My agent’s office is being painted, terrible fumes. We need a place to meet midtown. I’ve owned my house in North Carolina for, what? Going on five years. Amazing. My original accent is seeping back to sticky authenticity; my speed has changed from nursing’s gallop to recovery’s full stop; now it’s regained a smoother lope between. I have a few new friends; my first ones were the guys who helped me restore my house. Then acquaintance spread out through the village. Isolation was, for me, a hard state to achieve; I only got there by subtraction. Despite my resolution of solitude, it proved a toughie to maintain. You get pulled back into the world so soon. Especially if you’re nosy. Nosy is another word for hopeful. —You might laugh to hear I have been asked to join the volunteer fire department, just blocks from my house. I’m still debating. But you should see the talent-level in their busy shower room.

My agent, loyal through everything, suggested that we meet here at the Museum of Modern Art. She’s usually ten minutes late, for effect. That’s the birthright of physically beautiful people, a right I grew used to long ago. I settle on one of those backless benches to the lobby’s east, the wall nearest their bookshop.

It’s December and, through revolving doors, people maneuver huge giftwrapped packages. It has just begun to snow. Must be the season’s first storm, judging from how pleased-looking people appear lunging in here. Two women arrive smiling, shaking white powder from their hair, purging fat fur collars.

I sit reading the Times, waiting, though basically I have no talent for waiting. So I try to engage myself by studying tourists (pretending I am not one). These days, I am so out of all things art world; I subscribe to no glossy national magazines, just one local paper; instead I garden, putter, eat, bird-watch. And remember. I have learned to sit in each rocker for up to eleven minutes. Sit there, blank, safe, fatter, stiller.

I know I miss a lot up here in the city. If you lived in Manhattan for fifteen years and if you have the kind of memory I do, you still recognize certain faces from back then. Older, of course, they’re looking more prosperous or seedier. But over there, I see two people, both artists, long married, our age. We all attended openings together; they wouldn’t know a dropout like me but I recall them. They’re older but still seem flourishing, a pair.

Sometimes when you’re feeling agitated, your eyes will choose some arbitrary resting spot. Behind the dark coats of scruffy gorgeous Swedish students, beyond the usual Park Avenue matrons using art as their respectable starting place for luncheon-shopping expeditions, I come to idly focus on a new painting. It is the only picture in this lobby.