"It wasn't so much Angela," he said. "It was more L.A. It was getting on my nerves. Everybody I knew was in the business. I couldn't go anywhere without everybody talking shop. Plus the trendiness. The car alarms. The bad air. The constant driving, the miles of houses, the anonymity. It wore me down. It was all so plastic. It was pleasant, but the important things were missing. I started going to the Sierras to get away from the crowding and the noise and the scale of it, the deadening quality. I can write songs anywhere. I might as well live here. I still do a lot of sessions in L.A. My life is actually pretty dull."

She laughed. "This is like the night we met. Remember? You thought your life was ordinary, and I didn't? Now you're famous, and you still think your life is ordinary."

"This is boring. You talk."

"Speaking of boring, I got the botany doctorate and I was bored, so Owen encouraged me to get another one. Central American agricultural economics, at K. State!" She laughed again. "My Jayhawk friends think I'm a traitor."

"Aren't you overdoing it? Two of them?"

"The eternal student. Owen is proud of that. He thinks I'm 'accomplished'. He's trying to live up to his family history. He's made me part of that, in his mind. Owen Amory Fischer the third. He's named for his grandfather, and his grandfather was named for his grandfather." She looked at the flagstones. "We didn't know how different we were. I grew up poor. But Owen takes this for granted." She gestured at the big house, the beautiful back yard and the well-dressed people. "I'll never get used to it. It's wasteful... He wants me to join in. I just want to go to the City Union Mission and log the donations. I just like to answer the phone at Human Rescue. I don't want to sit on boards of directors. I wouldn't know what to do. And he doesn't like me going to Penn Valley Friends on Sunday. He thinks it looks bad. He wants me to go to Country Club Christian, with him. He went to Meeting once. It's in a poor neighborhood, and he thought sitting in silence was strange. He fidgeted. He wants to wear a suit and hear a sermon and see his friends. I know he doesn't listen for the still, small voice. And yet, we're close, we know each other so well it's almost like being brother and sister. I'm fond of him, we enjoy each other. I wasn't complaining. I didn't mean it the way it sounded." Long pause. "You know, I've always wondered whether I'd see you again. I didn't think... This is getting too serious. Have you flown any kites lately?"

"The kite. How could I forget? It must have been a hundred degrees. You showed me that letter from your father."

"He and Henry came up for the wedding. I think they were glad to go home. They were uncomfortable. They've lost their American-ness."

"Is he still married to Maria?"

"Yes. She couldn't come. Someone had to stay and milk the cows."

"Do you ever miss that?"

"No. Absolutely not."

He snapped his fingers. "I meant to tell you, I got through Don Quixote. 'In a village of La Mancha, there lived an old gentleman'."

"Buena nota!" She clapped twice. "En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor."

"Who would you be?" he asked.

"Don Quixote, of course. No responsibilities, completely crazy, wandering around having adventures."

"You're Dulcinea."

"Imaginary? No."

"Okay, then - Maritornes!"

She laughed uproariously. "The little slut. You always did bring that out in me... No, let me be Sancho Panza," she said. "But who are you?"

"Don Quixote. 'From little sleep and too much reading, his brain dried up and he lost his wits'. That's me."

"No, that's me!"

"I'm the insomniac."

"But I'm the romantic."

"All right," he said. "You can be Don Quixote if I can be Roque Guinart."

"Perfect! The swaggering outlaw. It's you!"

They fell into the talking trance, the same as before. She was unchanged. The conversation recalled the ones in the park, and his apartment, and the Union, and the library, and in bed. Finally it was dark and everyone had gone and the two of them were alone, with only the sawing of the cicadas for company, and the air had cooled, and his voice was hoarse. It had been years since he'd talked long enough to grow hoarse, though it might have been the laughter and not the talking that wore out his throat. Ada rubbed her arms in the same way she had in the park that night after the conversation about her brother and Cervantes and the ten thousand other things Wyatt couldn't remember now. Then, walking home, they had found Owen beaten half to death. Of such accidents our lives are made.

The phone was ringing.

"Aren't you going to get that?"

"I can't reach it in time. It's Owen. This is the time of evening he calls and says he'll be late."

"Go inside. You're cold. It's time for me to go home."

"I suppose." Pause. "I'm sorry about your girlfriend. You shouldn't be alone. You need to be with someone. Everyone needs someone. I have a friend at Meeting. She's pretty and kind and very smart. I can introduce - "

"Get real. Fix me up, after what we had together? If I got involved with her, I'd see you hovering over the bed like a ghost."

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Divorce Owen and marry me."

She didn't respond.

"I just keep doing it, don't I?" he said. "I'll go before I dig up all the crap and throw it at you again."

She didn't answer.

"You're cold," he said. "Go inside."

"It was wonderful to see you. Wonderful. Talking to you is better than anyone else. Call me soon?"

They went in the kitchen and she reached in a drawer and pulled out a pen and a pad of paper and wrote her phone number on it, and tore the sheet off the pad and folded it over with the number on the inside and handed it to him.

"I miss you," she said. "You were more generous with yourself. I think about you. You know there's no question of, well, anything but talk. You know that. It's just that feeling of always being alone, and being different, and no one understanding me. You're the only one who ever took that away. I want to talk to you. Is that all right?"

"Yes. It is." He turned to leave.

"Wait," she said. "Your number."

He wrote it on the pad.

She was standing in the door as he drove off, and he leaned toward the steering wheel and looked over and saw her raise a hand in farewell and he returned the gesture, across the great lawn and the flowerbeds, to the woman whose first lover he had been. She'd said she missed him; he wondered who missed the other one more. He wondered who would cave in and call the other first.