Suddenly I was afraid. The beautiful woman, with whom I dreamed of a life, already had one. She had a job, she had earned or inherited money, she had been with men, Gundlach and Schwind weren’t accidents, but decisions. “Design” – she said it short and clipped, as if she didn’t want me to know more about her than necessary.

“When will you give me the key?”

“I’ll drop it in your mailbox. Where do you live?”

I gave her my address. “You have to ring the bell. The mailboxes are in the main hallway. When will you come?”

“I don’t know. If you’re not there, then I’ll just buzz until someone opens.”

Then she was gone. She walked along the riverbank, crossed the street, and went into the museum. Crossing the street, as she looked left and right to check for traffic, she could have looked back at me and waved. But she didn’t look back.

I sat back down on the bench. Should I go to the firm? I could still put in a day’s work. I didn’t want to. When, in the Botanic Garden, I remembered that morning by the river, it occurred to me that I had never done that again, fritter away a day. Of course, with my fiancée, then wife, and then with my children, there were days when I didn’t work. But on those days I did what I owed my fiancée, my wife and children, what served our health, education, togetherness. Pleasant activities, certainly, and a nice change of pace from work. But just to sit, and watch the world go by, and close my eyes against the sun, and daydream hour after hour, to find a restaurant with good food and wine, take a little walk, then find another place to sit and watch, and close my eyes against the sun, and dream – I did that only that day, and now again in Sydney.

I wonder what I was dreaming of back then. Surely, of life with Irene. But surely not just that. Probably I pondered the past, as I do now. Since I seemed on the verge of finding happiness, maybe the past began to look different. Maybe I saw my childhood with my grandparents not as loveless, but as a path to freedom, saw my career not as a pressure to succeed, but as a gift of success; and saw, in my unfulfilled encounters with women, not failure but promise.