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worked so well.

 
Chapter Two
    Grief Orbits
    R OBERT HAD LIVED all his life in Mozart, and occupied a space that was neither confining nor generous. He had gone to college in the town and worked there after college, and when that job disappeared he still remained. He was just six feet tall, and in the past two years had filled his body with muscled weight from diving in the lake in the summer. In winter, he grew a beard that came in the color of his mother’s hair. Something in his stance or his eyes or the shifting of his head at a word conveyed a reluctant rootedness. His friends from school had all moved away: to La Crosse, Milwaukee, Madison, Chicago. The ­people in Mozart who themselves had stayed and grown settled with that realization years before saw in Robert that sense of being home, of having arrived without departing.
    As a child, he had worried his teachers with his unwillingness to apply himself beyond what was required to be average. His work came sheathed in a coolness of just barely caring; he ran only hard enough to finish races halfway up the pack. His recollection of his life in Mozart before he met Ben and his family was a fear not of failing, but of being found wanting in the pain of his entirety of effort.
    He was in Professor Ben Ladysmith’s Introduction to Biology class at Mozart College when he first saw Olive. She had brought her father’s lunch. Robert remembered most the chlorine scent she trailed and her damp hair combed back off her face. A tail of her untucked shirt flicked Robert’s face as she went past him down the amphitheater steps.
    He was in the class to pick up the science credit he needed for his Bachelor of Arts degree. For six semesters he had put off fulfilling the requirement. His talent as a sportswriter had been such that the editors of the Mozart Daily Scale overlooked his lack of the degree; they hired him with the stipulation that in the future he graduate. There the matter rested, unmentioned and ultimately forgotten in the hubbub of the Scale ’s folding and the disappearance of the owner, a man named Thrips, in the night with what money he’d scraped together and a Mercedes-­Benz trunk full of electric typewriters.
    Al Gasconade telephoned two days after the paper collapsed. Al had joined the Scale sports staff the same day as Robert, but moved on to a job with the Milwaukee Journal a month before the Scale folded.
    â€œI heard, Rob,” Al said.
    Robert moved the phone from one ear to the other. He was in the apartment he rented on Oblong Lake. Losing his job, he didn’t see how he could afford to stay there; he was counting on a final paycheck to give him time to think, maneuver.
    â€œThrips stole typewriters, pencils, paper, carbons, half a set of encyclopedias. M through Z,” Robert said. “Maybe he’s planning to start another newspaper somewhere.”
    â€œThey’ll catch him,” Al Gasconade said.
    â€œLet him go,” Robert said.
    â€œHow did you get the news?”
    â€œI went to work and the doors were chained. Chained. A bunch of ­people were hanging around, looking in the windows. Del Cobbler was there, wondering what paper ­people would buy. The ­people in Mozart were genuinely upset. Bophus finally arrived. He unlocked the chains and told us we could go to our desks and clean out our personal effects. No more. We had to come right back out. It was like he was running a tour through there.”
    Al Gasconade asked, “So what did you keep?”
    â€œMy clips. A dictionary.”
    â€œThat’s all?”
    â€œThat’s all.”
    â€œWhat about your phone numbers? Your notes?”
    â€œI pitched them,” Robert said. “There was a big barrel in the center of the newsroom and we were throwing it all away. I wanted to drop a match on it to make sure. It’s over, Al. There’s nobody I want to call.”
    â€œYou’re just down, Rob. You lost