They were in bed together at the end of their first day of heaven. They had made sweet, delicious love and were laying together, their bodies entwined, letting the air dry the sweat on their skin.

Natalie raised her head off Howie's chest. "Pardon?" she said, and then put her head back down and began teasing his nipple with her teeth, while running her fingernails lightly down his chest and across his stomach. She was content...more content than she could ever remember being. Howie had purged all the poisons from her system. He had made love to her and then he had listened to her. And then he had made love to her again, showing her that she wasn't a bad person after all.

When they had come back from town, Howie had taken the boxes of condoms into her bedroom and put them in the drawer of the night table. She had laughed when she saw how many there were.

"Is anyone else in Sweet Grass County going to be able to practice safe sex?" Natalie asked.

"Don't care," Howie replied, pulling her into his arms and kissing her.

"Get to work," she chided, gently shoving him away. She oiled the door and then went for a walk. He was concerned. Would she be all right? She knew he was referring to her revelations about Brent and her drift into melancholy at the end.

"I'm fine," she told him. "More than fine, thanks to you." More kissing ensued and then she headed off. She returned with a head full of ideas. She took her computer out to the back patio and typed until the Low Battery warning came on. She eased quietly back into the house and plugged it in. She paced up and down willing it to charge faster.

"Keep going," said Howie.

She looked over at him. "But..."

Howie set down the guitar. "I'm done for the moment," he said. He wasn't, but he could see her need. Her fingers were typing on the side of her leg as she paced and the ideas were spinning around her eyes like a cloud of mayflies.

She moved to protest again, but he held up a hand. "Go," he said.

And she did. Ticketa, ticketa indeed! Her hands flew over the keyboard. Howie watched her for a moment and then gathered up his papers as quietly as he could and took them and his guitar for a walk. He sat under a tree on a hill near the house and plucked out melodies. There was too much of a breeze to have his papers out and eventually, he gave that up in frustration and just played and sang.

When he went back to the cabin an hour later, Natalie's fingers were still flying. Suddenly, she stopped. She pushed back her chair and stood up. Three or four clicks shut the computer down and she walked to the other side of the room. "Now we wait and see," she said.

Howie looked from her to the computer and back again. What was she expecting it to do? She laughed at the look on his face. 'I just leave it now," she explained, "and then go back to it later...when I print it out. Sometimes it's garbage and sometimes it's brilliant." She laughed. "And sometimes it's not even the same story."

He nodded. He got that. Sometimes he would go back to a song, especially one he'd worked on late at night. He would find that the sure million-seller of the night before was now just a typical pop song with nothing special to offer to the world.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Haagen-Dazs, You said before that you had to spend time in your robe and slippers living on Haagen-Dazs."

Natalie laughed. "It's the female equivalent of the stages of grief."

Howie thought about that. "Denial, anger..."

"Yeah," said Natalie, "but in relationship grief, ice cream is one of the stages. Straight out of the carton, of course!" She raised up on one elbow. "Men don't do this?" she asked, laughing.

Howie shook his head. "I don't think so. Maybe they get drunk."

Natalie gave that some thought. "Maybe Budweiser is the male equivalent of Ben & Jerry's."

Howie laughed and ruffled her hair. He kissed her softly. Then he moved his head away. He looked at her thoughtfully. "Do you know," he said, "that you are the only woman in this county with short hair?"

Natalie grinned at him. They both pictured the locks and tresses from the dance. "Cleansing haircut," she said finally.

"What?"

"I used to have longer hair...nothing close to Montana standards, but it was longer." She put a hand just below her shoulder, indicating the previous length.

"And you cut it when..."

She nodded. "He really liked my hair long. It had only got to be that long because he discouraged me from cutting it." She shrugged. "So when I cut him out of my life..."

"...the hair went with him," finished Howie.

Natalie shrugged again. "Men don't get haircuts either, I guess. Okay, scissors and ice cream, two things women do."

"Wait here," said Howie, getting out of bed. He returned a minute later carrying a yellow ruled pad and a pen. He piled the pillows up and leaned back against them.

"Tell me more," he said and scribbled down the things she had already said.

Natalie looked at him. Did he really want to hear this?

"If you can..." said Howie.

Natalie dragged her fingernails down his chest, making him give out a little squeal. Then she sat up beside him and tugged one of his pillows away from him. She leaned back and began to talk.

"Well, first you can't believe it's happening - there must be some mistake, it will all get straightened out," she said. "And then, it doesn't, of course, and you have to decide." She looked at him. "I told you he wanted to marry me. At least, that's what he said, so I had all the pleading, cajoling crap coming from him at the same time I was trying to hate him."

Howie wrote, "trying to hate him" on the paper.

"Because you have to hate him and then get over that and get to indifference - that's the opposite of love - not hate, but indifference."

"Are you there yet?" asked Howie. He drew a triangle on the paper and wrote 'love', 'hate' and 'indifference' at each of the points.

Natalie smiled. "I am now, thanks to a very sweet man."

He leaned over and kissed her. Then he sat back and tapped the paper with the pen. "Okay, how do you turn love into hate?"

Natalie thought for a moment. "Well, in the denial stage, you go over all your memories, the things you did together, etc, because really, this couldn't be happening now, could it, if it was all so good in the past?"

Howie nodded. Go on.

"Then you start to get rid of them, the memories I mean...you find something wrong with it...like a picnic that was idyllic and now you remember the ants...or a nice dinner out together, but now you remember that the food wasn't that great and he'd picked the place and you hadn't really felt like Italian that night..."

Howie's hand sped across the paper. He got slowed down by his attempt to spell 'idyllic' and after three tries, he wrote 'happy' instead and kept going.

"In the end, though, when you're over it, the memories revert to being good again...but real."

"But before that, what kinds of things do women do?"

"Well, you could tear up all his pictures..."

Howie wrote it down.

"Throw out all the food that was only there because he liked it..." Then she added, "Specialty mustards were Brent's thing."

Howie nodded.

"If he left any clothes at your place, you could give them to charity or cut them up or burn them."

Howie's eyes widened.

"Charity," she answered his unspoken question.

"Anything else?"

Natalie shrugged. "I guess you could clean all the silver with his toothbrush and then send it back to him.

Howie raised an eyebrow.

"I don't have any silver," she answered laughing. "But I know women who have done worse things..." And she proceeded to shock Howie to the core with stories of vindictiveness.

Howie looked down at the paper. "So," he said thoughtfully, "first you turn it on yourself by wallowing in ice cream, and then you turn it onto him."

"You're a very astute man, Howie Dorough," said Natalie, slipping her hands down under the covers. "And now, if you don't mind, I'd like to turn it on you."

The pen and the yellow pad slid to the floor.