“Oh, Kitty,” I say. “Forget the movie. We’re out here in the park, it’s a gorgeous day. Let’s leave those other two people behind us. Let’s talk about…about horses.”

What a look! What a gaze! Every cheesy metaphor you can fathom comes to mind: sun breaking through clouds, flowers yawning into bloom, the sudden and mystical appearance of a rainbow. It’s done. I’ve reached behind or around or within—I’ve touched the real Kitty. And for reasons I cannot understand, reasons that surely must rank among the most mysterious of quantum mechanical mysteries, I experience this contact as revelatory, urgent, as if, in bridging the crevasse between myself and this young actress, I am being lifted above an encroaching darkness.