(xliii)


About eight in the morning, making my way out of the grill, keeping an eye on my feet, which I suspect may betray me at any moment. A trifle lost, something about the quantum theory of measurement.

She is sitting with a couple of guys at a table. They’re too nondescript to be chemists, even, they must be engineers.

We discover one another with brooding stares.

I have a pretty good brooding stare today. I manage to project deep mysterious longing, a dark and poignant sorrow in my past, and the intimation that I have a dork like a fire hydrant.

Hers is pretty good, too. An electric current seems to pass across my forebrain between my temples.

She says something to the engineers.

I grin at my feet. And manage to keep walking.


An exchange of stares. Are we back in the seventh grade, then?

I suppose it doesn't matter. I was happy, in the seventh grade. I could hustle women, in the seventh grade.

Sipping bad coffee from a Styrofoam cup, I notice that my hands are shaking.