I was standing in the lobby, some irritant in my eye, thinking back on a soloist I once heard in Venezuela, and then, for some reason, on a crate of oranges recently arrived from a friend in Florida, and then this colleague came up to me and asked me what time it was, and I don’t know what came over me but I was certain that I was standing there naked and I was certain she could see my thoughts, so I tried to hide them quickly, I was embarrassed that there was no apparent connection to them, will-o’-the-wisps, and I needed an alibi, so I told her I had seen a snapshot of a murder victim recently that greatly resembled her, and that she should take precaution, my intonation getting me into deeper trouble and I circled the little space I had cut out as if looking for all the sidereal years she had inquired into moments before, and the dazzling lunar poverty of some thoughts had me pinned like a moth and my dubious tactic to hide my malady had prompted this surreptitious link to the whirling Sufi dancers, once so popular in these halls. “It’s five minutes past four,” I said, knowing I had perjured myself for all time. I veered into the men’s room, astonished to have prevailed, my necktie, a malediction stapled in place, my zipper synchronized with the feminine motive. In Zagreb, just now, a hunter is poaching some cherries.