I’m asking Jean, “How many people in this world are like me?”

She pauses, carefully answers, “I don’t… think anyone?” She’s guessing.

“Let me rephrase the ques— Wait, how does my hair look?” I ask, interrupting myself.

“Uh, fine.”

“Okay. Let me rephrase the question.” I take a sip of her dry beer. “Okay. Why do you like me?” I ask.

She asks back, “Why?”

“Yes,” I say, “Why.”

“Well…” A drop of beer has fallen onto my Polo shirt. She hands me her napkin. A practical gesture that touches me. “You’re… concerned with others,” she says tentatively. “That’s a very rare thing in what”—she stops again—“is a… I guess, a hedonistic world. This is… Patrick, you’re embarrassing me.” She shakes her head, closing her eyes.

“Go on,” I urge. “Please. I want to know.”

“You’re sweet.” She rolls her eyes up. “Sweetness is… sexy… I don’t know. But so is… mystery.” Silence. “And I think… mystery… you’re mysterious.” Silence, followed by a sigh. “And you’re… considerate.” She realizes something, no longer scared, stares at me straight on. “And I think shy men are romantic.”

“How many people in this world are like me?” I ask again. “Do I really appear like that?”

“Patrick,” she says. “I wouldn’t lie.”

“No, of course you wouldn’t… but I think that…” My turn to sigh, contemplatively. “I think… you know how they say no two snowflakes are ever alike?”

She nods.

“Well, I don’t think that’s true. I think a lot of snowflakes are alike… and I think a lot of people are alike too.”

She nods again, though I can tell she’s very confused.

“Appearances can be deceiving,” I admit carefully.

“No,” she says, shaking her head, sure of herself for the first time. “I don’t think they are deceiving. They’re not.”

“Sometimes, Jean,” I explain, “the lines separating appearance—what you see—and reality—what you don’t—become, well, blurred.”

“That’s not true,” she insists. “‘That’s simply not true.”

“Really?” I ask, smiling.

“I didn’t use to think so,” she says. “Maybe ten years ago I didn’t. But I do now.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, interested. “You used to?”

…a flood of reality. I get an odd feeling that this is a crucial moment in my life and I’m startled by the suddenness of what I guess passes for an epiphany. There is nothing of value I can offer her. For the first time I see Jean as uninhibited; she seems stronger, less controllable, wanting to take me into a new and unfamiliar land—the dreaded uncertainty of a totally different world. I sense she wants to rearrange my life in a significant way—her eyes tell me this and though I see truth in them, I also know that one day, sometime very soon, she too will be locked in the rhythm of my insanity. All I have to do is keep silent about this and not bring it up—yet she weakens me, it’s almost as if she’s making the decision about who I am, and in my own stubborn, willful way I can admit to feeling a pang, something tightening inside, and before I can stop it I find myself almost dazzled and moved that I might have the capacity to accept, though not return, her love. I wonder if even now, right here in Nowheres, she can see the darkening clouds behind my eyes lifting. And though the coldness I have always felt leaves me, the numbness doesn’t and probably never will. This relationship will probably lead to nothing… this didn’t change anything. I imagine her smelling clean, like tea…

“Patrick… talk to me… don’t be so upset,” she is saying. “I think it’s… time for me to… take a good look… at the world I’ve created,” I choke, tearfully, finding myself admitting to her, “I came upon… a half gram of cocaine… in my armoire last… night.” I’m squeezing my hands together, forming one large fist, all knuckles white.

“What did you do with it?” she asks.

I place one hand on the table. She takes it.

“I threw it away. I threw it all away. I wanted to do it,” I gasp, “but I threw it away.”

She squeezes my hand tightly. “Patrick?” she asks, moving her hand up until it’s gripping my elbow. When I find the strength to look back at her, it strikes me how useless, boring, physically beautiful she really is, and the question Why not end up with her? floats into my line of vision. An answer: she has a better body than most other girls I know. Another one: everyone is interchangeable anyway. One more: it doesn’t really matter. She sits before me, sullen but hopeful, characterless, about to dissolve into tears. I squeeze her hand back, moved, no, touched by her ignorance of evil. She has one more test to pass.

“Do you own a briefcase?” I ask her, swallowing.

“No,” she says. “I don’t.”

“Evelyn carries a briefcase,” I mention.

“She does…?” Jean asks.

“And what about a Filofax?”

“A small one,” she admits.

“Designer?” I ask suspiciously.

“No.”

I sigh, then take her hand, small and hard, in mine.

…and in the southern deserts of Sudan the heat rises in airless waves, thousands upon thousands of men, women, children, roam throughout the vast bushland, desperately seeking food. Ravaged and starving, leaving a trail of dead, emaciated bodies, they eat weeds and leaves and… lily pads, stumbling from village to village, dying slowly, inexorably; a gray morning in the miserable desert, grit flies through the sir, a child with a face like a black moon lies in the sand, scratching at his throat, cones of dust rising, flying across land like whirling tops, no one can see the sun, the child is covered with sand, almost dead, eyes unblinking, grateful (stop and imagine for an instant a world where someone is grateful for something) none of the haggard pay attention as they file by, dazed and in pain (nothere is one who pays attention, who notices the boy’s agony and smiles, as if holding a secret), the boy opens and closes his cracked, chapped mouth soundlessly, there is a school bus in the distance somewhere and somewhere else, above that, in space, a spirit rises, a door opens, it asks “Why? ”—a home for the dead, an infinity, it hangs in a void, time limps by, love and sadness rush through the boy

“Okay.”

I am dimly aware of a phone ringing somewhere. In the café on Columbus, countless numbers, hundreds of people, maybe thousands, have walked by our table during my silence. “Patrick,” Jean says. Someone with a baby stroller stops at the corner and purchases a Dove Bar. The baby stares at Jean and me. We stare back. It’s really weird and I’m experiencing a spontaneous kind of internal sensation, I feel I’m moving toward as well as away from something, and anything is possible.

It is four days before Christmas, at two in the afternoon. I’m sitting in the back of a pitch-black limousine parked in front of a nondescript, brownstone off Fifth Avenue trying to read an article about Donald Trump in the new issue of Fame magazine. Jeanette wants me to come in with her but I say “Forget it.” She has a black eye from last night since I had to coerce her over dinner at Il Marlibro to even consider doing this; then, after a more forceful discussion at my apartment, she consented. Jeanette’s dilemma lies outside my definition of guilt, and I had told her, truthfully, over dinner that it was very hard for me to express concern for her that I don’t feel. During the entire drive from my place on the Upper West Side, she’s been sobbing. The only clear, identifiable emotion coming from her is desperation and maybe longing, and though I successfully ignore her for most of the ride I finally have to tell her, “Listen, I’ve already taken two Xanax this morning so, uh, you’re incapable of, like, upsetting me.” Now, as she stumbles out of the limo onto the frozen pavement, I mumble, “It’s for the best,” and, offering consolation, “Don’t take it so seriously.” The driver, whose name I’ve forgotten, leads her into the brownstone and she gives a last, regretful look back. I sigh and wave her off. She’s still wearing, from last night, a leopard-print cotton balmacaan coat with wool challis lining over a wool crepe shirtless dress by Bill Bless. Bigfoot was interviewed on The Patty Winters Show this morning and to my shock I found him surprisingly articulate and charming. The glass I’m drinking Absolut vodka from is Finnish. I’m very suntanned compared to Jeanette.