Hanging up the telephone, still thrumming with her daughter’s voice, its dying vibrancy, Meg had felt divided and dizzy, as though she had stepped into a room where the air was thinned and, at the same time, more tremblingly present. She was afraid she might faint or else choke and, for that reason, took a taxi back to the hotel.

“It was total extravagance,” she tells Roy. “When I had my carte orange right in my purse. And phoning in the middle of the afternoon like that, at the most expensive time. On an impulse. I just felt-”

“It was money well spent,” Roy assures her, knowing he will forever, in one way or another, be called upon for reassurance.

“We talked for ages,” Meg then confesses. “I could have bought that hideous dress for the same price.”

“Years from now,” he tells her, “you’ll look back and you’ll never count the cost. You won’t even remember it.”

The Sloans recognize but resist the details of the future, just as Meg knows about but can’t see the friable skin of her breasts beneath her white sweater, and Roy the bald, highly burnished spot on the back of his head. They will get older, of course. One of them will die first-the world will allow this to happen-and the other will live on for a time. Their robust North American belief that life consists of stages keeps them from sinking, though ahead of them, in a space the size of this small table, waits a series of intricate compromises: impotence, rusted garden furniture, disordered dreams, and the remembrance of specific events which have been worn smooth and treacherous as the stone steps of ancient buildings. A certain amount of shadowy pathos will accrue between what they remember and what they imagine, and eventually one of them, perhaps lying limply on a tautly made-up bed, will gruesomely sentimentalize this Paris night. The memory will divide and shrink like a bodily protein, and terror, with all its freshness and redemptive power, will give way, easily, easily, to the small rosy singularity of this shaded lamp, and the arc of light that cuts their faces precisely in half.

Block Out

Block Out

The writer Meershank, vacationing in Portugal with his wife-cum-editor, Maybelle Spritz, became blocked.

The two of them spent their first morning there exploring the coastal city of Porto, which is an airy gemlike city that, as Maybelle complained, had been severely underrated-given one lousy star in the Michelin Guide, that was all. This was plain crazy, a single star for a dozen broad sun-splashed terraces, for countless baroque churches, for the elegant iron bridges, and the lazy smoky river lined with pungent fishing boats and dark bars. Ridiculous! She was indignant. She slapped the green guide book hard against her long thigh. Coming to Portugal had been her idea. She was the one who had thought of flight, of leaving the Ontario winter behind, who had persuaded and cajoled and weakened her husband Meershank, and she was determined to unearth treasures for him hour by hour. Now this insult, this chintzy rating, a gorgeous city awarded one grudging star.