She left her parents' three-story white clapboard house with the impeccable green shutters and the manicured acre in front, slipped out the heavy front door with the giant handle on it and let it slip gently closed. Clean underwear, her favorite cashmere sweater, her long silken brown hair impeccable in a smooth bun, a gray flannel skirt to her ankles, her Goya in its case, her overnight bag, a note left on the long maple kitchen counter, and she fired up her little VW and rolled out on to the sinuus narrow back streets of New Canaan before sunrise on a fall morning.

Crisped leaves danced away in front of her as she wound across the blactop one laners that lead down the hill through the awakening New England town, winding down to the Merritt Parkway and south toward the state line and the Cross Bronx. John was back in town. and all she could think about, sane or not, was the look in his eyes and the gentle touch of his left hand, and the sound of the voice in him when he sang blues. She needed desperately to tell him what she felt, what she thought, what she would do for him if he would only make his mind up and take a stand.