Free For Love of Audrey Rose by Frank De Felitta

grounds. They slipped under the wooden fence and walked up the long, hard meadow toward the crest of the hill, holding hands. A bitter wind blew into their faces; Janice wrapped her sweater around her throat, but Bill faced the dark, rolling clouds with only a white shirt, his sweater tucked into his belt, until they crested the hill.
    Down below, Ossining was tucked into a series of hollows, dull gray trucks groveling up narrow roads, and a bank of century-old warehouses beyond a clump of nearly denuded trees.
    Bill’s hand reached for hers and squeezed slowly, sadly. He smiled—a smile of deep, bitter resignation. He pulled her down slowly onto the blanket he had spread under two intertwined oak trees, shielded from the wind. They looked back down the brittle stalks of dead grass to where the clinic occupied a flat space beyond the fences.
    “I love you, Janice,” Bill whispered, and kissed her gently on the lips.
    “And I love you, Bill.”
    Janice caressed his forehead, and, to her surprise, it was beaded with perspiration despite the chill wind. Bill leaned forward suddenly and began unpacking the wicker basket.
    “I’m starving,” he exclaimed. “You must be famished. Hey—I forgot the silverware. No, here it is! Good old Bill—finally wired together.”
    “Beaujolais!” Janice exclaimed. “Where did you get this?”
    “Geddes,” Bill said, brightening. “He got it for me in Ossining. Great man, Geddes.”
    “Delicious!” she said, biting into a chicken sandwich.
    Janice poured the Beaujolais into two metal cups. They drank slowly, looking into one another’s eyes.
    Then Bill poured another cup. He held it up to make a toast.
    “I was going to say—to Ivy,” he said uncertainly, “but, well, to our next Ivy—whoever she is—or he is.”
    “To us, Bill. To you and to me and to our being together all over again.”
    The second cup warmed them more than the first. Bill replenished the cups, and soon the wind blew in vain against the oak trees. The rain fell in long slants far away over the town, almost as though a hand of God had torn the underbelly of a ragged blue cloud and dragged it downward, releasing its pent-up tons of water.
    “I feel a little nervous,” Bill confessed. “Sometimes I know I say things a little abruptly. You have to forgive me.”
    “Of course I do, darling.”
    “Thank you, Janice. If you only knew what I’ve been through, where I’ve been down deep inside. Hey, did you bring me any books?”
    “Of course,” Janice said, crawling toward her bag. “I’d almost forgotten. I brought you a whole library.”
    Janice reached in and dumped a handful of volumes beside her plate. Bill picked up several. He examined the titles.
    “Twelfth Night?”
he asked.
    “It’s Shakespeare. It’s about the varieties of love.”
    “Sounds good and racy. What’s this?
Sonnets from the Portuguese?
”
    “Elizabeth Barrett Browning.”
    Bill laughed.
    “You always were trying to get me to like her. What about that blue one?”
    “Where?”
    “By the picnic basket.”
    Janice hesitated. Slowly she picked it up, opened a few pages. Then she closed it again.
    “Maybe I shouldn’t have brought this one,” she said.
    “Why not?”
    Janice hesitated once more, then leaned closer to Bill.
    “It was given to me by—” she began.
    “Please,” he said. “Just read.”
    Searching for the most comprehensible passage, Janice paged backward and forward through the thin volume. At last, and with misgivings, she began.
    “‘If someone were to strike at the root of a large tree, it would bleed sap, but live. If he were to strike at its trunk, it would bleed sap, but live. If he were to strike at the topmost leaves, it would bleed sap, but live. Pervaded by the living substance, the tree would stand firm, drinking nourishment from the earth and the sun. Therefore, know this, that the body withers and yet the substance never dies.’”
    Bill smiled.
    “That’s like old