Years ago, I spotted a hawk-like man flying seaward above the 405 Freeway. He appeared calm, hardly flapping his wings at all. I lost sight of him at the 10 interchange, but I found myself growing curious. What would it feel like to spin the wheel hard and go soaring off the edge of an overpass? Would I be weightless? Was it like flying?

I knew I hadn’t seen anything. My mind has never been my friend. So I ignored the hawk-like man, respectfully, the way one might treat an odd neighbor. I kept driving to work. He kept soaring toward the sea.

I was teaching at an after-school academy in Koreatown. Across the red bricks of its facade drooped long banners that listed the honors its students had won, the prestigious universities entered — as if the academy deserved the credit. The other teachers were recent graduates and working toward getting credentialed. They had binders full of lessons. They had good ideas.

I, who had been around longer, better understood our purpose. They would all be moving on soon, teachers and students alike. What we had was a temporary arrangement.

I walked into my classroom and said, “Kids,” then looked out upon them, faces like a plot of sunflowers. And in that room, I had to become the sun. I turned it on. “You’ll never believe what I saw.”

I told them about the hawk-like man, and the more they laughed and shouted, “Teacher! You’re crazy!” the more I spoke of him in a light and playful manner. I’d learned to treat all matters of life like so, to keep the unpleasantness at bay.

Kevin, who had recently taken to wearing a puka shell necklace over his school polo, said, “Yeah, right. It was probably a seagull.” I said, “Do seagulls have arms?” And he crossed his own and scoffed. “Probably!”

I called on Jenny, who had lifted her hand so high it pulled her from her seat. “Did he have friends?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

I wiped the whiteboard clean and clapped my hands together to signal the conclusion of chitchat. The class sighed. They were good kids. They could accept anything as normal and go on about their days. They knew what they had to do.

I helped with their homework. Whether they asked about long division or grammar, I’d tell them they were brilliant and show them things on the board. Then, magically, they’d teach themselves.

When the bell rang, they trooped past where I stood by the door and bumped me with their backpacks, on purpose — affectionately, I think. They stomped away to the shuttle vans idling in the lot, and I switched off the room lights behind them.

Lynn lived in old Los Angeles, in a wooden Victorian atop a yellowing hill, haunted by crows. I would take the stairs to her unit as if stepping into a dusty old film. I imagine she did too. That night, I found her stirring a bottle of wine into a saucepot, her short hair cinched into the rounded tip of a paintbrush. There she is.

It smelled wonderful there, the air steamy with Italian spices. Without looking back, she called out, “I’m almost ready.”

I settled onto a cushion by the short-legged soban on which she’d set our mugs — a Corgi for her, a Garfield for me — along with a fifth of bourbon. I poured big dollops for us both. I didn’t know her well, but surrounded by her things — the Moroccan fabrics draping the walls, the crumbling French ads for wine and cigarettes, the ’80s power ballad playing in the tape deck, sappy and hopeful — I could feel I did. I understood a devotion to lost causes.

When she brought in our pasta, I said, “This is a good song,” and she laughed. “No,” she said, “it’s Journey.”

We spoke intermittently throughout dinner. How was my week? And hers? I never asked very personal questions. This was why, I suspect, she liked me. I would nod and comment — on the oddity of customers she’d served at X, the old films she’d been watching, the auditions she’d blown — but that night, she told me we should celebrate. She’d been cast in a production that would be shooting in New York. In a month or so, she’d be leaving LA. She tipped the bottle into my mug, then hers, as she talked. I said, “That’s great!” Then I asked when she would be back.

She said, “About that.”

That night, while she slept, I watched the moonlight catch on her cold, otherworldly server uniform. It hung from a hook against the back of the door. A white blouse with starched cuffs and collar; a black bowtie and skirt.

For months, I’d been invited over for talking, then touching, and all of it maintained a distant politeness, the kind sometimes shared by seatmates in dim cabins on the longest of flights. I had no illusions about the plain facts of us. But —

I should confess here, in the hopes of being better understood, that when I was a child, I would peek out my window at the pale trunk of a massive tree in the yard. In its thunderous stillness, it observed me. It had things to say. I would come to feel a presence in other trees too, in rustling branches and flashing leaves. The world begged to be deciphered. I could hear it through my ceiling, the whispers chased into the trees.

He doesn’t know. . .

The talking originated not from within my skull but from out there. If I’d heard voices in my head, I would’ve known they weren’t real.

You’d better. . .

In class I would become disruptive, accusing other children of whispering hateful conspiracy behind my back. It drove me mad that they wouldn’t admit it. I was reported, repeatedly, to a principal who concluded I was acting out of malice. After a summary school board hearing, I was expelled.

So do it then. . .

I had an overactive imagination, my mother told me, as she laid out orbs of fish oils and pebbly vitamins, supplements chosen from among those she sold at Chinese church socials. I had to control it. I had to think positive and be stronger. I could outgrow this, she said. She took me to a holy man in the suburbs of Monterey Park, a monk of some sort who burned a gold paper charm and swirled the black ashes into a cup of red tea.

Only later did I learn that such symptoms can develop the way an allergy can — suddenly, for no reason. It’s nobody’s fault. Our bodies change and change again. But by then, I’d been listening to those voices for years.

I bring this up only to say that I’d put together some semblance of a normal life. I’d finished school. I’d found work. I had Bryant and Lynn. I was OK. And I intended to keep it that way.

In the morning, I woke up before Lynn and closed the bedroom door behind me. I washed my mugs, then our plates, the cloying, hardened streaks of red. In the cold light of morning, the living room looked odd, the Bohemian touches more like stage props.

I checked the kitchen drawers, hoping to find coupons, take-out menus, or loose packets of Equal — any signs of private life. I turned up silver chopsticks and spoons in a plastic tray. A corkscrew, a rusty hammer. I checked the cupboards. Bare but for a few spices.

Why bother moving to LA if she hadn’t planned on staying? Did she think she would become successful overnight? If I’d had a sensible adult to talk to, they might have steered me toward reasonable actions.

However, I had only Bryant. Back home, I found him lying on our couch with a huge book propped up on his chest: The Planes of World War II. On his stomach was a yellow notepad on which he’d sketched aircraft among the clouds. They were firing what appeared to be lasers.

He lowered the book. “George!” he said. “You’ll never believe what happened to me yesterday. I almost crashed!” His eyes went wide. “I could’ve died.”

He’d been a model before acting, primarily print, and had taken up helicopter lessons — not for a role but to be a more interesting person. He thought this would lend him depth on-screen.

“You should be more careful,” I said.

“Dude.” He laughed. “I know!”

It was hard to stay angry around him. I flopped into the armchair. “So.” I said, very casually. “What’s going on with Lynn?”

They’d had coffee the other week before an acting workshop and discussed her screenplay. Why? he asked. I told him she was leaving LA. He asked if we’d been fighting. I told him, no. In fact, we never disagreed. I’d taken this to indicate our compatibility but now it sounded odd. What couple never disagrees?

I told him she was headed to New York for a shoot and wondered if he could ask her about it. Maybe casually? He told me she was kind of a private person. And, besides, she’d stopped attending workshop.

I was shocked. “Why didn’t you tell me? That’s a really big deal!”

“I thought you knew!”

I could feel one of my old moods coming on. I stood to go. He said, “Honestly? People are always coming and going. It’s probably got nothing to do with you.”

If he’d been trying to make me feel better, he’d achieved the opposite. I stomped into my room to brood. Nothing to do with me?

That Thursday, I called in sick to drop by Lynn’s unannounced. I hoped to catch her off guard. I knocked on her door, hugging a paper sack of goods to my chest. Through the slimmest of door openings, she peeked out and said, warningly, “George.” She hated surprises, but I told her I’d come to my senses. I’d been shocked about her leaving but I was happy for her. Really. From the paper sack I produced a Corgi alarm clock. The short-legged dog clasped a clock face to its belly. Now she’d stop missing call times, I said. And she laughed. I knew this sort of talk could soothe her. It’s sad that I knew that.

After putting away what she had to, she let me in. She stepped into the kitchenette while I dimmed the room by unbundling the curtains, then lit and arranged the tea candles I’d brought. I put on the tape I’d compiled of those songs she liked — “White Lion,” “Heart,” and “Scorpions” — those big, swoony ballads that got her in the mood for drinking. Then she brought our mugs over and surveyed the golden, flickering room.

“What is this?” she said. “A date?”

I sipped and talked idly about children, how girls could become so skilled at hiding who they’d been, but boys never could, so the core of them remained in the men they’d become, a wound they acted out. I’d hoped to disarm her by conveying some understanding of her plight. But she only looked annoyed. So I talked about old films instead, and once I’d gotten her going — she hated Casablanca, loved All About Eve — I dunked bourbon into her mug, again and again.

Before long, she was clapping her hands to chant, “Down it, Georgie! You can do it!” Then watching me slyly, slurring, “You think you know people?” Then she was knocking about the kitchenette for the Doritos that she swore she’d just bought.

Yes, it felt a little like revenge. For someone like Lynn, who kept emergency bottles of Nyquil in the bathroom, all it took to spiral away was the gentlest push. In my defense, I can say only that I wanted to feel closer to her.

I put her to bed and tucked her in. Then I searched her bedroom.

I found under her mattress a photo album of no photos, only pages of blank cellophane pockets. In her desk, a battered day planner —the contacts only initials, the area codes for faraway places. I did find an “N.C.” attached to a 212 number. Nicolas Cage?

The biggest discovery that night arrived in a plastic storage bin, the top of which I lifted to reveal, on a tangled bed of intricate panties and brassieres, her fabled screenplay. In a three-ring binder with heavily reworked and highlighted pages, she’d written by hand about Park Hye-rin, a “whip-smart” waitress caring for an ailing mother while pursuing dreams of acting.

INT. DIVE BAR – NIGHT

HYE-RIN (21) flips through the jukebox for a song she’ll never find. She wears an old leather jacket and fistfuls of silver rings. She’s tired of looking like a girl and acting like a girl, but that’s the only way she has to make money.

DAVID (25), a cold and tormented photographer, crosses the room toward her.

DAVID

What are you looking for?

HYE-RIN

Some peace and quiet.

DAVID

Then what’re you doing at a bar?

They lock eyes in a meaningful way.

In the dark, I felt the thrill of discovery. I had uncovered ancient treasures — her unguarded thoughts.

David asks Hye-rin to model for him. She agrees, if he’ll comp her headshots. The walls of his studio are covered in photographs. They spill from unsorted stacks all about. Hundreds of photos. They’re good.

HYE-RIN

Is this your work?

DAVID

No. It’s my life.

My God, I thought. This is awful.

They begin an affair that’s both torrid and icy, and punctuated by long arguments about suffering and art. It’s all very “passionate.” When David bursts in on her pressing a razor to her thigh, he grabs her by the wrists — but no! She isn’t suicidal! Instead, she holds forth on the violinist Paganini and how he played most beautifully while he imagined his bow was sawing off his arm.

Her eyes gleam madly.

There was a lot of stuff like that.

All the while, her mother’s cancer — stomach, terminal — worsens. And the bills keep coming. This is how Hye-rin finds herself looking for work in Oakland’s most infamous room salon, Club Velvet.

I stopped to check on Lynn. Her face had softened in her sleep. I’d thought of her as worldly and aloof but I had to reassess. And, here, I think, is where I mis-stepped. I could’ve chosen to better understand her. But instead, I focused on David.

To fall for someone like that? This preening buffoon, this poseur? Was that what she wanted? Was that how I could make her stay?

I woke Lynn to tell her that I was leaving, and she nodded with her eyes closed, the filigree in her pale lids visibly purpled. She asked what time it was, and I told her to check her clock. She grinned. “Oh yeah!” And then she frowned. “George. Did I…do anything stupid last night?”

In the past, I would’ve assured her she hadn’t, and she would nod grimly, unconvinced. So I told her she’d been banging around loudly for Doritos. Plus, I added, she told me why she liked Corgis. They had arms too short for hugs. That’s why they looked like they needed one. She gasped. “I would never say that!”

I kissed her on the forehead. “But you did.” I told her I’d fetch her a cup of water before I left. She called out, “George?” I stopped in the doorway. “That was fun last night,” she said. “You’re being cool about this.”

“I’m full of surprises.” I winked. “You should stick around and find out.”

“Oh God.” She thrashed about under the blankets, as if in agony. “When did you get so corny? Who are you?”

I brought her the water. After she’d gulped it, I took the glass and touched my hand to her cheek. She let me. “Keep this up,” she said, “and I might even miss you.”

“Miss me?” I said. “Lady, you hardly know me.”

Then both of us were laughing, so happy to be seen.

In the weeks to come, I became Lynn’s tour guide until she left LA. In the past, she might’ve begged off, but I’d shown her I could be someone cool and collected, who she could be around without pity. I took her to the Huntington Gardens, Venice Beach, and the Getty. I spoke directly and acted decisively. These changes worked wonders, and we opened up to each other. She told me she brushed her teeth up to seven times a day. I told her I’d stopped listening to the radio because I had to avoid the “shadow DJs” who mocked me through the music. She said better shadow DJs than DJ Shadow. We tried crepes together and both hated them. Sweet foods made her ill. I never knew that. In the laserium at the Griffith Observatory, I lifted our shared armrest, and she said, “What’s this — ?” Before she could finish, I told her, “It’s a date.” Had she never had a real boyfriend? She tensed. Then the lights dimmed. The narrator spoke, the speakers thundered, the spiraling cosmos filled the sky. And through it all, I held her hand. It was the first time she’d let me.

In class, I surprised the children with Word Wizards packets, copied and compiled from — surprise! — the fifth-grade edition. They were to complete the worksheets and use the vocabulary in original compositions.

Kevin threw down his packet in disgust. “Are you serious?”

Jenny said, “Are you mad at us?” She flipped through her packet. “Oh my God. There’s like fifty words!”

It pleased me, more than I’d like to admit, to upset them. But I told them we could all use more self-improvement.

Kevin said, “Do you realize how much homework fourth graders get nowadays?”

I told them not to worry. I had good news too: they could write on topics of their own choosing. They broke into groans, and I shouted over them, “One day you’ll remember this and thank me!”

I turned to the board to wipe it clean, a fresh start, and heard a voice like Kevin’s mutter, “Not likely.”

I began pinning the children’s compositions to a corkboard — the week’s wildest, sweetest, or saddest. The class worked hard to be on display. They thrived with more writing, more homework and attention. Only Kevin was struggling. I’d hand back his work, thoroughly marked in red, and to lift his spirits I’d say, “Great! Keep going!”

He asked me what the crap I was talking about. He’d been getting F’s both with me and at school. “What matters is that you’re trying,” I said. “You’ll improve.” He said, “How?” and looked around the room for support. But nobody would acknowledge him.

All they needed to grow, I thought, was kindness. He’d find his way eventually. We were all changing.

Bryant picked up on the difference in my step. “What’s the deal with you? B vitamins?” I laughed and told him about how I’d read Lynn’s screenplay and taken pointers from David. “Wait.” He dropped his dumbbells on the pink carpet and said, “You did what?”

He settled into the armchair, laced his thick hands behind his head, and frowned. “OK. Yeah,” he said. “This feels wrong.”

“But she likes it!” I said. “A lot.”

I was surprised that he disapproved. I was only acting. Like stepping into the classroom and playing a role for my kids.

“That’s not acting,” he said. “What you’re doing isn’t real.”

Real? I needed him to be my friend, not tell me about “real.” Who was he? A model who thought biplanes shot lasers? I said, “What do you know about acting?” He gasped. “If you’re my friend,” he said, “you’ll take that back.”

I refused. We didn’t talk for a while.

Later in Lynn’s screenplay, Hye-rin is promoted from waitress to hostess at Club Velvet. Her tips that first night of drinking with clients are astonishing.

David knows where this is headed and tells her to stop.

DAVID

You can’t save your mother! It’s too

late for her. But not for us! Not

for you!

HYE-RIN

She’s my mom. No matter what. And

she’s dying.

DAVID

She’s practically dead already! And

now she’s killing you too!

The biggest tippers, Hye-rin’s regulars, start propositioning her. They ask to take her off-site for the weekend. An old man strokes her thigh and tells her she’s as skinny as a schoolgirl. The action stopped abruptly.

I flipped ahead. The pages stayed blank.

I wondered if those things had really happened to Lynn, and, if they had, in what proportion. Through the illness of my youth, I’d learned to hold contradictory beliefs, transparent overlays to be swapped in or out. This was how I’d dealt with the irreality of the voices, and what had allowed me —even as they grew more critical and insistent — to tell my mother I’d gotten better. All I had to do was not mind them. If I didn’t react, what was the difference?

Signs began to show. Lynn’s walls were stripped bare and boxes appeared on the floors. The place emptied out. It grew more difficult to ignore her leaving.

One afternoon, while Lynn chased down her back-pay, I collected my belongings from her place — a toothbrush, a towel, a mug. It occurred to me that she now trusted me. If I’d wanted, I could’ve searched through her things at will.

Soon she returned, clunking a grocery sack onto the counter, calling out, “George, are we ready to play?” Then she caught sight of me among the cushions. “Or,” she said, sitting beside me. “Do you feel like going out?”

I asked if there was anything in LA she still wanted to do.

What I had never learned growing up was how happiness can surprise and overtake us. It pulls us under and holds us down until we’re forced to let it in. It fills us up until it’s impossible to breathe.

We drove to Santa’s Workshop in the San Bernardino Mountains. Icicles dangled from log cabins and artificial snow dusted the roofs and paths. Lynn clapped her mittens together, laughing. “Is this real?” she said. “Can I live here?”

We visited the reindeer at the petting zoo, penned in by wooden slats. I’d never been so close to a living thing that big and thought that they’d be as scentless as cartoons, but no. Lynn wanted to press her face into their sides. I bought feed from a dispenser and poured the pellets into her cupped hands so she could offer them through the slats. The reindeer trotted right up. She gasped as they nuzzled her mittens.

We smelled the Christmas trees and hugged the big candy canes. We skipped along the snowy paths and hopped onto trains built for kids. I thought I’d enjoy it all at a remove, but while we strolled, holding hands, I had to wonder: Was this actually magical? When she lowered her eyelids for me to thumb away an errant lash, was that in fact romantic?

As daylight dwindled, we rested on a bench with paper cups of hot cocoa. Before us stretched a length of rail on which the cars of the North Pole Coaster would go rumbling by. I listened to the children howling and thought, I was robbed of my childhood.

I turned to Lynn to share this thought, but she was lost among her own, holding her cup close to her lips, blowing tendrils of steam. She stared at the children and whispered, “They look so scared.”

We trudged through the parking lot toward the car, but then Lynn tugged me toward the woods overlooking the Workshop. We hiked uphill to see how high we could get. The patchy landscape was lightened, here and there, among the tall, skinny pines by smatterings of snow on the hard-packed soil.

From the height, we could see how the dullness of the land cupped the brightness of the Workshop — all colored lights, powdered sugar, and Christmas fancy — bordered by parking lot grays.

“Look,” she said. “Isn’t it pretty?” And hadn’t it been pleasant to be there? To almost believe? “Try to remember this,” she said. “And I will too.”

But I didn’t want to remember. I only wanted her to stay.

“I really enjoyed these past few weeks,” she said. “I didn’t think I would but I did.” She looked at me then, her contact lenses a deep violet, softly, almost lovingly.

It was then, if I remember correctly, in the sky behind Lynn, that a speck of something brightened and passed into a cloudbank. It could be anything — a shooting star, a tiny aircraft, a hawk-like man. The most wondrous and terrifying things in my life could be products of the misworking mind. What good would it do to know the truth?

With the cold seeping into my clothes, I told her, “Let’s not do this.”

“Do what?” she said.

“I feel funny saying goodbye to you.”

She said, “Oh.”

I drove us back down along curving paths. It had gotten dark. The turns would come into view so abruptly they seemed to leap into our path like mad deer hellbent on collision.

Through it all, Lynn stayed curled in the passenger seat, trying to nap.

When we arrived at the bottom, I pulled to a stop in sight of the overpass. I understood the safety of longing for impossible things, but what if the impossible wasn’t? I whispered, “Lynn,” kissed her, and she stirred.

I told her that I could take care of her. I would work harder and become a real teacher, and she could try, really try, to do acting. We could still do what we wanted, together, if she stayed. While I spoke, her attention drifted to the traffic along the overpass, the blips of light speeding by.

“Oh no,” she muttered.

The more I talked, the more I sensed the scope of my mistake. But still I blundered on.

“George,” she said, taking my hand in hers. “I had a really good time with you.”

I could feel the flush in my cheeks. I asked what she planned to do for money. Oh, same as always. She waved her hand. Wait tables, serve drinks. I asked her where, and she laughed. “What do you want, a list?”

I said, “In what kinds of places?”

Her eyes glittered in the headlights of an oncoming car. Then it passed. “What do you think you know?”

I said, “What’s a room salon?”

“George,” she said. “Don’t ruin this.”

I took Lynn back to her place. There I was, in the cast of a dusty lamp on the floor — another shadow on the wall, undressing in a mockery of intimacy. We shed our damp clothes, and she kicked hers across the room.

“What a goodbye,” she said. “What a party.”

She paced the cluttered room, taking slugs of bourbon, her legs strangely long and tottering under her T-shirt.

“I knew you couldn’t handle this,” she said. “What do you want from me?”

I’d been afraid of what I’d started and how it would go, but now I only wanted to hurt her memorably and get away with it. I told her, “I think you’re full of shit. You didn’t come to LA for acting.”

She only laughed and said, “Men.” She sounded so hateful then. “You think if you know me, you own me.”

I imagined her in a dark, mirrored booth. “Men” hanging from her neck. They tested the heft of her breasts.

“You liked it,” I said.

“I think you want me to feel bad for you,” she said. “I think you want me to say sorry.”

“No,” I said, lying. “Just tell me the truth.”

“You’re taking something that doesn’t involve you and making it your problem.”

“It involves me,” I said, pleading. “We’re together.”

“George. I barely know you.”

“Temporary things are important,” I said. “Temporary things can change your life.”

“No.” She shook her head. “They don’t. You think they will, but they don’t.” I wanted to cry then. Not out of sadness, but out of anger at what life could do to a person. “George,” she said. “I don’t think you really want to know.”

So that was it then. It was all over.

That night, something would take hold of her. When the worst of it subsided, after she’d finished the bottle and muttered at her own invisible people, she’d finally vomit in quick, yellow bursts. I would hold back her hair and help her wash and take her to bed. I set the Corgi clock by her pillow and she took a long look at it before she rolled the other way.

My mother used to stop by my bedroom door at night to listen. I’d hold my breath and keep still, resolved to treat the voices the way I would any bully. If they fed on my attention, I would starve them.

It took years, but gradually they softened in tone, settling into advisory roles — like older friends who knew better — until one morning I woke up and heard only the clarity of the sun.

It was like all the birds of the world had flown away, overnight.

After Lynn left, I would sometimes drive by her place after work. Then I would brood in my room, turning up the TV to block out Bryant’s knocking on the door to apprise me of which Tupperware of stir-fry he’d prepared for me. He’d taken up gymnastics. The world had too many actors. What it needed was more stuntmen. I thought the worst of him. That like any actor, he simply couldn’t stand to be ignored. Still, I took comfort in his sounds. His stomping about, the whirs and beeps of the microwave, his timely bursts of laughter at sitcoms. They helped me feel less alone.

At work, I stopped trying. I’d peek through the parted blinds at the barren sky above Wilshire while the children giggled and chattered. I announced we would no longer be doing Word Wizards and the whole class cheered. I let them grow wild. I was tired of correcting them.

The only student unhappy about these changes was Kevin. He called out one day, “Why don’t you teach us anymore?”

“I am teaching you,” I said. “I’m teaching you self-reliance.”

That night, after all the other kids had trooped out, he stayed behind. I told him that the shuttle vans would be leaving without him.

“Why don’t you care about us?” he said.

“I do,” I told him. “You’re doing great.”

“But I’m not.” He unslung his backpack and slammed it against the metal of my desk, repeatedly. “Why,” he said, “do you keep lying?”

If I were any good as a teacher, I might’ve listened to his problems and turned his life around. Instead, I put a hand on his shoulder. I heard footsteps in the hall and thought a shuttle driver had come to scold us, so I picked up Kevin’s backpack, but the figure that stood in the doorway was tiny.

“Hey,” said Jenny. “Are you guys OK?”

I took the children on a walk and told them to listen. The city speaks in neon. OPEN signs tick like red heartbeats. The frosty signboards hum. There’s life in it all. Look at the MTA buses at the corners, hissing and sighing before throwing themselves back into motion. When the children were older, they could go as far away as they wanted, and all that bothered them now would be forgotten.

The things I was saying — these might not be the right lessons for children, but children hardly remember what we say. We waited on a corner to cross on green with the crowd. I told the children they’d become strangers to themselves someday, but when they were older, if they listened hard, they might hear the voices of those they missed the most. We held hands and stepped off the curb and — as we fell in with the rhythms of the city — we hardly noticed we were walking at all.