I pause in the entryway, in front of an antique oval mirror, running my fingers through my limp blond hair. I stare into the pitted glass at the tall handsome man behind me in pale gray, hovering over me like a breathtaking apparition.

“Do I know you?” I ask Benton without turning around.

“I don’t think so. Are you waiting for someone?”

“Yes.”

“What a coincidence. I am too. I’ve always been waiting for someone.”

“So have I.”

“Well not just someone. The right person.” His reflection looks at me.

“Do you think there’s only one right person for each of us?” I ask the mirror on the wall.

“I can only speak for myself.”

We don’t have a name for our little game, and nobody is wise to our delightful choreography of meeting as if we’re strangers. It’s refreshing, sobering but also good psychology if one can handle the truth. What would happen if we really were meeting for the first time right now in the entryway of the Harvard Faculty Club?

Would we notice each other? Would he still find me as attractive as he did the first time we met? It’s not always the same for men when their wives get older, and some mates may say they’re just as in love when they’re not. It’s brave to ask such questions and face the truth unflinchingly. What might we feel were we to meet now instead of decades ago when Benton was married and I was divorced and we worked our first case together?

There’s no scientific method for answering such a question, and I don’t need one. I have no doubt we’d fall in love with each other all over again. I’m certain I would have an affair with him that would result in my being called a home wrecker. And I wouldn’t care because it’s worth it.

Benton places his warm graceful hands on my shoulders, and rests his chin on top of my head. I smell his earthy cologne as we look at our reflections in the convex mirror, our faces Picasso-like abstractions where the silvered glass is eroded.

“How about some dinner?” he says into my hair.

“Will you excuse me for a moment?”

I check my shopping bag in the coat closet, and step inside the ladies’ room with its formal wallpaper and vintage Victorian theater posters. I set my leather messenger-bag briefcase on the black granite countertop and dig out a cosmetic kit. I face the mirror over the sink, and the woman in khaki staring back at me is slightly shopworn and disheveled.