I had broken up with my husband and was living in a drafty, dusty sublet on Madison Avenue, and whatever invitations came my way were like lifelines. I felt as if I were in outer space, whirling between planets. I was intermittently going out with a journalist who was a friend of my parents. He was bluff, a man of the people, a hearty and reassuring sort. Irish. I was in a state of semi-crush; I had no idea how popular he was. In his weekly column he sometimes wrote about a man and a woman who both loved books; I assumed this was about us, and I swooned. He’d told me about his house by the sea, a house full of books, and I longed to go there with him.

In the middle of all the parties and endless events of that fall, I told him I longed for the country. He invited me to come out for Thanksgiving. "We’ll go out later in the afternoon,” he said. “I have to do a family thing in town first.” That was fine; it allowed me to go to an editor’s house at lunchtime. I sat with the editors and grown-ups and nibbled at some turkey, humming with the prospect of that house in the country with its fireplace, its books and its owner. I got back to the dusty sublet at three, heart pounding. I folded silky pieces of lingerie into my bag, checked the box of Italian pastries on the table, checked the imported cheeses in the refrigerator and settled in to wait. I couldn’t concentrate. I opened a book of poems to settle my mind: Rilke. The Stephen Mitchell translation. The Duino Elegies.

A little after four he called to say he’d be picking me up at five. My heart leapt. I waited by the window, like the girl in the seventh Duino elegy. “Don’t think that I’m wooing, angel, were I doing so, you would not come,” I read, and closed the book.

The phone rang. He was held up with family; I heard noises in the background. He’d be there before seven. He’d call me when he was on his way.

The dusk fell on Madison Avenue. The number of cars increased around six, as the first shift of Thanksgiving guests headed back uptown. Taxis were rare, buses even rarer. The dusk turned to night and the phone did not ring.

I sat down and read the rest of the Duino Elegies. I did not reach to the angel’s knees. I vibrated with stasis. The street emptied out. At about seven there was traffic again, and then nothing.

The box of cakes stood unopened on the table. I didn’t want to ruin my house gift by taking one. I wasn’t eating much that fall anyway.

I started writing at the desk. A poet friend called from California.

“I’m waiting for someone to take me to the country with him. He’s late and I’m writing poems,” I said.

“Don’t do that,” said the poet. “It’s not a good idea.”

I carried on writing anyway.

At ten, my two European friends called, together. The French one was a childhood friend kept by a billionaire; the Italian one was older, a rich man’s wife with many lovers. “Va Fancullo,” said the Italian. “Come with us to my house in the country tomorrow. Stop waiting.”

At one in the morning I put the cakes in the refrigerator, took the silky lingerie out of the bag and went to bed. I was in shock: I hadn’t yet been single in New York, and I didn’t know that this behavior was common. I thought, of course, it was something I’d done.