Down in the ravine, on the other side of the rusty chain link fence, another subway train rumbled past where Tom sat, on its way up to Boston. He had a book with him, but it was lying next to him on the bench, closed. He looked down at the baseball cap in his hands. It was a Reds cap. It had taken him a while to break it in just the way he liked it, but he had done it, and now no other hat felt right on his head.

It had been eight months since he'd left Cincinnati and five months since he'd come back east. He had spent the three months in between with a friend in LA. In those three months, his friend had asked about her only once. Tom replied that it had been a very messy break-up. His friend only said that he was surprised to hear that. They'd been in the car at the time, and they both rode on in silence, effectively ending the conversation.

It was cool for late August. Last night's downpour had put a stop to a two-week heat wave. It had been the kind of oppressively muggy heat that, if you worked in an office, made you glad to go in, just to get into the air conditioning.

Of course, Tom would rather be at work anyway, regardless of the weather. Not that his job was terribly engaging — it wasn't. But it was enough to occupy his mind most days. Shortly after leaving Los Angeles, he'd found both a job and an apartment here in Quincy, and he counted himself lucky for it. His co-workers were all good people, which, as everyone knows, makes all the difference in the world. His favorite part of the day was lunchtime when they would all eat together, usually a dozen or so of them crammed around an oblong table. Once his brain had been numbed by work all morning, he would be ready to talk and laugh like a normal person. Sometimes they would invite him out with them after work, but he always politely declined.

He didn't go out much ... at all, really. He still had not fully adjusted to living alone again, and he hated sitting around the apartment, but he didn't feel like socializing either. She had returned his ring to him, of course, although he hadn't yet been able to bring himself to take it and get his money back. It was stuffed deep in a drawer so he wouldn't lose it, but he wouldn't have to look at it either.

Weekends were the worst. He'd spent most Saturdays this summer just like today: sitting in this park, reading or watching the T cars roll by.

He called it a park because the sign on the rock called it a park. "Freedom Park," it said. In reality, it was a little strip, maybe sixty feet wide, running along the side of Newport Ave. On one side was a busy four-lane road, and on the other side were above-ground subway and commuter rail tracks. There was a small grassy amphitheater at the south end of the park, near the T station. From there, a little sidewalk wound its way through a lane of grass and trees, extending up to Adams Street. It was a little patch of nature, if you will, in the middle of one of the oldest cities in the country, and no one ever seemed to go there. Which suited Tom just fine.

He jammed his hat back on his head and watched one of the commuter rails go by, much faster than the subway trains. He had brought his mail with him, as well, for something else to read, even if it was probably all just bills and solicitations. It lay, still unopened, underneath his book. The other end of the bench was damp from last night's rains, and he moved his stuff closer to him so he wouldn't accidentally knock it onto the wet part.

It had rained just about every day when he first got to LA. Seems it never rains in southern California. Except for like a month straight at the beginning of the year when it does nothing but. He hadn't come to California for the sun, though. The weather mirrored his spirits and helped him brood.

They say you need a car to live out there, and they're right. Fortunately, he had one. He hadn't taken much with him when he left — mostly just his clothes — but he threw it all into his old Tercel and drove west. His buddy lived up in the valley, where he found that the street names reminded him of Tom Petty tunes. Which also helped him brood.

Moping was pretty much a full-time enterprise for him while he was out there. He didn't have many bills. He gave his buddy money for groceries and slept on the couch. Mostly he just drove around, listening to the radio. One of his favorite routes was winding down through the mountains to get to the Pacific Coast Highway and then riding that up the coast, past Pepperdine, where Dennis Johnson had played college ball, and taking it sometimes all the way to Santa Barbara, before turning around and coming back. On days he didn't feel like driving, he'd take a short trip down the 101 to Griffith Observatory and spend hours just looking out over the city. After a rain, the city's infamous smog would dissipate for a while, and he could see clearly in all directions: downtown to the south, the mountains to the west, the "suburbs" down in the valley to the north and northwest, though it looked to him like more city, and, if it was really clear, the ocean to the southwest.

Little things amused him. He got to use his Spanish, and that pleased him immensely. He'd taken it all through high school, and the fact that a good amount of people there spoke it, and more importantly sometimes spoke it to him, meant that those years learning it hadn't been wasted. Not that he was proficient enough to carry on a conversation — far from it. But when he held the door open for people and they thanked him in Spanish, he'd reply, "De nada," and it would pretty much make his day. Because he drove around so much, he also became fairly competent in giving out directions in Spanish, when people asked him, once he had deciphered where it was they were looking to go.

But mostly he just thought of her. The details stuck with him. He found himself thinking about the plastic bibs they give you when you order ribs at the Montgomery Inn. He'd taken her to eat there the night he proposed. Big Red Machine paraphernalia all over the walls. She loves ribs. She'd stumbled on the brick sidewalk on the way in and he'd caught her. After dinner, he'd taken her on a riverboat ride on the Ohio. I don't think she thought I would ever ask her, he mused. After the question, she blinked, and said, "Please?" He smiled at the Cincy expression and repeated his question. There was no moon, but the lights from the city were enough to see the love in her eyes as she said, "Yes." He remembered the smell of the river: a rich earthy smell, not at all like the salty sea air back in Boston or over by D.J.'s alma mater.

He remembered going up to King's Island with her a couple of weeks later for her company outing. Like probably half the city, she worked for P&G, and there was this massive orange blow-up bottle of Tide at the entrance to the amusement park — like a moonbounce, but there was nowhere to jump around. There were more inside: a big bottle of Dawn here, a large jar of Noxema there ... it was comical. He got to meet all of her co-workers, whom he'd heard so much about, and he remembered thinking to himself: this is what couples do. And it was pretty cool.

Right up until the end of the day when they'd started fighting. It had been a long day in the sun, and maybe they'd gone on one too many rides. He couldn't remember what the fight had been about, but it was a quiet ride home; he remembered that. Some days, he only remembered the fighting. No, it wasn't just at the end; they'd always fought. Never in his life had he argued with someone as much as he argued with her. They somehow found a way to piss each other off to no end. And when they were mad at each other, it was awful. It made him physically sick, a constant churning at the pit of his stomach.

But when they made up, it was amazing. They were able to transfer their passion from anger to affection, and ... Anyway, he had figured that he fought with her like he did because he had never cared about anyone as deeply as he cared for her. He'd come to believe that this type of volatile passion, for better or for worse, went hand in hand with true love. And he'd decided that if their relationship could withstand these constant threats to its existence, then it had to be ridiculously strong.

But in the end, of course, it wasn't strong enough. She was becoming unreasonable, he thought, and it seemed she felt the same way about him, and he couldn't live the rest of his life like that. He couldn't take any more of going to bed mad at each other three nights out of any given week. He couldn't take any more of wondering how someone so pretty could look so cold. And he couldn't put his kids through that. Yes, he'd admit it now, though he wouldn't have at the time: he had thought about kids. And what would they think — how would they feel — when mommy and daddy weren't talking to each other for days at a time?

But some days he didn't remember the fighting at all. Sometimes he could only think about how much he'd been in love. The joy of waking up next to her. Sneaking out of bed without disturbing her to go brush his teeth so he could wake her up with a fresh kiss. Sitting on the edge of the bed, watching her stand in front of the mirror as she put on her makeup. He would come up behind her and wrap his arms around her waist. She'd put her hands on his and he'd kiss her neck and her naked earlobe until she said, "Stop it." He'd pull her tighter and she would kiss him back. Then she'd say, "Come on, let me finish putting on my makeup. I've got to get pretty for my man."

"But you already are," he would say sincerely. "You already are ... " And when he thought about moments like these, he didn't have that churning feeling in his stomach like he used to have. But he found it difficult to breathe.

*

*

*

You can only think the same thoughts for so long, though, and mooching off your friend, even a really good friend, has its limits. So, as baseball season was starting up, Tom made up his mind to go back to Boston and get a job. LA has two teams, of course, but he figured he might as well go back home and follow the Sox. Ob-la-di, ob-la-da.

So he found his job and he found an apartment and he found this park to sit in, and he only thought his tired thoughts on nights and weekends now. He picked up his book and opened it to its marker, but he couldn't really focus on it. He read the same paragraph three times without taking any meaning from it. Then he looked at his watch: half past six. It was getting darker earlier now, and in a little over an hour, it would be too dark to read anyway. He was starting to think about what he was going to do for dinner when he heard a familiar voice: "Hey, Tom!"

He turned around and saw Julie, a girl he worked with, coming towards him. She was about his age and lived up the street with her husband Nick. He had bumped into them a couple of times before, just around town. He liked them both and would talk to them for a short while, but would soon always excuse himself for some important errand he had to take care of. He had never seen either of them in his park before, though.

He brightened at her greeting. "Hi Julie," he said. "How's it going?"

"I was just walking by and I saw someone sitting here," she said. "You never see anyone in here and I thought, wow, someone's sitting in the little park, wait'l I tell Nick. Then, as I got closer, I realized that I knew that someone in the park." Then she gave him a wink and asked, "Come here often?"

"Once in a while," he answered. "It gets me out of the apartment." Fortunately, he thought, the book was open on his lap, and he almost looked like a normal person, just sitting on a park bench reading.

She pointed to the stack of letters beside him and smiled. "Get your mail delivered here, too?" she asked. He looked down at the mail like he'd never seen it before, then back up at her and smiled. "You know," she joked, "if you need a place, we have a futon that you're welcome to ... "

"Thanks," he said, playing along. "The park's alright for now, but I might take you up on it when it starts to get cold."

"Hey," she said quickly, "Nick's out of town this weekend, but I was on my way to meet up with Darryl and Amanda for dinner and drinks." Darryl worked with them, and Amanda was his girlfriend. Tom remembered her name from the lunch table. "You should come," Julie added. "I'll make sure you stumble back here to your sleeping bag, wherever it is," and she pretended to scan the surrounding area for his bedding.

Tom opened his mouth as if to say something, gaped a moment, and closed it again. Julie, seeing his hesitation, sat down next to him, on the other side of the mail. The bench was pretty much dry by now. They were both quiet for a moment, looking straight ahead at the empty train tracks.

"You know," she finally said, "when I was in high school, I went up to Québec with my French class." She paused, as if deciding what to say next. "The whole trip, I kept trying to speak French with people. Everywhere I went up there, I would start talking to someone in French. But my accent was awful. I was obviously American, and they get so many tourists up there, they just don't have the patience to let us pretend we can speak their language, and they would always talk back to me in English. Like I'd walk into a store and buy a shirt, right? And I'd take it up to the counter and ask, ‘Combien coûte?' You know, how much? And the cashier'd look at me, shake his head and say, ‘It's sixteen dollars, but they're two for thirty.'"

Tom smiled, and she went on. "So that was driving me nuts the whole time because no one would talk French back to me. And on top of all that, my best friend is walking around picking up trash and putting it in her pocket because it had French writing on it. Trash, en français, and she was just enthralled by it. It was gross. Like candy wrappers and stuff. She's picking them up and putting them in her pocket. I couldn't get her to stop."

Tom smiled again, and so did she. "It was a cool trip, though. Candy wrappers aside, it was weird seeing everything in French — signs, newspapers ... everything. Like KFC isn't KFC up there. It's PFK." Tom gave her a confused look, so she explained: "Well, 'cause it's in French. Instead of Kentucky Fried Chicken, it's Poulet Frite de Kentucky." Tom let out a chuckle. Not because it was funny that French-speaking people should refer to restaurants in their own language, but because it had never occurred to him before that KFC could ever be called anything else. "I even took a picture of it," she said, "because I thought it was so cool. And it's a funny picture, I'll have to show it to you sometime. There's this lady sitting there, eating her fried chicken, you know? And she's glaring into the camera, like why is this idiot girl taking a picture of a fast food restaurant?"

"But when you're in class," she went on, "it's one thing. It's a code among you and the other kids that take French, which was mostly girls anyway at my school. So the boys came around and you talked in French and they didn't know what you were saying. And, of course, logically, you know it's not just a code you can use when the boys come around, and that whole countries of people speak it everyday, but it's still pretty cool to hear it first hand."

Tom nodded. "No, that makes sense," he said. "I had to take Spanish, and when I went to LA, it was nice just to hear it being used."

"Yeah, see, you were a boy. Boys took Spanish."

They were both quiet for a while. Then she said suddenly, "Oh, but my point was ... " She smiled and said, "I do have a point. I'm not always as random as I seem. My point was that up in Québec, they have this little Church right by the downtown market area called ‘Notre Dame de Victoire' — ‘Our Lady of Victory'. They named it after they won some colonial battle against the British. It's an absolutely gorgeous little church, with this cute little cobblestone all around it. All the old downtown streets up there are cobblestone — it's great. Anyway, it got destroyed during another battle, I guess. All that was left were burnt-out walls. So when they were able to rebuild it, they named it ‘Notre Dame des Victoires' — ‘Our Lady of Victories'. You know, just when they thought they had been saved from the British, they built this church and everything, only to have it knocked down. They were probably devastated at first, but eventually they were able to pick themselves up and rebuild the church and give it a new name to account for having been saved a second time."

Tom raised his eyebrows, and a smile crept into the corner of his mouth. He thought he knew where she was heading with this. She simply added, "Anyway, as my teacher was telling us this story, I just remember thinking that it was a pretty cool little church, and I still think about it once in a while, when I'm feeling like I'm at the end of my rope, you know? When I'm thinking that I just shouldn't even bother trying anymore, I think of the little church up in Québec. Because you never know if the next church you build is going to be the one that lasts."

Then she stopped talking, and they looked at each other in silence. A few moments passed, and then they both burst out laughing. "That was the worst ... " Tom started to say, shaking his head, "most thinly disguised ... " But he couldn't finish, and they were both just laughing.

They eventually composed themselves, and she confessed, "You know, I don't think I even got the story right, to be honest with you. It really did impress me at the time I heard it, but it was so long ago ... I just sort of made up the details as I was telling it. It did get destroyed at some point, and they did change the name from ‘Victory' to ‘Victories', but I forget exactly how or why."

"Whether it's true or not," he said, "it was a good story. And it means a lot to me that you took the time to tell it."

Then she reached into her purse and pulled out her wallet. Inside, not in with the other pictures, but tucked out of sight in a side pocket, she pulled out a picture and showed it to him. It was a picture of a brick church; the top of its steeple came to a point somewhere outside of the picture. It faced a cobblestone courtyard, and the stones formed concentric circles around what looked like a bust of someone in the middle of the courtyard. In front of the church were half a dozen or so girls with shopping bags in their hands. Julie pointed to one and said, "That's the girl that was picking up the trash." Then she looked at Tom and said, "See, I carry around a picture of the church, though, and I do pull it out sometimes ... " Then she put a finger to her lips and said, "Shh. Don't tell anyone. It's a little sappy." And she handed him the picture.

"It's really sappy," he agreed, taking it.

He studied the picture for a while before she said, "If you want, you can borrow it, but you have to promise to give it back when you don't need it anymore."

"Oh, no," he said, immediately handing it back to her. "This is yours; you should keep it."

"No, I don't mind. Just keep it for a while." She hadn't taken it back from him and she pushed his arm back with the picture still in his hand.

He looked at it a little longer and said, "Thanks. I'll give it back."

"No rush," she said. "Take your time." And then she stood up. "Hey, I gotta roll. Darryl and Amanda are waiting for me. I'd be grateful if you came, though." She smiled. "Don't make me have to put up with those two all by myself," she joked. "They can get a little lovey-dovey sometimes. Besides," she said, gently pulling him to his feet, "the Sox are on NESN tonight, and these woods don't get cable."

"Alright," he said, gathering up his things. "You talked me into it." He hesitated a moment and then said, "Thanks."

"No problem," she said with a nod.

"Hey, do you mind if I stop by my place real quick and drop all this stuff off?" he asked, holding out his mail and the book. "It's just down the street."

She put up her hands, palms out, and said, "Hey, it's cool by me that you live in the woods. You don't need to pretend you've got a real place by dropping off your crap at some stranger's apartment," and she gave him a wink. "But in a month or two, if you find yourself still out here, sleeping among the falling leaves, remember that Nick and I are just up the street ... "

And, as dusk gathered around them, they started off down the sidewalk path, winding their way through Freedom Park, back towards the way he had come.