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A woman reclined in a yellow Adirondack chair with a back like a tongue depressor, watching the sun go down over the Vermont mountains. Summer was almost done. She looked out across the fields washed in orange light and saw herself in the third person, looking out across the fields washed in orange light. She tried to think of a way to describe the sound of the insects. The writer approached her from the side. She spotted him in her periphery and straightened her posture. Her heart quickened. She had been willing this moment, writing it out in her mind already, so it didn't come as a surprise when he asked her if she'd seen the creek.

She tried to think of a witty way to say no.

— No.

— Let's go, he said, handing her a peach. She bit into the fruit. It was mealy but because she liked the idea of the writer watching her eat it she pretended it was ripe. She wondered with sweet unease if her mouth would taste of peaches, if he had been with a black woman before, if

she would appear in one of his stories.

They were at a writing conference in a former ski lodge. Each day was apportioned into a rigid schedule of workshops and readings and master classes on craft. In attendance were famous writers, less famous writers and people who aspired to be writers — people who had paid handsomely to be in the midst of writers. These people wanted to be published with a sickening desperation, and sometimes, when he was drunk enough in the evenings before the fieldstone fireplace in the Barn, the writer told them what he really thought of their work. It was kinder to be cruel, of course, but it wasn't the kindness he enjoyed.

Oh to be bad! To be devilishly bad! When he was a boy he wanted to be a boxer, a bank robber, a bullfighter. Later he wanted to be Hemingway. But now he was fifty and fat in the middle — midlist, midlife. This young woman was half his age and the only black woman there. He noticed her. She had read all of his novels, even the ones that were painfully dated and out of print. She had hunted out his titles in dusty remainder bins. She wanted to be a writer. Not a black writer, but a writer. Not a female writer, but a writer. He told her he understood; he thought her writing was very, very good.

They struck out for the woods across a shaggy field of wasting hay. The hay was blonde and damp and clung to their shoes. He lamented that it would not go to feed any animals.

— So this field was plowed for beauty? she asked.

— Yes, he scoffed. — For the view of the sunset it affords the writers.

— The cicadas sound like a hundred and six tin wind-up toys going all at once, she said.

— You're right, he smiled. — You're exactly right.

They approached the motionless forest, each of them seeing the scene from behind, framed at a great distance. The sunset bled across the top of the picture. They saw themselves as characters about to do something dangerous,

but the plot was the writer's design. At the tree line, his voice deepened.

— Hey, beautiful, he said.

She became beautiful. He had that much power. She thought he did, so he did. He touched her cheek. She smiled. — 'This is the forest primeval,' he said.

Hand in hand, they descended the cool dark trail.

She noticed the lichen, the various mosses, and the white fungi sprouting through the rotting leaves of the forest floor. She noticed the trees: maple, birch, ash. She noticed the tracks of a fox in the mud. She noticed the writer's gold wedding band.

— 'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,' she said, though there was no fork in the path they were on. It led to the water and stopped.

At the creek, the dying sun was reflecting itself, glinting itself over rocks and dappling through the branches. The creek was clear and swollen with the summer rains. He pulled her to his chest there by the waterside.

— I can feel your beautiful heart beating, he lied.

— I can feel yours, she lied.

Oh, to be bad! She believed she enjoyed being in the writer's arms. When he leaned in to kiss her, she did and didn't want his lips on hers. Her eyes remained open. There was something ridiculous about his face at this perspective. His pores and the gray stubble sticking out of them; the red network of capillaries around his nostrils and his slightly unpleasant breath. She closed her eyes and thought of the author photo on the back flap of his big book — the one that won the Pulitzer, the one about his retarded son. Still, his tongue was unwelcome in her mouth. Not what she expected. A fish. A slab of meat. Disquieted, she bit his lower lip.

— Can I have my lip back? he joked.

— Can I have my dignity back? she joked.

They were both pleased by this dialogue.