He, the intruder, the smiling man in paint-stained clothes, isn’t wearing dark glasses and so his (mud-brown) eyes are exposed, with a look of frankness, openness. (Eagerness?)

Coming up unobtrusively beside her on the walkway overlooking the Detroit River. A lone man seeking a casual conversation? A predator seeking prey? An artist seeking a subject? As Belle Isle is a public place, it is the stranger’s prerogative to position himself casually beside her at the railing, yet she feels a twinge of sexual vigilance.

This sensation, of sexual alertness, arousal or repugnance, interest or disdain, became familiar to her as soft, wrinkly scar tissue on an obscure part of the body. Sizing up men she encounters—not usually in so public and random a way as she is doing now—though keeping a certain distance between them, on guard. Positioning her chic canvas bag between them in a way that might be strategic, just in case.

He sees this. He is sharp-eyed.

(Is he annoyed, insulted? Wounded?)

He might be wondering (she supposes) who she is—what she is: Visitor to Detroit? Artist/photographer? (The bag is large enough to contain a sizable camera, and in fact it often does. But not this afternoon.)

She has not responded to his overtures beyond vague murmurs, yet she hasn’t moved perceptibly away from him.

Often men approach L.K. in public or quasi-public places. At social gatherings, certainly. She does appear (much) younger than her age. Some of this is natural, for she is, or was, naturally very beautiful in a wan blond way; and some of this is by design, for she has made up her face, especially her eyes, carefully outlined with black mascara and shadowed with silvery blue, with the zest and cunning of an artist. Her eyebrows, so pale as to be invisible, she has darkened with pencil. Her long, exquisitely manicured fingernails are pearly, opalescent. She has subjected her drab, graying hair to extensive treatments to achieve this striking look of liquid silver, and she has swathed her body in clothing and adornments that suggest a work of art. (L.K.’s actual body has become wraithlike to her. It is aging, inevitably. In mirrors her vision is deflected—she has learned to prefer steamy mirrors, after a shower. It has been some time since she has wished to see herself fully naked.)

Wanting a man badly does not mean wanting all men or any man badly, or even mildly, for L.K. is selective, she is not (yet) desperate; or, even if desperate, she is not (yet) willing to be reckless.

Well, yes—she is willing to be reckless. But selective.