She positioned herself on the semicircle, adjusting the russet shawl she had wrapped around her shoulders, and gave a small, decisive nod to the piano player, a balding little man in a camel-colored sports coat whom I had not noticed until now. This new singer was slim, with blond hair and an Eastern European look about her. It occurred to me that one did not often see an opera singer of such slim stature. Was the sound better, I wondered, when it emanated from a more spacious architecture? Of course, it was not likely that the field’s best and brightest would be performing at a hospital during the lunch hour. And—another question occurred to me—this Kindertotenlieder, could it properly be called an opera?

But here I was again in danger of being distracted by irrelevant questions, and this time I was determined to listen carefully to the music, and with that in mind I closed my eyes again for the full effect.

Could he not, I thought, several minutes later, and by he I meant not the piano player but Mahler, could he not have made this Kindertotenlieder just a little faster, a little livelier? Then the song might have caught my interest, but unfortunately it was neither of those things, rather it was slow, melancholy, and artless, just a lonely voice wandering up and down the scale, rising and falling with no particular design.

I had a little daydreaming scene just then, in which I stood in the parking lot of the restaurant, as I had the night before, with the guest lecturer, looking out with her over rows and rows of parked cars. It was very quiet in the daydream, as quiet as a tomb, and as chilly and dark, so that I could see the guest lecturer’s breath clearly, in white puffs, as she said, with determination, “It’s a white car.”

Another noise nearby threatened to distract me—a sniffling, prefatory sound, like someone readying to blow their nose—but only for a moment. I tightened my grip on the daydream, in which, now, the guest lecturer and I were crossing the lobby of the Old Mission Hotel, that peculiar, scentless lobby. On our left was the empty bar, with its row of tiny red candles. Did you hear, the guest lecturer was saying, about all the controversy with this place?

Close by, the wet, sniffling noises were becoming more pronounced. The elderly! I thought. My god! Undoubtedly the worst kind of people.

All the controversy, I thought, returning to the daydream. This dirty deal, she had said. But now I was conflating two unrelated moments, I knew: what the guest lecturer had said as we stepped across the lobby, and what had been written on that piece of orange paper that I had found tucked behind my windshield wiper.