“Ironic, isn’t it?” Duncan said with a toothy grin, as Bonmot nodded like a man in dream.

For a short while, Duncan once again disappeared from my life, although this was a much gentler disappearance: his ghost remained behind. Postcards fluttered into my mailbox with alarming regularity, for him—at least one every two weeks. Duncan wrote in tiny letters, fitting long-winded, philosophical diatribes on them. (Not long-winded. Just, perhaps, impractical for the allotted space.) I would respond with postcards that teased him in the language of fashions and gossip—although, truth be told, sometimes I had Sybel write them when I was too busy. (It was no secret. Sybel told me, and his handwriting was markedly different from yours. He used to apologize to me for you when I collected my remedies from him. It was no secret, but also no sin. Still, I must admit to exasperation at the few times Sybel asked for advice on what he should write to me about!) From the evidence of the postcards alone, we might have been the two most uniquely different people in the world.

But the postcards were a way to remind each other of our existence, and those things most important to us at the time. Could I help it that my mind concerned itself with the ephemeral, the weightless, the surface, while Duncan continued to plunge into the depths?

On the corporeal level, the postcards meant nothing. What is a scrawl of letters next to that infinity of physical details that makes up a face? So I dropped by the Blythe Academy for lunch whenever I could find the time—at least once a month, depending on what demands Sybel and my ever-expanding gullet of a gallery made on me.

I shared the ghost of Duncan, this Serious Man seemingly more concerned about his students than his life’s work (so it might have seemed, I’ll admit) with Bonmot, for the Antechamber and my brother had become friends. (Good friends? Great friends? I honestly don’t know. The dynamic of our relationship was transformed day by day. On some level, despite our affection for one another, I think there was a certain caution, a certain wariness. He may have felt my obsession with the gray caps would lead me to discoveries that might bring dishonor to his faith in God. I know I was afraid that his religion might somehow infect my studies, change me in a way that I did not want to be changed.)

Without question, these lunches became the high point of my days. Whether in the sleepy cool heat of spring, the hot white light of summer, or the dry burnt chill of fall and winter. By the carp-filled fountain. They laughed so much!