That Barry is dead? That my family is falling apart? That it’s been three weeks since I last heard from Robin? That Chris and thousands of men-children like him might, could, will die? That to avoid the same fate, I will have to endure the minute-by-minute torture of starvation for seven more days?

But I know that what she means is, am I mad at her for going off with Bernard at Woodstock. “No. You came back with the rice and that can of SpaghettiOs. And you stayed for Saturday night when you didn’t have to.”

“It wouldn’t have been right otherwise.”

“You mean it wasn’t the I Ching that told you to come back?”

Tinsley smiles archly. It’s been almost a month since the night we lay under the stars on that smoky mattress in a field near Kemptville, Ontario, and she said looking at the stars made the universe seem closer. Things do seem closer now. Unfortunately, those things include death, war, bereavement.

“How’s your girlfriend?” she asks.

“Not good.”

“Not because of me, I hope?”

“No. Because of me.”

Tinsley takes another drag off her cigarette and plunks the butt into the brown broth. It hisses. She rises from the chair and gives me a peck on the cheek. “I hope you fix it, if that’s what you want.”

“Thanks. Good luck in France.”

“Merci beaucoup.”

Canned laughter seeps out of the den. At Barry’s house, Alan got bored and wanted to watch TV, but the living room was full of mourners, so Mom asked me to bring him home. She said she and the paterfamilias would get a ride back later.

On the way home, I asked Alan how camp was. He said he was the best rower.

“In a rowboat?” I asked.

He nodded.

“So you liked it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Would you go back next summer?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Even without TV?”

He said he’d think about it.

Standing at the living-room window at home, I gaze out at the street. The late-afternoon light floods in, illuminating the slowly floating bits of fiber and dust in the motionless air. Every now and then, a particle catches the light and refracts it in a tiny burst of rainbow spectrum, then vanishes forever.

The bathroom scale reads 162. I need to get down to 135. After three days of famine, my clothes feel loose and I’m pulling my belt to the last notch. Even with the countless cigarettes and glasses of water, I don’t know how much longer I can bear this agony.