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moment over the contentment he felt in the two of them wordlessly understanding each other—an even earlier event coursed beneath the surface. Michael does not go there now. He couldn’t even consciously summon this deeper memory if he was moved to try. But his sense of ease with Kelly on the night of the Clinton fundraiser was rooted in that past event, for it had given him an initial impression of what his life would be with Kelly, and that impression settled into him, and it would not change for a quarter of a century. The impression would remain and affect everything,even though the memory of the event itself would eventually vanish.
    It was this: Later on that same Ash Wednesday morning of their first days together, they have been walking the quiet Quarter and there have been some lovely moments between them and some awkward moments between them and Michael doesn’t know what to do about this woman and they find their way to the Café du Monde. They sit at street’s edge in the café’s open-air pavilion and order beignets and chicory coffee and the waiter moves off, and Michael and Kelly sit across from each other at the tiny bistro table, and he is afraid there will be talk, earnest talk. But instead, they look each other in the eyes and she doesn’t ask him to speak, she doesn’t seem to wish to talk at all. They look each other in the eyes and they don’t look away and this goes on for a few moments and a few moments more and her face is not compressed into questions, not restless, her face is not seeking something, her face is placid, an unrippled pond bright from daylight but without even a reflection there, and Michael untenses, unlocks, he feels his own face go calm, and he and Kelly don’t look away from each other. And this goes on. They look at each other steadily for a long while and then somewhere about her eyes she shows the tiniest moon-ascension increment of a thresholdsmile, but it too holds and persists without pushing on and he does not have to deal with it, does not have to smile as well or be forced not to smile in return, it is a simple thing with no demands on him, and his chest and arms and shoulders go quiet, his mind goes quiet, he knows he can be good with this woman and she can be good with him. And as they look each other silently in the eyes just like this for a long while more, this impression of Kelly burrows deeply into Michael, and the memory of this moment will vanish from his conscious memory and only the impression itself will remain. And so, as Michael sits on the side of the bed now, asserting his characteristic control over his mind, backing away from the past, thinking to put on an antebellum tuxedo and missing the irony of that, he does not overtly remember those few minutes when there was only silence and hope and the sudden inevitability of the future between him and the woman who, he assumes, ceased being his wife this morning.
    ∼
     
    Michael stands inside the front door of the cottage, dressed for Laurie, his hands clasped behind his back, thinking to step outside to wait but hesitating as he deals with a niggling unease at showing himself in public incostume. He finished dressing while Laurie was still knocking around in the bathroom and he has a faint moue of a thought about how his wife—his ex-wife now, surely, given that declining sun before him—how his ex-wife and this woman from an entirely different generation share in some sort of ancient female gene which makes them compulsively and needlessly worry that their men won’t get dressed in time. And now, this glancing off of Kelly, even vaguely, even over some little quotidian quirk—how she always fussed at him to hurry up, hurry up and get ready—this murmur of Kelly in him makes his hands unclasp and drop to his sides for a moment and then bury themselves in his pants pockets. And he shuts down his mind on this whole subject. He can’t let himself think about Kelly.
    “So.” This is Laurie’s