Excerpt from Matrimony by Joshua Henkin, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"There are lots of antique stores here," he said.

"This neighborhood used to be old money," Mia explained. "Now it's porcelain frogs and wooden Dachshunds."

"Were your grandparents old money?"

She shook her head. "They weren't new money, either. But they got by."

They passed another antique store, and a pub, a pizza place, a post office, a leather shop, and now, off Charles Street, on Pinckney, on Revere, they were winding their way through the neighborhood, along the silent residential streets. A light went on in a living room, then flickered off. A Jaguar pulled out of a driveway, the sound of its engine hushed, guttural, and low. In a garden out back, two girls in slippers were walking a rabbit on a leash. The mansions stood sentinel on the hill, winking at them in the diminishing sunlight.

"There it is," she said.

"What?"

"My grandparents' house."

"Oh."

"Anticlimax?"

"No."

"It's nothing special. It's a house. It's got a roof and floors, some plumbing."

"It looks nice," he said, but then he felt bad because all he could see were a few shuttered windows and he didn't wish to sound insincere.

"An old woman lives there now," Mia said. "You know what I think? They should make a law that after a person dies their house should remain empty for a while. Let it lie fallow. Come," she said, "I'm being macabre." She took him by the sleeve and they walked off.

*****

They strolled on Newbury Street and Boylston and Newbury again, past Newbury Comics and the department stores and the Boston Public Library, heading west toward Kenmore Square and Fenway Park and, beyond that, Boston University. Commonwealth Avenue was like a European boulevard, with high-domed buildings and wide promenades. As they walked along it, rain started to fall, lightly at first but then harder. They were getting poured on now. They had neither the inclination nor the will to seek cover; they ran and ran, past Gloucester and Hereford, kicking up puddles as they went, their sneakers sloppy and rain-drenched, the canvas sticking to their socks. They crossed Massachusetts Avenue and now, on the corner, they bent over like sprinters catching their breath.

Mia's hair was matted to her forehead; it stuck in clumps against her neck. A drop of rain rolled down her chin, and Julian brushed it off with the sleeve of his windbreaker.

They drove home soaked, as if someone had thrown them fully clothed into Boston Harbor. When they stopped at the turnpike to get their ticket, Mia twisted the water from her hair. As she drove on, Julian fell asleep to the rhythm of the car, his nose, his whole face, pressed against the window.

"Let's go out to dinner," Mia said. She told him she knew of a good place to eat, elegant but not too elegant; she hated restaurants where the waiter pulled out your seat for you. Julian agreed; fancy restaurants made him uncomfortable.

They ordered a bottle of wine and quickly dispatched it. Julian felt a warming come across his face. He liked wine, though he knew nothing about it. Textures and aromas, nutty wines, fruity wines, which wines should be drunk with which foods: all this meant nothing to him. He didn't want to know about wine; he just wanted to drink it. He had an image of himself standing barefoot in some vineyard where his only job was to trample the grapes. His fingers and toes were purple--his whole body was--and Mia was with him; she was there to trample, too. "Tell me something about you."

She laughed. "Are we getting to know each other?" She took a sip of her wine, and when she put down her glass the imprint of her lips was on the rim, an exact mold of her mouth. "I like watching you," she said.

"Tell me something else."

Excerpted from Matrimony by Joshua Henkin. Copyright © 2007 by Joshua Henkin.