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lately where I am asked to play the aging
    actress, the middle-aged wife, the older . . . whatever. Last month I played a hundred-year-old witch. It would be absurd for them to cast me now as the lead and love interest, but I would relish the challenge to see if I could still bring it off."
    "So, what shall I ask?" I said.
    She was silent again.
    "I thought maybe I would inquire about her child-hood," I said.
    "That would be a start," she said, nodding, "but after that, ask her about these four things: her lovers, her great-est fear, her greatest desire, and the worst day of her life."
    I thought about Samantha's list, and just briefly con-templating those questions caused the figure of a woman to cohere in my thoughts. She stood on a flat rock that ele-vated her above the surf, and the wind was blowing her blue dress, the ringlets of her hair.
    "Good?" she asked.
    I nodded, trying to focus harder on the image, but was momentarily distracted when Samantha got out of bed. In the candlelight, her body looked nearly as young as when she had first come to pose for me twelve years earlier. I watched as she bent above the flame and blew it out. Once in darkness, I

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    could see only a fading image of her smooth back and long legs. She returned to bed and rolled over to put her arm across my chest.
    "That's a disturbing commission," she said sleepily. "Somewhere between foolish and mysterious."
    I agreed, now picturing the falling leaves that adorned the screen of Mrs. Charbuque. It came to me that even that static scene of autumn must be a clue. "What type of woman would choose that object?" I
    wondered.
    Samantha's breathing grew shallower, and I knew she was on the verge of sleep.
    "What is the scent of that candle?" I wondered aloud.
    "Do you like it?"
    "It seems familiar; very peaceful," I said. "Is it cinna-mon?"
    "No," she said, drifting off, "it's nutmeg."
    Crystalogogistics
    Watkin closed the door behind him, and I took my seat.
    "Are you there, Mrs. Charbuque?" I asked.
    "I am here, Piambo," she said, sounding younger, her voice lighter than it had the previous day.
    "I must confess I've pictured you as at least a hundred different women since yesterday," I told her.
    "The imagination is a cornucopia," she said.
    "Very true," I agreed. "But for the artist it can at times also seem a vast, frustrating Sahara."
    "And which is yours today?" she asked.
    "Neither," I said. "A blank slate, waiting for your words to make the first mark."
    She laughed, a sound both joyful and demure, the sophisticated nature of which thoroughly enchanted me. I said nothing for a brief time, caught up as I was by the absolute serenity of that high-ceilinged room. Although I had but a few minutes before been out on a thoroughfare where newsboys yelled, streetcars clanged, and humanity surged, drawn on by a million individual desires and pursued by as many tragedies, inside this quiet, cleanly space it was as if I had been transported to a distant mountain retreat. Whereas the day before there had been a distinct urgency about our meeting, now Time itself yawned and closed its eyes.
    "I was wondering if today you could tell me some-thing of your childhood," I finally said. "I'm not so interested in a general history, but I was hoping you could relate to me the precise event that comes in all children's lives when you first realized that you would not remain a child forever. Do you understand?"
    I saw a vague shadow move on the screen and tried to read the figure, but there was not enough light coming in the windows for the projection to reveal anything specific.
    "I do," she said.
    "Please," I said, "tell me in as much detail as possible."
    "I will. Let me think for a minute."
    That morning as I had ridden uptown I had formulated a method by which to proceed. I had recalled that during my tutelage under M. Sabott, he had once had me practice a certain technique. Set up on one of the tables in his stu-dio was a still life composed of a human