The Rolling Stones, terrorism, and Charles Baxter's fiction

Two stories from Believers (1997) collected in Charles Baxter's "Gryphon" show very different sides of Baxter and his sensibility: Kiss Away is one of the longest of his stories, but touches on the familiar themes and settings - Midwestern, young single woman, somewhat intellectual (listens to rather obscure classical music, as do many Baxter characters) and intelligent but a real underachiever, unemployed and near poverty, meets an ambling free spirit, and, after an improbably long period during which they have breakfast together every day and plan a job hunt, they finally have sex and she totally falls for him - and then an ex contacts her and tells her very frightening secrets about the guy - but are they true? Is he a violent psychopath, or is the ex a crazed and jealous destructive woman? Many writers would play up the dark side of this, have the relation actually become violent or have the relation break off and the characters end in sorrow, but Baxter brings the young couple together at the end, triumphing over this adversity - but characteristically with dark and mysterious background notes, especially the weird echo of the Stone song (from which the title comes) with it haunting recollection of Altamont and death. A second story, much shorter, The Next Building I Plan to Bomb, is in far darker hues and one of the few in which Baxter indulgences in some surreal imagery: a seemingly very straight-laced banker find a possibly threatening note and it sends him on a course toward his own destruction - we surprisingly learn that this guy picks up male hookers and takes them to cheap motels, then tries to work this out in therapy. As we watch his personal struggles, the threatening note, which many characters dismiss as a prank or misinterpret, hovers in the background, menacing everything - much like the threat of terror in our lives today, everywhere.