The Remedy for Love: A Novel by Bill Roorbach

shipboard ensign, three as adjutant spokesperson and analyst on environmental matters at a time when the chiefs of staff wanted real reform, safely between the two Gulf wars. And good things had happened, lots of good policy shifts of which he was part, acknowledgment of global warming, for one thing, a series of desk jobs, all compensated. But he didn’t say any of that, only shrugged.
    She didn’t care, said, “Let’s have a look.” She marched to the front door, the one door, pulled it open to a shocking wall of snow, no opening at all, a perfect print of the door with its cross-bracing and big hinges. She punched the top of the drift and made an opening to heavy wind. A plume of dense snow blew in and then a cascade of fine snow off the roof, like two storms. She punched again and broke the opening wider, just more weather to let in, more night. She thrust her face into the wind. Then she shuddered, shoved the door shut, leaned into it, forced the wood-and-leather latch closed with a few punches of her tight little fist.
    “Navy,” she said disheartened.

Nine
    ERIC MADE HIS famous pizza dough: flour and cold water, salt, couple tablespoons of the good Tuscan olive oil, two teaspoons yeast, very simple. He liked to cook and, like a lot of people in Woodchurch, where there were no real restaurants, he had gotten pretty good at it during his time with Alison, constant dinner parties. The old cabin stove had a smooth firebrick floor to it and you could move coals around the oven compartment wherever needed, make room for a pizza, perfect. He fed logs and sticks in, gradually brought the temperature up to very hot—pretty pleasant in the snow-swept interior of the cabin. The stovepipe rattled and creaked and pinged with the snow and ice flying into it above the roofline, but no danger of its falling—it had been beautifully installed, someone with great skill, also time on his hands, 1930s no doubt, the last era like this one. The cabin that had seemed so rustic seemed more sophisticated suddenly, craftsmanship and materials better than any you’d find in many a contemporary house.
    Danielle was into a second hour of a nap up in her loft, had climbed the ladder in a huff after yet another discussion of Eric’s motives, which, interrogating himself repeatedly, he still found benign: she was a puzzle and interesting to him in the way of puzzles, but he felt no further attraction to her, romantic or otherwise, and of course nothing of the violence she seemed to imply. She didn’t know him. She only knew assholes. She was married and furious and her hair had been rudely chopped off and that was that. But more than a puzzle, a kind of story problem, that intelligence lurking, the fineness back there in her eyes. Something he could do: dedicate the evening to showing her that they could be friends, that in the months or even years to come, he could look the Army Ranger in the eye, shake his hand, be his friend, too. That there were people willing to help you, and no strings attached. If he was anything, he was a guy who wanted to try and help get things sorted out.
    Shit, the tomatoes. The tomatoes were at home, last produce of his neighbor’s garden. He pictured them on the kitchen windowsill in sun, carefully ripened post-season and ready for saucing, saved for Alison. Quietly as he could, he searched Danielle’s cabinets for tomato paste, tomato puree, canned tomato sauce, anything. But no. He thought a while, things he and Alison had eaten in Italy, remembered all the various pesti they’d encountered, few to do with basil. Breakup sex. And here he’d thought it was get-back-together sex. What did he know? He had bought kale, and so he fished it out of one of the bags, washed a couple of the big leaves as best he could in the bucket of river water, borrowed a smooth river stone someone had long since put on the windowsill, mashed up the green right on the butcher-block table, mashed in garlic and olive oil and