Or that time Catherine dragged me to this crystal museum—they had these giant crystals from every part of the world, and every color—and you walked around them and at every angle it was like discovering some wonder, the way the light showed in and around and jumped out of them. I liked the way Catherine described it: “They’ve got goodies any which way you look!” How do I remember him in those early days? How did we chat?

I remember once I flew to them:

“Here you are,” he said.

We sat on the steps outside the psychiatric hospital together. Just sat. Occasionally, he would just glance over at me, regarding me, but I wouldn’t look back at him. I no longer asked him why. I’d stopped asking him why first. Anybody’s guess, and anybody’s guess was as good as the next fellow’s. I could feel his eyes on me. I started thinking of something else I read once in a book by Hemingway, his island book. That painting was practiced by better people than writing. She was a sculptor though. Same difference. She’d tried to kill him, and yet somehow the idea of Catherine as “the better person” always ran through my head. Because of that book? Well, who are you in the next guy’s imagination? Is it hard to be the person in your own?

“They’re putting her on a different sort of medication,” he said. “She has to take it for ten years. My God, and what happens afterwards? I don’t know what they mean.”

Something else he (the other Ernest, Hemingway) said. That if he were a good enough person he’d have been a painter, that if one were enough of a bastard, he’d be a good writer. Something like that. I must have read it years ago but only remembered it when I met Catherine and became part of her troupe.

Creature of her own invention. When you say that again, Cowgirl, smile.

Why does he stay with her?

Can you be better than your actions?

If I were bastard enough I’d . . .

He kept turning to look at me, but I wouldn’t look back.

“Do you know how well I think of you?” he asked.

“For coming?”

“Not just for coming, but for coming too . . . I’m not handling it very well.”

“Better than most.”

“I spoke with her doctor, but they never tell you anything you can use.”

“So should I come back tomorrow?”

“Yeah, it’s better to wait. Tomorrow’s soon enough.”

His gray suit wrinkled in spots and places.

“I can come and pick you up tomorrow if you want.”

“No, that’s too much trouble, and besides your hotel’s closer.

I’m out of your way.”

He was silent, observing me.

“There’s almost nothing I wouldn’t do for you; you know that,” he said.

I heard the “almost.” Does every woman hear the “almost”?

“Thanks, but I can get here.”

“Okay.”

“Your suit looks like it’s been through somebody’s mill.”