Excerpt from Matrimony by Joshua Henkin, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

They drove through old mining villages, past junkyards and parking lots. A single tube sock clung to the limb of a tree; a woman's pink camisole dangled from a clothesline. In the middle of a field stood an abandoned school bus; graffitied on the exterior was STANLEY FUCKED DONNA GOOD. Soon came the signs of encroaching industry, trucks rumbling past them, the Worcester skyline ahead.

"So this is what I do," Mia said. "I drive."

"Where to?"

"Anywhere. I came to college to get away from things, and now that I'm here I'm getting away some more." She looked up at Julian. "And what do you do?"

"I drive with you."

All around Boston, everywhere they walked, it seemed to Julian they were surrounded by park rangers, some giving tours, some just walking the streets the way he and Mia were. Mia walked the way she drove: fast. He had trouble keeping up with her.

They stopped at King's Chapel Burying Ground, where John Davenport and John Winthrop were buried. At the Granary, where they went next, you could see the tombstones through the metal gratings. John Hancock was buried there, as were Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, and Benjamin Franklin's parents and siblings.

"Are you taking me on a tour of colonial cemeteries?"

"Why not?" Mia said. She was reading a plaque. "Mother Goose is buried here."

"You mean she's real?" Julian had thought Mother Goose was a cartoon character.

"She was a writer," Mia said sunnily, "just like you."

In the North End, on the corner of Hanover and Parmenter streets, stood a cluster of wooden arrows: "Roma." "Milano." "Venezia." "Capri." "Genova." Julian and Mia stopped into a specialty store where Italian women sliced ham for the customers and filled jars with Sicilian olives.

Then they were back across town, to the Public Gardens, where Make Way for Ducklings was set. A row of bronze ducks lined the walkway. There was a pond in the middle of the gardens, and a bridge above it where two boys in Puma sweatshirts were playing tag. A Chocolate Labrador trotted across the bridge, wearing a red bandanna around its neck. Trees grew out of an island at the center of the pond, and on the periphery stood a statue of George Washington on a horse. A man was reading Make Way for Ducklings to his daughter.

"Life imitates art," Mia said.

It was lunchtime, so they went across the street to pick up sandwiches, turkey for Julian, roast beef for Mia, and between bites Julian explained that he'd been reading about supertasters. It was an actual scientific category, he said. Supertasters were different from other people. Their tongues were denser; they had more taste buds.

"Say you like Brussels sprouts," he said.

"I do."

"And I don't. But when we eat Brussels sprouts, are we eating the same thing and just responding differently, or are our taste buds actually registering something different?"

"Is that a philosophical question?"

"I think so."

But before she could answer him, he had moved from philosophy to English usage. He was listing the idioms he used to get wrong. He'd said "no holes barred"instead of "no holds barred"and "deep-seeded"instead of "deep-seated." "It's 'home in on,'"he said, "not 'hone in on.' Like a homing pigeon." Why, he wanted to know, was it "the whole nine yards" and not"the whole ten yards"? It took ten yards to get a first down. Or "have your cakeand eat it, too." It was no trick, he said, to have your cake and eat it. The real trick was in reverse, to eat your cake and still have it. That was what the idiom should have been: "to eat your cake and have it, too."

"Or 'long in the tooth.'" Mia said. "What does that mean?"

"Old."

"But why? Do our teeth get longer as we age? Are we destined to become beavers?"

They walked through Beacon Hill, Mia's grandparents' old neighborhood; Mia was taking him to see their house. Her grandparents were on her mind, she said; they always were when she came to Boston.

Excerpted from Matrimony by Joshua Henkin. Copyright © 2007 by Joshua Henkin.