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your husband, I know.
4thly I saw you cross the street, stop, then cross back again.
5thly why did you do that? There was nothing ahead and nothing behind. Coming darkness, filled avenues.
6thly I saw you walk east again.
7thly I saw you pass the spot of original departure and continue.
8thly I saw you turn left onto Broadway and pass through a heavy crowd of tourists.
9thly why did you do that? You hate that.
10thly why didn’t you turn at any point and see me? You never even looked left or right.
11thly what happened to you after that? I lost you.
12thly what’s the matter with you?
13thly I saw you keep moving but I couldn’t get through.
14thly when did you stop?
    About the lights: He knew about the lights, that they had become an issue, in place of The Issue, that the lights had become a stand-in or substitute, as they are for sunlight or moonlight. He knew they had this additional function, they obscured as well as brightened, were a deflecting glare where before there had been none, only voices, cool rooms, he knew he and she had achieved this when one day he came home and said, Why are all these lights on?
    (Question: who cares?)
    She was sitting on the couch, watching TV. She looked up and said, There are three lights on.
    She named them: 1. the kitchen, 2. the hallway, 3. the living room.
    Why do you need the one on in the kitchen?
    To get a drink.
    And the hallway?
    To walk to get a drink.
    You need a light on for that?
    Yes, I do.
    And in here? (After all, she had the goddamn TV.)
    To sit in the spot where the drink will be drunk.
    It wasn’t only the lights that acted as a detour. Other subjects and objects did as well. There was the tea and the issue about that. There was the garbage and all of that. The laundry, her laundry, and what she did with it, and his laundry and what he did with it. And all the other items that got scuffed or hung up or needed dealing with, floors and hangers and checkbooks. There was her slow-moving tone and his, slowly moving from loving to harsh, the slow movement of them moving away from each other on the bed.
    She could be taking a walk, a series of walks, as exercise or for temp-erament or temperature regulation. She could be looking for something she lost, a valuable coin, an earring. She could be sad, require air, pavement. She could be pacing—not in her own home but out-of-doors, a cityscape pacing. She could be searching, not for something lost but for something not yet seen. Or she could be searching for a way to tell him, she could be looking for a brink to be on, or an edge to be off. She could be feeling too prominent, like the most prominent object in any scene, she could be fleeing that, wanting diminishment, wanting extraction, to be taken out of any given situation. Where could she walk to that she wouldn’t be?
    She could be merely avoiding him? She could be taking the long way home?
    It is ridiculous, he said, to have three lights lit and only one person.
    Two people.
    I only just arrived.
    How do you know I wasn’t leaving on anticipatory lighting?
    We’re both in the same room.
    How was I supposed to know where you’d want to be? she said. Maybe I should have left the bedroom light on. Maybe I should have lit the back porch. Maybe I should have left on anticipatory lighting for me because I should have anticipated that you’d come home and carry on at me and I’d have to get up and leave the room.
    Which she did.
    And he followed.
    That was the first month he followed her. So each weekday evening, that’s twenty, plus a few mornings, maybe twenty-five total the first month. He could apologize for each of those, if she would, like hearing or telling the same story twenty-five times. And she just might. But there wasn’t going to be anything fun in it. She may as well know that right up front.
    There she was, his wife, walking under a string of awnings.
    She said the cost was minimal and he said the issue wasn’t cost but waste. She said the waste was