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I taught English at a private Christian school, where the principal informed me I would be fired if anyone saw me buying alcohol.
I began to drink a glass of wine by myself at dinnertime anyway, always choosing white because I wanted to have a taste in
my mouth that was simple and light and clear. I read Buddhist books about impermanence, how there is no self or soul connecting
the pieces of ourselves together, and I liked the idea of relinquishing my ego and merging with the void and of having no
more desires for anything or anyone.

Vincent and I were still in touch. We exchanged polite, impersonal e-mails a few times each month, and any small detail he
was willing to give me about his life made me brood about him a little more.

He once told me, with some regret, that he was an amoral person. I had been fascinated and disturbed by the number of women
he had slept with, all those bodies he had left behind. Now he had left me behind, and it was sobering to realize that there
was nothing that distinguished me from the rest.

I met the businessman at a dinner party hosted by a friend. He was holding a drink the color of avocados with a marigold floating
on top. “What’s that?” I asked. “It’s very pretty.”

“Pea soup. Do you want to try?” He handed me his glass, and I took a sip. “Well?”

I hesitated. “It tastes like . . .”

“Pea soup?”

“Perhaps if you put in some salt.”

“Hmm. I don’t ever taste what I cook before serving it.”

“You made this?”

“Well, it isn’t any good.”

“It’s quite aesthetic. The flower is a nice touch.”

He shrugged. “I always care more about how the food looks than how it tastes.” The businessman was tall and thickening around
the middle. He had a heavy, handsome face that was at once masculine and babyish, light quick eyes, and a cleft chin. I already
knew from my friend, who wanted to set us up, that his name was Clay and that he was from Georgia. He liked old films and
owned a small collection of Venetian masks.

Clay asked me what I did on the weekends, and I told him I went to concerts at Davies Symphony Hall, where I paid twenty dollars
for a Center Terrace seat overlooking the back of the orchestra.

“You go alone?” he asked.

I blushed and asked if he had heard of Leon Fleisher, who was performing next week. “He’s this pianist who was at the height
of his career when he was afflicted with a neurological disorder,” I said. “It made the muscles of his right hand contract
and his fingers curl under. For a while, he couldn’t perform in concerts, but then he developed a repertoire of left-hand
pieces. There’s a surprising amount of pieces you can play for the left hand alone.”

Clay smiled. “You want to pay to go see someone play with one hand?”

This made me like him a little less. “Well, he’s still brilliant,” I said. “I mean he plays better with one hand than most
people play with two. But the thing is, he recently regained the use of his right hand. He gets injections that relax the
muscles, so now he can play with both hands.”

“But he can play only the easy pieces, right?” He smiled at me and said he was only teasing. “Let’s go hear this Leon Fleisher
guy together.”

I hesitated for a moment. “All right,” I said.

I didn’t tell Clay I got a painful pleasure out of going to these concerts by myself. The only reason I knew about Leon Fleisher
was because of Vincent, of course. His interests and tastes exerted a more powerful influence over me now that he was no longer
in my life.

The following week, Clay and I watched Leon Fleisher appear onstage, looking battered and untamed in spite of his tuxedo.
Set apart and shielded from the world by square black glasses, he was a sturdy, deep-chested man with spindly legs, his hair
streaked black and iron gray, his Mephistophelian beard whitening at the chin. He was larger than life and yet also all too
human. There was the frailty of his age, the remarkable history of his hands. He played a Mozart concerto with lightness and
joy, and as I leaned forward in my chair, I was startled when Clay reached over and patted my back. A moment later, he removed
his hand and began flipping through his program and reading the concert notes.

During the intermission, he held out my jacket for me as I slipped it on, and we walked onto the terrace and leaned over the
railing, looking across the street at the lighted dome ot City Hall. “Sometimes my attention wanders when I listen to music,”
Clay told me. “I’m bored, and I think about other things. But it’s funny how it can get under your skin when you’re least
expecting it. When it stirs you up, there’s nothing you can do. Seriously, there were moments just now when I felt I was going
to lose it.” He grinned, putting a knuckle to the corner of his eye, and I smiled as well.

“A sensitive businessman,” I said.

“Whatever preconceptions you have about me are dead wrong,” he replied.

We walked back through the shining lobby with its walls of glass, past people sitting at small tables and others standing
in line at the bar, couples sipping their drinks and looking out at the city or leaning back against the windows and observing
other people go by. The constant murmur of voices, the sound of laughter and tinkling glasses, filled my ears. Rising beneath
this din, the whirling cacophony of the orchestra as musicians practiced or tuned their instruments, a chaos of sound that
lent itself to anticipation.

Clay guided me through the crowd by touching my elbow, and it occurred to me that anyone who saw us might think we were together
and in love. We found our seats again, and as the concert resumed I felt disappointed by my own detachment. This evening with
Clay was pleasant enough, but there was no part of me that was deeply engaged. I glanced at my watch, then looked out into
the audience at the sea of cold, pensive faces, the fine glittering dresses of the women, the sober husbands crumpled in their
chairs.

Clay called me a few days later and said he wanted to take me out to dinner that night. “I’m going away this weekend and want
to see you before I leave.”

“Why don’t we do something when you get back?”

“No, I’m sorry,” he said, “but you’ll have to give me a compelling reason why you can’t go out to dinner with me tonight.”

I thought this was unusual. Here was a definite man who made demands of me. And so I agreed to meet him for dinner.

At the restaurant, Clay said he had been looking forward to seeing me all day. I opened my menu, but a fog had descended on
my brain and I couldn’t make up my mind. Clay merely glanced at the menu and closed it, observing my confusion with a smile
on his lips.

“You’re a decisive person,” I said.

“I was born knowing what I want.” He spoke with charming ease and a subtle drawl that disarmed me.

The appetizer arrived, figs wrapped in prosciutto, and I cut my fig carefully in half before taking a small bite. “The way
you’re eating sums up the differences between us,” he said, popping an entire fig into his mouth.

The restaurant was small and crowded, and we had to raise our voices to hear each other. Finally, he set down his fork and
leaned forward with his hands folded together. “I’m not going to try to talk over this noise,” he said. “I just want to look
at you.” He cocked his head and gazed at me, at one point blinking rapidly as if he were starry-eyed. I tried to stare back
at him boldly, but I lacked the nerve and looked down at my plate. I was playing the typical role of a woman who is looked
at, and it made me very unhappy.

“Look,” I said. “If you’re not going to talk to me, then I don’t want to get coffee with you afterward.”

This put his gazing to an end, and he paid for the meal, one that I couldn’t have afforded. Outside the restaurant, he said,
“You greeted me so coldly before. Can I have a perfunctory hug now?”

“Of course.” I opened my arms, and he pressed me fully against him. When I tried to back away, he wouldn’t let go and squeezed
me even tighter. It was unpleasant to be so close, to feel his desire when I felt nothing at all. At last, Clay released me,
and we walked on to the cafe. I tried to pay for the coffee, but he looked at me in a steely way, as if I had just insulted
him. “Money is no object,” he said lightly, taking out his wallet.

Later, as he walked me back to my car, he insisted on walking on my left-hand side, closer to the curb. “Why that side?” I
asked.

“If a car should lose control, I’ll be able to push you away in time and sacrifice myself.”

“Well,
thanks,”
` I said. We had arrived at my car, but he continued to hover beside me. I was nervous and afraid that he would ask for a
perfunctory kiss. “Well, bye now.”

“Hey, I’m sorry I’ve been so pushy,” he said, moving toward me. His stubble grazed my face, and I felt his moist parted lips,
the warm insistence of his breath, as he kissed me on the cheek.

A few days later I received a bouquet of oriental lilies. Only three lilies had bloomed, and it seemed a modest arrangement
at first. I knew I should call to thank him, but I felt an obscure dread that manifested itself as passivity, and I couldn’t
do it. He called me later that evening and told me the flowers were a small gift.

The lilies smelled heavy and sweet and close. Each day another bud opened, and the bouquet spread out and grew more lush until
I counted nine starlike, poisonous faces the size of my palm. They crowded my desk, blocking my peaceful view of the bay.
If I drew the blinds, I came away with flecks of pollen on my sleeve, and even when I was careful not to brush against the
anthers, the slightest stir or exhalation was enough for them to mark me.

I once asked Vincent if he had ever slept with someone he wasn’t attracted to. He had widened his eyes and with careful emphasis,
because he knew what he was going to say would upset me, he confessed that he had been with Miranda, one of the teachers at
our school. “People say you can have sex only with those you love,” he told me, “but you can have sex with those you don’t
even like.”

When Clay called me again, I didn’t pick up the phone. He called two more times after that and left messages, and I wondered
why a person became less desirable when they showed need. His interest in me seemed odd, even unnatural. I had done little
to encourage him, yet he continued to press on. I recalled the moment when Clay took his shoes off in the cafe and put his
socked feet on the bench beside me. It was an intimacy I hadn’t asked for, but he remained oblivious of my feelings, quite
comfortable in fact with his feet lying there next to me. He was so sure of himself, acting as if he knew something I didn’t,
and I felt an irrational fear that the gypsy woman had cursed me. I saw myself moving toward him in fits and starts, a dangling,
convulsive puppet.

For some reason, Clay was fixated on me just as I was fixated on Vincent. Vincent was probably fixated on a former student
of his, a twenty-year-old blonde with cornflower blue eyes, a pointy nose, and a pale little smile. When he and I were still
together, I had stopped by Vincent’s apartment one afternoon without warning and found him and the girl playing cards together
at his dining room table. The girl was slouched in a chair with a languid expression on her face, her long legs slanting under
the table. Vincent sat upright, his feet spread slightly apart, slowly flipping over cards. Their legs were close enough to
be touching, and an image of the two spending the entire afternoon in bed with their legs entwined and then playing this desultory
game of cards rose up before me. The girl immediately straightened up in her chair when she saw me.

“Anne,” Vincent said without missing a beat, “this is Lisa. I’m helping her procrastinate from writing her final paper.”

I already knew who she was. Vincent had told me he wanted to sleep with her when she was his student. I felt unbearably hot
all at once, standing there in the middle of the room, and I realized that as usual I was wearing too many clothes, whereas
the girl was dressed in a tank top and a short skirt, things that you’re supposed to wear when you’re young. I took off my
jacket, but it was hard for me to focus and reply to what Vincent was saying. I finally gave up trying. “Well, I’ll leave
you two alone now,” I said, turning to leave.

“Bye,” the girl said quietly — it was almost a whisper—and I quickly left.

Vincent called me a half hour later at my house. “Why did you leave like that?” he asked me. “It was so sad the way you rushed
out. You were practically running away from us. Lisa felt awful and left early.”

“I’m glad,” I told him.

“Oh, you are, are you?”

“You’re sleeping with her, aren’t you? You’ve always said you’re amoral, the type to cheat, so just tell me the truth, you
fucking degenerate. Are you sleeping with her?”

“You know, in a way, I’m flattered by your reaction,” Vincent said. “Your jealousy makes me think you really care about me.
But it also makes me like you a little less. You’re so quick to think the worst of me.”

I never knew for sure whether Vincent cheated on me. What was certain was that he liked me less after that. By the time we
broke up, he said he felt nothing. He didn’t want to pretend anymore and dreaded having to touch me.

In the evenings, I prepared lesson plans and graded student papers in a large open cafe in my neighborhood. One night, I looked
across the room and saw a man with a small wrinkled face staring at me. He had a clipboard tilted toward him and seemed to
be drawing something, and the way he looked at me, moving his pencil across the page, filled me with alarm: I thought he might
be sketching me. We made eye contact, he smiled, and I quickly looked down. The woman at the table beside me got up to leave,
and I was dismayed to see the man gather up his clipboard and stainless steel mug and approach me. For the first time, I noticed
he was missing his entire left arm. He set his things down at the empty table beside mine, then went back to the other table
to retrieve his satchel and long walking stick. As his back was turned, I took the opportunity to glance at his clipboard.