Description: Seize the Night UP IN OLD VERMONT SCOTT SMITH The first time he asked, Ally had been there only a few months, and the idea seemed sweet but absurd--so much the latter, in fact, that she wondered if the old man might not be just as befuddled as his wife; it was easy for Ally to say no. She was happy for a change, still newly arrived in Huntington (new town, new job, new boyfriend), and feeling cocky with all the high hopes attendant to such beginnings. It was early autumn in the Berkshires--the first slaps of color appearing in the trees alongside the road, the morning light so clear it hit her eyes like cold water from a pump. Ally had dyed her long hair blond the previous summer; she''d taken up running and had grown ropy with the exercise, the veins standing out on her arms, dark blue beneath the skin. She felt good about herself after a long period where quite the opposite had been true; she was even beginning to think that maybe, if she could just keep her head straight here, her years of wandering--all those false starts and wrong turns--might at last be behind her. She wanted to believe this: that she''d finally found herself a home. Even after she learned their names, Ally thought of the couple as "the Hobbits." They were short and stout and friendly, essential qualities that their advanced age seemed only to have heightened. The woman''s name was Eleanor. She had Alzheimer''s, and her condition had deteriorated to the point where she could no longer remember her husband''s name. Eleanor called him Edward, or Ed, or even Big Ed--someone from her distant past, Stan explained to Ally, though he didn''t know who. It didn''t seem to bother him. "If she liked the man, that''s good enough for me," he said, and he happily responded to the name. They both had thick white hair and oddly large hands, and their skin was noticeably ruddy, as if they spent a great deal of their time outdoors. When they dressed in matching sweaters--which they often did--they could look so much alike that Ally would find herself thinking of them as brother and sister rather than husband and wife. The second time Stan asked, it was deep winter. If Ally had said no the first time out of an excess of optimism, she did so on this subsequent occasion from an utter deficit. She was fairly certain that her boyfriend was sleeping with her roommate, though she hadn''t caught them yet--this wouldn''t happen for another month or so. She was cold all the time; business was slack at the diner; she had a yeast infection that kept reasserting itself each time she imagined it finally cured. She felt bored and poor and unhappy enough that she would''ve liked to crawl out of her own skin, if such a thing were possible. She couldn''t see how anyone would want anything to do with her--even this sad, lonely couple. So when Stan repeated his invitation, she just smiled and said no again. It was more difficult to decline this time around, however: after the Hobbits departed, Ally went into the diner''s restroom and wept, sobbing as vigorously as she had since childhood, running both faucets and the electric hand dryer in an attempt to mask the sound of her distress. It was the sight of Stan helping Eleanor to their car that had prompted this outburst, his hand under her elbow as he guided her across the icy lot--it was the years of love implicit in the gesture, along with Ally''s sudden, self-pitying certainty that she herself would never feel a touch so tender. The Hobbits ate a late lunch in the diner toward the end of every month, stopping on their way down from Vermont before they turned east for Boston, where Eleanor had appointments with various specialists--"Hopes raised and hopes dashed," was how Stan described the expeditions. He''d order a grilled cheese sandwich for Eleanor--American cheese, white bread, the purest sort of comfort food--and New England clam chowder for himself. He''d drink a cup of coffee; Eleanor would quickly drain a vanilla shake through its long straw, rocking back and forth with childlike pleasure. If it was quiet, as it often was in those late afternoon hours, Ally would pull up a chair beside their booth and chat with them while they ate. Eleanor called Ally Reba, which Stan assured her was the highest sort of compliment: Reba had been Eleanor''s college roommate. A beautiful girl, Stan said, smart and funny and more than a little impish, dead now for forty years, one of the first friends they''d lost, so sad, breast cancer, with three young children left behind, but what a pleasure now to find her resurrected so unexpectedly in Ally. Eleanor continued to suck contentedly at her milkshake, swaying to her internal music, while Stan spoke in this manner. She rarely ate more than a bite or two of her sandwich, and sometimes, after they departed, Ally would stand in the kitchen and quickly devour the rest. All that winter, with each successive day seeming darker and colder than the last, she felt an incessant hunger. By March, she''d gained twenty pounds. Her waitressing uniform had grown snug around her midsection and rear, making her feel like an overstuffed sausage. It was late April when Stan asked the third time, and as soon as Ally heard the words, she realized she''d been waiting for them, hoping he might try again. By this point, Ally''s boyfriend had moved to Springfield with her roommate. Ally was behind on her rent and lonely enough that she''d begun to drift into the diner on her evenings off--a new low. She knew she couldn''t stay in Huntington much longer, but she had no idea where to go instead. She''d just turned thirty-three, and she sensed this was far too old to be living in such a rootless, aimless manner. She wasn''t so desperate that she imagined the Hobbits might save her, but why shouldn''t they be able to offer a brief reprieve, a little space in which she might lick her wounds? She and Stan quickly agreed upon an arrangement: room and board, plus what Stan called "a small weekly stipend," which was nonetheless nearly equal to what Ally had been taking home from the diner. And in exchange? Some cooking and cleaning, a little light weeding in the garden, the occasional trip into town to pick up groceries or Eleanor''s medications, but mostly just the pleasure of Ally''s company--"Eleanor likes you," Stan said. "You calm her. Merely having you in the house will make her days so much easier." The Hobbits picked her up outside the diner three days later, on their way back from Boston. Ally had two suitcases and a large cardboard box, which they loaded into the Volvo''s deep trunk. Then they started north. It was the sort of early April afternoon that can throw a line into summer, with pockets of dirty snow still melting in the hollows but the day suddenly hot and thick, the world seeming to hold its breath as dark gray clouds mass in the west, an errant July thunderstorm, arriving three months too early. The air inside the Volvo was stuffy; it smelled of cherry cough drops. Before they''d even made it out of town, Ally began to feel carsick. Her stomach gave a queasy swing with every turn. She started to count upward by sevens, a calming exercise a stranger had taught her once, during a cross-country bus trip, when Ally was heading back east from Reno. She''d been working as a barmaid in a second-tier casino: another lost job, another failed relationship, another aborted attempt to make a life. This had been almost a decade ago, and Ally remembered how ancient the stranger on the bus had seemed, so ill used and depleted, though the woman couldn''t have been much older than Ally was now. Seven, fourteen, twenty-one, twenty-eight . . . Ally was at eighty-four when Stan glanced back from the front seat, asking if she minded music. Ally shook her head, shut her eyes, feeling abruptly tired, almost drugged. A moment later, a Beatles song began to play: "Hey Jude." She was asleep before the first chorus, dropping into a tropical dream, to match the oddly tropical weather. Ally was on a sailboat in the Caribbean, where she''d never been, and Mrs. Henderson, her high school gym teacher, was trying to teach her how to tie nautical knots, with mounting impatience--mounting urgency, too--because a storm was rising, seemingly out of nowhere; one moment the sky was clear, the sea calm and sun-splashed, and the next, rain was sweeping across the deck, the boat pitching, the wind seeming to rage through the rigging, sounding tormented, howling, shrieking, a pure cry of animal pain, so loud that Mrs. Henderson had to shout to be heard, and Ally couldn''t follow her instructions, which meant they were doomed--Ally somehow understood this, that if she couldn''t learn the necessary knots, the boat would surely founder. She awakened as the first wave broke over the deck, opening her eyes to a changed world, her dream panic still gripping her. Rain was running down the car''s windows, blurring the view beyond the glass, the trees seeming too close to the road (murky, animate, swaying in the storm''s onslaught), the car swaying, too, rocking and thumping over the deep ruts of a narrow lane--no, not a lane, a driveway--and now the trees were parting before them and the Volvo was splashing through one final pothole, deeper and wider than the others, moatlike, the car almost bottoming out before emerging into a clearing, a large irregularly shaped circle of muddy grass, on the far side of which stood a tall, narrow house. The house looked gray in the rain and fading light, though somehow Ally could tell it was really white. The movement of the surrounding trees lent the hous

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