Hallie Rose's legs, as shapely as bayonets, were marked with deeply colored varicose veins. They weren't varicose veins exactly, more like burst blood vessels from athletic excess. Hallie Rose was a runner and her muscular calves were marred by purply rivulets. They weren't fundamentally off-putting or disgusting but disappointing somehow. Hallie Rose must be self-conscious about them, Dean thought, yet here she was displaying her legs as if they were of the finest polished silver. Perhaps, she thought, they were good enough legs to make up for their aberrant discoloration.

They almost were. Yet, something tickled Dean's harp-strings. He put down his paper and pen and walked toward the fiction section, emboldened.

"You can stand it a little longer," he said, over his shoulder, to Fran.

She gaped.

"Looking for anything in particular?" he asked Hallie Rose, his voice sonorous.

Hallie Rose spun like a dancer.

"Hi. No," she sputtered. "That is, something good to read."

"Uh huh," Dean said.

"Duh, right? I'm in a bookstore."

"Right."

"Anything to recommend?" she asked as if this were not how the worst year in Dean's life had begun.

"Always," Dean said but he made no move toward a book.

"Well," she said. She was aware of Dean's eyes on her. He was resting his gaze on her in a way she had not seen before. Dean was looking at Hallie Rose as if she were a well-trodden path.

"Did you like the Fowles novel?" Dean asked, smiling.

"Fowles?" she asked.

"The Magus. It was the novel I recommended to you the last time you asked that question, lo these many months ago."

"Oh. Right. I didn't read it," she said.

It's raining in Goddamn, Dean thought.

"Well, if you're not gonna read 'em I'm not gonna recommend 'em," Dean said but he laughed to let her know he was kidding, to let her off the hook a bit.

Hallie Rose laughed. It was the sound of wings beating.

"Swear I'll read this one," she tinkled.

"Ok, then. Here," Dean said, bending to pluck an Alice Hoffman novel from the lower shelves. "Surefire."

"Thanks," Hallie Rose said.

"Take it. That way it's guaranteed," Dean said and turned back toward his desk. When he turned around she was still standing there with the book in her hand.

"Well, thanks," Hallie Rose said.

"You bet," Dean said.

That evening he couldn't resist dropping in on Jack.

"Wow, you saw her again and you're not melting like string cheese," Jack said.

"That's a horrible simile, but, yes, I did, see her, that is."

"And she looked great."

Dean thought for a moment. She did look great, of course. She was still the loveliest woman Dean had ever seen in person. So, what was different? What had happened? And could he make Jack understand?

"Absolutely, she looked great. She's Grace Fucking Kelly."

"Or Heather Graham in your pantheon," Jack said, laughing their private laugh.

"Exactly."

Dean wanted to hold his secret. He wanted to keep Hallie's flaw from his best friend as if it were an ace up his sleeve. He couldn't explain what he felt, even if it were clearly delineated.

Dean tried to examine his emotions but he didn't quite understand them. And, two nights later, when Hallie Rose called, he wasn't even surprised.

"Hello," he said.

"It's wonderful, like you said," Hallie Rose said, in need of energetic conversational badminton.

"What is?" Dean said.

"Seventh Heaven."

"Well, hence the name," Dean said.

There was a heartbeat or two of silence. Then Dean laughed.

Hallie Rose laughed.

"I'm glad you liked it," Dean said.

"Are all her books this good? I mean, I couldn't stop reading it. I've almost finished it."

"Illumination Night next, I'm thinking," Dean said.

"Ok," Hallie Rose said. "And I can find that, I'm betting, at ... "

"Come by anytime," Dean said. "Except you gotta pay for this one." And he laughed again.

"Listen," Hallie Rose said. Dean was listening as if the next voice he heard might be God's.

"You wanna go get a coffee right now?"

So Dean began dating Hallie Rose. It was slow starting, a simmering pot. But they were kissing regularly at the end of every evening and the heat was growing.

On their eighth date Hallie Rose took off her clothes. Dean almost couldn't look at her—she was white like altar candles and as smooth as if she were freshly minted. Her coppery tangle of pubic hair was delicious against such a bright background. Dean's erection was so pronounced, an unfiltered laudation, Hallie Rose muttered an admiring "woof" into his ear as she took it into her sweet palm.

Dean could not help but sneak a glance at her legs. There they were, the marks of Cain, the bruises of mortality.

And when he entered her it was with tenderness and vigor and all appropriate feeling. Hallie Rose flushed with the pleasure of his attentions. It was, by both party's mutual recognition, quite a coupling.

They began to see each other every night. It was unspoken togetherness, natural like nature.

"Jesus," Jack said on the phone, a few weeks later. "You're dating Hallie Rose."

"Yes, I am," Dean said.

"How many men get to date their unapproachable she-god?"

"Not many," Jack smiled.

"I'm with you, Buddy. This is fantastic."

"It is good, isn't it?" Dean said.

"She's so beautiful."

"She is that."

So, a few months later when Dean grew tired of Hallie Rose and called off their relationship Jack was completely thrown for a loop. He had been worried that his friend was on that road that leads only to heartbreak. No offramps. No chance in hell of not reaching one's sad destination. Men like Dean, as sweet as they are, did not hold onto women like Hallie Rose. And men like Dean did not, simply did not, dump women like Hallie Rose. It defied natural law.

At the bookstore Dean was his old self again fairly quickly. There is sadness, surely, at the end of every relationship, no matter who performs the surgery. But Dean was surprisingly serene. Sometimes Hallie Rose would call and ask him over just to talk, drop by the bookstore unannounced and stare at him with her goddess eyes, or just on long, jittery evenings snuffle a bit into the phone.

"It's going to be alright, sweetheart," Dean told her.

"It's all going to be alright."

Copyright © Corey Mesler 2003