“Claire. It’s me.”

“Yes, Henry, it’s you.”

“Henry the Ranger. Remember?”

“Henry the Ranger. Yes, I remember.”

From The Fool’s Progress: An Honest Novel (1988)

“I’m in Denver, Claire. Only ten blocks away. I want to see you.”

“That’s sweet of you, Henry. But we’re going to a concert. We have to leave in a few minutes.”

“Oh.” He stopped. Now what? “Well—I’ll go with you. I’ll buy the tickets.”

She laughed. An angel’s laugh, it seemed to him. “But Henry, I’m in the orchestra.”

“In the orchestra?”

“String section. Second violin.”

“Oh.” What now. “Well—I’ll come and watch.”

“You’re not supposed to watch, Henry, you’re supposed to listen. Both, rather. But yes, do come. Meet me at the reception afterward.”

His heart swelled with relief. She does remember me. Joyously he said, “I’ll bring my harmonica. And my Jew’s harp. And my Paiute foreskin fertility dance drum.”

“What?”

“Dogskin.” Giddy with sudden happiness, he barely heard her instructions. But he found the place, the concert hall—after a quick stop at a gas station to bathe, change shirt, whip on necktie and jacket—and bought a cheap seat high in the peanut gallery, among the music students. He noticed a few of them adjusting opera glasses. The orchestra had not yet come onstage. Henry hurried out to his truck and returned with his 7 × 50 U.S. government official forest ranger binoculars. The tympani leaped to his eyes. The harp stood five feet before him. He could read the lettering of the open score on the conductor’s podium: Leonore Overture no. 2. Henry was so excited he could barely restrain himself from turning to the young people around him and announcing in bold frank supercharged tones that he, Henry Holyoak Lightcap, was boldly frankly candidly in love with a girl, with a violinist, with the whole string section, with the entire Denver Fucking Symphony Orchestra, with Leonore too and Ludwig Whatshisname….

He waited, waited.

The members of the orchestra began to file in—first the percussionists (how he envied the man at the great copper bowls of the kettledrums) then the brass then the woodwinds then finally the string folk: the bass viols, the violoncellos, the violas, the violins—including yes, yes, there she was a slender figure holding her dainty instrument (and later mine, hoped Henry) in one hand, plucking up the long skirt of her formal blue-black velvet gown, trimmed at neck and sleeve with snowy lace, as she picked her way on slick black glossy pointy shoes among assorted elbows, cellos, legs and feet toward her chair. Henry stood up, the better to see her—and as he did so a number of others around him also stood, following his lead, assuming the advent of an important personage onstage—and waved at Claire. Already tuning her fiddle, however, she failed to notice Henry, failed even to look up. Henry sat down, disappointed. Those around him sat down. He remembered the giant field glasses hanging from his neck. He raised the eyepieces to his eyes, adjusted the focus and grazed with greedy looks upon the radiance of her flowing butter-colored hair (no braids tonight), the rosy luster of her cheeks, the bare glowing flesh of neck, bosom, arms…