"Oh, Roger," she murmured disconsolately, but she lifted her glass and touched his. She sipped the heady red Pinot Noire, feeling it slide smoothly down her throat to warmly comfort her knotted stomach. She sipped again without thinking and then again… before she had realized it, Roger was refilling her empty glass.

Miriam moved on the blanket so that she could rest her chin upon her drawn-up knees and lean dreamily against his chest. She wanted to let him know she was having fun and was pleased to be here with him, and for a short while they sat in silent pleasure, Buck on the other side of her as quiet as his master. She savored the sweet-smelling fragrance of the air and the featherish rustlings of the surrounding glade as a gentle breeze stirred the foliage. Above her, there was nothing in the sky except a dipping, caroling bluejay. Lazily she listened to the gurgling sounds of water over the rocks in the stream bed a few feet away… The deliciously dulling illusion of liquor pervaded her worry clouded mind as she continued sipping the wine in her hand. She was glad to be here with Roger in this almost idyllic paradise. The last time she had been in the mountains with a man had been on her honeymoon ten years ago with Gregory Dodge, high in the Catskills, and that had turned into a hell on earth…

She couldn't stop her thoughts from returning to that time so long ago, in spite of the fact that these memories were painful enough to make her outwardly wince. Miriam's mother had warned her about sex all during her formative years, instilling in her the warped fallacy that all men are nasty and brutish, and the result had been a sad farce of marital bliss. The wedding night had been one of stark terror for her as for the first time she'd seen a man's penis. Unlike the small non-violent appearing organs she had seen on younger boys in her childhood, the turgid, blood-filled shaft which had stuck menacingly out from the much older man's plump white belly had made her cower under the covers and whimper with abject fear.