In the hotel foyer, we shake hands in farewell. Keisha’s hand is shockingly small-boned, cold. I tell her that it was wonderful to meet her and that she is very deserving of her award.

“Thank you! And you, too …”

Keisha has forgotten my name, I see. But no matter, it has been a fictitious name, in no way to be confused with the reclusive genius N__.

I do not want to feel anything further for Keisha. Not in a mood to accompany her to the parking lot, to her car. No. My excuse is a need to use the men’s room.

And perhaps Keisha is eager to be alone as well. To get into her car, to tear open the envelope. To discover what the miraculous Third Gift is, for which she will be grateful for the remainder of her life.

Resolved, I will never see Keisha again.

11.

Soon after this humbling incident, in the early spring of 2012, I left Herrontown, PA.

Not the slightest curiosity, what became of Keisha Olen. Or any of them.

For surely nothing of significance could happen to them.

What had been significant in Keisha’s life had been me. And I had no curiosity about me.

What?—you are offended by this abrupt termination of the story. It is unsatisfying. It is in violation of the rules of fiction.

But may I remind you, this is not fiction. This is rather the wellspring of fiction. Its (mysterious) origins. You, unlike me, are suffused with curiosity. Your naïveté allows you to wonder what becomes of “characters” after their stories have ended—as if “characters” continue to exist outside a story.

In the case of Keisha Olen, as in the cases of the morose postal clerk and the stylish librarian, what became of them after I moved to a larger city was of no interest to me. At once, or nearly, I ceased thinking about them.

Until your (naïve) question—Where do I get my ideas?—I had all but forgotten them. As cattle graze a field, then move on, a writer grazes a territory, then moves on. Nostalgia for where you have grazed is not seemly. Delicious mouthfuls of fresh grass are interchangeable, it does not matter where.

In fact, you are probably coming to resemble me in this way. In other ways too, you will one day realize.

In fact I have returned to Herrontown, several years later. For I am required to sell the property on the river, which in my absence has deteriorated like a gangrenous limb.

Finding myself at McGuire’s. Corner of Humboldt and Depot Streets, nothing much changed.

Steeling myself to enter the dingy grocery. The interior seems smaller now. Only two checkout counters are open.

But there is Keisha still at her post!—a stab of emotion leaves me weak, stunned.

But no. The cashier is not Keisha Olen. A slender young woman in smock and jeans, with a girl’s face, close-cropped sand-colored hair. Many years younger than Keisha would be.