Suddenly there was a click in my head. This guy was that Chinese boy I’d known in high school.

“Strange, huh, how someone ends up walking around selling encyclopedias to Chinese? I don’t understand it,” the guy said, seeming to distance himself from the whole thing. “Sure, I can remember each of the little circumstances leading up to it, but the big picture, you know, how it all comes together moving in this one direction, escapes me. I just looked up one day and here I was.”

This guy and I had never been in the same class, nor, as I said, had we been on such close personal terms. But as near as I could place him, he hadn’t been your encyclopedia-salesman type, either. He seemed well bred, got better grades than I did. Girls liked him.

“Things happen, eh? It’s a long, dark, dumb story. Nothing you’d want to hear,” he said.

The line didn’t seem to demand a response, so I let it drop.

“It’s not all my doing,” he picked up. “All sorts of things just piled on. But in the end, it’s nobody’s fault but mine.”

I was thinking back to high school with this guy, but all I came up with was vague scenes. I seemed to recall sitting around a table at someone’s house, drinking beer and talking about music. Probably on a summer afternoon, but more like in a dream.

“Wonder what made me want to say hello?” he asked, half to me, twirling the lighter around on the table. “Guess I kind of bothered you. Sorry about that.”

“No bother at all,” I said. Honestly, it wasn’t.

We both fell silent for a minute. Neither of us had anything to say. I finished my cigarette, he finished his coffee.

“Well, guess I’ll be going,” he said, pocketing his cigarettes and lighter. Then he slid back his chair a bit. “Can’t be spending the whole day talking. Not when there’s things to sell, eh?”

“You have a pamphlet?” I asked.

“A pamphlet?”

“About the encyclopedia.”

“Oh, right,” he mumbled. “Not on me. You want to see one?”

“Sure, just out of curiosity.”

“I’ll send you one. Give me your address.”

I tore out a page of my Filofax, wrote down my address, and handed it to him. He looked it over, folded it in quarters, and slipped it into his business-card case.

“It’s a good encyclopedia, you know. I’m not just saying that because I sell them. Really, it’s well done. Lots of color photos. Very handy. Sometimes I’ll thumb through the thing myself, and I never get bored.”

“Someday, when my ship comes in, maybe I’ll buy one.”