as his influence on the nineteenth-century Russian novel, or the reverse. It was so long ago. Forty years. She must be around sixty-five by now, if she’s still alive. She developed a serious kidney disorder he learned from a mutual acquaintance of theirs, and something was also wrong with her blood. He thinks those are the two things. She had two children with her husband, got her Ph.D. and taught awhile, he doesn’t know what or where or if it was a tenure-track appointment, and then had to cut back her teaching to two courses a year and then one because of her illness. He was told all this around twenty years ago, in a letter, and it was the last he heard about her. The mutual acquaintance died in a motorcycle accident a year or two later, his wife wrote him, or sent him without comment, as she must have done to a number of long-time acquaintances and friends who didn’t live near them, a photocopy of his obituary in their local newspaper, and her husband was the only person he knew who knew Sharon. He can’t recall the name of the guy or how he came to know him, though he knows it was in California. Sharon should have had his child. That’s what he wanted then: for her to get pregnant by him and leave her husband and marry him. Of course it was a stupid idea. He had no money saved and just a temporary department-store salesman job and was making nothing from his writing. But she took him seriously and said — what did she say? — she said for any of that to happen, Bill, his name was — her husband’s — would have to leave her first and start a divorce, something he said he was never going to do. He liked things as they were, she said, and deep down, “in spite of our crazy errant marriage, I know he loves me more than a little and he knows I love him enough to stay with him. Surprisingly and perhaps unbecomingly traditional as this might sound to you, although I don’t think it would if you were my husband and Bill were you, a vow is a vow and sacred to me, the one about till death do you part.” This was when Sharon and he were still sleeping together and seeing each other about twice a week. “But tell me about your visit to Pasternak’s dacha. You met him? He was still alive?” “He died in 1960,” she said. “We were there in ’61. We were both seniors at Michigan State, part of a very select group of American college students studying Russian language and culture in Moscow for a month. It wasn’t my idea to go to Peredelkino, it was my boyfriend’s. He was also interested in Pasternak, but his prose. I was reluctant to even get off the train there. I thought it too pushy — too American — to just barge in like that, and pleaded with him to turn back right up till the time he knocked on the door.” “What you were on must have been part of the rapprochement between the two countries, and when there were various cultural and people-to-people exchanges. I remember. I was a reporter in Washington in ’59, when it all started.” “Right. So, he sort of forced me — grabbed my hand and practically dragged me to the house — and I’m glad he did.” But he’s confused again. If she was a college senior in ’61, then the earliest she could have got her master’s at Berkeley was ’62, so it’s unlikely she could have been writing her dissertation in ’65, isn’t it? Doesn’t it take at least three years to get through all the coursework, especially in literature? It took Gwen even longer than that before she started writing her dissertation. She got her B.A. in ’68, her M.A. in ’69, and he thinks she completed and defended her dissertation the year before they met in late ’78, or maybe that same year but at the beginning of it. Maybe Sharon was only sketching it out while she was still doing her coursework, hadn’t even got a word down, just ideas. Though maybe it is possible to finish the coursework in less than three years — it might depend on the program — and writing the dissertation could take, if you work on it day and night, a year or two, but not if you teach, as Gwen did, lower-level literature and humanities courses for two or three years after you finish your coursework and spend a year on fellowship doing research abroad. You’d think he’d know more about it, having taught at a university for twenty-five years, though mostly undergraduate writing courses, and being married to a Ph.D. Just, the subject never came up with Sharon, or not that he can remember, and up till now he thought he knew. As for Gwen taking so long to complete her Ph.D., she said it was pointless rushing through it. The dissertation, which she wanted to be a book for the common reader as well as academics, would suffer, and the prospects were slim there’d be a teaching job in New York or the surrounding area when she finished it, and New York was where she was determined to stay. Besides, she said, she had other things to do: writing essays and poetry and traveling and just lots of fun living. Of course, getting married and divorced when she was a grad student and having an abortion and the emotional toll that took slowed things down too. “My husband thought having a kid so early would bring our studies to a standstill and I just didn’t think he’d be a good father.” But Sharon: “The old servant of Pasternak’s opened the door,” she said. “His two sons were there, Boris and Leonid, and they graciously asked us to come in. They served us tea and cookies. After a long conversation about art and music and literature, all connected to their father — are you really interested in this?” and he said “You bet. I love personal accounts and anecdotes about serious writers. Go on.” “They invited us to stay for dinner, but we had to be back in our Moscow dorm by nine or we could be thrown out of the country the next day.” She said she first got the idea for her thesis topic when Pasternak’s old cat — his favorite — ripped one of her stockings with his paw and knocked her cookie off her plate. “They told me he wanted us to be talking only about him and his contribution to Pasternak’s poetry. Later I learned the cat used to follow Pasternak when he visited his mistress in this same community, and was the principal muse to him, even more so than his mistress and wife.” After about an hour, she stood up and said “This has been very nice and you’ve been patient in listening to my blather.” “I told you,” he said, “I love such blather. Like to meet again? I sure would, in other words. Can I call you sometime?” She said she was married, so it wouldn’t be a good idea. “It would if you were interested in me,” he said. “But you’re married? I’m surprised that didn’t come up.” “It did, but you must have chosen not to listen, or you’re not being entirely honest with me.” “Honestly, I’m being honest, and we’d only meet for some more literary talk,” and she said “Oh, yeah. I’m sorry, but I really have to get home. My husband expects me and he worries. And he’s doing the cooking tonight and I’ve got the tofu.” “One big chunk will do for the two of you?” and she said “He’s probably already diced and sliced the other ingredients that he’ll cook with it, sort of a stew.” “You both vegetarians?” and she said “Please,” and they went outside, she put out her hand and he shook it and she got on her bike and he headed for his car. He forgets how they paid for the pastry they shared and coffees, or she, tea. And their names? Surely they must have given them. What a waste, he thought, watching her ride off, admiring her body from behind — her rear end looked plump on the bicycle seat, which it didn’t when she stood — and which he would later tell her he thought, after they’d begun sleeping together: “Not of my time, a waste, but, because I was so quickly attracted to you, that you were married and wanted to stay faithful.” “I did want to,” she said. “I’d already had too many affairs since I got married. Not many by your standards, perhaps: just two, but one too many. The first was partly to try it out, because everyone, including my husband, was doing it. And by telling Bill I loved the man, which I didn’t, to see how much I could hurt him after some real dirty things he did to me. I found out I couldn’t hurt him or make him the least bit jealous, so broke off the affair. No loss; my affairee was inept and dull and I didn’t like his conversations. The second was also a dreadful stupid mistake, in a different way, but full of love and tears on my part, and lasted. My partner was sexy and exciting and intellectually energizing and metaphorically flicked his cigarette ashes on me. My first broken heart.” Was the one-too-many her mentor, he thinks, and must have thought then, and the reasons she followed him to whatever university he switched to and why he helped her get such a good deal at it? She never told him who the two men were and how long the affairs lasted because, she said, when he asked, she wanted to keep that part of her life secret from everyone but her husband. “We even, in fact, wrote it into our marriage vows: to promptly tell the other the truth about everything seemingly important to the marriage we’ve done, no matter how bad.” He next saw her on the main street of Palo Alto, which now makes him think that her mentor had switched to Stanford and that’s where she got her doctorate. So maybe she had finished all her coursework by the time he met her, and maybe in two years, not that he ever heard of it, though that doesn’t mean anything, and now only came to Stanford once a month or so to do whatever a doctoral candidate has to do for her department once she’s done with her classwork — take her orals, attend a lecture by a prominent visiting professor in her field, meet with her dissertation advisor, and so on. Otherwise, he thinks he would have been with her more, since he lived in the next town over from Palo Alto. He knows that the deal she got at whatever university she got it from was over, where she didn’t have to teach for her department for two or three years. Oh, he’ll never remember it completely, no matter how hard he tries, so give up. It was in the afternoon, a beautiful spring day: bright sky, soft breezes, the air smelling of flowering fruit trees. He was on his way to pick up his typewriter at the typewriter repair shop on the street. Saw her walking, couldn’t believe his luck, because he had thought about her a lot, and came up alongside her and said “Wow, this is a coincidence, bumping into you after just a few weeks,” if that’s how long it was — it was a short time, though, that he knows—“unless I’ve been following you. I haven’t. Nice to see you again,” and he put out his hand to shake but she didn’t take it. She looked puzzled and he said “Martin Samuels”—if they had given their names the first time, and even if they hadn’t—“from that Berkeley health food co-op? Tofu and herbal tea?” “It’s not that I didn’t recognize you and from where,” she said. “It’s what you said about following me. You make such odd remarks and bad jokes; forgive me if I’m being too frank.” “No, I like it, and you’re right, it was odd and my humor does tend to fall, from time to time, flat. Unfortunately, it seems a habit I can’t seem to break, but I’ll try. In order to change the subject and get the focus off me, can I ask how you’ve been? What are you doing on this side of the bay? You bike all the way? People do.” “No, I came here as you’d expect me to: I drove.” “So, another odd remark on my part, right? though maybe not as bad.” He doesn’t remember if she said what she was doing in Palo Alto. “But I think my explanation why I keep saying these odd and sort of inane things is, one, I’m not odd but I can be inane and dumb. And two, I’m probably — I must be — and maybe here comes another of either of those that I’m going to regret but I’ll say it anyway — nervous speaking to you. Yes, that’s something I should’ve repressed. I had the time to; I caught myself before. But I’d already started it so thought it was too late to stop.” “So, why?” and he said “Did I think it was too late to stop?” and she said “Better we drop the subject. You did explain yourself sufficiently, although I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. Your nervousness is kind of charming. I can’t remember ever making a man nervous before with just my presence.” “How else, then, could you have,” he said, “if you don’t mind my asking?” “When I crossed the street against the light, but with someone who didn’t want to, and cars were coming. And when a man I didn’t know was crossing the street against or with the light and I nearly ran into him with my bike.” “So it seems only on the street,” he said. “Look, I was on my way to pick up my typewriter at the repair shop there, but would you like to step in someplace for coffee?” and she said “Sure, I’ve time.” “You don’t think — no, I won’t say it; I’ve cured myself for today.” “I’d shoot for much longer than that, because you don’t want to ruin what could be a good thing. For the time being — and please don’t try to squeeze out of me what changed my mind — we’ll avoid talking about him, okay?” “I live in Menlo Park,” he said, “—very near here. Do you live in Berkeley?” “I thought you already knew I did.” “Like to, instead of a coffee shop, have it in my small modest flat? I also have crackers and cheese and different kinds of teas.” “Flat?” she said. “How cozy. Sure, I’d go for that too. Give me the address and directions — you can just tell me and I’ll remember — and I’ll drive there.” “Think I should get my typewriter first? Don’t want to stop the momentum, but why should I go back for it when it’s right here, and I’m going to need it later?” She walked him to the typewriter store, then he gave her directions to his building, said he’d meet her out front and walked her to her car. “Volvo,” he said. “All the latest safety features. It’s the car I’d expect you to drive.” “I know I’m breaking my interdiction about talking about him, but it was a decision, buying this car, my husband and I made together after considerable research. That’s what married couples do. It’s fun.” They had tea and crackers. “I’m sorry, I’m very hungry,” she said, “so I’m going to have to eat your last cracker, unless you want to split it.” “I should’ve stopped for lunch food on the way here,” he said, “but I didn’t want to keep you waiting. I thought you’d leave.” “I wouldn’t have,” she said. “If you were delayed I’d know it was for something you thought important and that was probably related to me. What we first should have done was go for a snack someplace. That’s what I was about to do when you saw me on the street. The conversation we’re having now we could have had anywhere.” “I forgot, I’ve wine,” he said, and poured them each a glass. After he finished his, he took her glass out of her hand—“This could be considered rude of me, taking your wine away without asking you,” and she said “I’ve drunk enough and I know what you’re about to do and it’s okay.” They kissed a few times. When he started to feel her up, she said “Some other time. I don’t want to do everything in one or two days.” “So you think something’s started?” and she said “Yes, I think something’s started.” “I have no love life; do you, or not much?” and she said “I can see why you might think that about me but it isn’t true. In any case, could you please get your lips over here? Make it one that lasts my entire drive home, and then I go. Unlike you, if this isn’t an anomaly on your refrigerator’s part — I took a peek inside — ours is always stocked with good food. Maybe one day you’ll come by and I’ll make you lunch.” Then, about a year later, or maybe a few months earlier than that, she said…But he suddenly remembers something about her that he thought at the time characterized her a lot. It also relates to Gwen. They were making love and she was unusually tight down there, and he stopped — he was behind her — and said “This must be hurting you. I know it’s a bit uncomfortable for me,” and pulled out. “I don’t think you’re producing the required amount of vaginal juices, and I’m not saying it’s your fault. I probably entered you too early.” She said “Do you have any lubricant for it?”