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"What ti with you, you know"

"I’lad you are"

A frozen uess that’s it" She retreated to the bedrooain "Stephanie is a lucky girl, you know I’ured it out"

Then she was gone I stripped to my boxers and lay on the couch Under different circu to think that such a woman would take me into her bed But I actually felt relieved; Liz had chosen the honorable route,the decision for both of us It occurred to me that not once, neither at the restaurant nor as alked, had I thought of Stephanie in the context of any betrayal I h the s, I heard the wash of the city, an oceanic sound It seemed to creep into my chest, where itExhaustion poured through my bones, and soon I drifted off

So watched A sensation, vaguely electrical, lingered on my forehead, as if I had been kissed I rose ontoover ht I must have dreamed this

--

About the funeral, there is little to say To describe it in detail would be a violation of its confidential grief, its closed circuit of pain During the service, I keptDid she knoanted her to know, but I also didn’t; she was just a girl No good could come of it

I declined the family’s invitation to lunch; Liz and I returned to the aparte On the platforhts, kissed me quickly on the cheek

"So, okay?"

I didn’t know if she meant me or the two of us "Sure," I said "Never better"

"Callh the s as I made my way down the car to find an e the bus to Cleveland, that long-ago September day--the drops of rain on the ,to see if one I took a seat beside theLiz had yet to move She saw me, smiled, waved; I waved back A deep an to e with her gaze, as we entered the tunnel and disappeared

18

May 1992: The last of raduate suraduate fellowships had come my way MIT, Columbia, Princeton, Rice Harvard, which had decided it had not seen the last of me if I cared to stay on It was the obvious choice, one I felt bound toto savor the possibilities for as long as I could Jonas would be going back to Tanzania for the suo to start his doctoral work; Liz would be going to Berkeley for herto Washington to work for a political consulting firraduation ceremony itself would not happen until the first week of June We had entered a nether time, a caesura bethat our lives had been and what they would become

In the ers, black-tie balls, a garden fete where everyone drank irls wore hats Init had become a trademark--I danced the Lindy, the Electric Slide, the Hokey Pokey, and the Buover An hour of triumph, but it came at a cost For the first ti people I had not yet left

The week before graduation, Jonas, Liz, Stephanie, and I drove down to the Cape, to Liz’s house No one was talking about it, but it seeain for so just opened the house for the season I had met them before, in Connecticut Her mother, Patty, came across as a bit of a society doyenne, with a brisk, soraciousness and a lock-jawed accent, but her father was one of thepeople I’d ever otten his vision) with an earnest face, Oscar Macomb had been a banker, retired early, and now, in his words, spent his days "noodling around with hter--that was plain to anyone with eyes; less apparent, though undeniable, was that he vastly preferred her to his wife, whoive to an overbred poodle With Liz, the man was all smiles--the two of them would frequently chatter away in French--and his war me, whom he had nicknamed "Ohio Tim"