“I like you a lot,” he said. “Why don’t we blow this joint?” He spoke in his best Bogie accent.

“We can’t,” I said. “We can’t spoil Catherine’s dinner.”

“It isn’t working,” he said, “because you don’t want it to work. I know you like me.”

I fingered the braid across my knees. I handed it back to him. He returned it to his jacket pocket. (I got it again later; I’ll let you guess how.)

“What’s the story?” he asked then.

“No story.”

“You’ve got such beautiful wide eyes.” He fingered my eyebrows, fingered the space between my eyes, fingered my chin, moved my face toward his and kissed me.

“I’m going to have a showing in Paris next week. Why don’t you come with me?”

“I can’t.”

“Think about it.”

I said nothing. He smelled like a pinecone.

“Anyway, my braids didn’t do anything spectacular here in the States until Catherine and I combined our talents—we had a joint showing where she used the braids to decorate her sculptures. It made a sensation and I’ve been in demand in America and Europe ever since.”

“What about Japan?”

“Oh, in Japan I’m just a second-rate braid maker. They wouldn’t even look at me in Japan.”

“That didn’t look second rate to me.”

But I remember this Sri Lanka story we’d read in a creative writing class where the teacher insisted on using materials from different cultures, rather than just Western literature, and everyone in the class had marveled at how wonderful and original the story was; how impeccably written, every element so precise and meticulous like a fine oriental tapestry (or a Billie Holiday tune I put in, to the class’s dismay); how superb the storyteller’s imagination! But the teacher said he’d shown the story to an acquaintance from Sri Lanka and the fellow laughed—said in Sri Lanka that it was the most conventional, mundane, ordinary story that anyone could write. In fact, in Sri Lanka it would have been the work of a third-rate storyteller.

“It’s a very ancient art there,” he was saying. “My mother’s people laughed at me. Her grandfather was celebrated as the best braid maker in Japan. I’m decent, that’s all.”

I still marveled. But I said nothing. And I didn’t want him to give me any more details of himself, his life. (Make believe or real?) I didn’t want to be drawn closer. I didn’t want to be intrigued by anyone someone else had arranged for me to meet. I liked to collide with a lover by chance. But how could I tell him what the problem was or make sense of it? “If I’d picked you out of a crowd,” I could have said. Then he’d say, “Let’s go find a crowd.”

He held out his palm. I put my hand inside it.

“Have you ever been to Paris?” he asked.

“Passed through.”

“How can you pass through Paris? Woman, you’re something else!”

He hugged my shoulder, and I leaned into him.