Remembering this as I type, I suddenly see not just one trip to Sirin’s office, but many, over several seasons, a pleasant overlay of memories as sensual as any heated groping of bodies in the back rooms of a guest house. I see the perpetual but graceful aging of Sirin, which for him manifested itself solely in his hair, which whitened and receded, while the rest of him stayed exactly the same. I see the constant rush and withdrawal of the papers on his desk. I see the sudden and inexplicable disappearance and reappearance of his legion of secretaries. The blur of colors and motion outside of his windows. The steady permanence of his smile, his desk, his butterflies. (It’s difficult to shake off the feeling, isn’t it, Janice? Difficult because you don’t want to. Neither do I.)

One of the more distinctive aspects of Sirin’s offices, beyond the sheer expansive clutter on his desk (early spring, then, was it?), and the lingering odor of cigars and vanilla, were the tubular glass enclosures a Morrow glassblower had made for him. They lay clustered on the table behind his desk, near an oval window that overlooked Albumuth Boulevard. Each had tiny holes cut into the glass and contained a caterpillar, chrysalis, or fully formed butterfly. (Certainly, little bound his butterflies to the past, or the present. As they emerged glistening from their tight houses, they knew nothing but the moment. Sometimes I envied them.)

I had often observed Sirin puttering over his charges as his secretary showed me in, but this time he stood there lamenting a dead butterfly. Sirin looked tanned and well-rested beneath his crisp gray suit and burgundy shoes, any graceful effect ruined by a glaring multicolored bowtie that a clown would have been ashamed to wear; it was his only vice, besides tricking people. His hair had by now receded to reveal more and more of his narrow, intelligent face.

I had known him for many years, and yet I knew little or nothing about him, really.

Sirin spun around at my approach. (Butterflies and moths lived inside his head, Janice, just as mushrooms lived inside of mine. This made it difficult to hear.) He fixed me with the famous stare that could pierce walls and bring confessions from even the most hardened Truffidian monk.

“Look at this,” he said, gaze bright but disturbed behind the gold frames of his glasses. “My favorite sapphire cappan has been colonized by the emissaries of the gray caps. It’s a sign, perhaps.” His outstretched hands, smeared with fungal spores and bearing the crumpled corpse of his beloved butterfly, belonged to a piano player, not an editor and writer. (I often thought his piano playing was a step above his editing, to be honest.)