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take a taxi to a hotel on the East Side today? Why not tomorrow? Why should he not stay in his old life until he devoted himself to the new one? It would be laughable if in a few weeks he couldn’t manage to switch out of his old life and into the new one. Could do it now. If he had to. But he didn’t have to. Besides, nothing was to stop him going there now and coming back tomorrow. If he went later, he would never come back. The new life with Susan would hold him there.
    What was important was to decide. And he had decided. He would give up his old life and start a new one with Susan. As soon as he could begin it properly. He couldn’t do that yet. He would do it as soon as things were that far along. He would do it because he’d decided to. He would do it. Just not yet.
    When he stood up, his arms and legs hurt. He stretched and looked around. The kids were at home, watching TV or playing with their computers or asleep. The street was empty.
    Richard took his suitcase, unlocked the front door, collected the mail from the mailbox, climbed the stairs, and unlocked the door to his apartment. The bucket that collected the drips from the broken pipe was almost empty, and there was a bunchof asters on the table. Maria. The oboist was asking on the answering machine if they were going to see each other this evening. His Spanish teacher said hello on a postcard from his yoga vacation in Mexico. Richard switched on his computer, then switched it off again; the e-mails could wait. He unpacked, undressed, and threw his dirty clothes in the laundry basket.
    He stood in the room naked, listening to the noises in the building. It was quiet next door; upstairs a TV murmured gently. From somewhere way below him in the building came the sounds of an argument, till a door slammed with a crash. Air conditioners hummed in several windows. The building was asleep.
    Richard switched off the light and went to bed. Before he went to sleep he thought of Susan standing on the steps up to the plane, laughing and crying.

The Night in Baden-Baden
1
    He took Therese with him, because that’s what she’d been hoping. Because she was so happy about it. Because when she was happy she was a wonderful companion. Because there was no good reason not to take her.
    It was the premiere of his first play. He was to sit in the box and walk onstage at the end and allow himself to be applauded or booed with the actors and the director. It was true that he didn’t feel he deserved to be booed for a production he hadn’t overseen himself. But he did want to stand onstage and be applauded.
    He had booked a double room in Brenners Park-Hotel, where he had never been before. He looked forward to the luxuriousness of the room and the bathroom and to being able to wander through the park before the performance and take a seat on the veranda to enjoy a cup of Earl Grey and a club sandwich. They left in the early afternoon, made it onto the Autobahn in good time despite the Friday-afternoon traffic, and by four p.m. were already in Baden-Baden. First she took a bath in the tub with the gold fixtures, then he did. Afterward they wandered through the park and after the Earl Grey and the club sandwiches on the veranda, they drank champagne. Being together was pleasantly relaxing.
    But she wanted more from him than he wanted from her or could give her. That’s why for a whole year she hadn’t wantedto see him, but then she missed their evenings together going to the movies or the theater or out to dinner, and accepted that all they ended with was a fleeting good-night kiss at her front door. Sometimes she snuggled up against him in the movie house, and sometimes he put his arm around her shoulders. Sometimes she took his hand when they were walking, and then sometimes he would hold hers tightly in his. Did she see in this a promise of greater possibilities between them? He wanted to keep things vague.
    They went to the theater and were greeted by the director,