He gets out of bed, goes to the bathroom, pees, washes his hands. Feels his face. Should he shave now so he doesn’t have to do it later? He thinks. No, too early. And he has to get out of that habit of getting so far ahead of himself: preparing tomorrow’s salad today, and so on. He’d like to go to the kitchen for a glass of water from the sink’s filter tap. His mouth’s dry and he also hasn’t drunk much water today. He’d read somewhere, but read elsewhere a while later where this notion was debunked — actually, both in the Times’ Tuesday health section — that the average mature adult male should drink no less than eight glasses of water a day, but neither said what size glasses. He doesn’t want to run into the kids, though. One of them might hear him going through the house and come out of her room and say “Anything wrong, Daddy?” or say through her door “That you, Daddy? Everything all right?” He turns on the bathroom light and washes with soap the sort of scummy bathroom glass and rinses it till it’s clear. Plastic juice glass he took two of from Gwen’s hospital room her last time there. Thought they’d be useful in a bathroom, so has one on the glass and toothbrush holder in the other bathroom too. Less chance than real glass of breaking on the floor or when it falls into the sink and a glass splinter, after he thought he picked or swept up all the pieces, later cutting his finger or foot. And the glass’s height, when he thought of taking the first one, seemed perfect to fit under the medicine cabinet door when he opened it, and he was right — made it by an inch. He drinks a full glass of water, then another not as full to make up a little of what he didn’t drink today, and goes back to bed, lies on his back, head centered again on two pillows, pulls the covers up to his neck and thinks: So what happened next? He bumped into her on the street the day after their phone conversation and she said “Hi, how are you, what a wonderful surprise. If you’ve time, think we can move up our coffee date now?” They met at the drugstore as planned. He remember anything they said when they met there? He pictures them talking. Mouths moving but no words he can make out. Sitting at the soda fountain counter. She’s smiling, he’s smiling. What a beautiful smile she has, he thinks he thought. Must have. She had, always had — photos of her around the house show this, every single one of them — a beautiful smile. Something to do with her lively eyes and shape of her face and high cheek bones and length of her mouth. As they talked, he might have thought Did she think he has a nice smile? People have said he does and his mother used to say he has a beautiful smile. Well, his mother. And he should have mentioned the certain way she opened her mouth when she smiled, which he can’t right now put into words, and her bright white evenly aligned straight teeth, which also might have contributed to it, but with a bit of her upper gum exposed, something she tried to hide. “Smile” ends, he thinks, if he rearranged the letters, with a lie, not that that has anything to do with what he’s thinking here. Just popped in. Has anyone ever thought it? He waited for her in front of the drugstore. Day was unusually mild for that time of the year. Temperature in the high forties, maybe mid-fifties. Pretty good for the first week of December. And because he was able to read comfortably outside, probably no wind. Walking weather, he thinks he thought. Also: he’ll suggest it if she doesn’t bring it up. He was a little nervous, wanted it to go well. From this date to the next one and so on. Just act natural, he might have thought. Don’t act false, vain, boastful, pedantic, anything like that. Good conversation will come. She was definitely pretty, he thinks he thought, definitely pretty. He looked at her enough at the party to know. He isn’t so bad-looking either, he might have thought, and up till about five or ten years ago he was considered good-looking, though that doesn’t help him now. And he still has a good deal of his hair — around half of it, while his father was bald at thirty — and it hasn’t started turning gray. And he’s fairly tall for his age group and lean and well-built, just as she is — not so much tall; five-feet-four or — five; of average height — so they start out with that: one really good-looking woman and a not-bad-looking guy. There are of course other things and that’s part of what this meeting’s about: to find out. He knows she’s intelligent and witty and clever, from what she said in their phone conversation. What did she say? Things, things; he forgets what in particular but knows he was impressed. And he hates the word chemistry when it’s related to two people pairing, but he’s got to say it: they’ll see if there’s any between them. There was for him, talking with her on the phone and some of what went on by the elevator and on the street — she certainly gave off something he was attracted to and liked — so what he’ll really see is if it’s still there. He got to the drugstore about five minutes to three and she got there about twenty minutes later. The wait was easy. He enjoyed the anxiety. Feelings he hadn’t felt for a long time. Well, he had some of the same ones while he was thinking of calling her, but now she was on her way and would soon be here. His stomach; things rushing around or rolling over but doing something in his head. His chest, even. This could be it, he thinks he thought or something like it; this could be it. Pretty, bright, speaks well, teaches at Columbia, and so forth. Loves literature. Camus. And that she agreed to meet him. Must mean she isn’t hitched. He was curious what she’d be wearing and if she’d be carrying a book and, if so, what it’d be. Probably something to do with her teaching, which she should be finishing soon. Maybe the last class of the semester is this week and then there’s study period and exams if she gives them and term papers to read. And even if she’d be wearing a cap or hat and if her hair would be pinned up as it was at the party or in something like a ponytail or brushed straight back. Did she wear makeup? From what he recalls, not even lipstick or eye liner, which he likes: that she didn’t. No embellishments. Natural face. Didn’t know why he thought all this, but he thinks he did. He was very curious about her, that’s all. At home before, he thought she might get to the drugstore earlier than she’d said and he didn’t want her waiting for him, he can’t remember why. Oh, yeah. Didn’t want her getting impatient for him to come, which might put her in a bad mood, though she didn’t seem that way. He thought she’d think: “He’s not late; I’m early.” He brought along the