8
ACROSS THE COMMON, IN THE dim early morning light, I can see Jenny in a bright red parka, walking around her car and looking at her watch. Above her is a huge white setting moon, glittering in a cloudless sky just turning blue. The air is sharply cold, and so dry that the small white clouds forming from my labored breathing—the result of my having just run up the stairs behind the library—appear to dissipate noisily into the atmosphere the way that a glass loses its form at the moment of its impact with the floor, exploding into a million flashing fragments.
I’m not going to dine with the Doetons tonight, as it turns out, which accounts for my feeling discombobulated as I stroll toward Jenny, still trying to calm my breathing, its rapidity being as much the result of my confrontation w
