Sun didn’t have many of them. Maybe a Baltimore Symphony concert during the week and a new TV show or two and a play once a month and always movies — lots of them — every Friday. Times, of course, had them all the time. He rarely read the Times’ reviews of dance or popular music or architecture or Broadway musicals, and in the Sun he doesn’t think he read a single review of a musical that came to Baltimore. Didn’t read TV reviews in either paper, except of Masterpiece Theatre and a few other PBS specials, but only so he could tell Gwen about them. She watched and he sometimes did to have a couple of glasses of wine during them, but mainly to keep her company in the bedroom so she wouldn’t watch them alone, especially the weeks after she returned home from the hospital. He thinks that’s the second time since last night he mentioned that, maybe the third. Why? Pictures her sitting in a chair in front of the television, not looking well but a lot better than when she was in the hospital, and…what? Shudders. Sees her sick. Weak. Everything an effort. Closes his eyes, opens them. She’s gone. She’d look at him from the chair, smile. He’d say “Program’s pretty good. I’m enjoying it,” and she’d smile again, glad he was there, and look back at the television. Did she believe him? Probably not. “Can I get you something?” he’d say several times while they watched the program. “I don’t mind missing a little,” and she’d shake her head or say no. She must have known he was going into the kitchen to fill up his glass. Did she think “He needs to drink to be with me?” No. “Are you comfortable? Do you want a pillow for your back? You’ve been in that position for so long,” and sometimes she’d say yes and he’d get it for her, or something to cover her legs. Oh, if only he could have had her illness for her. He means that. Easy to think it, though, right? But he would have. And then, if that was the deal, she could get whatever was coming to him later on. But she was almost eleven years younger than he, so she’d have those extra pretty healthy years, at least. And then who knows how he’ll go. Maybe in his sleep overnight. Maybe a stroke in his sleep that’d kill him the first time. Stupid thoughts. Why think them? They don’t make sense and what do they bring? Not comfort, that’s for sure. Dreams of her do. The ones on which she’s healthy and not angry at him. The best are when they’re embracing and deeply kissing, better than the ones with sex. Why? They feel real, the two or so he’s had. After he woke up from them, for a few seconds, he still felt her on his lips. Crazy, he knows, but it made him feel good, as if she’d forgiven him. The sex dreams he’s had always ended before he came, and he woke up frustrated. No, in one he came. But the papers. Get to the end of your thought. Which reviews did he also read? Never of video games, something new in reviews and which hasn’t come to the Sun yet. It will. The games have become too popular not to. Also, never of movies listed as having strong violence or were for children or seemed geared to adolescents or even to people in their twenties. Times’ review he usually read first of the many it’d have of different things on just an ordinary weekday — not Friday — was the book one if it seemed like an interesting subject to get some quick knowledge of or a book he might want to buy and read. Always looking for them, or used to. Couldn’t imagine not having a book to read. Not reading anything now. Looks at the first page of a book he took out of one of the bookcases or the page he last left off at of the novel he was reading before she died and can’t concentrate, reads the first sentence or paragraph over and over again and still can’t quite make sense of it no matter how simply it’s written, and puts the book down or back. Demons, a new translation, was more than halfway through it. Liked it? Kept his interest. Lots of good characters and dialog and he liked that some of what they said was in French with translations at the bottom of the page. Read a much earlier translation of the book under a different title more than fifty years ago when he was eighteen, nineteen, and he read almost straight through everything of his he could find in the Donnell Library on 53rd Street. Seemed the best place to get them. He’s saying it had shelves and shelves of Dostoevsky. He remembers where they were: in back, on the extreme right, first floor. He’ll go back to the book or start another. When, he doesn’t know, but he has to. What else is there for him to do? Make soup, a salad, clean the house, launder his clothes once a week and his linens every other, resume his workouts at the Towson Y three — four times a week when he’s ready to? Maybe, once the kids leave, he’ll go every day, just to be around people and lots of noisy activity for an hour and use the showers there, which are much better than his. And watch one of the cable news shows while he’s on the exercise bike, after he’s done with the resistance machines and weights, or switch around from one news station to the other or movie channel if it’s a good film. In other words, to get out of the house to do something other than shop or take a short walk in the neighborhood around dusk and maybe once or twice during it say “Hello” or “Good evening” to someone he passes. He might even start using the Y’s pool if the water’s warm enough. But he’s a ways from doing any of that yet. Will he go back to teaching? Doesn’t think so, at least not for a while. He can’t see himself seeing anybody who knew Gwen, without breaking down. Did he ever go to the ballet with Gwen? Just thinking. The opera, of course, many times in Baltimore and New York, but the ballet? Once, in Baltimore, with the kids about ten years ago. Forgets the name of the company — it was from France and they sat in the orchestra because the balcony was sold out. One of the dances was to a recording that sounded like a full orchestra in the pit and a singer off to the side of the stage of Strauss’ Four Last Songs, a piece Gwen and he loved before they even knew each other and which was why they thought they had to go. Oh, yeah. Another time, just the two of them, more than twenty years ago at the State Theater he thinks it was still called then in Lincoln Center. Her mother bought them the tickets and looked after Rosalind that night. He thinks they went to a Japanese Restaurant for dinner after — Ozu. No, that’s the one they liked in the Eighties on Amsterdam or Columbus. Dan, on Broadway and 68th. Their first time there. Funny how things come back. Remembers during an intermission looking down to the lobby from one of the top floors and wondering if anyone in all the years this place has been here had jumped from it. And then the hospital she was brought to after her first stroke. There was a walkway — a bridge over a huge atrium, really — to her intensive care unit, overlooking some other part of the hospital three to four floors below. Maternity, the waiting area, and he thought when he stopped on it if anyone…not “if anyone.” He thought if she dies he might come here and check that nobody’s directly below him and throw himself off. Why? Thought it several times when he walked over the bridge and stopped and rested his forearms on the railing and looked down, but not the second time she had a stroke and was brought to the same ICU. Because he didn’t think he could live without her. Well, can he? Has to. The kids. Their mother dying so suddenly? Gwen’s mother, whom they also loved very much, committing suicide six years before? Then their father going the same way? That’s just what they needed. And he’ll find other good reasons not to, but that one stands out. Anyway — get off that subject — since Gwen and he liked ballet and modern dance and most of the music for them, how come they didn’t go more? And both girls were in dance classes for years, as was Gwen when she was young and her mother took her to see lots of ballet, so why didn’t they take them? Doesn’t know. No, not that excuse again. Maybe it never came up. But he’s making himself less observant than he is. He read the