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 29 The Memory of Light How good it is and how pleasant for people to dwell together. Good and pleasant, people together. Psalm 131:1 Smoking outside the hospital a younger woman confesses an affair to an older one whose first cigarette is spent with its red tip upturned in the sand bin, gin still fresh on her breath, a faithful husband still recovering from arterial sclerosis. Old news. A young man asks for a light: “the light,” he says in broken English or so she thinks. He’s been watching the icing on her lips, thinking something familiar, like ice on the tips of awnings in February, when the sun sporadically makes its appearance through layers of gray, through the memory of light. He has wanted this throughout the day of his life, a Betamax moment since 1979 when the world seemed obsessed with music, women in their kamikaze fashions at his awakening, their woolen skirts green steel, black walking shoes like cartoon footprints made visible in the day’s dried newsprint. ...

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