I reached to draw her robe back over her, and it was then that I glanced at the blind man. What the hell! I flipped the robe open again.

My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. !But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything.“It’s really something,” I said.

Imagine a woman who could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one. A woman who could go on day after day and never receive the smallest compliment from her beloved. A woman whose husband could never read the expression on her face, be it misery or something better.

Leave me alone,” Connie whispered.“Hey, you know that old woman down the road, the one with thechickens and stuff — you know her?”“She’s dead!”“Dead? What? You know her?” Arnold Friend said.“She’s dead —”“Don't you like her?”“She’s dead — she’s — she isn’t here any more —”“But don’t you like her, I mean, you got something against her? Somegrudge or something?” Then his voice dipped as if he were conscious ofa rudeness. He touched the sunglasses perched on top of his head as ifto make sure they were still there. “Now you be a good girl.”

She put out her hand against the screen. She watched herself push thedoor slowly open as if she were safe back somewhere in the other door-way, watching this body and this head of long hair moving out into thesunlight where Arnold Friend waited.

Ellie turned for thefirst time and Connie saw with shock that he wasn’t a kid either — hehad a fair, hairless face, cheeks reddened slightly as if the veins grew tooclose to the surface of his skin, the face of a forty-year-old baby. Conniefelt a wave of dizziness rise in her at this sight and she stared at him as ifwaiting for something to change the shock of the moment, make it allright again.