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a lonely guy who just happened to get found by a woman. When I called Jonah, I told myself that I had really nothing in mind—no agenda—that I merely wanted to see him, to have lunch, to find out how he was getting along.
    Jonah sounded guarded on the phone but he named a Mexican restaurant a few blocks from the library on the west side of town near the railroad tracks, a real Mexican place with good food. I decided to walk. This whole valley had once been planted in orchards, and in vacant lots and behind old buildings, fruit trees could still arrest passersby with the sudden cloudy voluptuousness of their blooming. As if born out of those same flowers, bees now appeared in my path, swirling around errant boughs reaching over the sidewalk. Green shoots widened thecracks in the pavement and petals torn down by last night’s rain filled the gutters. Because of the beauty of the day, I decided that I didn’t need to make resolutions about anything. I decided that to believe I could resolve anything would be an act of audacity. Life, I decided, had its own rhythms and patterns and to abandon myself to these was the greatest wisdom.
    Jonah had a cold—or maybe it was hay fever. His eyes watered and he blew his nose constantly. I couldn’t believe he’d chosen a Mexican restaurant on top of this distress, but perhaps some homeopathic reasoning lay at the heart of it, a belief that like heals like, and making your eyes and nose run by eating hot sauce would cure a cold.
    â€œI think about you a lot,” he said. He’d ordered a beer and it rested in a chilled mug in front of him. “More than a lot.” He looked down into the beer as soon as he’d spoken.
    â€œWell, I think about you too,” I said. I immediately regretted having called him. He wasn’t a player. He was for real in the way that Bill was for real. “I wondered if you’d found somebody.”
    â€œI was seeing a woman for a while, but it didn’t work out.” He blew his nose into a large handkerchief with a wet morose sound. “I wish you could have stayed around.”
    A waiter arrived with chips and guacamole and salsa. I ordered a beer. “Well, I’m married, Jonah, and I couldn’t allow myself to get serious. But I like you. It was nice making love to you.”
    â€œBetter than nice,” he said.
    â€œIt was nice for me because it was supposed to be fun. I didn’t want it to go anywhere. It wasn’t supposed to become a courtship.”
    â€œYou believe that, don’t you?”
    â€œYes. I don’t think good sex and a good relationship are Siamese twins. You don’t get one with the other necessarily.”
    â€œYou’re sick,” he said, sounding immensely dismal for my sake.
    â€œMaybe so, Jonah. I just don’t take what we did that seriously.”
    â€œWell, I still want to sleep with you.” He stabbed the guacamole with the chip.
    â€œI still want to sleep with you too, but that’s not why I called.” If I had when I’d called, I didn’t any longer. I stabbed my own chip into the gaucamole. It would be a long lunch. “It’s hard to find a good relationship, but it’s worth it—even if the sex isn’t the greatest. You have to try not to get discouraged.”
    He loosened his tie. He’d gained weight again. He wiped his eyes.
    I invited my father for dinner. I wanted to warn him that I was moving my mother to town. Despite the fact that they’d been separated for almost thirty years and divorced for twenty-six, my mother still called him from time to time whenever she felt a need to lay her misery on his doorstep. I’d heard both ends of these conversations and I’d been on both sides. My father had moved up here after Bill and I had, not to be nearer us, but because one of his girlfriends lived here. He hadn’t married her, but he had married someone else later on who