Free Impulse by Frederick Ramsay Page A

puzzles that had her stumped before ten in the morning were a breeze after two in the afternoon. She relegated non-mental tasks to mornings—gardening, laundry, and so on. Her late husband thought the whole notion silly. He had been one of those early risers who didn’t require an alarm clock to bounce out of bed at five-thirty. He’d be showered, dressed, and out the door about the time she began to have the first inklings that a world existed on the other side of her closed eyelids.
    The front page of The Sun carried the same depressing news it had the day before. Shootings, terrorists, political corruption. Nothing changed. She tried to remember if it had always been that way. She didn’t think so. Years ago, crime and violence seemed far away. They never locked their doors and left the car keys in the ignition. She frowned.
    You sound like an old lady.
    “We’ve had this conversation once already. Leave me alone.”
    Her thoughts drifted, to Scott, to another, gentler age, and finally to Frank Smith.
    He’s a man with a lot of hurt.
    “I suppose so. Is that why I’m feeling this way?”
    It doesn’t matter why you feel that way. Carpe diem .
    “Oh please, I’m not some thirty-something, perky breasted, one-hundred-twenty-pound career woman. I’m old and subject to the laws of gravity. I can’t just move in and out of relationships depending on the state of my hormones. I don’t even have hormones.”
    Right. You’re an old bag ready for the scrap heap. Come on, the buzz on the street is fifty is the new thirty, so what does that make you, forty?
    “That is horse hockey. Boomers, unwilling to admit they’re getting old, are in mass denial. They think they drank from the fountain of youth at Woodstock. But when the cartilage disappears from their knees and arthritis kicks in, they’ll give up that nonsense and pay attention to what their body is trying to tell them. So, I’m not young and people my age just don’t…whatever.”
    Where is it written that people in their “golden years’”aren’t allowed to fall in love, have sex, or enjoy themselves?
    “That’s not what I was thinking about.”
    Yes it was, you hussy. Stop feeling guilty and go for it.
    “Go for it? Go for what?”
    Should she? Could she? Well, why not?

Chapter Eleven
    Later, Frank would compare the evening’s events to four cars speeding toward each other at an intersection, none aware of the other’s approach. When they met, the collision would be spectacular. He admitted the simile contained more hyperbole than truth, and the events he found so spectacular would seem ordinary to anyone not intimately involved with what followed. As it turned out, there would be five players involved in the collision, but he didn’t like the image of a five cornered intersection, and besides, Darnell played only a minor role. Nevertheless, for the families of four missing boys and a few members of the Scott Academy faculty, the cocktail party set in motion a series of actions and reactions that would forever change their lives.
    Guests started arriving shortly before six. Alumni, alumnae, wives, and husbands dressed in blazers and slacks or cocktail dresses flowed out of parking lots and along the Academy’s brick walkways like bright flower petals bobbing downstream. A large green and white striped tent, set up with tables, two bars, and the aroma from an extensive buffet, drew them inexorably with its promise of refreshment and fellowship.
    Frank calculated the time the round trip back to Baltimore would take—too long and not worth the trouble. Instead, he’d brought a fresh shirt and electric razor, and, borrowing one of the school’s soap-scented washrooms, freshened up and changed. The marquee was nearly empty when he entered; no waiting at the bar and a free run at the buffet, two activities that would become increasingly difficult as the evening progressed and more guests crowded under its green and white stripes. Newcomers, for