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you know where the glass was?”
    “Myna.”
    “What?”
    “Myna’s the waitress. She knows that I’m blind now and she always puts everything in the same place. That way I know exactly where to put my hands. I’ll show you.” Without turning his head away from Valentina, Sovereign moved his left hand through the air and let it descend on the leather bill folder. He flipped this open, then reached into its right front pocket, producing a twenty-dollar bill. He placed the money on top of the open folder and smiled.
    “How did you know it was enough to cover the cost?” Valentina asked.
    “My bills are separated into different pockets,” he said, “one for each denomination. In other countries they make the denominations different sizes, but here in America they make you work at it. I get the teller at the bank to help me with that. And Myna knows to stack the bills of my change from left to right starting at the edge of the leather wallet. If a denomination is missing she leaves a little gap to indicate it.”
    “So,” Valentina said, “you accept the breakup now?”
    “Yes.”
    “I wish you had been able to do it earlier,” she said.
    “Me too,” Sovereign replied from deep within his underground grotto.
    “Will we still be friends?”
    “As long as you want.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” Valentina asked, still, Sovereign thought, looking for a way to get the upper hand.
    “That I will answer your calls and you can come visit whenever you want.”
    “No hard feelings?”
    “Lots of feeling,” he said, “but none of it hard.”
    The sway of the conversation reminded Sovereign of his grandfather’s boat. He was that vessel, floating away from shore, soon to be lost. He wasn’t sad but merely lonely.
    “What are you thinking?” Valentina asked.
    “About my grandfather.”
    “What about him?”
    “One day we were standing next to this big lake. I said, ‘Look at that lake, Granddad,’ and he said, ‘I see the little of it that I can see.’ And when I asked him what he meant, he said, ‘I can’t see the bottom and I can’t see the other side. What I do see is only a very little part of what makes up the lake that I know to be there.’ ”
    “Did he really say that or are you just making it up?” Valentina asked. For the first time her voice carried some of its old mirth.
    “I’m pretty sure he said it,” Sovereign replied, “but you know memory is like that lake—you think you know it but you never have it all.”
    “I have to get back to work.”
    “I’m glad you came here, Valentina. I’m glad you found me.”
    “I remembered you used to come here for lunch on your days off,” she said.
    “I’m glad.”
    “Good-bye,” she said, and he felt a feathery kiss on his left eyebrow. After a few moments he realized that she was gone.
    He thought that maybe he hadn’t tricked her after all, that maybe he’d broken a cycle in himself and not between them. Maybe his grandfather had lectured him on the unconscious shortsightedness of men for just such a day as this.

    “Were you lying?” Seth Offeran asked an hour and a half later.
    “I thought I was,” Sovereign said. “But when I think about it, maybe it was the only way that I could speak the truth.”
    “Explain.”
    “Everything I do is a game, Doctor. Every word, every question or statement or answer I give is designed to help me win.”
    “Win what?”
    “I don’t know.… I mean, I used to think that I knew. Getting my parents to think I was the best over my brother and sister, getting the top grades, or making the team. Even in the lunchroom I’d try to be the most popular by making fun of other kids’ problems or differences.”
    “And that was winning?” Seth Offeran asked.
    “I thought so. People always seem to be trying to get the upper hand. Valentina was trying to in our conversation. She wanted to put the blame for our breakup on me. She feels that it was my fault for wanting children