clearly circling the drain. One night we listened to Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue,” and when our man sang the line about his lover being married when they first met—soon to be divorced—we both looked at each other with matching expressions of horror and recognition.
I sang tunes for Nancy on the Autoharp, songs I remembered from childhood as well as my own opaque ballads that hinted at—but never quite revealed—the thing that was in my heart. In the mornings when we rose, I would brush her long blond hair for her and bring her toast and marmalade on a plate. She gently shook food into the aquarium in my living room where I was raising Sea-Monkeys. On other mornings she had me close my eyes and imitated the feeling of raindrops falling on my back, with fluttering fingertips.
Nancy was slender and beautiful. It was kind of hard to look at her, as though I were looking at some impossibly bright light. But none of that mattered to me as much as the fact that she had the most amazing dogs I’d ever seen: a pair of borzois.
The borzoi is also known as the Russian wolfhound. The American Kennel Club describes them as “affectionate, loyal, regally dignified.” What struck me about them—in addition to their obvious, eerie resemblance to Nancy herself—was that viewed from the side, they were huge, massive creatures, like balloons in a Thanksgiving parade. But as the dogs turned to face you, they virtually disappeared, so slender were they, like the dog equivalent of angelfish.
One night, we lay in my apartment in Baltimore, the borzois asleep on the floor, my fingers folded into Nancy’s hair. Softly she asked, “Who are you, Water Strider?” The question landed heavily in the quiet room.
“I can’t tell you,” I said. It was the best I could do.
“You can,” said Nancy. “You think the mist you surround yourself with is a perfect disguise. Like you’re a superhero with a secret identity. But I can see you in there, James. Every now and then I catch a glimpse.”
I said, “I’m no superhero, believe me.”
“Come on, Water Strider, out with it. Who are you?”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. How could I explain? How could I ever describe my soul with words that would not frighten this delicate person away for good?
The borzois raised their heads and looked at the two of us. We looked back at them.
There was no help for it. All I could do in the weeks to come was to quietly disappear out of Nancy’s life, without an explanation. It was an unpleasant business, but it had to be done. It was a matter of national security, or so I told myself.
She was half right about me, anyhow. I did have a secret identity, but surely I was no hero.
After that, I didn’t see her Russian wolfhounds anymore.
Later, I heard that she’d written a poem about me for her graduate workshop at the university, the one she was taking with David St. John. My friend Michael asked me if I wanted to read it, but I said no. I knew it would only break my heart.
She died twenty-six years later, of ovarian cancer. A friend invited me to the funeral, but I couldn’t make it.
Seven years after that, while I was writing this book, in fact, it occurred to me that the poem she’d written had most likely wound up in her graduate thesis and was probably still in the Special Collections of the Johns Hopkins library. I made a single phone call to JHU, was put through to Special Collections, where a very helpful librarian—I have never met a librarian who was not helpful—said he’d find the collection for me, locate the poem, scan it, and email it to me. In less than twenty-four hours, there it was in my hands, like an artifact out of an Egyptian tomb, or a moon rock, a tiny precious thing that had been miraculously returned to me from an impossible distance.
Thirty-three years after I’d vanished on her, for committing the sin of falling in love with me, I read the words she’d written.
INCANTATION TO A MARVEL COMICS HERO
I recognized you, Water Strider,
but not right away.
I had to focus through several layers of mist
to catch the rhythm of your long legs
as you dimpled the elastic surface
between sea and air
coming toward me.
Take my hand, Water Strider,
and press the blood rising from my palm,
torn from climbing over rocks,
into the small cup you’ve made
of