I feel old today. I’m sure it’s because you’re going to be thirty-nine.”

The black man has come to the corner of Constitution Street and stands waiting as the traffic light flicks from red to green across from the new library. The appliance truck is gone, and a yellow minibus stops and lets black maids out onto the same corner. They are large women in white, tentish maid-dresses, talking and swinging big banger purses, waiting for their white ladies to come and pick them up. The man and women do not speak. “Oh, isn’t that the saddest thing you ever saw,” X says, staring at the women. “Something about that breaks my heart. I don’t know why.”

“I really don’t feel a bit old,” I say, happy to be able to answer a question honestly, and possibly slip in some good advice on the side. “I have to wash my hair a little more often. And sometimes I wake up and my heart’s pounding to beat the band—though Fincher Barksdale says it isn’t anything to worry about. I think it’s a good sign. I’d say it was some kind of urgency, wouldn’t you?”

X stares at the maids who are talking in a group of five, watching up the street where their rides will come from. Since our divorce she has developed the capability of complete distraction. She will be talking to you but be a thousand miles away. “You’re very adaptable,” she says airily.

“I am. I know you don’t have a sleeping porch in your house, but you should try sleeping with all your windows open and your clothes on. When you wake up, you’re ready to go. I’ve been doing it for a while now.”

X smiles at me again with a tight-lipped smile of condescension, a smile I don’t like. We are not Hansel and Gretel anymore. “Do you still see your palmist, what’s-her-name?”

“Mrs. Miller. No, less often.” I’m not about to admit I tried to see her last night.

“Do you feel like you’re at the point of understanding everything that’s happened—to us and our life?”

“Sometimes. Today I feel pretty normal about Ralph. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to make me crazy again.”

“You know,” X says, looking away. “Last night I lay in bed and thought bats were flying around my room, and when I closed my eyes I just saw a horizon line a long way off, with everything empty and flat like a long dinner table set for one. Isn’t that awful?” She shakes her head. “Maybe I should lead a life more like yours.”

A small resentment rises in me, though this is not the place for resentment. X’s view of my life is that it is a jollier, more close to the grain business than hers, and certainly more that way than I know it to be. She’d probably like to tell me again that I should’ve gone ahead and written a novel instead of quitting and being a sportswriter, and that she should’ve done some things differently herself. But that would not be right, at least about me—there were even plenty of times when she thought so herself.