Free You Lost Me There by Rosecrans Baldwin Page B

Willis?”
    How did she know?
    “People here get hung up on not caring about their looks,” Regina said. She leaned on the railing. “It’s like everyone’s deciduous. No one knows how the island repopulates itself.”
    Past the lawn, the ocean stewed under the moon, crashing with foam like magnesium bursts. “Maybe,” I said, “it’s because there’s no sex ed in the schools.”
    “Maybe it’s because there’s no one to have sex with.”
    “Maybe it’s just too cold.”
    Now she laughed, a surprisingly sincere laugh, and I felt as if I’d won a prize. I’d never seen anyone like Regina. She wore a black crepe dress and gold shoes, and spoke on the cusp of sneering with a hushed, deep voice. Big legs, broad shoulders, painted lips. Aware of her effects, but not quite in control. Probably too much for boys her age.
    Next to the kitchen was an empty sitting room full of plants. We sat on a love seat. Regina told me about her undergraduate years in Ann Arbor writing poetry and organic chemistry papers. Her parents had been free spirits, both trained as biologists but practicing as hippie farmers. They took family trips from Michigan to study marine life in Florida, one summer joining an archaeological dig in Montana. After graduating from college, Regina spent two years working for a pharmaceutical company outside Boston, and then moved to Maine to work at Soborg.
    “Now everyone I meet wants to play country bumpkin, to try their hand at the plow. And I want to join the Velvet Underground.”
    “Then why here, of all places?” I asked. I had a hard time picturing her in Bar Harbor during the busy months, never mind the winter, when the island emptied out, when the passes filled with chest-high snow, and the forests were more congested than the towns.
    “Well, the work.” As though this were a stupid question. “Soborg’s not exactly bush league. Do you know how many people applied for my position?”
    “But you’ll do your Ph.D. somewhere else.”
    “Sure, I’m hoping for Michigan. I mean, I love the work, I just don’t know if it’s my life’s ruling passion. Maybe I’ll make out for Broadway. You know I played Ophelia once; I still remember the lines.”
    She laughed at herself, and then her eyes lit up; she turned toward me, pulled her feet underneath her, and asked about my favorite movies. I mentioned The Blue Dahlia . She slapped me lightly on the leg.
    “Come on, you’re lying.”
    “Why would I lie?”
    “Whatever, it’s one of my favorites, too. George Marshall? Veronica Lake?”
    “No, you’re teasing,” I said. “You’re too young to appreciate it.”
    “I’m not so young.”
    Twenty minutes later, Regina stood up, smoothed her dress with both hands, and excused herself. “E-mail me sometime. Or don’t.” She smiled. She pronounced, “Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.”
    Decisions have multiple origins, neurologically. If we used only our brain’s rational side, we’d analyze without stopping, dissect our options into ever smaller pieces, and follow out their logical options, step by step, until we were so distant from the original impulse that we’d forget why we began. Without our emotional voices, without the gut, without sentimental gales and whatever mute instinct governed (or not so mute, considering the loudness of hunger, a sex drive’s roaring static), there’d be only dithering.
    I spent the weekend composing a letter in my head. I found Regina’s e-mail address in the Soborg directory. I e-mailed her Friday morning, a week later, surely too late. Dear Miss Bellette . I wrote that I had enjoyed our meeting. Perhaps we could have coffee sometime in the Soborg cafeteria. Or not. Yours sincerely, Victor Aaron.
    She responded after lunch.
    Try again. Write this. Dear La Loulou, I’ll be by at five, see you then.
    I laughed from shock. I read it and couldn’t believe what I was reading. I sat back, then lurched forward and did as she commanded. I