Gymnopedies, he thinks they’re called, or close to that. He never heard Sharon play but she told him some of the pieces she’d learned or was practicing then and that if they were ever at a place where there was a decent piano and nobody else was around — it could even be her home, she said, which he never set foot in — she’d play for him. Gwen he heard hundreds of times before her first stroke. If she was playing an entire piece, not practicing one, he usually stopped whatever he was doing to listen till she was finished, even if he was working in another room, and later would sometimes say “I love to hear you play, something I know I’ve told you, but I mean it.” She had a piano given to her by her grandfather when she was twelve and which they had moved from their New York apartment — they didn’t move it to their Baltimore apartment because they still had the New York one then and would stay in it often — to their first house in Baltimore and from there to this one in the county. Before that it had gone from her parents’ apartment in the Bronx to the one on West 78th Street and then to her own apartment on Riverside Drive. Actually, to two of them in the same building: She moved from the rear to the front. Gwen tried to get back to the piano after that stroke but got frustrated and disgusted with herself for playing so clumsily, she called it, because she was using two fewer fingers, and stopped. “My instrumental soulmate, dead,” she said. “Not even Maureen plays it anymore after her last, what she thought disastrous recital so long ago. Oh, a run of tinkles every other Thursday when the cleaning woman wipes the keyboard down. You ought to take up the piano and give some life back to it. It might also calm you down.” Sharon and he talked for a while that first day. While they talked, or while she was talking, he thought something like, as he did with Gwen the night they first met, “Jesus, she’s beautiful and so refined and delicate and obviously smart. Can I pick that up in just a few minutes? You bet I can. My ideal woman; I’ve finally met her. Now if it can only work out.” He looked at her left hand when it was on the table — did the same with Gwen from a distance at Pati’s party — and there was no wedding band or any other kind of ring on it. One of the next times they met he said to her, holding the fingers of her left hand — so this had to be after they started sleeping together—“Been meaning to ask. How come no ring?” She said her engagement ring, which had been her husband’s grandmother’s and was a big gaudy diamond in a garish setting and always too big for her because her finger kept shrinking, so she was glad to be rid of it, she sold when they were down to their last nickel—“You know graduate-student couples.” And the wedding band she lost in a washing machine at a Laundromat and never got it replaced, maybe the one thing her husband really minded about her. “‘If I wear one,’ he said, ‘you should wear one too, even if we don’t exactly adhere to our marriage vows.’ But I like to have my fingers free, and without one it’s easier to pick up guys like you.” He also remembers the times — not as many times as she did it to him — he’d go into Gwen’s study or wherever she was working and say — the kids had to be out or napping or not yet born—“Like to take a break?” She usually said “Sure,” but if she felt she didn’t have the time right then she always said — he doesn’t recall her ever not using this expression—“I’d like to, but can I take a rain check?” Later, if he was still interested in making love or his interest, if he can call it that, had been renewed, he’d say to her — in her study or better if she was in the living room or kitchen or better yet if she had just lay down for a nap in their bedroom — no, if she had the odds are she would have said “I’m going to lie down for a nap. Care to join me?”—“Think I can take advantage now of that rain check I gave you?” and half the times, he’d say, she said something like “I don’t see why not.” He already remember this tonight? If he did, he forgets. But it’s a nice memory and it’s made him a little excited, which is okay, not that he’s going to do anything about it. He’ll save that for another day, when the kids aren’t here and maybe with a magazine with nude women in it, if he’d have the guts to buy one. Doesn’t see himself choosing one off a stand and going up to the salesperson — especially if it was a woman or there was somebody on line behind him, again especially if it was a woman — and paying for it, but he might have to. As far as playing with himself till completion, how many times would he say he’s done it since he first went to bed with Gwen? Twenty? Thirty? And he thinks mostly when he was on tour for a few days to a week with a new book — only happened twice — and another time teaching at an out-of-town summer writers’ conference for two weeks, something he hated doing but Maureen was on the way and they needed the extra money. Of course, also when he first started teaching down here and for two years she stayed in New York and taught — they weren’t married then, or were, at the end, when she was already pregnant with Rosalind — but he used to train up to be with her for three days almost every week. And he did, he now remembers, spend at least one night at Sharon’s when her husband was at a girlfriend’s house and it was understood between them that when he did that Sharon could have her lover over, but what he’s getting at here is did she play the piano for him? He thinks she just made dinner for them and they went to bed and he left before eight in the morning so he’d be gone — this was also the understanding between them — before her husband came home. “He’s an early riser,” she said, “and he likes to get at his desk before nine. That’s one reason I haven’t let you sleep here before. The other is, I never liked the idea of sharing his bed with you. Too peculiar, and I’d have to change the sheets twice.” He asked Sharon that first day if she was a graduate student at Berkeley. “I mean, you look young enough to pass as an undergrad, but by the way you speak and the subject matter, I suspect you’re not.” “Was,” she said. “I got my master’s there.” “Did you go further?” and she said “All the way.” “What was your thesis on?” and she said “If you mean the dissertation for my doctorate, I’m still writing it. My master’s thesis was on Boris Pasternak and cats.” “Seriously?” and she said “Animals in Pasternak’s poetry but mostly cats. I was lucky to get away with it. My thesis advisor was a young new hire who had a crush on me. I led him on a little till my thesis was approved.” “Where’d you get the idea?” and she said “If you mean for my thesis topic, it was inspired by a visit my boyfriend and I made to Pasternak’s dacha at Peredelkino.” “So that’s how you pronounce it,” he said, “accent on the second syllable? You must speak Russian, then,” and she said “Just Russian poetry. But you’ve heard of Peredelkino,” and he said “Sure; I love Russian poetry. All poetry, but twentieth-century Russian poetry the most. No, that’s not true. I love early twentieth-century French poetry better, or as much, and some post-World War I and II German poetry, particularly when it’s written by a Czech or Romanian.” “I won’t ask who they are because I think I know. But not English poetry?” and he said “English, American, Whitman, Housman, Berryman, all the men, but I was talking about poetry in languages I don’t fully understand or understand at all, and excuse me for that stupid joke about men. I really didn’t mean it the way it could be interpreted. Could you recite a Pasternak poem for me? Any Russian poem. I’d love to hear one in the original. Pushkin. Mayakovsky. Ahkmatova and Mandelstam. They were good friends, no?” “I’m able to recite lots of them. I studied with a teacher of Russian poetry who had us memorize fifty Russian poems. She said it’d come in handy if for some reason we didn’t have a book on us to read and were waiting a long time to go aboard something or for it to arrive. In other words, we’d have this whole anthology in our heads — but I don’t want to. It’d draw attention, and Russian poetry can’t be recited quietly.” “Could you whisper the translation of one to me?” “Please, no more of that. I’ve already expressed my disinterest.” “Tell me about your visit to Pasternak’s dacha. You met him?” Wait a minute. If she got her master’s from the Russian department, why would she then go for her doctorate in English literature? He must have it wrong. Is he thinking about some other woman he knew? No, he’s sure he’s not. It’ll come back to him. That’s it: she went to Stanford for her doctorate because her mentor at Berkeley switched to there and she wanted to stick with him and he helped get her a good financial arrangement, or was it U-Cal at Davis or one of the other U-Cals, and her connection to Dickens w