THE FOLLOWING morning there was no question of not meeting Ralph at the coffee shop he’d suggested. At the same time I didn’t believe he’d show up; perhaps that was my wish. He had made me think so hard, the scope of my everyday life seemed so mundane and I had become so excited about this possible adventure and future that I was already beginning to feel afraid.

He arrived on a bicycle, wearing few clothes, and told me he’d stayed up late dancing, woken up early, exercised, and studied a “dramatic text” before coming here. It was common, he said, that people living a “second” life, like people on a second marriage, took what they did more seriously. Each moment seemed even more precious. There was no doubt he looked fit, well, and ready to be interested in things.

I found myself studying his face. How should I put it? If the body is a picture of the mind, his body was like a map of a place that didn’t exist. What I wanted was to see his original face, before he was reborn. Otherwise it was like speaking on the phone to someone you’d never met, trying to guess what they were really like.

But it was me, not him, we were there for, and he was businesslike, as I guessed he must have been in his former life. He went through everything as though reading from a clipboard in his mind. After two hours we shook hands, and I returned home.

Margot and I always talked and bickered over lunch together, soup and bread, or salad and sandwiches, before our afternoon nap on separate sofas. Today, I had to tell her I was going away.

Earlier in the year Margot had gone to Australia for two months to visit friends and travel. We needed each other, Margot and I, but we didn’t want to turn our marriage into more of an enclosure than necessary. We had agreed that I, too, could go on “walkabout” if I wanted to. (Apparently, “walkabout” was called “the dreaming” by some Aboriginals.) I told her I wanted to leave in three days’ time. I asked for “a six-month sabbatical.” As well as being upset by the suddenness of my decision, she was shocked and hurt by the length of time I required. She and I are always pleased to part, but then, after a few days, we need to share our complaints. I guess that was how we knew our marriage was still alive. Yet she knew that when I make up my mind, I enter a tunnel of determination, for fear that vacillation is never far away.

She said, “Without you here to talk about yourself in bed, how will I go to sleep?”

“At least I am some use, then.”