Philip sighed and said, “I was afraid you’d say that.” He glanced out the side window. “It’s her nature to inflate things. Sometimes she gets a wild notion in her head.” He looked back at me with a mournful expression. “You really don’t know her well, because she’s tough to know. She doesn’t trust easily.”

Yes, but, Philip, maybe with good reason. I mean, who was that woman in the window?

“It’s difficult to explain her. Suffice it to say she’s a person of extreme sensitivity. Fragile, I think. It’s what makes her Anna. It’s what makes her vibrant and astonishing in my eyes.”

No cars on the bridge had moved. In the van in front of us, a driver leaned on his horn.

“You better call ahead, Hank. Let them know we’re running late.” Philip turned to me and said, “Where were we?”

“You were telling me about Anna.”

“If she likes somebody, she tends to idealize them. Like you and your husband. Also, she’s extremely generous, almost to a fault.”

“Yes, I know, the dress.”

“You see, I never wanted to marry anyone. But she’s not anyone. I couldn’t have imagined Anna. I couldn’t have dreamed her up.”

A few years back there was an awards show on television where a noted philanderer received a lifetime achievement award. His much younger, almost as famous, very pregnant wife watched from the front row as he humbly thanked the many people who had aided/graced his career. The last part of his impressive speech was devoted entirely to a lengthy tribute he paid his wife. As if on cue, tears sprang from her eyes, and even a skeptic such as me felt something catch in my throat, the sudden rise of goose pimples. I turned to Tim, equally moved, and asked, “Do you think he loves her as much as he says?”

“We’ll never know,” Tim said. “One thing is certain, though: He’s in love with the idea of us believing he’s in love.”

I wondered whether this was true of Philip Ashworth as he waxed on and on about Anna. “She’s not made like you or me. She’s unusual. Sometimes I think she has an extra set of nerve endings. She’s complicated.”

What I found funny, of course, was that Philip Ashworth was equally complicated. Maybe all of us are complicated, but because of our tenuous place in the world, our contradictory selves aren’t indulged. And because they’re not indulged, those interesting, inappropriate, shocking parts of us wither away, atrophy. Maybe Philip and Anna were complicated only because they could be.