She enrolled in summer school; she no longer wanted to travel home, even if to come back afterward. The only reason she'd considered dropping out was Wyatt -- she had thought he didn't care for her as she had come to care for him. He laughed when she said this, but she regretted the time they'd lost, and the concealment they had practiced with each other. Beginnings lasted. Deception was the wrong way to start.

He stayed as well. The summer classes meant he could graduate in January, but the true good luck was to be with Ada, as he wanted to be always. Time without her was marking time until he was with her. Every day, in the afternoon or evening, she came to his apartment and they studied and made dinner and after they'd eaten cleared the table and sat down to work again. She often glanced at him for a moment, as if to reassure herself of his presence, and immediately resumed reading or writing. She didn't notice when he studied her instead of his books.

She was unique and flawless: her face; her radiant smile; her thin, nervous fingers holding his; her dishevelled hair; the children's sneakers she wore; the absence of jewelry and makeup and other adornments; the sadness with which she read the newspaper; the meticulous way she arranged her books on the table; the careful thought she gave to which sentences she would underline; her absorption in study, so that she often didn't hear him when he spoke; the precision with which she did chores or tidied up; the way she separated her foods and examined them before she ate; the way she brushed past him, excusing herself, when they cleared the table; the attention she paid when she looked at him; the way she was silent and composed her sentences before she spoke, or paused while speaking to find the right word; the curious gaps in her worldly knowledge -- cars, movies, politics; her indifference to art and music; her inability to watch television; her refusal to complain; and even the harsh judgments she made. She was perfect. He would not have changed a thing. She was a universe of details, and there wasn't time or attention enough to notice them all. Even her flaws were not flaws; even her severity was not a weakness, because it was part of her Ada-ness. It didn't matter that he was in love. What mattered was Ada, whom he loved.

Every woman Wyatt had slept with more than once preferred a certain side of the bed, and had a habit of drifting off on her left or right, or on her back. He thought of them as right-side, left-side, and back-sleepers. Ada had no pattern. She took only a minute or two, in whatever position she happened to be lying. Wyatt would stay awake, and when her breathing slowed and steadied examine her. She was unable to accept his admiration, it embarrassed her, but when she slept he indulged himself and looked. He loved her body and hair and skin, all red and pink and white, a cinammon girl. He revered the little red-gold hairs at her temples (and the faint vein there), the near-invisible down on her forearms, her chapped hands and milk-white feet, the blackened fingernail that had caught in a doorjamb, the curve in the small of her back, the perfect column of her neck, its tendons, the slight swell above her voice box, the hollow where a pulse beat (he especially liked that pulse, it was hypnotic); the nape of her neck and the vee where her haircut ended; her shoulders and narrow arms; her breasts, small and firm, with pink nipples; the triangle of red hair below her belly. Sometimes the sight of her aroused him and he woke her. She was always willing; she never refused him a second or third round of lovemaking. She never asked for sex, had never talked about it, but always welcomed it. She was taking the pill now, and they no longer had to use a condom, and their fumbling awkwardness had vanished.

She regarded lovemaking as a sacred act. Kim was more typical of Wyatt's other encounters, with women who treated it the way they did clothing or food. He was unsure at first how to respond to this unfamiliar attitude. He was careful, he was reserved, he checked his playfulness at the door because he might have confused or dismayed her. She was learning to kiss, to touch, to respond, but she took nothing for granted. This made sex, which he had treated as mere pleasure, new and surprising. She had become his lover because she couldn't not, but her good fortune astonished her, and she treated him the way she would have a new valuable possession, with extra care. It was this that drew him into her world. He was defenseless against her, but he didn't understand what that implied, so he misinterpreted their roles: she was more his teacher than his student. He didn't notice the speed with which he had been absorbed into her sensibility. What he did notice, he found surprising: there was a texture and depth to the sex that he had never known, because it was saturated with mutual feeling.

He woke tired from being up half the night with her, talking even with nothing to say, encouraging her, so he could hear her voice. Talking interrupted by long sex. He learned that she cared less about orgasms than about the length of their lovemaking. She liked him to be slow and gentle, so he was. He timed their duration on the clock -- half an hour, three-quarters of an hour. She said nothing, sighing, clutching him to her, kissing his face, his neck, his shoulders, pressing her hands on the small of his back occasionally as a signal to stop for a while, then letting go, so he would start again. She shuddered, her eyes closed, the expression on her face transparent and beyond pleasure. Stopping, talking, starting again, with an absorption like dying.

He woke tired from nights apart, his sleep without her restless. She had drawn the line at living with him, and that meant restricting the overnights at his place to fifty per cent. She tracked the nights by writing her initials on the wall calendar in his bedroom. He would have erased some of those initials, to steal more time, but she wrote in ink.

The nights she spent in the dorm, they made love only once, and then he walked her home and said goodbye at the door, and he would have talked to her for hours except that she kept to a limit of ten minutes. She would not be budged, and sent him home. Later, when she was settled in bed, she would pick up the phone and call to say goodnight.

"Why won't you stay here?" he would ask. "We could have more time together."

"I want to be with you every minute, too, but we still have to lead normal lives, don't we?"

"This isn't normal. Being together is normal."

She would say, "It leaves you more time for your music."

"We're taking a break. Brad's in Montana, and Dave's in New York. Anyway, I practice in the music building every day."

He was wasting his breath, and he knew it. He wouldn't change her mind with logic, but he was compelled to try. Then they'd move on to other subjects. The conversation might run for an hour or more. She usually dropped her phone on the floor when she nodded off and then they would both be startled and know it was time to end the call, but other times they fell asleep and he would wake after a while and hear her steady breathing. He imagined her lying on her side, her hand open around the phone, her hair pressed against the pillow, her eyes closed, her breath a slow metronome.

That summer was her first in Lawrence, and as difficult for her as winter had been. She was unused to heat; her home in the mountains had been high up, never hot, always cloudy, often rainy. She loved the sun, but she was often at the point of collapse after an afternoon outside. She insisted on walking around town on the weekends to look at houses, or pursued similar projects when she wasn't studying. She read outside even on the worst days, refusing to acknowledge the heat. Wyatt arrived home one day to find her sitting on the steps again, this time without her books. Her forehead was beaded with sweat.

"Did you lose your key?" he asked.

"No. I wanted to see you coming, I wanted to show you this letter. My father remarried! I've been worried. It was very hard on him when my mother died. This is exactly what he needs."

"Who is she?"

"Maria. She's Tica, not Quaker. She was my friend." She saw his look and continued, "No. She's not my age. She's a widow. She had a tiny house by herself near our school. She loved Henry and me, I don't know why. She made us her special children. We usually stopped at her house for a few minutes on the way home from school and she'd give us juice or coffee. She didn't have much, but she always invited us to stay for dinner. She was lonely."

"Didn't she have any children?"

"They died young, except one son. He worked for the government at the park on the Osa peninsula. It was a long way and he couldn't visit very often. Sometimes I'd tell Henry to go home and let father know I'd be late, then I'd stay and eat and we'd talk for hours. She was incredibly kind. She gave me so much love, I had to love her in return. She was the best listener I've ever known. I could talk to her about things I couldn't tell mother or father, and never feel stupid. It wasn't just the listening, she knew how to give in other ways. She made everyone welcome. There was always room for one more at her table. All she wanted was someone to take care of."

"Then her wish came true."

"Yes. Now she can take care of my father, and my father has someone to keep him company. It's a perfect match. I'm so glad. For him. For her. For them." She looked at the letter. "They had both kinds of ceremonies, Catholic and Quaker. I wish I could have been there. I wish he'd told me. I would have gone home. I would have, even if I had to ride busses for a week, each direction."

"I could probably borrow the money for a flight, if you want to go."

"Thank you," she said. "Thank you. I couldn't pay you back."

"But -- "

"Thank you. No. I missed the wedding. I'll stay here. I'll write him. I'm sure it was on purpose. He was probably thinking about me being in school. He didn't want me to spend the money, or drop out of my classes. He wanted to spare me a hard decision. Besides, he's shy. He probably didn't know how to tell me. After he was married he had to. He has a hard time writing, anyway. He's good with things, not words." She paused. "I wish you could meet him. He's very genuine. Very gentle."

"Maybe we can go together someday."

"That would be the best. I'll show you my tree house, and we'll ride horses and I'll teach you all the plants and birds. That would be lovely."

He had been squatting in front of her. He sat next to her on the stairs. She handed him the letter and wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her knees. He read in silence, then handed the letter back. She folded the pages and put them in her shirt pocket and looked off into the middle distance without speaking. The trees were lashing back and forth.

"Lots of wind today," he remarked.

She leaped up. "That reminds me. I bought a kite."

"It's too hot."

"Only for a little," she said. "To try it out." She hurried up the steps and into the apartment, returning a moment later with the kite.

They flew it in the killing heat, the wind as gusty as it had been yet that summer, and the kite caught in a tree, which he climbed to rescue it. He would have abandoned the thing, it only cost a couple of dollars at the drugstore, but he retrieved it because he knew she would have tried to get it back if he hadn't, and she was too short to reach it and he would not let her be hurt. Her parsimoniousness compelled her to save anything she could, rather than discard it. They brought the kite home and he watched her repair it with knife and glue. She was good with her hands and with tools. She patched her jeans; soon, when the patches became obvious, she said, she would start a quilt, and she had asked him to contribute his old jeans.

"There's something I have to ask you," she said, pressing the broken wood together. "It's embarrassing. Promise you won't laugh."

"Have I ever laughed at you?"

"It's just that I know you've been with other girls, but I haven't, I haven't had any other boyfriends. You're my only one." She blushed. "I don't know what to do. I want you to be -- I'm not sure -- I can't talk about these things," she cried. The pieces of wood slipped apart. "Damn!" She never cursed. "Excuse me." She glued the pieces and held them together for a long minute.

"Are you happy with me?" she asked, frowning at the kite, as if speaking to it, and then let go.

"Ada, don't you know? This is the happiest I've ever been. The happiest I can be."

"I mean in the bedroom." She hadn't looked at him yet.

"Yes. Can't you tell?"

"I don't have anything to judge by. I don't have anything to compare to. I might be imagining."

"Come to bed right now. I'll show you."

"Don't joke. I'm serious." She touched the kite, testing it.

"I'm serious, too. I never expected this. I was waiting for something, I didn't even know that I was, or what it was, but it was you, and now you're here." He stood and put his hands on the table and leaned over. "Are you happy?"

"Oh, yes," she said. "Oh, yes. I never imagined." She crossed her wrists between her breasts and looked up at him. "I never imagined it would be this way. Is it like this for everyone?"

"No," he said. "Only the ones with passion."

"Yes. That's how I feel. I'm glad. Have you ever had this before?"

"No. I thought it was a myth, until I met you."

"Do you mean that?"

"Yes."

"Then I'm luckier than I thought I was."

Silence.

"Wyatt."

"Yes?"

She moved the kite aside. "Is there anything you want me to do. Is there anything, you know, to make you feel -- to please you? That we can do?"

"I'd like to leave the lights on sometimes."

She blushed.

"Don't be embarrassed," he said. "I want to look at you because you're beautiful."

"Me?"

"Yes."

Pause. "Well, why not?" She nodded.

"And I'd like to try some other positions." He thought this might be saying too much.

"Positions?"

"Besides the missionary position."

She looked blank for a moment. "Oh! It has a name. There are others! I have a lot to learn. It's embarrassing to be so ignorant."

"No. Don't say that."

"It is. I am. No one talked about it when I was growing up. We had a little library, but there weren't any books about it -- I looked. And everyone knew everyone and I could never ask because my parents might hear. I'd watched dogs and cows and horses." She blushed again. "But they're different from us. No one talked about it. I didn't know anything. You have to understand. Everyone was very shy. So we can -- try things? -- but not all at once. I'm learning."

"There's nothing to be afraid of. It isn't difficult. It isn't painful."

"Not with you." She smiled and touched his cheek. Her finger was sticky with glue, and she wiped it from his face with the back of her wrist. "No," she said, "those are the last things it would be. You're very gentle. I couldn't ask for a better teacher. I haven't said anything. All I know are English and Spanish and French, and none of them has the vocabulary. I can't think of a way -- "

"I know," he said.

"It's just that when I'm with you, it's -- even if I knew what to say, speaking would spoil -- I'm closer to you in the silence. I always knew there are things words ruin, but this is more that way than anything ever was. I wish I had the words -- "

"Yes. I know."

"There's something else," she said. "This is almost as hard to talk about. I'm not very good at talking, except to you, but I have to know I understand you. You have to tell me everything. Anything less -- I have to know. If I can't believe you, because you try to be too nice, I won't know what you think, what you feel, and that's what I need. That's the only way I can understand you. I have to have all of you, the way you are, not the way you want me to think you are. You can't stop me from loving you, it doesn't matter what you say. Anything less than everything will hurt me. It means you don't love me."

Years later, she would remember this conversation, and wonder at her naivete, and Wyatt's patience; she would remember the things he had tried to tell her. She should have learned from him those things she only learned later, learning them in ways she would have been spared if she had listened.

"I don't think that's wise," he said.

"Please. At least try."

"Sometimes I'll forget, and then you'll be disappointed."

She nodded. "Then I'll have to be disappointed. As long as you do your best. I just want two things. I want you to try to tell me everything you feel. And I want you to put us first, above everything else."

"I already put us first. I'll work on the other. I want something, too. Stop idolizing me. You'll end up disappointed, and you'll leave me, and that would be a mistake. I'm not perfect. I'm Wyatt. I'll do my best, but sometimes my best won't be enough, and you'll have to put up with it."

"But I don't expect -- "

"You do. You will. Watch. You'll see. Your ideals are more important than anything else. Someday I'll disappoint you and you'll leave me."

"No, that's not possible. Please believe me." She waited. "Wyatt?" She waited again. "It won't happen. It won't. It can't."

"Oh yes it can. It will. Everything will change."

"I won't. I won't."

"You can't know that. This is the first time for you. Me, too, but I know how it works. I've seen it with my friends. You believe things about each other that aren't true. Everything glows, it all has a rosy aura. But that's not real. Later on it gets real. You see you imagined those things. You see the irritants. I'm not perfect, but you think I am. You want me to be. Those judgments you make about other people, someday you're going to make them about me. I'll never live up to everything you expect."

She said nothing for a long time. Then, "I understand."

"Is there anything else?"

"The only thing is, you always left those other girls. Will you leave me? I'm so, I don't, I have to have you. I don't know what I'd do without you."

"That's past," he said. "There won't be anyone else. There can't be. I have more with you than I had with all of them added together."

"Do you -- "

"Wait. I have to say this now. The band is moving to L.A. in April. Everyone's graduated, and Dave dropped out. I'm the only one keeping us here, and I finish in January. Don't look like that. Don't. Listen, we can work this out. I've been playing with these guys for -- Ada, don't."

She was up and her arms were around him and she was saying, "No. You can't do that. I need you here. You have to stay," and she was hurting him, her arms were squeezing his ribs. "Why didn't you tell me before?" she asked, and asked again, "Why didn't you tell me before?"

"It hasn't been long, I mean, it hasn't even been two months since we -- "

"You should have told me."

"I couldn't. I thought you'd leave me."

"Oh, Wyatt. How could you?"

"I didn't know how. I didn't want to hurt you. I didn't want you to be disappointed in me. It was easier not to."

She didn't understand, she seemed determined not to understand, no matter how much he explained that he had been in the band for four years, that they had made a pact to give themselves a year in L.A., that he had made a promise to them, that he would never leave her, that he was a musician and had always wanted to make his living as one, that the move would be temporary. He said everything he could think to say, for hours. Finally, he was silent. She refused to talk. She said they should wait a day or two. It was too fresh. It hurt too much. She had assumed she would see him every day forever, that he would get a job and stay in Lawrence, that he would be there always, to see, to talk to, and to touch.

She couldn't persuade him to stay. "I want to be by myself for a while," she said, and went home.

He called her when the usual time had passed, but there was no answer. He called several more times, at intervals. Around midnight he walked to the dorm, and when she didn't answer his knock on her door, he waited outside, on the steps. She materialized from the dark half an hour later.

"Where were you?" he asked. "I was worried."

"I went for a walk. Go home. I need to sleep. We've already talked too much."

"You have to be more careful," he said. "Walking at night -- "

"I'm not a little girl. I took care of my mother when she was dying, and I farmed and cooked and I mended my own clothes. I can take care of myself. I always have. I don't need your help, and I don't want your coddling. I may not know what life is like here, but I know what it's really like, more than you do. I helped birth cows. Sometimes I saved their lives. I helped butcher them, too. So don't worry about me. Now I'm tired, and I'm going to bed. I have classes in the morning."

When the alarm woke her, she wondered whether she needed to apologize, and decided that she didn't. She swung her feet to the floor and straightened her pajama top and looked at the calendar. She had always looked at the clock first, but not today. She counted how many days each month had, and how many were left in this month, mentally adding all the numbers to figure the days before next April. Less than three hundred. Very few.

She tried to maintain the pretense of not living together, but their time had a boundary now, and soon nearly everything she owned was at his place. Her things seemed to have migrated of their own will -- articles of clothing, books, had moved themselves somehow. Little remained in her room but her family photo and the ancient teddy bear and the papers stored in her desk.

There had been a trigger, and the first irritants started to appear, as Wyatt had predicted. He liked the dishes washed and stacked and dried in a certain order and fashion, and Ada did them a different way, and stored them in wrong places, because she was too short to reach the top shelves. He was a light sleeper and she sometimes woke him with a hand or foot. He ate a lot of meat; she was almost a vegetarian, except that she ate a lot of cheese and milk and eggs, none of which he liked. He threw his clothes on the floor and was annoyed when she picked them up and put them in the hamper, and further annoyed when she did his laundry, ruining two of his shirts by setting the heat too high. Worst of all, she liked to tidy and rearrange his apartment, and he would be unable to find his things. They had an argument, their first, about this, the pressure of the earlier annoyances having piled up. At least, they had as much of an argument as they could have when one person refuses to raise her voice. He gave up; the time for fighting would come, but why hurry it?

He was trying to show her what music meant to him. She might be more tolerant of a year's absence if she learned to feel music as he did. He thought he could educate her -- all that was needed was for her to get it, to hear the music. He was dragging her to concerts of every kind -- rock, folk, classical, even (though it was a long shot) jazz -- in the hope of finding a musical idiom that clicked with her. They were listening to a chamber music quartet tune up, waiting for the concert to begin when she asked, "Are we having what people call a love affair?"

"I guess so. Why?"

"I wondered, that's all. It sounds watered down."

"You have to call it something. Words are just handles. They're not the things, just the tags."

"But -- " She gestured toward her heart. "I want you to know how you make me feel. I feel so much. I can't explain. The words are all so -- inadequate, like 'love affair'. Calling this a love affair is like saying the sun is warm. It's meaningless. I can't describe the things you do to me. The language doesn't exist. I didn't even have any senses before I met you -- taste, sight, touch. There was nothing. Now it's all changed. The world is different, it's more vivid. Like being blind and having my sight restored. Like not knowing what color and shape and movement are, then seeing them for the first time, so much more real than anything I could have imagined. You brought me to life."

"No. You had more life than any woman I've ever met. I was a goner from the moment I started talking to you."

She leaned toward him and grasped his hand with both of hers. "Then don't leave. Stay here. This is too good, too wonderful to lose."

"We're not going to lose it. This is only for a year. A year isn't long."

"It's forever. It's three hundred sixty-five days of twenty-four hours each of sixty minutes of sixty seconds of longing. Of being without you. Of missing you. Of sleeping alone. Of not hearing your voice or touching your hand or face. Of not making love. Of missing you, every second, every minute, every hour, every week, every month, for twelve unending months."

"It's only a year."

"Is your band more important than us?"

"No, but I said I would. I've been friends with these guys for four years, and I write most of the lyrics and a lot of the melodies, and the keyboards are an important part of our sound. Anyway, this is how I want to make my living. When I was in third grade and my teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said 'musician'. That's all I've ever wanted. This is my chance. My only chance."

They had this conversation at first once a week, then twice a week, and by December nearly every day, getting better with practice. They learned to hurt each other without going too far. He learned not to say "only a year". She learned not to accuse him of selfishness, or to say that he was breaking faith with her. She learned not to plead her own needs, but to plead for their connectedness. The harder she pushed, though, the more resolutely he refused. She used his stubbornness as a pretext not to visit his family during Christmas, although she knew that fear of their rejection was at least as important.

"You won't stay with me," she said. "Why should I go with you?"

"Fine, don't," he yelled. "You've been manipulating me for months. Stay here by yourself. See if I care. Get caught in a snowstorm. Maybe a stranger will rescue you. Maybe he'll obey your every whim."

She picked up her books and walked out. She expected him to call and apologize before his flight the next day, but he didn't. She remained in the dorm, among the few other foreign students, intending not to use the key to his apartment. The dorm and its narrow confines would do, as they had before she'd known him. Besides, his apartment without him in it would only remind her of what she was losing.

He called her as soon as he arrived, a short call because the distance made it expensive and his father told him to keep it brief. Ada apologized; she should have gone. She sat with her hand on the phone after they'd finished, trying to understand the odd feeling in her chest. Ah! It was only her old familiar, loneliness, come to visit again.

Wyatt returned early, on the twenty-eighth, and went straight to her dorm, his bag in his hand, without stopping at his own place. She opened the door, wondering who could be knocking, and he kissed her while her hand was still on the knob. He unbuttoned her shirt and reached around back and undid her bra and pulled it down and started kissing her breasts. She held his head with her hands and moaned. They were standing in the door of her room, visible to anyone who might walk by. They sank to the floor. He fumbled with the snap on her jeans and pulled the jeans down and reached into her panties and thrust a finger up her vagina, hearing her say "Oh -- oh -- oh". He bumped a foot on the threshold.

"Get in the room," he commanded.

She pushed with her feet, squirming away from the door, and kicked off her sandals, one of them flying into the hall, then pulled off her jeans and panties, not bothering with the shirt or bra or socks. Wyatt threw his bag into the room; it knocked a lamp to the floor and broke the bulb. He pulled his jeans and underwear down and elbowed the door shut and knelt with his knees between hers and plunged into her. He came in less than a minute, and groaned.

She opened her eyes. "What's wrong?"

"I must have been overexcited. I never thought that could happen."

"Neither did I." She laughed. "It's different. Not like it usually is."

"Too bad. You didn't get yours."

"I don't care."

He started to pull away.

She held him to her with her hands on the small of his back. "No. Wait. Where are you going? Stay there."

But the floor hurt his knees, so she let him up and they took off the rest of their clothing and got in her narrow bed.

"We should go to my place," he said. "This bed is too small. Besides, they'll kick you out of school if they catch us."

"Not yet," she said. "Soon. Put your arms around me for a while. Tell me about your trip."

"It wasn't what you'd call successful. I sort of moped around," he said. "My family got annoyed. Then I said I was coming back early and my dad was pissed. Pissed. We haven't had a fight like that in years. I thought he was going to punch me out. I don't care. I'm graduating. I don't need his money anymore." He went on talking. She watched him, not listening, only looking at his face, her upper leg thrown over his, her hands against his chest.

Later they went out to eat at a diner and talked about the people there, all of whom looked like they had nowhere better to go, and made up stories about them. He rambled. She watched him, and listened to the preposterous things he was imagining about the other patrons, while she wondered how it was possible to love him so deeply and to feel as close to him as if he were all through her bloodstream, and yet -- how could he not know how she felt? How could he not understand what his leaving would do to her? Why was he abandoning her?