failed. I think something got the eggs. They abandoned it."

She noticed that he ate just as fast as always. "You won't get to hear the chicks cheeping. I always like that."

"Yes. I was looking forward to it. The house gets a little lonely sometimes. I'm the only living thing."

"Maybe you should get a dog."

"Gone too much. Out of town at least a week every month, usually more. You aren't eating. Is something wrong?"

"No. Everything's fine," she said. "I'm enjoying it. Perfect weather, perfect food, perfect -- " company, she'd started to say. She looked at her plate and blushed.

"Is this awkward for you?" he asked.

"I suppose. I'll get used to it. Is it awkward for you?"

"No. It feels natural. It feels " -- he looked directly into her eyes -- "perfect."

When she'd finally finished and he'd stacked the dishes in the sink she said, "I'd better go home now."

"Is Owen expecting you?"

"No." She blushed again. "He doesn't know I'm here. He had a golf date."

"What are you going to tell him?"

"I don't know. I'll think of something. I mean, I'll tell him, it's just -- delicate. He's sort of jealous of you."

Wyatt guffawed. "He's jealous of me? I thought it was supposed to be the other way around," he said. "I'm sick of Owen. I want to play you some music."

He settled her in the arm chair in the music room. She expected him to put an album on the stereo, but instead he pulled music from the bench and sat at the piano and launched into something by Beethoven; she couldn't remember its name. She was stunned at the volume of sound, and the passion and sweetness. His back was to her, and for a while she watched his shoulders and head leaning over the keyboard, and his hands hammering away. The music rose in an overwhelming crescendo. She closed her eyes. She couldn't move. The music rose and fell in waves that lasted forever, climax upon climax. Even if she had been able to move she wouldn't have wanted to, not because it would break any spell, though spell there was, but because moving would acknowledge that she had sat through it, would admit that she had been a party to this plundering.

It ended. He waited before speaking. "Say something. Did you like it?"

"Oh yes. Too much. If you do that again, I'll have to leave."

"That's ridiculous. I'm in a mood to play. You can leave if you want, but I hope you stay. I think you'll like this." He pulled out some more music and started Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.

She sat back. This was much safer. At least it wasn't full of naked passion. She pulled the lever on the recliner so it tilted back. She closed her eyes.

"You're still here," he said when he'd finished.

She spoke without opening her eyes. "Play something else."

He played some Satie next, then something she didn't recognize. When she asked what it was, he said, "Nothing. I'm improvising."

Finally he said, "This is called 'Weightless' ", and began singing as he played: "How did I come untethered, floating here in space, awake at last, but unattached... ", singing the words in a rough, slightly unsure voice, and adding a long solo section in the middle. When he finished, she opened her eyes. He was scribbling words and notes on music paper. She waited. He wrote for about ten minutes, then set the sheets of paper on the piano, blank side up so the words were concealed.

"Are you working on a song?"

"An idea."

"Play it for me?"

"Later, if it works. No one gets to hear the failures." He stood. "Would you like something to drink? Wine? Beer? Scotch?"

"No, thank you. Maybe some more of that wonderful juice."

He brought two glasses.

"What's in this?" she asked.

"My secret recipe."

"Honey."

"You haven't called me that in years."

She laughed. "No. You put honey in it, don't you? What else?"

"No comment," he said. "Let's go out front. We can read the paper."

They sat in the lawn chairs, the Los Angeles Times and their drinks on the table between them. The sun had moved, and the chairs were in shade. They chose the newspaper sections they wanted and settled down to read.