Merrion said. "Sure you do. You've been here for a long time. Close to thirty years by now, or so, pretty close to it. If you and Walter weren't together when I first came to the court here, I know he was, and you must've gotten here pretty soon after that. Because I've been in that courthouse now for about thirty years, and, I'm not saying that you're old, now, but you've been here a long time."
She laughed. "It's just dawned on you, hasn't it?" she said. "Just hitting you now. I can see you thinking it. "My God, what the hell've I done? I've been to bed with an older woman. She's practically old enough to be my mother."
"Oh boy," he said. "Diane, I hate to tell you this, but the fact of the matter is: you're wrong, very wrong. Women that I've always hung around with've generally been about my age, within three or four years of how old I am. Don't get me mixed up with my friend. I haven't hung around the schoolyard since I got out of school. I'm actually a very nice guy."
She said "Oh." She sat down at the table in the kitchen opposite him and gazed at him for a while and then she frowned and looked at her hands and said: "No, I know that. Or else I don't know that. Oh, I don't know what I know." She looked up at him again. "I didn't mean for this to happen," she said.
"But you just said…" he said.
"I know what I said," she said.
"Well, now I'm confused," he said. "First you said it was important to you and that now we've slept together, we have to get things straight and have some rules, and that was fine with me. And now you're telling me instead it's something else. A mistake or something."
"Amby," she said, 'before Walter died, I'd seen you a lot but I didn't really know you very well. I'd never really thought about you as my friend; whether you were someone I knew and trusted, and wanted to have as my friend; only about you as one of Walter's friends. When Walter died; after the shock wore off and I'd started to get my bearings and so forth, well, I certainly hoped sex would be a part of my life again I'm a normal, healthy, adult woman -but I didn't really expect… I didn't know, I didn't have anyone in mind. I didn't have any idea, who it would be with. That I'd be with in this new part of my life.
"But I have to be honest with you: I didn't think it would be you. Now don't be hurt; I didn't think it wouldn't be you, either. You were never; it was never part of my plan, not that I had any plan, really, but… I don't know what I mean here. To get involved with you. As lovers, I mean."
"Why not?" he said.
"Now you are hurt," she said, 'and I didn't mean that to happen either.
It's just that you and the people you know and the life you've always led, you were someone who was completely different from Walter. Whether you knew it or not, you were sort of a romantic hero to Walter. Do you understand what I'm saying? Walter was exactly what he looked like: a small-town, small-business, family man. His whole world was family, and the business that his family'd started, and the small towns where the family lived and knew the people, ran the business. His whole life was in the Four Towns; it always had been he liked it that way.
"It was how I liked it, too. I'd grown up in a settled environment in Minneapolis, a very conventional family. But once I went to Madison to go to college that phase for me was over. I became rootless. I had adventures, I guess you could say, and I enjoyed them. But after some years I began to worry. I didn't have any base of my own. So Walter's Four Towns were nice for me to come back to, an orderly world where people stayed in the same place and you could depend on them. Not the same world but the kind of world I'd grown up in. I don't think I'd ever been really afraid before that, uneasy, maybe, but with Walter I felt safe again. He was an utterly settled man. When I was with him I knew everything was going to be all right. I never dreamed he'd die so soon.
"He admired you. You, and as much as he fought with him all the time, Danny. When Mercy kicked him out last year, he was the only person I know, man or woman except, I'm assuming, you who was on Danny's side.
The two of us had some sharp words over that. In a way you two were Walter's imaginary friends. You and Danny lived around here just like he did; you moved in the same world and you acted like everyone else, but you were also different. You were pirates. He liked his life all right, but it was quiet; there was action in the lives you two were living they were exciting: You were in politics.
