patch of grass next to a vegetable stand, and I had no idea how and what it had come to be doing there. An old woman figured in the incident, insofar as the horse was sort of lying on her. The old woman, though she was eager to talk, seemed incapable of answering questions or rather of providing answers that seemed in some way to correspond with questions. I had been in this situation before. I knew what to do—when to say yes and when to nod. When I was young my father used to tie linoleum strips around my ankles so that the snakes wouldn’t bite me when we were berry picking, the old woman said. I nodded, I held her hand. She described the handles of a tea set she had once owned. Also she had been a teacher. In her cardigan pocket was a list of the subjects she had taught. I have a list in every pocket, she said. She then told me, pulling out one of said lists as evidence, about her mother’s onion tarts. Here I listened very carefully. It was apparently all in the consistency of the cooked onion. An emergency team arrived, the horse was lifted, shot, and carted away. I went to a computer shop. There I was supposed, also according to my instructions, to acquire a computer, a very small one. The salesperson assured me she had just the thing and demonstrated how neatly her product could fit into, for example, one’s breast pocket. She was very proud of her product and succeeded in imparting a fair measure of that pride in me, the new provisional owner of the very small computer with the illuminable screen. Later that screen was to come in handy, as was the built-in calculator, and one or two other functions. Alas, that item was not one I was permitted to keep. It was held as evidence and played a role at my trial in exonerating me. Then, for the second time, I thought I saw her again. I was leaving the store, small computer in breast pocket, red duct tape and feather duster in a plastic bag. The feather duster was nice, too, in its own understated way. The tips of the feathers had been touched with green paint and one could imagine how nice they would look gliding across oak or cherry or teak. She was sitting in the window of a restaurant across the street talking to someone—someone I couldn’t quite see, someone wearing a hat and sunglasses. It certainly did look like her, albeit with one or two of the somewhat important differences I mentioned previously. Sun was flooding the street. It occurred to me that it was perhaps the presence of so much sunlight that made her appear to have changed a little. There had of course been sun, even bright sun, during those other days, but it had not been warm, or only rarely. Most of the time there had been rain. I tried to imagine I was looking at her through the rain. I squinted a little. It helped. Still squinting, I crossed the street and stood outside the window. It was her all right, I thought. As for her interlocutor, I couldn’t be certain, but it seemed to me that she was speaking with some difficulty, as if, even, she was stuttering, and it also looked a little like she was holding a gun. Such impressions often prove erroneous, however. In fact, the last time I had seen a person who spoke with a stutter and who seemed to be holding a gun, I was wrong, about the gun part. This was following the conclusion of the task I had undertaken at the outset of my recuperation, some weeks previously. I had performed the task and the lights had come on and all present had nodded and we had all shaken hands and just as they were beginning to clean up the blood someone had said, follow me. We went along dark streets for a while then into a building and up six flights of stairs. I don’t mind this, this is great, I said, huffing a bit. Will you please keep your fucking mouth shut, the person I was following said. Then we were at the top and I kind of leaned over and the person told me to kind of stand up and I said hold on just a second and the person gave me a smack. I stood up very
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