I became a murderer on the Fourth of July. It was a warm，<br >muggy evening， and we were out on my roof drinking rum punch<br >and listening to Napoleon s army retreat through the city of<br >Boston. The roof-deck was six stories above Storrow Drive，<br >overlooking the Charles River Esplanade and the Hatch Shell，<br >where the Pops was in concert. Across the river the Cambridge<br >skyline was darkening as the sunset dissolved. There was a<br >block of ice floating in the big glass bowl I d bought for my<br >little roof party， and the punch was delicious and cold. Most<br >of us were mildly drunk by the time the cannons started firing.<br > An exception， drinking iced tea， was Meg. She crouched be-<br >side my chair， a warm and slender hand tucked into the crook<br >of my arm. When the rockets started bursting out over the river，<br >a pink suffusion of light made her face glow， as if she were<br >being illuminated from within. Meg was in love with me. The<br >implausibility of that may have had something to do with my<br >getting deep into the punch.<br ><br >