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NYU students to the east, artists to the south, tourists to the north, and depressed writers from all directions.
    Annoyed and disappointed that he had failed to jettison Bernard, Enrique nevertheless remained hopeful, having faith in his conversational endurance and especially comforted by the geographic logic of their eventual farewells. Their way home from Sandolino’s put their apartments in this order: Bernard’s first, at Eighth Street near Sixth, then Enrique’s close by, but still somewhat farther east, at Eighth Street near MacDougal, and Margaret’s last, at Ninth Street east of University Place. They would say good-bye to Bernard, whereupon Enrique would gallantly offer to escort the single girl to her door and make evident that his interest had gone well beyond establishing the mere existence of Margaret Cohen.
    Enrique and Margaret kept up a lively dialogue while Bernard said little. When she had dispatched three-quarters of her challah French toast, she pushed the plate to the side and leaned forward to resume her mock interrogation, abandoned over five hours ago, about the extent of Enrique’s education. She asked whether he hadcompleted elementary school. Enrique triumphantly announced that he was a graduate of P.S. 173.
    “What! Nooo!” Margaret shrieked, extending the o to indicate amazement while her delicate fingers touched the dark hairs on Enrique’s left forearm, which rested on the distressed wood table between his coffee mug and hers. Her tips brushed his hairs lightly and remained hovering just above. Enrique felt as if each follicle was standing on end, pitifully pleading for continued and firmer contact. He looked down to see what was actually happening. This evaluating gaze caused Margaret to appear self-conscious about having touched him. She raised her eyes to look into his, and for the second time Enrique felt a shock of sensation, something more than sexual excitement. She must have misinterpreted his look, because she immediately withdrew as if he’d rebuked her. “That’s impossible,” she declared.
    “Me going to P.S. 173 impossible?” Enrique wondered aloud. “Not only possible. Really easy. I lived across the street.”
    “But I went to P.S. 173!” Margaret declared, the elongated oval of her face framing the purer ovals of her astonished eyes. This was a look he would witness countless times, Margaret peering in wonderment at a fact which confounded or delighted.
    Enrique said nothing for a moment. Margaret and Bernard had been in the same class at Cornell, which meant that she was three or four years older than precocious Enrique, who had left home at sixteen. He became friendly with people who were between four and eight years older than he because he had little choice; his contemporaries were in high school for at least two more years and away at college for another four. With more years of experience at living a so-called adult life, Enrique ought to have felt surer of himself; but he still possessed the skittish insecurities of an adolescent. Females were utterly strange to him, despite his having lived with a woman for over three years. He had read all of Balzac’snovels, so he did know that no matter how young the woman, it was never correct to remind her that you were younger. He tried a neutral remark: “Um, so you were at 173 at the same time I was?”
    “No!” Exasperated at not being understood, Margaret gave her head a firm toss, like a horse shaking off a fly. That too was a gesture he would come to know well. “In Queens. I grew up in Queens. I went to P.S. 173, but it was in Queens!”
    “Uh-huh,” Enrique said, confused by her annoyance. “Well, I guess we were fated to meet,” he said, trying to turn a dull coincidence to romantic advantage.
    “There can’t be two P.S. 173s,” Margaret declared and looked to Bernard for confirmation.
    At last, after taking a conversational drubbing for hours, as each topic introduced seemed to enliven