He took the call in the other room.
I heard him stand, heard his footsteps cross the floor with that particular quality they had when something had been decided and the deciding of it had given the body a direction, and then the bedroom door closed and I was alone in the main room with the Paris evening coming through the windows and the phone on the table between us that had just played me the shape of my entire life rearranged.
I sat with it.
This was something I had learned to do young, the sitting with things, the staying inside a difficult truth without immediately looking for the exit from it. My father's house had taught me this the way it had taught me most things, which was without mercy and without the option of not learning. You sat with what was real because what was real di
