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it made me self-conscious to look at her. I put her in charge of the mainsail, and she learned quickly. In no time she was ducking and shifting like a veteran. I told her she would make a good sailor, which got us talking about what we wanted to be.
    She wanted to be a good photographer, “not famous, just good.” She explained that she hadn’t yet plotted her course, mainly because of what she called the chrome shift, the change from black-and-white to color. She said that color photography had been technically perfected too soon. “Black-and-white had years to go. Now it’s hard to resist color. Plenty of serious photographers do only black-andwhite, but there’s something affected about it, like making black-and-white movies. Color may never be any good, it may be too real. Good photographs aren’t real, they’re pictures of what you think about what’s real.” She said the truthhad come to her one evening in a New York restaurant. “There were black-and-whites on the wall. Everything else was in color. I was in color, the man opposite me, the chairs, the floor. The pictures were the only exception, the only refuge. Art is a refuge from reality.”
    She asked me if I had a talent. I said I thought I had a talent for happiness. “Like Father,” I added.
    She said I seemed more serious than Father.
    “Father is very serious. It doesn’t show, because he’s witty and he’s nice to people.”
    “You’re nice to people, Misha, when you want to be.”
    I knew what she was getting at, which I didn’t want to talk about, so I said, “But do you think I have a talent for happiness?”
    “I think you have a talent for goodness.”
    “What good is that?”
    “It’s good for the people around you.”
    “Is it good for you?” I said.
    “Maybe. But when I said you were nice to people when you wanted to be—”
    “You meant Melissa.”
    “That girl loves you.”
    “I don’t love her.”
    “If I were a man,” Zina said, “I’d make love to every woman who loved me.”
    “Suppose you were a movie actor and thousands of women loved you.”
    “I’d make love to every one of them once. It would be my sacred obligation.”
    “What about when they wanted to do it again?” I said.
    “I’d explain about my sacred obligation to the others and send them away.”
    “Suppose they insisted?”
    “I’d tell them they were lucky to get me once.”
    “What would you do if I said I loved you?”
    “Well, Misha, I’m not a man. A woman must love a man before she makes love with him. That’s
her
sacred obligation.”
    “Well, I love you.”
    “Maybe you do, and maybe you don’t. I’ll give you a test. Can I let go of this sail?”
    I turned the Angela into the wind, and Zina sat down beside me. “All right,” she said, “I will kiss you on the eyes, but you must keep them open.”
    “Kiss me on the actual eyes?”
    “Yes, and if you can’t keep them open you don’t love me.”
    “I can do it.”
    “You can’t keep them open with your fingers.”
    “I know. Go ahead!”
    She touched one eye with the tip of her tongue. She let me close my eyes in between. Then she touched the other eye. Tears ran down my face.
    “You’re really crying,” she said
    “I really love you,” I said.
    She dove into the water. I could handle that mainsail and the tiller perfectly well myself, but to take over so suddenly flustered me. She came right to the surface. We were far out, and she was surprised by the feel of deep water. It has a swell and pull that let you know you’re in its power. The sails caught the wind and the Angela moved away. Struggling to get the boat under control, I saw on Zina’s face not fear so much as intense curiosity. I wanted to get to her before she became afraid.
    Returning to a given spot in a sailboat is not easy. You don’t move in a circle, as you would in a power boat. You execute a figure eight. As roundabout as that sounds, it’s the proven way to get back to someone