66 11 Gilchrist knows that Raya will arrive promptly at nine o’clock. One of the qualities that he recognized in her from the beginning of their work together was her scrupulous punctuality. Since returning from Saranac, Gilchrist has neither seen nor spoken with her. All that he now has in his mind’s forefront is what Tabry broached to him during their phone conversation . Suddenly, even as he thinks of that or perhaps because of what it has prompted him to call to mind about Raya, he remembers, like an image imposed upon another image, the vased lilacs that she placed on his bed stand in Saranac before she left. He sips more coffee from his third cup of the morning. He feels a certain discomfort that is equally divided between anxiety and fear—anxiety because he really wants to see Raya, wants her near so that he can taste her presence, wants his eyes to have their fill of her, wants to smell the quiet, fresh scent that is as proper to her as her smile, and fear because he hates to be at the mercy of his anxiety. For an instant he has the feeling that his very personality is abandoning him, is no longer his, no longer subject to him alone but to the personality of a girl he has known for just a few months. He asks himself again and again and again and again why he can’t see her in the purely biological way he sees or has always seen other women in his life. Perhaps it is because she is not American. But no, he has known many foreign women who have never had this kind of effect on him. Perhaps it is because she is younger—but not that much younger—than he. He dismisses this as well because he has never sensed to date any evidence of age in himself or any ebb in his capacities. If anything, he knows the contrary feeling of being at the very peak of his powers. It is—it must be something else, he tells himself, something that discomforts him like an unhealing or an unhealable wound. He swigs the cooling coffee from his cup and asks himself if his discomfort is not Raya’s Time | 67 derivative of some residual desire for Raya masquerading as concern. He knows from his own experience and observation the many guises that Pan can assume, and the avuncular or paternal impulse has always been one of the most commonplace. He wonders if it could be as simple as that. No. It couldn’t be, or he would know it or should have known it by now. He reflects on how he has desired women in the past to see if a similar pattern is discernible now. Sometimes it was the simple need to possess sexually what he found attractive or desirable. The women Gilchrist chose at such times were invariably willing companions with whom he satisfied himself, and he cared little if they were satisfied or not. Then there were times when desire offered itself as an escape from loneliness or as a way of ridding himself of his residues or as a vengeance, a choice, a habit, a right, a tactic, a rejuvenation, an exercise, a tip, or an experiment. If what he feels for Raya is but a variation on the chromatic scale of his previous romances, Gilchrist is certain that he will know it in good time. The interim, he admits to himself, will be discomforting but revealing. But if he discovers something else in the process, something entirely different, what then? And what will he do in the meanwhile? Work as usual? What else? Gilchrist is ping-ponging the alternatives in his imagination when he hears Raya at the door. As soon as he sees her, his questions vanish. His anxiety and fear cancel one another, and he absorbs her presence until he knows the same satisfaction he has known just after he has written an American sentence as well as it could possibly be written, which, for Gilchrist, has always been a form of ultimate perfection. “Good morning, Mr. Gilchrist,” Raya says and smiles before proceeding directly to the computer. “Good morning.” Gilchrist watches her inspect the papers on her desk. “You have nothing new for me?” she asks. She is still smiling. “These are the pages I finished before we went to Saranac.” “Nothing new, I’m afraid.” “Is there something...