Met her when they were both grad students in the same university. She was in the theater department and because she didn’t have as good a fellowship as he, worked in the town’s Woolworth’s. Met her in the school’s main cafeteria. Wasn’t going with anyone then, wanted to talk to someone now, walked over, had seen her before at the same big round empty table, or one of the ones right around it, eating from a bagged lunch and Thermos, liked her looks, not just her intelligent face but the long thick braid and dark sensible clothes and even her frayed canvas bookbag and the two serious modern novels and book of plays on the table the last time and what seemed like different books this time, had never seen her standing up so didn’t know how tall she was and what her legs and waist and rear end were like, told himself to be bold, sit down beside her and start talking, however inane the first things he says are, it’ll be okay, if she’s attracted to him, sat down and said “I don’t know, you were sitting alone. I was, I mean, and you too, of course, and excuse me for sitting down without being asked, if you were reading and not just eating I wouldn’t have, but I thought it’d be nice on such a nice day to talk to someone for a few minutes, do you mind? — though I don’t see what the nice day has to do with it. Probably a rainy or cloudy or very cold day, not that you’re going to get many very cold ones around here in winter. But one that draws you into yourself and where you’d be less likely to want to look out these enormous dirty windows, would even be a better reason to want to talk to someone and that person to want to talk to you, even if for both of you it’s someone you don’t know. I’m sorry, that couldn’t have made much sense, but I’ll get around to what I want to say eventually. Anyway, if you do—
mind—just say the word and I’ll go,” and she said “No, fine, sit here, free country and so forth, and I’m not reserving or preserving,” and he said “‘Reserving’ I under stand, but ‘preserving’?” and she said “If you want to talk, you can’t do all the talking — those are the basic conversational rules, agreed?” and he said “Deal,” and stared at her and she said “Yes, so, what?” and he said “Well, I already talked too much, you said so and I agree with it, but if you don’t want to say anything just this moment, I’ll go on?” and she said “No, I have things to say, except my mouth takes a few more seconds than yours to start up,” and talked and he did and the conversation was fast, stimulating, lively and they laughed and after about a half-hour of it he wanted to see her standing up before he went any further with her and he said “Like a coffee or tea?” and she said “I brought some, hot cider,” tapping the Thermos, and he said “But you also wouldn’t like a coffee or tea?” and she said “I don’t want to seem health-nutty, but I don’t drink stimulants and I abhor all those decontaminated alternates,” and he said “Then something else? — here,” standing up, “come with me to the food line and choose whatever you want — my treat, since I’ve been chewing your head off — but not anything lavish, of course,” and she said “What could they have lavish in that kitchen midden? but honestly, right now I wouldn’t walk very well,” and he said “What’s wrong?” and she said “I have a limp,” and he said “Something really wrong with one of your legs, or just temporary?” and she said “Let’s simply say you’re anatomically close and there was and what I have is a relic of what existed and that right now that foot wants to recess,” and he said “So, your foot, not a leg, okay,” and got coffee and they talked more and later walked to the parking lot and she did have a bad limp and kept having to stop because she said “My relic’s rebelling, but you go on, though I won’t be able to catch up with you and you don’t know which one’s my car and I’m not sure where it is,” and she drove him home and he got her phone number and after she drove away he realized he’d forgotten to look at, or maybe for her sake with the limp he just wanted to keep his eyes off of, the bottom half of her, but from what he thinks he fleetingly saw when she got into the car, nothing was out of the ordinary there. She had a hole in her foot, wide as a quarter and deep as, well, a quarter standing on its edge. Maybe not that deep. The first time they made love, which was on the first night they went out — drove to San Francisco, had a fish dinner, walked around a block of elegant food and clothes shops in a building that had recently been a chocolate factory but was now called a square — she took off her sock while they were undressing—“You mind if I get right under the covers,” she said when he started kissing and fondling her, “I’m cold?”—and pointed out the hole to him and said “This is my limp