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And suddenly I unravelled. I lost all professionalism, found myself challenging her grief against mine. I told her I hadn’t slept, that she’d stumbled last night into a domestic funeral, that I’d lost the only woman I had ever loved.
    What a fool I was to have unburdened myself. But I had to release, to vent, and if it hadn’t been Vivian Lalonde it would have been hypersomniac Katerina Welch or Larry Jankes with his body dysmorphic disorder.
    Ironically, my anguish acted upon Vivian as therapy.
    “Oh, Timothy, that’s terrible. I didn’t realize … I’ll come back another time.”
    She calmed completely, her own marital plight a dim concern against mine. As she was about to leave, she turned to me and, before I could shy away, kissed me on the lips. An impetuous act of compassion? Let us hope.
    I struggled through the next twenty-four hours, rescheduled patients, escaped to the sea aboard my cutter. But I couldnot escape Sally. I remembered how she used to sketch as she squatted on the bow, her T-shirt powdered with artists’ chalk, blonde curls ruffling in the wind.
    She’ll summon me back within days, I assured myself. A week, perhaps, to save face. I will return non-gloatingly to her bosom. I’ll mend my ways. I’ll carry a Daytimer. I’ll buy a pager, a cellphone.
    To allay her worries, I called her several times during the week to assure her I was coping. She was solicitous, then launched into rundowns of her day from which I picked up a lilting tone of freedom. I came by the house one evening to fetch my clarinet, but she was out – where, at half-past ten? I still had my key, and I prowled like a ghost through the darkened rooms. I felt smothered by all the loss and loneliness, by the smell of her in our former bedroom, and I grabbed my clarinet and ran.
    I had a dream that night that seemed almost facile, too obvious. I was playing my clarinet before the gates of a fortress with many windows. You may deduce that I was trying to entice Sally to one of them, but more likely to enter the fortress of her life, proving my talent, proving I was worthy, if even only as a musician. But now I was being drowned out by sounds from within, an oompahpah band, a lusty Liederkranz, “Valderee, valdera.” The fortress, I realized, was actually a Munich beer hall. Sally was nowhere to be found. She’d taken a hike …
    Now I spend my dream-filled nights bobbing on the waters of False Creek, in the shadows of the great bridges that connect to the heart of the city, amid the throng of seiners and plea-surecraft tied up at Fisherman’s Wharf. For one so scattered as I am, it is good discipline to be confined aboard a boat, where tidiness rules, where everything must have its place. I’ve undertaken a spate of sanding and varnishing, trying to achieve the mindlessness Nataraja counsels.
    I tell myself that I’m lucky to have the
Altered Ego
to escape to. The true claustrophobic revels in the freedom of the sea.Upon her, I’ve spent many pleasant days and nights, often weeks at a time, drifting about mystical Desolation Sound, the Charlottes, the Broken Islands. She’s a graceful lady in her polished dress of teak and mahogany Everything I need is here. There is a small shower in the head. There’s standing room in the main cabin, barely I have my books. I have my clarinet, my jazz collection, Grappelli, Parker, Peterson. I have loyal Vesuvio, my Italian aluminum racing bicycle.
    Yes, Sally will quickly realize she’s made a tragic blunder in sending me away Life will be a bore without Timothy Jason Dare.
    But just yesterday, I’m sorry to say, she buttressed her will. When I called to suggest lunch, she gently put me off. She
did
want to see me, she felt “tenderly” toward me, thought the idea of dating was fun, but she was worried about her resolve weakening, worried that she’d never achieve the strength to break free, to test herself as an independent person for the first and maybe only time in her