“Once,” Allen said. “My Sunday school class camped out on the Tamassee one weekend. Of course that was over twenty years ago. I’m sure a lot’s changed.”

“Probably not as much as you’d think.”

I caught a whiff of Allen’s aftershave, a kind of green, fresh smell, like lime. A good smell. Never get involved with a man you don’t like the smell of, my Aunt Margaret always said.

I looked over at him, trying to gauge the difference between the face three feet from me and the picture on the back of The Center Cannot Hold: Death and Life in Rwanda. The genesis of that book had been the reporting he’d done in the mid-nineties for the Washington Post. Four years ago the book had been a finalist for a Pulitzer. I’d bought a copy after we met.

In the author photo Allen stared directly into the camera. I’ve seen what most people can’t imagine, his eyes seemed to say, and something more, a hint of arrogance as well, as if to add, and I’m good enough to make you see it as well.

But he had done more than that. Allen’s best passages in Death and Life in Rwanda accomplished what Brady’s and Capa’s most affecting war photography did. They didn’t just make you see, they made you unable to forget what you’d seen.

“I brought your Rwanda book,” I said. “I’d like you to sign it later, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Sure,” Allen said, but without much enthusiasm.

“It’s a fine book. I read it in one sitting.”

Allen glanced over at me skeptically.

“I tend to do that, start a book and not put it down.”

“I’m bad about that myself,” Allen said, smiling now. “When I was a kid I’d go to the library and be so oblivious I wouldn’t know what time it was until the librarian started cutting off lights.”

“Sometimes when I’m working that same thing happens. It’s like I’m outside of time. Three hours will pass and seem like thirty minutes.”

Allen nodded. “Writing used to be the same way for me.”

“Used to be?” I asked.

“Used to be,” Allen repeated.