To all these things I feel myself respond, some rising bubble of recognition, an excitement that these mysteries exist. I despise them less now, or not at all—the humans. They are intriguing. They keep secrets for years and then announce them suddenly, if only to strangers. Now this “everybody,” far from being a threat, is a perpetual consolation. And if I yearn for a banquet in my honor, or hate my neighbor because she embodies every virtue that I lack, or hold the direst grudge against those who have helped me in my most desperate time of need, I will announce it to the mailman. And if I choose to dine on ice cream and mysteries for the fifteenth day in a row, and glory to feel my last two teeth wobbling in their sockets, and find my patchy hair coming out in wads on the brush, I will mention it with pleasure to my brother when he calls. The mailman will give me a dirty look, my brother will lecture me and go out for a bag of oranges, but later, alone, I know they will feel some echo in their chest of the truth I have offered them, they will feel some enjoyment of their own oddities in recalling mine.

The summer session was over at the college. There was no one there but the janitors and the lady on the switchboard. The fat Russian cook was in charge of the snack bar. I stood for half an hour watching her make sandwiches for the men who were wiring the new wing of the library. She’d been promoted from the big potato masher in the main cafeteria. She was very proud and she spread tuna salad onto slices of bread carefully and quickly.

“It’s the first bite that’s important,” she explained to me. “I spread thick at the corners so the first bites will all be nice. It can be a little thin in the middle.”

She had The Brothers Karamazov propped open in the steam tray. A tangerine held her page. I stood peering blankly at the strange print, the peculiar forms of ink on paper. She shook her head at the book a little sadly.

“He’s my last lover. He doesn’t care that I’m dry and sagging. But he’s very self-indulgent. It’s like being loved by a boy. Only his madness is ravishing. I think it was real. Too many people pretend to be mad. They think it hides their dullness and allows them to be self-indulgent.”

She gave me a tuna sandwich and sent me away.

“The men will be coming. They don’t like to see a girl in the kitchen with long hair and no net. I don’t mind, myself, but if they saw you here they’d be opening their sandwiches looking for hairs. It would be an insult to me.”