The Beginning

I am too modest to adhere to the solipsistic world view--the idea that nothing exists outside the self that is imagining it. As Einstein said (it is said) "I believe the moon is real, whether or not I can see it." [... not actually a refutation, but a simple 'faith-based' assertion.]

Dr. Johnson did a slightly better job. When asked to respond to Bishop Berkeley's argument about the insubstantiality of the world, he supposedly kicked a rock and said, "I refute him thus!" Not bad, not bad. But again, not a real refutation, for one's foot may be as theoretical as any rock, and the pain of your stubbed toe as hypothetical as the universe itself. Still, I believe that Einstein and Johnson were real, no matter that I never saw them.

And yet, anything that we haven't actually experienced, and personally remembered, is bound to seem somewhat pallid compared to one's own "reality". In this sense, the beginning of Time, for me, was the summer of 1939. I am wearing a yellow romper, my chubby feet packed into white baby shoes, by which means I am propelling my dump truck down Forest Street, past our house, and our neighbors' houses, all with their turned pillars and "Queen Anne" porches.

From one of those porches my mother's approval filters down upon my blond curls like sunlight through the maples. My Aunt Sela also admires me from the porch next door ("Goodness, how he has grown.") and just beyond, Mrs. Ferry's waggly terrier gives me a sniff and a bark ("She won't hurt you, dear.")

Onward, ever onward, past Mr. Goodwin watering his lawn (he nods gravely) and Dr.Thomson's Studebaker, parked in the shade.

A man in a seersucker suit is walking home from work., his jacket slung over his shoulder. His hair is red, his tie is loosened and askew. I recognize him with surprise, the first time I have ever seen my father outside the house. I raise my hands from the steering wheel to wave. He lifts us up and carries us back up the street, boy on one arm, truck under the other.

And he was still carrying me, albeit on his shoulders, when we visited the New York World's Fair. I remember it in black and white, as if we had visited a photo album instead of the fair itself. Of color I recall the pinkness of spun sugar and a spot of yellow mustard. Otherwise, endless lines and numerous poses in front of oddly shaped buildings, my father mostly absent. As Producer-Director and cameraman, he was in charge of the mise-en-scene; but in one case a kindly fellow tourist must have snapped the family Brownie. My father stands as the keystone of his dynastic pyramid--boy on top, eldest daughter holds boy's hand; two other daughters hold daddy's hands; phallic trilon and perisphere in the background.

But of the astonishing future that the fair predicted, or my first train ride to New York, I remember nothing, as if it neither ever happened. But so what? They might just as well not have. I probably slept on the train, and the future hardly turned out as predicted. As unlikely as it seemed at the time, the newsreel of the World's Fair segued into action shots from the Western Front.

We live our lives with scarcely more consciousness than ants make a sand hill. The Parthenon is what happens when favorable circumstances randomly combine with genetic impulse. The 20th Century is what happens most of the time.

Exeunt Old Fart [Stage Left]

I'm trying to sweep up a bit before I dodder toward my exit. I've tossed out a lot of physical junk--and I'm starting on the orts and shards of writing projects which have come to rest in a basement file cabinet. It's hard. As horrible as some of them may be--they often make me laugh--and it is amazing [to me] to see how often I come back to the great enigma--how is it that the human mind sifts what it chooses to call "meaning" from the chaos and randomness of the universe.

I've tried various characters and fictional scenarios. The one I uncovered this morning must have been written about 1984, shortly after Professor Sebastian  was shot by a jealous husband, and (far more painful) discovered that the hero of his autobiography, was a buffoon in his lover's life story.

Maybe I abandoned it because I don't know anything more about physics than poor Sebastian.

___________________________

Sebastian was taken aside by his host, Professor Hawkins, an ancient physicist, who had been raised on a farm in Yorkshire, educated in Edinburgh, and had studied with Bohr in Denmark. He spoke in a mixture of half forgotten accents, and emphasized his points with unexpected blasts of volume. "Here, Flavius," he said, "Step into my WARK room for a moment. Have a look at this."

"What is it?"

"Cloud chamber. Home made. Horace Hawkins, Mad Scientist, eh? Watch this now." He fiddled with a control. There was a little popping noise and the chamber was filled with wispy tendrils of light. It glowed a moment, and died. "Interesting, what?"

"Yes. But what does it tell us?"

"Ions passing through water vapor. Ye canna' see the ion, but the track of bubbles shows you where it has been--the HISTORY of it, ye might say. It's in the nature of a parable, for my friends in the humanities."

"Ah... I see." Sebastian replied, puzzled and cautious.

"Ay? Do ye? P'raps ye do..." He stared at Sebastian and detecting that, in fact, Sebastian understood nothing, he laughed with satisfaction. "Well then, it's an analogue, Professor, of the human condition with respect to knowledge. The water vapor is what physicists call 'disordered' meaning only that it has no structure, do ye ken? An end state--entropy, puzzlement, confusion--where we are all headed. And through it shoots the ion, to all appearances full of intent and purpose, but in fact it is a random thing, for according to the laws of thermodynamics it could just as well be going the opposite way. No direction, all directions, forwards, backwards, upside-down. It's all the same, right? But here's the odd thing, laddie--as far as we can tell it never actually goes into reverse, does it? I mean, it keeps on going! if ye get my meaning.

"Well, actually, I'm not sure I do."

"Of course you do!" the old man admonished, but as Sebastian apparently did not, he fetched some glasses from the cabinet and poured them each a sherry before explaining, "Whatever happens, Professor, as ye WELL KNOW, happens in Time--and Time only goes in the direction we call 'Forward'. That's a given, right? No matter how confusing things may be in other respects, we know events are moving away from the past. That sense of direction APPEARS to make the past meaningful. Now we Physicists are more modest than you Historians, for we don't say 'Why' anything happens--only that it does happen--or if we're feeling bold, that '...under certain circumstances', it WILL [probably] happen. But for you Historical fellas, MEANING is the whole job, right? History is a story...intention is the cause...events are the effect. Of course, unintended consequences are LIKELY to prove more important than the ones intended, but in general, everything traces back to decisions. Cause and effect? Articles of faith. Right?"

"Well, O.K. Sure... in general."

"But hell man--don't you see? We know 'Everything happens in Time'--and we know 'Time only goes forward'--but the bubble chamber says, 'So what? Forward is not the same as 'non-random'. We have 'cause' we observe 'effect'-- but do we have 'information'? Not much, not much. So, Professor, ye might say, 'That's fine for your poor ions, but men are not particles!' But then, ask yourself, 'Where does the non-random part begin? With life, maybe? Suppose you take some particles and make an amoebae. It's alive, but is it non-random?" Hawkins shook his head doubtfully, "So maybe with consciousness? But how much does it take? How about mayflies flitting over a trout stream? They have intention, surely, for they mean to get laid if at all possible. But is that enough? Maybe the point of a mayfly is to be trout food. So then, ye may ask, 'Is the trout's consciousness sufficient?' Same problem, I'd say."

Sebastian made no reply, and after a moment the Physicist continued, "Somewhere along the line we are pleased to imagine that intention becomes more important than accident, and that our choices (and grandma's and FDR's) make the past MEANINGFUL." He snorted out the last word as if it were an obscenity, and laughed dolefully, "Look through a telescope, boy. The whole damned universe is a trail of bubbles in a cloud chamber, and we are riding one of them. Now SURELY ye would not claim that events acquire meaning because a trifling species at the edge of a minor galaxy observed them and said, Wow!"

He topped up their glasses, and once more fiddled with the apparatus. They watched the streaks glow and fade. This time the event looked a little forlorn.

Hawkins shrugged, "But of course, there's the alternative... your alternative... that man is the measure of all things... that 5,000 years of human history (or 500,000 if ye like) is non-random. Doesn't it follow that if this tiny fraction of cosmic time, or even a single instant, has meaning, then ALL time must be meaningful? That it's all one piece? All or nothing, eh? From ions in a box to the rolling of the galaxies? That 'randomness' is just another way of saying 'We don't understand.' The equations of the blessed Newton and Einstein, aren't explanations, they're just DESCRIPTIONS! Sure, it was a fine thing to discover that E=mc squared. God bless the man. But the nagging question is, 'WHY does it?' We have no clue. It just does. Or maybe we can say 'It MUST, or otherwise things would be DIFFERENT.' But that's not an explanation, either. The greatest insight of the present age and we are really just as ignorant as before."

The unctuous sherry soon reconciled Hawkins to his ignorance. He laughed apologetically. "Don't repeat this, old boy," he begged, "The young fellas are determined to figure it all out. Unified field theory, super strings, God knows what. I wouldn't want to seem like the old fart in the department..."

Mrs Hawkins peered into the workroom, "There you are, Horace. Good heavens, I can't leave you alone for a minute. Bring Sebastian back to the party. Everybody is dying to hear about how he was shot."

Hawkins turned off the light and they headed back to the patio, but at the door he stopped Sebastian and added, "There is a third alternative, I suppose, that human history is a tiny tumor of meaning growing in a vast Petri dish of chaos. Somehow I prefer the 'All or nothing' alternatives. Either of them."

THE OVERCOAT

The Overcoat

I was dressed in a fine suit, expensive shoes, and an overcoat of black wool or alpaca—it reached almost to my ankles. I was at some sort of terminal, trying to help a young woman with a three or four year old son. She had come a great distance and was now faced with a body of water she could not cross. She had attached herself to me. Perhaps I looked competent

On the same platform were hundreds of other travelers, their packs and bundles on the floor around them—poor and disconsolate, waiting for a boat or some other solution, or simply waiting. They weren’t refugees for they were headed East, and (“as everyone knows”) sanctuary lies to the West.

 I went forward to get a better look, the little boy trailing behind me. 

The platform where we waited was high above the water, in a network of steel girders, part of the superstructure of an uncompleted bridge. I was more annoyed than afraid, although I do not like heights. It was just another problem. 

The young woman wanted some eggs. I found a man mixing bread dough. He had some left-over eggs, strewn among sticky broken shells, some cracked, others covered with dirt and feathers. He agreed to sell me five but had no container. I had to hold the eggs in my hands while fumbling in my wallet, which was stuffed with foreign currency—lire, francs—and something Middle Eastern, oddly over-sized, in huge denominations like 20,000 and 50,000.

As I searched for the two dollars we had agreed upon, the baker offered to wrap each egg in a sheet of newspaper. In the process an egg broke, smearing my elegant overcoat. 

Wakening, I remembered having this same dream before. Gogolian. Fraught with symbolism. 

Luckily, I am neither Jungian nor Freudian, but of that skeptical bent that considers dreams nonsensical, the ephemeral consequence of random synaptic activity. 

And yet, I was sad that I had been so little use to that young woman and her child.

Sebastian's Task

Professor Flavius Sebatian’s life altering affair with his wife’s best friend began with a noncommittal, “Hmmmn...” the sort of noise that signifies to one’s wife that she has been heard and understood, but that one’s manly judgment has been reserved.

But to step back a little, what Marjory said was, “Bash, do you know a Professor Schmetterling?”

“I’ve met him. Foreigner. Philosophy. Or maybe Goethe. Something like that. Why?”

“I just met his wife. She’s really beautiful. You’d love her.”

“Hmmmn...”

“They’re new. Maybe we should invite them for dinner...”

“Of course. Whatever you like.” The Sebastians had been married ten years. He never disagreed, knowing that in the end she would do as she pleased. However, the Schmetterlings were not invited. During the Fall Term Marjory and Nora became good friends, but they soon realised that their husbands would never get along, so it was several months after the initial “Hmmmn...” before Sebastian actually met Nora.

Marjory was right. Nora really was beautiful, and he really would love her (and she him) although they could not have managed it without help, for neither possessed the guile nor the organizational skills so necessary for adultery. She was too honest, too passionate (her heart so close to her skin) and he (as profound and wise as he was) lacked even the rudiments of system. It really wasn’t meant to be—and yet, “Love will find a way” (albeit in their case, an awkward, hesitant and absurdly convoluted way.)

We have seen them at the Faculty Christmas Party, and later at the opening of her dancing school. We can skip over the tender urgency of their ‘first time’ (in a borrowed bed, in a friend’s apartment. You’ve been there, done that—no use reiterating.) And no need to remark upon ecstatic transports during the mid-course of their affair. They weren’t any different from what you have experienced

Let's jump aside near the end (when her jealous husband appeared so unexpectedly at the Dance Society picnic, swinging a croquet mallet) and lament with Sebastian while she suffers a total loss of memory and he toils his weary way through the divorce court. No doubt that is all familiar territory.

The following year found Sebastian living in a tent in Turkey, at the same archaeological site where he made his famous discoveries, and wrote  Anatolian Prehistory. The site is still being worked by his former assistant, Ted Strong, who has given Sebastian sanctuary until the Dean is willing to let him back on campus.

We'll peek over his shoulder at the letter he is writing during his midday 'siesta':

...everything here (I am writing, dearest Nora, from the birthplace of Dionysus, himself) reminds me of our love’s frenzy: my breakfast orange—its globular, yielding, fragrant succulence: my evening pipe—that dizzy faintness when you only smoke once a day: the bodies of the girls, of course, their shorts all sweaty in the creases, their halter tops loosened for better circulation. They laugh among themselves as they sift and sort, perhaps at the same female secrets as the women who lived here so long ago.

Did I mention? Among the blessings I have received from Ted is a graduate assistant with a clipboard. Ted has instructed Lorrie to “keep track of things”—and maybe “make sure Sebastian doesn’t run off with any credit.”

It’s O.K. I live without desire—no lust for Lorrie and none for glory. I’m just doing my archaeological thing, trying to restore memory—yours especially. She wonders what I’m writing, and has offered to type my notes. Would you like to be typed by a 23 year old anthropologist? No, I think not. She has a clinical manner you might find refreshing, but she doesn’t have the necessary facts. You’re a dancer. You know that memory is kinetic. There is as much of you in my fingertips as in my brain, and by far the better part. It’s not the sort of thing she’d understand.

Her own fingers are cool, and smell of witch hazel. She ought to evoke Marjory, but in spite of her antiseptic qualities, she reminds me of you. Perhaps it is our conversations. In the midst of collating some field notes she suddenly burst into tears and asked if I could explain how a man could claim to love two different women at the same time (not realizing, I suppose, that she was consulting a leading expert.)

I tried to jolly her along, “Of course I can explain. You’ve known me six weeks. Have I ever lacked an explanation?”

She is quite game and tried to respond at the same level, “No, never,” she began, but she couldn’t sustain it. She gulped back a sob and added miserably, “I just don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t,” I said, “You’re a woman.”

This was a better approach for she sat up and bristled for the honor of her sex, “Oh? And why is that?”

“Nothing wrong with your head, my dear. It is simply a matter of biology, a question of what men can understand versus what women can understand. I can explain it perfectly, but you will understand it only imperfectly.” Before she could interrupt I added, “It works the other way round, of course. Remember who asked, ‘What do women want?’ Freud had been listening to women for fifty years, and still didn’t know. If the wisest of men could not understand women what hope has a slip of a girl, as bright as you are, of understanding men?”

She shrugged, “Try me, anyway.”

“You won’t like it.”

“I already don’t like it. Maybe I won’t dislike it so much if I understand it, however imperfectly.”

“Through a glass darkly, eh? Well, it’s as much as we can hope for. The answer is that we are animals, not just males (although we are so beastly) but all human beings. We are ninety-five percent biologically determined. We do what we do because we are what we are. But to persuade ourselves that we are qualitatively different from monkeys or cats, four fifths of the remaining five percent is used in self justification, leaving a scant one percent of human wit and energy to build civilization and explore the moons of Neptune.”

“That’s it?” she asked. “That’s your explanation?”

“Well, I can elaborate, of course. But if you reject the main point...”

“No, no. Please continue,” she sniffed.

“We don’t ask why a cat behaves like a cat. They do what they do. We are not astonished. Apparently someone you care for has acted like a male human being. If you were both chimps you’d hardly mind at all; but because of the miniscule difference between you and a chimp (the thinnest of veneers, nearly an illusion) you feel you must ‘understand’, while he needs to ‘justify’. We’d do better to study people like Lorenz studied ducks, as a collection of interesting behaviors.”

“But surely,” she objected, waving her hands at our system of trenches, “That’s not why we’re here? We’re archaeologists, we believe in human choice, intention and rational explanations.”

Well, Nora, that’s exactly why I’m here, putting the past back together, reminding you of our choices, finding the explanation. But maybe you haven’t really forgotten—maybe you find Amnesia preferable to Memory. And really, how much of our love was by intent? And where, finally, is the uniqueness? Perhaps the poignance of our I-ness and Thou-ness, the vividness of it, is no more than a series of check marks on a curve labeled: “Human infidelity, subset: Caucasian intellectuals.”

Troubling thoughts, dearest Nora. More troubling to me than to Lorrie—for I notice she has rebounded. The resilience of youth is astonishing.

Of course, she wasn’t whacked with a croquet mallet, as far as I know.

_____________

We'll leave him there for now--writing his letter to Nora. Maybe he thinks the story is over--but he is yet to be shot, and Nora (her memory restored at last) has yet to reveal the truth of their affair. What tangled webs we weave when first we practice to write fiction.

Summer 1960

During the summer of 1960 I worked as 'Assistant Director' at a YMCA camp. I didn't have anything to do with the program. My job was to be the 'Figaro'--here, there and everywhere a manly presence was required. In short, the truck driver.

There were two four week sessions, one for boys and a second for girls. During boys' camp the staff cabin was full of guys. When off-duty we played poker. During girls' camp there were only two unmarried male staffers, me and the horse wrangler. We shared the staff cabin, but only in some nominal sense, for the wrangler found it more convenient to sleep in the hay-loft with the riding mistress.

The camp had two trucks. A conventional Ford with 'rack' sides was used on the highway to transport canoes, baggage and even campers (so insouciant were we about possible liability.)

A Dodge 'Power Wagon' of World War II vintage was used within the camp.

It had four wheel drive and an endless selection of ever-lower gears making it unstoppable on the rough forest paths. It climbed granite ledges at any angle of incline dragging fallen trees, uprooting recalcitrant stumps--a wonderful machine, vastly over-qualified for its civilian employment. I formed my self image to suit its heroic qualities (lonely proletarian intellectual, as far above my trifling tasks as the Power Wagon itself.)

When off duty I lay on my bunk in the staff cabin and read Lenin, hoping to inspire fear, awe and longing in the hearts of the female counselors.

Each morning, after I collected and incinerated the camper's trash, I would take a shower in the cook's bathroom, and with a damp towel around my neck, sit in the shade to watch Alice give tennis lessons. It put her off her game. Many is the easy lob she entirely missed and countless double faults dribbled forlornly into the net. "Yikes!" (I thought) she thought, "...this man is dangerous!" And so I was in my torn sweatshirt, a pack of Lucky Strikes in the rolled up cuff of my blue jeans, the poems of Kenneth Rexroth on the bench beside me:

                                             We lie here in the bee filled, ruinous
                                             Orchard of a decayed New England farm,
                                             Summer in our hair, and the smell
                                             Of summer in our twined bodies....

However, as tempted as she certainly must have been, she lacked the courage to cross the night forest to my lonely cot.

____________________________

"When We With Sappho", K. Rexroth, Collected shorter Poems, New Directions, NY, 1966

A New Year

          After Sebastian’s disgraceful fight with Professor Brooks at the faculty Christmas party Marjory thought it best that they not accept any New Years invitations. They went to bed before midnight. Marjory read a magazine while Sebastian composed himself for sleep. Outside, they could hear anticipatory fireworks.

Marjory asked, “Bash, can we talk?”

          He sat up. “It depends, Marjory. I am absolutely not going to apologize any more. I said I'm sorry a dozen times, and I've been groveling around here with my tail between my legs for almost two weeks. That's it! Anything else we can talk about.” This was surprisingly assertive for Sebastian. Marjory wondered if she had missed some sudden shift in character—perhaps she had been taking him for granted.

          “Not about that… Well, actually, it is about the Christmas Party—but not that part of it. I was wondering if you talked to Nora.”

          “At the party? About what?”

          “I don't know. I'm asking. You were with her. Did you talk?”

          Sebastian had to force his mind past the fight with Brooks, to an earlier part of the party, when he hadn't been drunk. “No. I don't think so. I took Melanie and the baby sitter to her house. We kissed our respective kids good night and drove to the club. She was happy in the car, but as soon as she got inside the door she started to get unhappy. She seemed kind of at loose ends. Maybe she was angry  because Carlos went to San Francisco and she had to go to the party with somebody else.”

          “Hmmm... maybe that was it.”

          “You don't think so?”

          “I don't know. I don't think  so. I think she was angry at me. We haven't talked since then; not really, anyway. And now she's opening her dancing school at the old Cascades Club, but she hasn't asked me to help her.”

          Sebastian doubted it, “Why would she be angry at you?”

          “Oh Bash,” she groaned, “for the same reason you were. I spent the entire evening playing 'Ms. organizer and Queen of Everything', and I ignored you both. My  best friend... and my only husband.”

          He was about to protest, but he suddenly realized that she was right. He had been angry with Marjory, and jealous of her attention to Brooks, “Gee,” he mused, “that's really weird. I've been wondering what that was all about.”

          She gave him a little hug, “Honestly Bash, sometimes I worry about you. Poor Brooksy got biffed because you were angry with me, and you didn't even know it.”  Seeing him start to bristle, she added quickly, “Sorry...you're right. I promised not to talk about that part.”

          “O.K. I was stupid, but the fact that you spent the evening giggling with Brooks, wouldn't explain why Nora's nose is out of joint.”

          “You're right. Of course you're right. Maybe I'm imagining things.”

          “Call her.”

          “No. I don't think so. Maybe in a day or two.”  They were silent for awhile, and just as Sebastian's attention was drifting back to ancient mysteries of Artemis, she asked, “You could do me a little favor?”

          “Sure, sweetheart.”

          “Her dancing school is opening on the Third. Take her some flowers...from both of us.”  He squirmed a little, and she leaned forward to forestall any objections, “Please?” she asked.

          “Sure. O.K.”

          “Thanks, Bash. You're a nice guy.”

          “Sure. That's what my wife used to tell me.”

-o-

          Thus, on the Third of January, began Sebastian's visits to Nora's studio.  He arrived early, holding an armful of pink roses wrapped in cellophane. In three or four weeks he would be dashing to Nora through the dusty corridors and up the gloomy stairwells, hardly aware of his surroundings, but that first day, not knowing where to find her studio, he noticed everything, the desolate grime of the abandoned club house, lugubrious portraits of 19th century Club officers, a brass spittoon filled with sand and cigarette butts next to the non-functioning elevator.

          He climbed the stairs, peering through the wire reinforced glass of the fire doors. The doors to the second story were locked, and he could see nothing but a miscellany of ominous wooden packing cases, looking like an ammunition dump, or a coroner's warehouse. Not that day, but much later in the spring, he was startled by a man unlocking the door on the second floor. His cheap blue suit, white shirt, dull tie and thick soled shoes all screamed “plain clothes” to the guilty Sebastian, and he worried that Carlos was having them followed.

          The third floor was more cheerful. It had been rented by an artists' cooperative. The massive hall and arched ceiling had been repainted. The side rooms, formerly a library, a lounge and a bar, had become studios. There was a pleasant clutter of works in progress, and the smell of turpentine and plasticine. In one of these studios he startled an attractive painter kneeling on an enormous canvas, spread on the floor. She was up to her elbows in paint, which she was daubing on the canvas in glittering rectangles. She paused long enough to give him directions, smearing some paint on her cheek when she brushed aside a lock of hair. Her overalls were so caked with glossy paint they resembled fishing boots. She looked frail and elfin inside these comic breeches, with the little smear of paint on her cheek. It's hard to believe that this waif caused the shambles at the homecoming picnic...but later, later...first Sebastian needs to find Nora and deliver these damn flowers.  

          One more flight of stairs...ah, this must be it...and without any warning he suddenly appeared at her door (and simultaneously in her mirror) just as Nora, who had been stretching and exercising at the bar, stopped to remove the woolen legging from her left leg.

          She hesitated a moment (it is only Professor Sebastian) and then continued. But now her gesture, a moment ago so intimate and private was subtly transmuted into a little display. Was it intentional, or just the subconscious response of an artist to an audience? It never occurred to him to wonder. He caught his breath, not because of the laborious stairs and corridors, but because of that carved ivory limb, gradually revealed to his astonished eyes. He was stunned. He had never seen a woman deal with her body in such a casually intentional way. He could hardly  breathe she was so beautiful. But, equal to all occasions, he approached her across the polished floor, his Doppelganger seeking her reflection in the mirror. He handed her the flowers and said, “Marjory wanted you to have these. To celebrate the beginning of your school.”

          “You're much too kind, Bash. Tell her 'Thanks' they're really beautiful. I've been in such a rush to get started, we've barely spoken in two weeks. I promise to call her tonight, and tell her how it went. I'm so nervous.” 

          “That's silly,” he said, “It's going to go wonderfully.”  And so they chatted in the vacant, uncertain way of people meeting the friend of a spouse (or in her case, the spouse of a friend) on unfamiliar ground; her with one woolen leg and one of apricot silk; he wearing his usual gray flannel slacks and scuffed loafers.

          After awhile she excused herself to remove the other legging, and to return to her exercises. It was as if she were two persons at once, one of them carrying on a friendly conversation with him, while the other, absorbed in the inward currying of her muscles and ligatures, was as untouchable and self contained as her reflection in the mirror. And all at once the class arrived in a giddy flutter of tutus and happiness (one sullen male excepted.)  She smiled apologetically. They shook hands like Europeans.

          As she greeted her already adoring students Sebastian withdrew, pausing in the doorway to watch as she caught some loose strands of hair and pinned them back in place.

          So much for their first moments alone, the first time he'd ever seen her in a space she had made for herself—and he remembered their odd handshake, as if it were an omen, or a token of some agreement that he had not quite understood.