So I’d speed to the countryside, striding over the wintry moor with a gait that was purposeful and a mind that was not. The dull, tingling, perpetual twilight of January hung over the chestnuts, painful to the eye, drained of all color. That semisolid grayness, the texture of dust, played hob with depth perception—perhaps I needed windshield wipers—for the trees seemed to be gliding blindly toward me. At times the earth and the sky became one and I’d lose all sense of direction, lose sight of the widow’s walk, the entire house. A feeling of loneliness and isolation cut me off from the world as it reeled on its own axis, and the image of my father would thud across my mind like the memory of some weighty transgression (not his but mine).

Some world. Something was wrong with it, a world in which I walked alone, while Val frolicked like a fawn on a tropical beach with Derek the self-enchanted satyr. I’d break out in a cold sweat thinking about her, them, until Take it easy, I’d tell myself. Be patient and one of these days she’ll return.

But hold on.

It occurred to me that my obsessive frenzy over Valerie might tumble into a bottomless fixation—and then what? What if I never saw her again?

It was possible. People go to south Florida and other such lotus-eating communities in the horse latitudes and never come back. They letch around with beach bums (like Derek). They catch wheezy-engined planes to Mazatlán or Zanzibar. They… you get the idea. So I knew I’d better be ready for any importunate contingency, of which there are legion. But I wasn’t folding my tent like Longfellow’s Arab and quietly stealing away. If she was dumb enough to curl up with Derek, I’d get by, no matter how I felt at the moment.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

ELEVEN
THE CANDY BOX

Surfeited in riches, I sat within a fortress of impacted books, magazines, monographs, journals of the International Association of Egyptologists, anthologies, chrestomathies—enough cud to chew and swallow for a long time. I flipped through the leaves of an old New Yorker, feeling warm and happy about all the consumables in the ads I had not the least desire to own. I practically caressed a copy of Light in August. Nestled among its cozy, big-shouldered siblings was my old friend MUN–ODD of the Britannica.