Vigil for a Stranger by Kitty Burns Florey Page A

and talk or read or go to a movie or walk down to Christopher Martin’s for a beer, and I would fall asleep worn out.
    In this way I crossed off the days.

Chapter Six
    My appointment with Orin Pierce was for four o’clock. His office turned out to be on the sixty-sixth floor of a new building in midtown Manhattan. It was ridiculously, tastefully palatial—hardly what I expected: antique tables, brass lamps, mellow old oil paintings. I was wearing an ancient black wool turtleneck with paint on the sleeve, and jeans tucked into my rubber lace-up boots. (Silvie had bought me the boots in Paris years ago. I had a letter from Denis: “ Grand’-mère Silvie is bringing you home some boots. She knows you do not wear boots of animals, so these are strange boots of rubber, up to the knee, with laces.”) I gave my name, feeling like someone who had come to solicit contributions for a home for aging hippies.
    The elegant, unflappable receptionist said, “Mr. Pierce is expecting you, have a seat.” I sat for a few minutes in a tufted leather chair the color of fine sherry, ostensibly looking at a pile of real-estate prospectuses (deluxe high-rise apartments with identical skyline views like paintings on velvet) but really wishing I hadn’t come, and then I was shown into his office.
    He rose to greet me. “Ah! Ms. Laurent,” he said, and I was stunned into silence. My first thought was yes , followed immediately by no , and then I gave up and stood there confused, staring at him. He gave me no sign of recognition. I had never remembered to wonder how much I had changed in twenty years—not so much, I thought. Not so much as this man. Because if he was Pierce, he had changed from a lean young man with thick brown hair that fell in his eyes, to a heavyset, bearded, balding man with creases across his forehead. The kind of man who wore a three-piece suit, a watch chain stretched across his vest, rimless glasses which he was polishing with a silk paisley handkerchief.
    He put his glasses back on and shook my hand; his hand told me nothing: it was warm and dry, the handshake was firm. “How extremely nice to meet you,” he said.
    It was indeed if he were in disguise or in costume—playing a kindly visiting uncle in a Merchant-Ivory movie or the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland . I couldn’t speak. After the first shock, I could barely look at him—the smile, the brown beard. I looked beyond him to the window and the view from the sixty-sixth floor: immense sky, a glance down to puddled rooftops, the river sparkling in the distance, and at eye level, coming our way, was a helicopter. All I could think was: after that plunge down the canyon, how can he bear this height? And realized the idiocy of that thought, the extent of my confusion. I immediately became dizzy, and had to hang on to the back of a chair.
    â€œAre you all right?”
    He stood beside me. I hung on. The helicopter began to descend. I watched the blur of its propeller until it slipped below us, out of sight. When I turned to meet his eyes, he was smiling. He said, “Here—sit down. The height often has that effect on people. Would you like a glass of water?”
    â€œPlease.”
    He poured from a glass carafe into a tumbler shot with gold. “There are times when we’re actually above the clouds. Or sometimes it’s snowing up here, with sun and blue skies down below. It’s really amazing.” I drank, staring at him, wanting to run out the door, with the feeling that everything had gone wrong—though I couldn’t have said in what way I had expected it to go right. Was he supposed to cry, “Chris!” and sweep me up in a hug? Or be a seven-foot-tall stranger with coal-black hair, or be Pierce, definitely Pierce, but in the grip of amnesia, from which I would tenderly bring him back? Anything but this, all wrong—the alarming view, his impersonal kindness,