Alabama said she had a superstitious feeling they should do my blood-work first. “No sweat,” I said. “Whatever magic …” I got done fast and while they finished hers, I wandered the place. Today, everything seemed an omen. I was scouting, for nothing I could name. Some story to tell her later? Some sign I would know only when I found it.

I guess, being back here, I wanted to meet somebody exactly as lively as she had been then, somebody still very young. I’d bring that kid to Bama this time, and not, dog dutiful, trot my find clear back to Robert.

I recalled my body’s warning of a sure thing on first seeing her—that burning in the nose, jets of scalding salt behind the lids of either eye. Patrolling this clinic, poking through open doors, hands in pockets, feeling on the verge of a hymn or a scream, I made certain vows. If she was okay and if I was okay, I’d … what? Become a better person finally? Leave Manhattan? Discover a good non-Southern subject at last? Forgive, what? And would I, no matter her status, now sign on for whatever portion of a husband she required? Which part of one? There is so little concrete that The Law lets guys like me offer others legally.

Her fantasy had been of Robert’s perfect head seen before her best huge early painting. By now, MOMA owned two of her charcoal drawings and they were negotiating to buy, over time, one of her big recent oils. Alabam was not lobby-ready. She had told me, she would have to get clear up past her retrospective there, clean into her mid to late forties, even before she got her shot at the lobby.

This clinic had been gutted and revamped since we last needed it (for kid stuff caught from playing around). All the old warrens of classroom-waiting-areas were gone now. Everything looked both sleeker and sadder. I missed our youth’s poster funkiness; industrial carpeting now outranked and smothered scuffed linoleum once as marbleized as bowling balls.

I tried to get my bearings and peeked through the door of what looked like a nursery. Low chairs enameled primary colors, a few battered toys, one easel featuring a daubed ideal house, smoke howling out one chimney, and over it, in child’s script: “Everbody Should Get to Be Heathy.”

In one corner stood a brown cardboard fort. On the far white wall, a fire extinguisher painted pink, a concession to the nursery atmosphere?