Dante: “Remember tonight . . . for it is the beginning of always.

In this age of weather satellites and Internet they should have known better. Predictions
of overcast skies and slight rain for late June were as clear as noon-day. Yet they decided
to spend a week on the shores of this sparsely visited, silent lake in the foothills of the
Berkshires. But we cannot see into the minds of others. How could we when so often we
don’t even know what’s going on in our own.

He sat in the small hotel lobby -- waiting for her to finish her morning beautification --
listening to a grey-haired man noodling Cole Porter’s “I love Paris” on an out-of-tune
antique upright, meant, no doubt, for decoration only.

Finally . . . a slow tap-tap of heels announces her arrival as she carefully negotiates the
winding, squeaky wooden stairs -- Oh, no! She starts to sing:

“I love Paris in the winter, when it drizzles . . .”

The tone-deaf lady wears a tight-fitting, blue-striped summer dress that unfortunately
emphasizes her slim feminine endowments. The red coral necklace barely balances the
overall negative effect.

He suppresses his disapproving cynicism (“Come on now, she always does what you
want!”) and displays admiration.

No less artfulness is her cheerful, “ready-for-any-adventure” demeanor. “There he is, the

man of my dreams,” her teeming neurons murmur behind a steep forehead, partially
covered by precisely distributed bangs of thin brown hair, “the arithmetic average
between the Terminator and the hunchback of Notre Dame. Backup plan! Carry on! OK,
with that receding hairline -- backup for the backup.”

“Breakfast?”

“Yes.”

They eat; drink several cups of coffee while reading the paper, exchanging sections.

What to do on this last rainy day? Swimming or canoeing is out of question. Having
brought her easel, brushes, and paints, she could “create” on the covered terrace or in
their room. But if she gave in to her passion as she did a few days ago, he would become
restless again, dragging around books that evidently failed to capture his interest.

They decide to drive back to the small town a couple of miles away. This will be the third
visit but what the heck? Living in New York City made both of them fond of quaint,
clean, polite stores with incredibly low prices.

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She was a statistician at the New York Port Authority, and he, a certified accountant,
worked for a Wall Street investment firm. The mutual acquaintance who introduced them
nearly two months ago strongly suspected that they were a perfect match.

The sun came out while they rummaged around in the small town’s “brick and mortar”
bookstore (old fashioned bell above the door). Without any warning, the afternoon turned
into high summer, skin-burning, windless.

They sat under an umbrella on the terrace of a pastry shop, enjoying homemade ice
cream. The acknowledgment that tomorrow, Sunday, they must drive back and get ready
to rejoin life on the payroll, made them nostalgic for the time that had slipped through
their fingers. They listened to each other with enhanced intensity, like army buddies
before a combat.

She told him about her younger sister’s wedding, which took place shortly before they
met.

“Sis tried to throw the bouquet to me. It was obvious. Everybody noticed how she
marked my place before turning. But another bridesmaid caught it. Anyway, who
believes in such urban legends, stupid superstitions, right? Guess what! She got engaged
last week.”

He detected a trace of sadness in her voice, feeling some disquietude that she might have
developed matrimonial expectations towards him. At the age of 40, he knew very well
that a woman close to 30, still living with her parents, must have anxieties; the biological
clock and all that. He vividly recalled how her face brightened up when someone referred
to him as “your husband” the last time they were here.

It’s time to plunge back into the swirling cauldron of Manhattan. There is no better
antidote to airy hopes than quick-paced, purposeful activity.

Eager to refresh the spirit of carefree self-abandon in which they have embarked on this
mini-vacation, he told her the story that circulated in his office (two years ago -- but she
didn’t need to know that.)

An elderly couple, way into their sixties, had enjoyed a long happy marriage. Children
gone, near retirement, they didn’t know what to do with their free time and ended up
becoming avid movie buffs. They went to cinemas around town and rented dozens of
DVDs. After a while, the man developed a weird idiosyncrasy. Every time they saw a
beautiful actress on the silver screen, he had erotic dreams about her; and, to whom else
should he tell the details, if not to his wife?

“The poor woman heard about wild escapades with Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Lopez, Zoe
Saldana, Lucy Liu, Pamela Anderson, and so on. How charming they were, what they did
all night and how totally they were conquered by him. She felt deeply hurt and decided to
take revenge. She struck up an affair with an old family friend, a married man. The jig

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didn’t last long. The man’s wife sniffed out what was going on and the liaison was
exposed. When the serial lover of Hollywood stars leveled the age-old question “Why?”
at his wife, he was flabbergasted to find out that it was supposedly he who had broken the
marriage. She only retaliated. The woman evidently equated her husband’s dreams with
full-fledged extramarital indiscretions.”

She laughed, of course, but doubted the cheating wife’s story. “It’s a ridiculously poor
excuse for totally inexcusable behavior. Sorry for asseverating but I was brought up to
believe that wedlock is a holy union and no matter what happens in life nothing should
change that . . .”

They headed back to the hotel in a good mood; driving through the country with windows
rolled down, filling their lungs with the chlorophyll exhalations of the late afternoon.

Then, as if caring nature wanted to delight them, the setting sun flushed the land around
the narrow road in orange red, making the windowpanes of a two-story mansion
scintillate in the distance -- a mesmerizing, fairytale-like vision witnessed from within.

“Now you wish you had your paints and brushes.”

“I know,” she said, well aware of how much he admired her landscapes.

During dinner, the waitress told them with a wink that there was full moon.

They spent a few hours in their room where a vague sense of sacrilege for using her as a
mere sex object began to trouble him. An undirected, nonspecific jealousy that the
woman’s tenderness awakens in men took hold of him. It only added to his end-of-
vacation anxiety.

Not wanting to sleep, they walked out into the night.

There it was the flared bell-glass indeed, waxed as far as it could, dressing the lake, the
tree branches in silver haze. Even the weather-torn wooden bench, upon which they sat,
turned into altar-quality Carrera marble.

Long silence gave birth to festive melancholy. Since it was fathered by solitude -- that
certain notorious, transcendental kind which lies likes a drunkard in the dark gutters of
consciousness -- it was a sad slip, torpid and frozen.

But the moon in its fullness never leaves things alone. By pitching exalted will against
the fear of losing out on one thing or another, it is a powerful prod to accelerate
transition; in his case to finding deliverance in everlasting friendship, indulgence,
unfailing comfort . . . the opportunity to pass on his genes.

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Observing her keenly in the lunar glow, he noticed for the first time how inviting her
drowsy eyes and slightly swollen lips were. What an exquisitely exciting, charming,
elegant, dependable, talented woman! What a winning personality! What comprehension!

A flash of dull pain at the thought of separating from her.

How many billions of times did this happen before, yet it is still a unique event, a
miracle, a total surprise!

Without a trace of forced nonchalance, in the world’s most natural tone that originates in
the throat -- he proposed to her.

For a moment or two she was stunned, looking more like a bank teller who had just been
handed a note than Juliet on the balcony. But a shiver made her recognize fate and all her
reservations along with a reflex-like suspicion quickly transfigured into muted ardor for
this very special man in whom strengths and weaknesses found such an attractive
balance.

They stood up and he embraced her protectively as if her frailness had been his own.

“I want you to be my woman forever!” he said softly.

“I know,” she whispered.

And the air became filled with jubilance.