Disappointment. I scrape the eggs into a blue bowl and smear them with margarine. The cover of the book is a smooth assemblage of red-spotted orchids looping over a skull, which sports a neat dark hole over one eye and a sad hand of poker—fine cards, faces exposed—gripped in its wealthy American teeth.

But not with life, this disappointment. Not me. The life around me, that I have noticed, has always been … sensational. Nor with love. Love has been precisely what I always suspected. But there is deep and abiding disappointment in myself. I was led to expect better.

After catching Mr. Chesbrough’s hand in the paper cutter, and the tumultuous sleep that followed the departure of the only completely beautiful creature that has ever fallen into my clutches (even his feet and elbows were nicely done), something in the sleep itself, some lost series of dreams that soothed and explained, made my waking hours calm. There was a little light in the earliest hours there in the summer. I stared at the wall and knew that I could rely on myself for nothing but survival. I could make no confident resolution about my own decency or good sense. That I might suddenly acquire dignity and self-reliance was as unlikely as my chances of becoming thin and graceful; all I had was resiliency, and that was merely depressing.

I spooned the eggs from my favorite bowl. The yolks were slightly runny, the same color as the goldfish. I often enjoy this snack at three in the morning with no thought of having to wake at a particular time. Sam has furnished his new apartment with balloons and combs the fuzz down from the crown of his head to display the shine of his bald spot. Carlotta smiles again. I go call on the creature in the garden. I spend many long afternoon teas over there beneath the bush. I stretch out there in the shade, surveying my own bulk, a broadcloth landscape of the swollen bits of my flesh. I prop my hand on the roots of the tree and peer over the roll of my belly to the beyond. I can see directly over my right big toe into the dark crevice where the toad hides. By the time the mug beside me is empty, he will have come to investigate the silence.