Three planes mark the horizon. It's roulette to guess which is his. Planes are modern angels, silver-winged and supernatural, righteous and uplifting, carrying away cargo that is precious. I don't like to think of him there, in metal airborne, in machinery overhead, though it is right for him to vanish this way, cutting through the flat dividing lines of time, soaring into a place that is prismatic and imaginary, like the end-glass of a kaleidoscope - the West.

And me. Does he search the paling membrane of the planet from the brightness of his cabin? Does he find me, can he see, do I appear - minuscule, anonymous, indigent? Does he see the way I become? And I forgot to thank him. In August I will thank him - for leaving me rich, for leaving me courageous, a fighter. For leaving me with everything I've ever wanted. I land with my feet on the soil of a nation. I am an American girl.

"Oh, Jack," I say out of the car window, the wide world flying by. "Now that you are gone, I swear to be filled with twice the life."

She had always wanted words, she loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. Whereas I thought words bent emotions like sticks in water. She returned to her husband. From this point on, she whispered, we will either find or lose our souls. Seas move away, why not lovers? The harbours of Ephesus, the rivers of Heraclitus disappear and are replaced by estuaries of silt. The wife of Canduales becomes the wife of Gyges. Libraries burn. What had our relationship been? A betrayal of those around us, or the desire of another life?