She pulled me inside and kissed me hard. A minute later we were upstairs, in the same bedroom. We went slowly this time. She took the handkerchief off her head and shook her hair. I ran my hands up her rib cage, caressing the soft flesh beneath her breasts. She closed her eyes.

She grabbed my hands as she moved against me. She worked at it harder and harder, all the while biting her lower lip. She looked at me once and then closed her eyes again. A great shudder ran through her body. Then she collapsed against me and whispered in my ear. “Oh God,” she said. “What are you trying to do to me?”

We lay there without talking for a long time, as the sun went down and the light coming through the curtains changed the color in the room. It was the kind of light that usually makes you feel a little sad and tired, the light of a midwinter day that ends too quickly, with spring a long time away. But on this day it felt different.

“What’s this from?” I said, running my finger along her eyebrow. I hadn’t seen the scars on her face the first time, not in the dim light of New Year’s Eve.

“Hockey, what else? I caught a stick there. Fourteen stitches.”

“And here, too?” I touched the long line on her chin.

“I took a dive on the ice. Seventeen stitches.”

“Don’t they wear face guards up here?”

“In college you have to,” she said. “But not out on the lakes. Face guards are for pussies. And Americans.”

We rolled around a couple of times over that one. Then she got up and put her sweats back on. I couldn’t help thinking, what kind of woman invites a man over and doesn’t do anything to get fixed up? Maybe the kind who at the last moment was hoping nothing would happen between them? If that was it, her resolution lasted all of three seconds. Hell if I knew.

She served me her beef stew at the big dining room table, under the antique light with the five glowing lanterns. When she sat down across from me, I finally got her story. It’s funny how you can distill your whole life down to a few minutes, telling it like it had a plot and a theme and a moral at the end. Or at least what will pass for a moral for the time being, until your whole life story is done.