The woman introduced herself as Naomi. "What a coincidence--I mean, our names come from the Bible."

Ruth made a small smile in acknowledgment, and carried Naomi's linens and suitcase to a downstairs room. They had arrived in Port Townsend on the same shuttle for the writers' workshops. This was the beautiful edge of the continent; she hoped she would not fall off. Naomi said it was her anniversary, but she was a widow. "On our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, I made a toast to George, 'To the second thirty-five years.' He answered back, 'To the second of many sets.' Funny man."

Back in her own room, Ruth shut her window. She sat at the desk and arranged on it her clock, pens, paper. One of the ballpoint pens was out of ink. She tossed it into the brown metal trash can; it made a clanging sound. For their anniversary four years ago, Brian had given her a Montblanc with a pearly barrel. Last year, of course, there was nothing.

Ruth paced in the room. When she passed the mirror, she screwed her face up and made a net of wrinkles like Naomi's; she did not recognize herself. She heard a knock on the door. She opened it; Naomi extended a paper bag. "I packed a bag of cookies at home." Her white hair seemed soft around her face, holy.

"I bake cookies now." Naomi shrugged. "Before I retired, I used to be a union organizer for the typographers."

Ruth invited her to sit down. A retired union organizer. She wryly thought of the dissolution of her own union. There had been a time when Brian enjoyed her wryness.

Ruth placed the brown paper bag on her desk next to the alarm clock. Outside the window, the red sun was rolling on the bay, spreading the water flat beneath two sailboats glinting on the horizon. She turned toward Naomi. She had not flicked on the overhead lamp, and they were both brushed with damp twilight.

Naomi said that union membership had gone down from more than twenty per cent of the work force to twelve.

Ruth said that unions were not doing well since Reagan crushed the air traffic controllers, that was the easy and agreeable thing to say. "Wasn't that the case?"

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Naomi looked down and nodded, holding herself in, as if there were an abyss she could fall into.

Ruth saw Naomi's unease, or perhaps it was she herself who was rattled and unmoored. Outside, the world was pulsing, shimmering. Ruth felt her own heart beating in rhythm with the wobbling planet.

She sat beside Naomi and held on to the bed. "Will it get better? I mean, eventually, later--at some later time? Do you have hope?"

"Of course," Naomi said. She looked up, and her eyes invited the world in.