“Junior,” Margaret managed, and then, more confidently, “Alistair.” He said, “I like a girl who’s smarter than me.” When he caught on that she was joking, he laughed and wiped his brow. Margie made him a dry Martini and asked, with a straight face, if he wanted olives in it or trout. On the fourth night, his friends retired early-perhaps at his direction-and left him at the bar. She had to stop herself from smoothing it down. A devious left-side smile, sandy hair that stuck out like straw. Alistair, though, loped along with his head down, as if embarrassed by his handsomeness. Rather, she understood that these were the ones to avoid, men who’d likely be selfish and incautious lovers. To be clear: Margie didn’t seek out rich men. She’d also learned to sniff out which in a pack of men was the one they all aimed to impress-and she’d never seen men so quick to laugh at a friend’s jokes.

She’d learned to recognize an expensive watch. But Alistair was the first who dripped wealth. It was too easy: the small restaurant and bar right downstairs from the guest rooms, the men who’d never return, the tips they’d leave when they thought they had a chance. Margie had worn his class ring on a necklace to save him from whispers that he was inverted and wouldn’t look twice at a woman-again, true-their couplehood convincing enough that everyone believed he’d caught his disease from a French whore, not from a fellow-soldier.Īlistair wasn’t Margie’s first hotel-guest dalliance. But they wrote only once a week, and while Margie relayed the town’s gossip, even jokingly began her letters “Dearest Abelard,” they’d never been in love-just fast friends since age five, when they’d built a circus for worms in Vincent’s back-yard mud. The bit about the nose: unfortunately correct. Another rumor was that Margie and Vincent wrote every day, still in love but destined, like Abelard and Heloise, for a life of longing correspondence. Rumor had it that the syphilis had collapsed his nose. Vincent had returned from the European theatre with rashes all over his body, been sent to a sanatorium in Albany, and hadn’t been seen in Stickney since. She had hair like her late mother’s, like dark water you could drown in.īut by twenty-three she’d been noticed with only one boy. She wasn’t even blond, to the annoyance of those who hopefully lemoned their hair each summer.

Still, she was the undisputed local beauty, a striking girl with a stronger resemblance to the Modiglianis in the library art books than to a dish-soap model.

In both 19, Margie Bixby was crowned Trout Queen of the Upper Delaware River, an honor she lost in 1948 only because it wouldn’t do for the daughter of the newspaper editor-the editor of the paper that sponsored the pageant-to win three times.

The borrower by rebecca makkai