Love object would be the commonest convenient term to indicate what Amy became to me. But where does that leave one? Suppose, instead of ‘love object,’ you were to say ‘door’ – what sort of door? Does it have a knob; is it old or new, smooth or battered, does it lead anywhere? Half a century of feeling is invested in her, of fantasy, speculation, and absorption, of imaginary conversation. After forty years of concentrated imagining, I feel able to picture her at any moment of any given day. When she opens her purse to find her house keys, I am aware of the Doublemint chewing gum fragrance that comes out. When she is in the shower, I can tell you how she raises her profile to the spray. She’s an older woman now. It’s been thirty years since I saw her naked body, subject to the usual changes, like my own body – more Japanese than I would have thought, if Adletsky hadn’t pointed it out.

But once, about a decade ago, I ran into Amy and failed to recognize her – the woman with whom I was virtually in daily mental contact. I ran into her at the edge of the Loop, under the Wabash Avenue el tracks. As I was passing she stopped me; she stepped in front of me and said, ‘Don’t you know who I am?’

Though I can be brazen about ordinary social embarrassments, I felt that this was a very bad failure.

To her it was a terrific knock. She said, ‘You son of a bitch!’ Meaning that if I didn’t recognize her, she was no longer herself. She too, still presenting or, as we say, ‘selling’ herself-as-she-used-to-be, was caught out in a falsehood.

‘Who am I!’ she said.

I shook my head. I should know who she was. But I didn’t – I couldn’t identify this enraged woman.

‘Amy!’ she said in a furious voice.

I saw her now. This was how it was. She was in the real world. I was not in it. ‘Hey, go easy, Amy,’ I said. ‘In all the time we’ve known each other, I’ve never run into you downtown. And under the el tracks when the weather is overcast, everything turns gray.’

Because she was as gray-faced as a maid-of-all-work – an overworked mother. She had run out to do a quick errand, returning a pair of shoes her older daughter had changed her mind about. The thick, dried urban gumbo of dark Lake Street made everything look bad. Yes, she was unidentifiable below the black girders. Besides, her difficulties with her husband, Jay, were acute just then, and she feared she wasn’t fit to be seen. Her looks were more mature. Or subdued. I’m looking for a tactful way to say it. Nobody comments on my changing appearance. My fat eyes and Chinese lips are the same. From the first, there was nothing to be got out of me.

But she knew how she had figured in my life and that I was in continual mental touch with her. I kept her preserved as she had been at fifteen years of age. So not to be identified when we were face-to-face must mean that she was in full ruin. I was shocked too.