When he was speaking with people, he found himself in a state of apprehension, of nervous excitement, lest he be profoundly offended by what they said or did. For nearly a year, he had dated a girl who did such neck cycles at moments he deemed inappropriate. After completing one she had done in a bar they frequented, she had asked him, "Didn't I look like a kitty cat?" "No!" he replied, his voice acid with distaste. At once he regretted it. They spent the night lying in her bed like wooden planks. The next morning she dressed in silence, her face grim. He had tried to assuage her with boyish gaiety. She had broken her silence with one sentence: "I don't want to see you anymore."

When regret threatened to sink him, he made efforts to count his blessings. He had a passable job with an accounting firm, an affectionate older sister living in Boston with whom he spoke once a month, and a rent-controlled apartment. He still took pleasure in books. He had been a comparative literature major in college before taking a business degree, judging that comp lit would get him nowhere. His health was good. He was only thirty-six.

Only! Would he tell himself on his next birthday that he was only thirty-seven, and try to comfort himself with a word that mediated between hope and dread?

Yet was it possible that his evasions, his lies, were transparent to others? And they chose not to see through them because the truth might be so much more burdensome?

She was, after all, a very nice woman, kind, generous, full-hearted. What did it matter that in bending to someone's pet or a friend's small child she assumed a high, squeaky voice, that she held her hand over her heart when she was moved, that she struck actressy poses when she showed him a new outfit or hairstyle? What had it mattered? Body to body - what did it all really matter?

[...] It suddenly came to him that he'd been lying to himself about how the affair had ended. He'd convinced himself that she had left his apartment, angrily, the morning after their quarrel about "kitty-cat." In fact it had taken a week, during which they met at the end of the day in his or her apartment, ate together, went to a movie, slept in bed side by side. They had not made love. When they spoke, it was of mundane matters, and when they parted in the morning, he to his office and she to the private school where she taught first grade, she had briefly pressed her cheek against his. Life has its rhythms, he told himself.

"I haven't just been hanging around, you know," she said defiantly.

"I only want to speak to you."

"You want! You have to think about what other people want once a year!"

"Jean, please ..." He dropped the bone on the table.

In a suddenly impetuous rush, she said, "It was so silly what I asked you! I'll never forget it. I can't even bear describing it to myself - what happened. All I feel is my own humiliation."

"We are born into the world and anything can happen," he said.