Across Charles Street, not waiting for the light because there was no traffic, we moved uphill gently, across the Common, angling toward Boylston
Street where an all-night diner served things like pie, and coffee in thick white mugs with cream and sugar. The winding walkways that bent through the
Common were shiny with rain, and the unleaved trees glistened blackly.
Around the lamps there formed a dim halo of mist that softened the light and made it elegant. To our left Beacon Street went up the hill to the
State House, its gold dome lit and visible from everywhere, its Bulfinch frontpretending that what went on inside were matters of gravity and portent. The wind that had, in the late afternoon, slanted the rain in hard as I left police headquarters, had died with the daylight, and the rain, softer now, came down in near perfect silence.
There were no pigeons about the Common at this hour, no squirrels. There was a fragrant bum sleeping on one of the benches under some tented card board which shed most of the rain. And, further along, several others slept, or at least lay still, wrapped in quilts and sleeping bags and newspapers.
"Are you in a pie reverie?" Susan said.
"Cherry," I said. "Blueberry, apricot."
"No apple?"
"Rarely do they make good apple pie," I said. "Usually they don't cook the apples enough, and sometimes, too often, they leave, yuk, some of the core in there. Cherry is my favorite."
"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 planning on pie?" I said.
"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.