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gathered up the two pieces and carried the wood over to the garage. He put away the sawhorses, the saw, the ax, a wedge, and the maul. Then he went inside.
    Sol and Bonnie sat at the table, but they hadn’t begun on their food.
    You better sit down and eat with us, Sol said.
    Sit down, Bonnie said.
    Not hungry just yet, Myers said.
    Sol didn’t say anything. He nodded. Bonnie waited a minute and then reached for a platter.
    You got it all, I’ll bet, Sol said.
    Myers said, I’ll clean up that sawdust tomorrow.
    Sol moved his knife back and forth over his plate as if to say, Forget it.
    I’ll be leaving in a day or two, Myers said.
    Somehow I figured you would be, Sol said. I don’t know why I felt that, but I didn’t think somehow when you moved in you’d be here all that long.
    No refunds on the rent, Bonnie said.
    Hey, Bonnie, Sol said.
    It’s okay, Myers said.
    No it isn’t, Sol said.
    It’s all right, Myers said. He opened the door to the bathroom, stepped inside, and shut the door. As he ran water into the sink he could hear them talking out there, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying.
    He showered, washed his hair, and put on clean clothes. He looked at the things of his in the room that had come out of his suitcase just a few days ago, a week ago, and figured it would take him about ten minutes to pack up and be gone. He could hear the TV start up on the other side of the house. He went to the window and raised it and looked again at the mountains, with the moon lying over them—no clouds now, just the moon, and the snowcapped mountains. He looked at the pile of sawdust out in back and at the wood stacked against the shadowy recesses of the garage. He listened to the river for a while. Then he went over to the table and sat down and opened the notebook and began to write.
    The country I’m in is very exotic. It reminds me of someplace I’ve read about but never traveled to before now. Outside my window I can hear a river and in the valley behind the house there is a forest and precipices and mountain peaks covered with snow. Today I saw a wild eagle, and a deer, and I cut and chopped two cords of wood
.
    Then he put the pen down and held his head in his hands for a moment. Pretty soon he got up and undressed and turned off the light. He left the window open when he got into bed. It was okay like that.

What Would You Like to See?
    We were to have dinner with Pete Petersen and his wife, Betty, the night before our departure. Pete owned a restaurant that overlooked the highway and the Pacific Ocean. Early in the summer we had rented a furnished house from him that sat a hundred yards or so back behind the restaurant, just at the edge of the parking lot. Some nights when the wind was coming in off the ocean, we could open the front door and smell the steaks being charbroiled in the restaurant’s kitchen and see the gray flume of smoke rising from the heavy brick chimney. And always, day and night, we lived with the hum of the big freezer fans in back of the restaurant, a sound we grew used to.
    Pete’s daughter, Leslie, a thin blond woman who’d never acted very friendly, lived in a smaller house nearby that also belonged to Pete. She managed his business affairs and had already been over to take a quick inventory of everything—we had rented the house furnished, right down to bed linen and an electric can opener—and had given us our deposit check back and wished us luck. She was friendly that morning she came through the house with her clipboard and inventory list, and we exchanged pleasantries. She didn’t take much time with the inventory, and she already had our deposit check made out.
    “Dad’s going to miss you,” she said. “It’s funny. He’s tough as shoe leather, you know, but he’s going to miss you. He’s said so. He hates to see you go. Betty too.” Betty was her stepmother and looked after Leslie’s children when Leslie dated or went off to San Francisco for a few days