I’d hardly had a private word with Robert since the great event. I’d certainly never approached him about the matter of one spot no broader than a collar button. I told myself that bringing it up now would look like latent sour grapes. Besides, since there was no cure, no health regime that helped, what good would it do him to worry about this during these first days his ship had finally come in?

The morning after their Times photo, I’d stopped by Ossorio’s, expecting no one. Through the window, I saw Angiebama alive and in person. It was such a delightful shock, I literally ran toward the table. But she was giving an interview. At our table.

She introduced me and asked if I minded waiting. The journalist and the photographer and their three assistants were all hip humorless unwashed young Germans. Cigarette smoke formed a minaret above our table. The Germans were really “into” her, I was now told during some attempt at inclusion. Angie informed them I was a coming young writer. “Really,” the journalist said, looking critically at my shirt. I hung around only because it would’ve been too rude, dashing off. Grouch that I was that week, I soon had to admire the way she managed them.

In one of her Honored Owl finds, a book on optics, I’d scouted out a brilliant phrase, one I quoted to her. Now I heard her say, “My color? I deal in oppositions. A hard battle can make a good marriage. As our great Goethe teaches, ‘Colors are the deeds and sufferings of light.’” In the way of journalists, I saw the shaggy young reporter flinch with joy, cut his eyes at the photographer during the erogenous word “Goethe.” I sensed she had just given them the headline for their Alabama piece, and from the epigraph that I had given her from a book she’d first shown me. When they turned away to pack up gear, she flashed me one collusive wink that made me feel almost human again, partly included.

When alone at last, we spoke of Robert’s return, how drained he felt from all the travel, how she feared he was involved with at least one half of the Smug Quartet, how all he wanted to do now was come home and hide and sleep and finish his First. I was still awed by the review he’d gotten. I’d memorized it. She smiled, “Number One, it was mixed, extravagant but mixed. Of course, you’re too fuck-witted to notice. Number Two, in each department, each reviewing wing of the Times, you get twelve reviews like that per year. It’s just an IOU, Hartley. The amount they claim is owed, that’s what’s attention-getting. He’s still got the National Debt to make good on. That’s different, honey, from the actual payoff.”

“Oh,” I said. “You’ve clearly thought this out.”

“What else have I been thinking about for the last few years but work and him. And, you, too.”