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Trenti said. “Or heat.”
    In the darkness I could see that Mr. Trenti had put his hand on top of Natalie’s. She lifted her fingers and coiled them around Mr. Trenti’s. They both kept staring straight ahead, as if it were their hands that were falling in love, not them. I got up and walked around front.
    That afternoon I got a postcard from my mother. She was on her honeymoon in a place called Canyon Springs. She had learned to play badminton; things were going well. She said she hadn’t mentioned me but she would. She was just waiting for the right moment. Sometime in the near future. The near future means soon. I wanted her to ask me to move to Texas so I could say no. I wanted to tell her I was moving to Alaska. Alaska is the biggest state now.
    I crossed the street and walked behind the dry cleaner’s. I stood in the middle of the gravel parking lot, throwing stones at the dark window, each throw harder, till the window broke. When the sound of it breaking was finished everything seemed especially quiet. I thought something might happen then, but it didn’t.
    After a while I heard a frog chirping down in the culvert, but when I walked toward it, it stopped. I stopped, too. Neither of us wanted to be the one to do something next.

THE MIDDLE OF EVERYTHING
    T HREE DAYS BEFORE HIS show opened, Jack arrived at his hotel in New York to find a telegram from his grandmother. He was not alarmed. His grandmother believed telegrams were the most civilized form of communication. This telegram, like all of hers, was succinct. It read: “Welcome New York. Awaiting your call.” It was signed Mrs. Enid Winns Carter.
    In his hotel room Jack was overcome with the paralysis he always felt upon arriving in New York. Lately he had made his home in Mexico, and occasionally, Los Angeles. He hadn’t lived in New York City for nearly four years. He never knew where to begin in New York. He always felt as if he were coming in at the middle of everything.
    He decided to begin by calling his grandmother. The phone barely rang once before she answered it. “Hello Grandma,” Jack said.
    “Hello,” she said. “How are you?”
    “I’m fine,” he said. “A little jet-lagged.”
    “Who is this?” she asked. Mrs. Carter liked to act confused on the telephone. It was her least favorite form of communication.
    “This is Jack,” Jack said. Since he was her only grandchild, there could be little doubt as to his identity.
    “Jack?”
    “John,” he said. “Your grandson.”
    “Oh, John!” she exclaimed. “It doesn’t sound like you. Did you get my telegram?”
    “Yes,” he said. “How did you know where I’m staying?”
    “Because you always stay at the same hotel. That horrible place downtown.” He was staying at the Chelsea. A couple of years ago his grandmother had come into town to have lunch with him and had taken a taxi to the hotel. She refused to get out because she claimed Twenty-third Street looked like a circus. She took the taxi back up to the Sherry-Netherland, where she summoned him for a “civilized” lunch. Now Mrs. Carter avoided the city entirely.
    “Can I expect you for dinner?” she continued.
    “I should really check in at the gallery,” he said.
    “Couldn’t you do that tomorrow?”
    “I suppose,” Jack said, who was none too eager to confront his paintings. They always looked inexplicably different and invariably worse in New York. “What time are the trains?” he asked. His grandmother lived in Bedford.
    “I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t taken a train in ages. I suggest you call the train people. That’s what they are for.”
    “I see you insist on looking like a field hand,” Mrs. Enid Winns Carter said by way of a greeting. She was standing in the front hall, supported by a cane.
    “You can’t help getting at least a little tan when you live in Mexico,” Jack said.
    “Yes, but you could help living in Mexico.” Mrs. Carter disapproved of North Americans living in