Falconer

"I suppose I am dealing with romantic and erotic things, but I think I am dealing with much more. What I remember, tonight in this cell, is waiting in some living room for you to finish dressing. I hear the sound from the bedroom of you closing a drawer. I hear the sound of your heels-the floor, the carpet, the tile of the bathroom-as you go there to flush the toilet. Then I hear the sound of your heels again-a little swifter now-as you open and close another drawer and then come toward the door of the room where I wait, bringing with you the pleasures of the evening and the night and the life we have together. And I can remember wishing for di

"And I remember when we first met, and I am today and will be forever astonished at the perspicacity with which a man can, in a glimpse, judge the scope and beauty of a woman's memory, her tastes in color, food, climate and language, the precise clinical dimensions of her visceral, cranial and reproductive tracts, the condition of her teeth, hair, skin, toe nails, eyesight and bronchial tree, that he can, in a second, exalted by the diagnostics of love, seize on the fact that she is meant for him or that they are meant for one another. I am speaking of a glimpse and the image seems to be transitory, although this is not so much romantic as it is practical since I am thinking of a stranger, seen by a stranger There will be stairs, turnings, gangplanks, elevators, seaports, airports, someplace between somewhere and somewhere else and where I first saw you wearing blue and reaching for a passport or a cigarette. Then I pursued you across the street, across the country and around the world, absolutely and rightly informed of the fact that we belonged in one another's arms as we did.

"You are not the most beautiful woman I have ever known, but four of the great beauties I have known died by their own hand and while this does not mean that all the great beauties I have known have killed themselves, four is a number to consider. I may be trying to explain the fact that while your beauty is not great, it is very practical. You have no nostalgia. I think nostalgia a primary female characteristic and you have it not at all. You have a marked lack of sentimental profoundness, but you have a brightness, a quality of light, that I have never seen equaled. Everyone knows this, everyone sees this, everyone responds. I can't imagine this being eclipsed. Your physical coordination in athletics can be very depressing. You have to throw me a te

"And I remember some mountainous place in the winter on the eve of a holiday where thousands of people had gathered to ski and where thousands more were expected on the late planes and trains. And I remember ski places, those overheated rooms and the books that people leave behind them and the galvanic excitement of physicalness. We were in bed then, when there was around midnight, a sudden rise in temperature. The thawing snow on the roof made a dripping sound-a water torture for the i