He was living with a woman in California, was called to New York when his father had a life-threatening massive heart attack, or that’s the way it was put to him on the phone by his mother: “Fly in quick, you might not even have time if you got on the plane this minute; they’re all saying, or you can see and hear it in the way they’re wavering, that he might die.” His father pulled through easily, and while there Gould met a woman at a party. Nice face, intelligent and attractive, dressed simply, tall with a slim figure, quiet wry smile, pleasant educated voice, the look of someone with a good disposition and no affectation, seemed to have a young son with her and to have come with another woman, since she was always standing beside or moving around the apartment with her and occasionally stopping the boy to tend to him—“You want something more to eat? . This will be dinner, so perhaps you ought to have a second walk around the food table with me. Did you see there’s another boy here around your age? He looks nice.”—and there didn’t seem to be a man she signaled across the room to periodically and met up with every fifteen minutes or so and things like that — what he always does when he goes to a party like this with a woman — and he went over to her and said, pointing to the boy, “He yours?” and she looked warily at him and nodded and he said “Excuse me, the introductions, very rude of me to you two — Gould Bookbinder,” and held out his hand to her and she shook it and he shook her friend’s hand and the friend said “Miriam,” and he said “How do you do, Miriam, Gould Bookbinder, but I said that,” and then to the boy, while he was thinking should he ask the woman her name? Ah, she doesn’t want to offer it now, let her, “Rude to all three of you I should’ve said, right there, kid?” and put out his hand and the boy looked at it and he said “Really, and I hate using this word, but he’s adorable, and I’m not going to steal him so don’t be leery,” and the woman said “Who even said?” and he said “Of course, but you see, I just look at him and realize how much I miss the little kid I live with in California — towhead too and same height and haircut — in fact, they almost all have the same cut today, people of a certain well, just so many people with kids this age, I mean his age with people like that — got popular with the president’s son, if I’m not wrong, and before that the elite prep schools and Prince Valiant, though I think Valiant’s was a little longer and he was older,” and Miriam said “Who’s he?” and he said “A comic strip, which might not be around anymore and I never read it . . and after the president got shot and the son got older, it just kept on with boys that age and he’s not biologically mine either, I should have right away said, but I think acts like he is, whatever that’s supposed to mean — relies on me a lot, hangs on me a little — and I guess I feel like his father too after so long, as I also hang on to and rely on him for different emotional things. But what’s yours, five in a couple of months?” and she said “Three, in one, and he’s not tall for his age, far as I know — is your boy unusually short? But where in California? That’s where I’m from originally,” and said she grew up in the county just south of the one he now lived in, Miriam and she had gone to the university he’d been a grad student at, which wasn’t a coincidence, since the couple giving the party had been in their undergraduate class and he’d first met them when the man came back after a few years for a master’s in his department — but to get to it: they talked, Miriam stepped away and then called the boy to the window to see a sliver of one of the new World Trade Center towers they could just about make out through two buildings, his grad student friend came over and said “So you two need no introducing?” and he wanted to say “I still don’t know her name yet” but they both said “Yes,” and he said “Jinx,” and held up two joined fingers and she said “What’s that supposed to mean?” and he said “An East Coast thing kids used to and still might do, and maybe on the West Coast too, when two people say the same word or phrase synchronously: ‘What comes out of a chimney?’” and she said “What?” and he said “You’re supposed to say ‘smoke,’” and the host said “I don’t know it either,” and left, and he said “And then I say ‘What color is it?’—the chimney smoke. There are four to five quick questions: ladies’ pocketbooks, coins, gray and gold, and then you do the — I mean I do, the questioner — though you’re certainly questioning me now—’Do not speak till you are spoken to.’ That’s right, it’s not my fingers joined together but both parties’ in this, the index fingers at the tips, and when it’s all over, questions answered correctly, one of us breaks the fingertip conjunction with a gentle chop of his hand. You want to go through with it? — though if we go by the rules it’s already too late,” and she said “Please, no games. What am I, a child?” and he said “Sorry, it all just suddenly came back, but only having fun.” Married for five years, lived in Madison where her husband taught law at the university, only here a week to be with her best friend from college “who apparently thinks I should be talking to you alone — I must have told her last night more about my life than I should have, and which I’ve already disclosed to you, in just saying that, more than enough too,” and he said “So you’re saying I should be diplomatic, untactical and gallant,” driving back in two days with her son and he said “Why so soon?” and she said “Because I’ve been here five,” and he said “Oh jeez, what a pity, because I don’t know, I’d love seeing you again, maybe that’s it,” and she said “Excuse me, and I’m not trying to prompt you with this query nor induce you into a clumsy confession you’ll regret later, but whatever for? You have yours, I have mine, there are children involved, I’m leaving in less than two days and you’ll never see me again unless by accident and then we probably won’t recognize each other or remember this party, and we’ve only just met and spoken a few minutes together,” and she looked at her watch and said “My watch must have stopped, what time is it?” and he said “I don’t wear one,” and she said “Well, I know I have to be out of here in less than half an hour to take John to a birthday party another college chum’s having for her girl — we all seemed to have had our first babies around the same time,” and he said “‘John,’ like the president’s son with the prep cut if not even the prez himself,” and she said “Yes, it’s the boy’s father’s and grandfather’s name too, though he’s not the third,” and he said “He’s not?” and she said “After his name.” “Excuse me, but this isn’t right what I’m about to say,” and she said “Please now, I can sense what’s coming, so don’t,” and he said “Ya gonna let me continue, lady?” and she shut her eyes as if she’d just stay that way tolerating what he was going to say and then walk away and he thought Should I say it then? and said “To say it then, and this isn’t a line I’m giving you—” and she looked at him and said “You’ve used that one before,” and he said “Never — but low, though, so nobody else hears, and maybe the most important words of my life,” and she said “Jesus Christ,” and he said “I wish, and this after only ten minutes alone with you — even more than ten, but good conversation, time flew, so another solid sigh—