not now fathom them. The change – the descent, as he now thought of it – had been too gradual.
He watched her at the desk, her eyes and hands intent on papers spread in neat piles. Stacks of white rectangles on a shiny black surface. Each piece of paper a perfect white background cluttered with what seemed to him to be arbitrary black splotches. Insignificant.
Should he go to her? Touch her? Say something? What would he say? What was there to say? A touch might be helpful, he thought. But more likely it would be rebuked. Her body would jerk and tense in repulsion, her cold disgust would jar the room. He could not touch her. Could not even talk to her. There was nothing to say.
The sunlight from the window formed a large bright yellow triangle on the wall behind her. One vertex of the triangle reached down from the wall and just met the edge of the desk, creating a small point of contrast like a dot of glimmering starlight on a calm sea of black. The triangle loomed over her as if it were a door, a portal to another time, another world. He stared at the triangle. He felt pulled into it. He seemed to feel a warmth from the yellow triangle, which intrigued him. He imagined diving into it and being absorbed by a calm, soothing salve.
She rustled her papers. She crossed her legs. As she did, he noticed that the gray skirt of her business suit inched up her thigh. Her black business shoe now hung above the taupe carpet, dangling from her nylon-covered toes. As she gently moved her leg, the heel of her black pump began to sway up and down, up and down, in an empty, rhythmic fugue.
He started to say something, but he stopped. What he started to say was, Jane, I love you. For an instant, perhaps under the spell of the