I don’t think I ever told you but sometimes I can see ghosts — Terry that one time in Amsterdam, jetlagged as I was and walking walking walking to keep from falling asleep, well I saw Terry just some distance ahead of me the whole time, occasionally turning so I could see his pale sad face. Oh Terry, who let you go so far from home, and how did you get here? But of course I must have carried him with me, it’s the only thing that makes any sense.

It’s random, who I see and when, it doesn’t prefigure much of anything and if they are trying to tell me something it never quite comes through. But what I wanted to tell you was that I saw you, in the restaurant in the vineyard, your long hair now all white and grey, wearing the most ridiculous hat and regaling your table with some witticism, your wife beside you looking bored (I imagined she’d heard it before). I don’t want to be unkind but you looked so pleased with yourself that I felt a secondhand kind of embarrassment as though I’d caught you unawares, picking your nose or something. I looked away but not before I caught your eye, and I shivered.

What? said my friend and I said oh nothing, I saw the ghost of someone’s future but it ain’t mine, and then we went on to our own table and lunch.