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life-size statue of my wife seated at our kitchen table reading the New York Times . She is in stone, and so is the Times .”
    A longer silence this time. “You keep a statue of your wife in your house? Is she dead?”
    “Oh, no. Alive and kicking. These days she reads the Times with an event planner named Joel in Beverly Hills. I told the sculptor to put Chloe in shorts and a T-shirt, the way she liked to dress, and to position her comfortably and give her a rapt expression. The statue solidifies our relationship. It proves that some things are set in stone. Now she has the life she liked best with me, buried in the news.”
    “I gather you disapproved of her interest in the news.”
    “As she disapproved of my lack of interest. It was a fair exchange. I especially disapproved of the New York Times . ‘The New York Times brings the world into your home every day’—need I say more?”
    “Don’t you think the world is worth seeing?” she asks.
    “‘Worth seeing, but not worth going to see.’” I am quoting Dr. Johnson’s retort when Boswell chided him for not wishing to accompany him on a trip to Scotland. Did the doctor not think Scotland was worth seeing? he’d demanded. I cite the reference for her and explain that Dr. Johnson was always right.
    She seems to recognize that it would be prudent to returnto the matter at hand. “We have plenty of seats to Buffalo on the eleven P.M . flight. How many do you want?”
    “One for myself.” Then, wondering if it will queer the deal, I add, “And one for my dog.” Hector’s ears prick up in alarm.
    “I love dogs,” she says.
    “Name your price.”
    “The dog will have to travel in the baggage compartment. But that’s perfectly safe too.” Amazing what gentlenesses total strangers are capable of. “Do you want me to book your return reservations now?”
    I have been afraid of that question. I have tried to put off thinking about what will happen after Chautauqua. Once I do what I shall do this evening, what then? A moment’s moral elation; a nighttime escape by rowboat to a safe haven; a hired car to take me to LaGuardia and USAir; the dreaded turboprop to Buffalo, where I shall be met at midnight by a Chautauqua driver who wants to talk to me about all the famous people he has driven since 1931—“really famous, not like you.” No sleep. The certain knowledge that the police are hunting for me, and the certain pleasure that they will never think to look in Chautauqua, either because they have never heard of it or because it is so hard to get to that it lies outside every jurisdiction and has no extradition treaty with the Hamptons. The morning lecture. Followed by a life of hiding and running. Loneliness, despair, memories of chicken-fried steak at Applebee’s inRiverhead and of clambering atop the White Duck landmark when I was a kid, and bellowing quacks. Disgrace and eventual death in the cheapest room of the cheapest motel outside Bridgeport. Then interment in some potter’s field that is about to be sold to a developer. Of course, I could always live out my days in upstate New York, but I would prefer to be buried horizontally and underground.
    So I tell her yes, I will want return tickets for Hector and me. Yes, I will be coming home to face the music. Anyway, I want to face the music. Why commit an act of social protest, of civil or uncivil disobedience, if one is not prepared to suffer the consequences? Suffering the consequences is the whole point.
    “Don’t you think so?” I ask her. “Don’t you think that if someone does something on principle, pure principle, and that something happens to break the law, he should willingly pay for the act as a public statement of his noble intentions, and as a sign of his respect for the law in general?”
    “It depends on how bad the act is.”
    “Well, it’s bad, but it’s not as bad as acts get.”
    “The question is still too general for me to offer an opinion. I hope you’re not