They conversed throughout that evening. She wasn’t fascinated but she wasn’t exactly bored. They sat side by side on the couch after dinner, sipping coffee and brandy, talking only to each other because Denise and Chuck were settling a geography dispute then, atlas open across both their laps. Siggy wasn’t the talker Alan had been – Susan was starting to think about getting herself home after fifteen minutes of Siggy on sea kayaking – but then he put his right arm around her waist and pulled her to him with a smile that completely charmed her. His movement was so authoritative, so masculine, so refreshingly unambiguous. She gave him her phone number and agreed to see him that weekend. She refused to let him walk her home; she didn’t want more interaction right then.

When Susan awoke the next morning the creek was running clear. She forgot about the cat until she saw her car in the driveway; then she renewed her vow to sell her sedan and give up driving. She remembered Siggy and considered him along with her memories of Alan as she went through her day.

Siggy called shortly after she got home that evening. He’d thought about it, and suggested that there was no reason to wait for the weekend to see each other. She was flattered but she would soon discover that his eagerness to see her was only evidence of his impulsiveness and impatience, and nothing personal. She was to learn his family had called him Sudden when he was a boy. His divorce hadn’t been his idea, and he was lonely.

She knew even then that bells weren’t ringing for her. But she’d gone a few years without sex or male companionship, and she liked his eyes. She also liked the way he liked food; she thought the sex would be good. She was dreadfully wrong there. He was vigorous like an 18-year old, and about as creative. He was so childishly enthusiastic about it that she decided not to discuss the subject with him. And he never asked.

She didn’t love him, but she liked him at times. She shouldn’t have taken up with him, she told herself at the end and afterward, but in the beginning she hadn’t meant anything by it.

Sometimes Susan asked Siggy about his wife: had she laughed a lot? what did she like to eat? when did they enjoy each other most? He always said he didn’t know. At first Susan thought that was his discreet way of refusing to answer her questions, but she came to understand that Siggy really didn’t know. He’d been married to Brenda for 18 years and he had no idea who she was. Susan realized this and also understood that she was just as much outside Siggy, trying to pound into him some notion of who she, Susan, was… and failing.

She had been seeing him for more than a year when she had that revelation. Time flies when you’re old, she told herself, as she watched her 50th birthday approach. She realized at the same time that she no longer enjoyed dining with Siggy, or walking with him, and their metaphysics were diverging the more he got into the aura-flossing Portals program he had discovered a season before. Suddenly she saw him as too murky to keep.

As long as they had been together Siggy did the driving for them. He owned a station wagon but Susan hadn’t gotten around to selling her car; she just gave him the keys when they wanted to use her more comfortable vehicle. He was an inattentive driver. He thought he was a safe one because he’d never had an accident, but Susan concluded that he was so bad the other drivers saw him coming, and maneuvered to avoid him. She was never comfortable in the car with him, but at least she didn’t have to drive.

The day she broke up with him Siggy pulled out of her steep driveway with even less attention than usual. He was angry and upset and he gunned it. He ran over a big yellow cat as he backed up to the street but he just put his car in gear and drove away.

Susan saw which way the hurt animal raced. She followed the flopping creature to the edge of the creek and had her hands on the cat before she thought about her own safety. She released one hand at a time to pull off her sweatshirt jacket, wrapped the injured animal in it, and got it into her house. The cat was conscious and quiet. Susan looked into its small face. “What the hell,” she murmured as she picked up her keys.

She managed to get herself and the cat to the animal hospital without mishap. The vet had no trouble setting the broken leg. He also examined the yellow cat, pronounced it male and healthy, and sent them away with ointment, antibiotics, and instructions.

Susan refused to reconcile with Siggy. She told him she didn’t even want to talk about it. She settled in with Sanity, as she named her new pet, and she resumed driving her car now and then. She decided the best thing she could be for Siggy was a memory without bitterness, her image clean, level, and two-dimensional, like a cat’s face on a chrome drain.