Could have sworn, the eye-sockets had glared merrily at her.

“Is good? Is — surprise? ‘Happy Halloween’ — is right?”

Was it Halloween? Hadley was sure it was not. October thirty-first wasn’t for another several days.

“Is for you — Hedley. To set here.”

Flush-faced now and smiling in his shyly aggressive manner that was a plea for her, the rich American woman, to laugh at him, and with him; to laugh in the spontaneous way in which Americans laughed together, mysteriously bonded in their crude American humor. On his angular face and in his stiff-wiry hair that receded sharply from his forehead were bits of pumpkin-flesh and seeds at which Anton wiped, surreptitiously, like a boy whose nose is running, wiping at his nose. Hadley thought If he kisses me he will smell of pumpkin.

Her husband had died and abandoned her. Now, other men would drop by the house.

Anton presented Hadley with the misshapen pumpkin. The damned thing must have weighed fifteen pounds. Almost, it slipped from her hands. Hadley thought it would have served Anton Kruppe right if she’d dropped the pumpkin and it smashed on the brick. No doubt, he’d have offered to clean it up, then.

“Anton, thank you! This is very…”

Their hands brushed together. Anton was standing close beside her. He was several inches taller than Hadley though his posture was slouched, his back prematurely rounded. Perhaps there was something wrong with his spine. And he breathed quickly, audibly — as if he’d been running. As if he were about to declare something — then thought better of it.

At the organic food and gardening co-op where Hadley had once shopped frequently, when she’d prepared elaborate meals for herself and her husband, and now only shopped from time to time, tall lanky Anton Kruppe had appeared perhaps a year ago. He’d always been alert and attentive to her — the co-op manager addressed her as Mrs.