Open Season by Archer Mayor Page B

only reason I might have interrupted my monk-like solitude and scrambled Spam.
    One of Brattleboro’s peculiarities is that it has become a retirement village for sixties flower children—“trust-fund hippies” and “granolaheads,” as we used to call them. Initially flocking to locally resented communes, attracted no doubt by the quaint woodsiness of the state, this vanguard of “creeping vegetarianism”—to quote one alarmed member of the Holstein Association—gradually grew older, cut its hair and, with values mostly intact, joined the homegrown establishment. The result was a leavening of the town, setting it apart from other has-been industrial centers. Mixed in with the beer dives and neocowboy bars were health food stores and vegetarian restaurants. Kids named Sheela, Alayna, and Charity ran up and down the streets, while their parents became business leaders and declared Brattleboro a nuclear-free zone. My fondness for this crowd wasn’t based on any Berkeley-born nostalgia, however. It was firmly attached instead to one of its leading citizens.
    Gail Zigman had followed the above recipe word for word, arriving in Marlboro, near Brattleboro, in the mid-sixties to join a commune. Long-haired, free-loving, pot-smoking, and more involved in the lives around her than I’d ever been at her age, she eventually tired of communal life, moved into town and went through the gentle and predictable transformation from antiestablishment outsider to successful Realtor and selectman. She was also on every committee possible, from day-care to arts council to Ban-the-Bomb. She and I had been lovers for the past several years.
    For two people supposedly committed to their community, we showed remarkable restraint regarding each other. Ours was a balancing act with both of us keeping the seesaw level. When one pushed for closer involvement, usually because of outside troubles, the other counterpushed. The irony was that life’s traumas, so routinely counted on to bring people together, forced us apart. We cared for one another and showed it as much as we dared, but our separate independencies had, over the years, become too valuable to give up. We were a perfect match, both too old and too self-centered to change our ways. Frank called us roommates without a room.
    I threw out the junk mail, piled the bills on my desk, and picked up the phone.
    “Hello, Joe,” she answered before I’d said a word.
    “How did you know it was me?”
    “You’re the only one I told when I’d be back.”
    I liked that. “How was New York?”
    “As usual; awful and lovely.”
    “And your parents?”
    “Awful and lovely. Dad gave me a ‘how-to’ book about finding a way out of mid-life crisis, and Mother and I had our annual boy-talk. You’d never have guessed I turned forty two months ago. How was your Christmas? And what’s Leo up to?” Leo was my brother, and an endless source of fascination for Gail.
    “He’s dating a wild woman who dyes her hair green and drives a Corvette. She runs a Sunoco station she picked up in a divorce. According to Leo, she doubled the business the first summer because all she wore were grease-covered hot-pants and a halter top. Trade falls off in winter. I like her.”
    “What’s her name?”
    “Ginny. She’s a tough thirty-five, which makes her Leo’s junior by a mile.”
    “I’m your junior by a few years.”
    “Yeah, but you don’t drive a Corvette or wipe a dipstick on your butt. This woman could be the death of him.”
    “What’s your mother think of her?”
    “She’s amused, but she won’t admit it.”
    “Is this serious with Leo?”
    “Good Lord, no. He’s more serious about her car. She’s just part of the package, and a rather athletic one at that, according to him. But you know Leo. He’s happy the way he is.”
    “Seems to run in the family. What are you doing tomorrow night?”
    “Same as tonight—nothing.”
    “You want to come over?”
    “Now?”
    “No, I’m