THE MOMENT WE’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR

I see myself as I am. No woman would happily choose to marry me. And yet, her fingers swam through the hair on my chest, and she toasted me at our party. Even when she told me about Dr. Oh, she wanted me to stop her from leaving.

I’m not crazy to hope. It’s worth the risk.

Ten minutes from now, I’ll either have my bride at my side, her loving cheek against my shoulder as swooping swallows trill round our heads; or else I’ll be finished, kaput.

A grove of old trees hides Dr. Oh’s house from the street. Darkness cloaks the property.

I find that I can’t believe in the happy ending. Better not leave the car until I can.

In Delaware, realizing I should get a shave, I cruised the streets of Newark until I found PJ’s Barber Salon, where the chairs are still red leather, the steel footrests still say Theo A. Kochs, and the combs still lean lazily in a bottle of blue Barbicide.

A visit to the barber is always humbling. For fifteen minutes or so, you confront the face the world judges you by—in my case, a bloated, small-eyed face, not nearly as handsome as the inner me. No wiser than a fop, I wished I were more attractive—though not desperately enough to seek surgical help.

Under friendly questioning, I told the barber I was on my way to propose marriage. “Another one bites the dust,” he said.

He was an ex-marine type, with a steel gray flattop. He had hung some WWII-vintage model planes (with decals!) on fishing line above the blue kiddie car that served as the children’s chair. Taking his quip more seriously than he’d intended it, I replied, “A bachelor’s freedom is overrated.”

Like others who depend on tips for a living, he declined to argue.

He let me change into my suit in his back room. When I emerged, carrying the garment bag like a business traveler, he shook my free hand. “Last chance,” he said.

“That’s exactly right,” I answered.

Upon my arrival in Doctor Oh’s neighborhood, I gave myself a pep talk. It’s not just your own life you’re trying to save. He’s a weird little dude; she can’t be happy with him. I may be unhealthy and unemployed, but we care about each other. That outweighs everything else. Doesn’t it?

The sun had gone down. Dr. Oh lives on the side of the ridge, amid palaces ten times the size of a normal home— the same place I showed Eka after our visit to Willowbrook. One house had a dozen Christmas trees, all strung with lights, lined up behind a spearhead iron fence. Excitement and terror stewed inside me. I caught myself making a low-pitched zzzzz, like a large flying beetle.

I’ve been parked here for a while now, across the street from the house, which I can’t see except for a dark finial poking up between the trees. I wrote this to calm myself, but it hasn’t worked. I should leave the car now, and ring the bell.

As you can see, though, I’m still here.

I’m back where I started. No worse off than before Eka appeared at my door. Except for the memories.

Go ahead. Finish what you started.

Dr. Oh’s house, approached on the cobblestone driveway, resembles an English college built in 1357. A wide, pointed arch frames the massive door. The stone is rough-hewn. Up above are crenellations. Not what I expected from an unmarried Korean-American toxicologist.

His chimes, grave and regal, reminded me of the many doorbells it’s been my lot to ring. This time, though, the grisly drama was my own.

The doctor opened the door himself, complicating matters. (Illogically, I had imagined this scene without him in it.) He seemed to have stepped out of an Eddie Bauer catalogue, in his blue button-down shirt and creamy V-neck sweater. I hadn’t noticed in our earlier encounters that he has a handsome face. His thick black hair arcs above his forehead and ends alongside his eyebrow, a wave that’s always about to break.

Finding me at his front door, he showed neither surprise nor worry, only irritation.

“I need to talk to Eka,” I said urgently, half implying that I’d brought a life-or-death message from a loved one.

After looking me over quickly, he said, “I’ll get her,” and left me at his threshold.

I assume a decorator helped him create his museum-like entrance hall. A baby grand’s polished lid reflected one of the two faux-Cezanne paintings that faced each other across the mostly empty space. White-carpeted steps led up the center of the space, then branched left and right. Fresh flowers in vases added indigo and violet to the scene. Music— Chopin, I think—filled the room so softly that it seemed an unconscious thought.

Weighed against the solidity of Dr. Oh’s stone palace, my dreams were less substantial than air. The following points pressed themselves on me:

• It will be hard for her to live in squalor after this.

• Dr. Oh is closer to her age than I am.

• The wrinkles in my suit don’t make a good impression.

She appeared just as the last of my optimism evaporated. She had on a strapless, plum-colored satin dress and silvery arm-bangles. Her lipstick matched the dress; her hair, usually tied back in a bun, hung to her shoulders. Like a husband who comes home early and finds his wife modeling lingerie for the plumber, I felt more or less eviscerated— not because I’d lost a flawless goddess (her bare shoulders were dotted with birthmarks and moles), but because we had been close, and never would be again.

How to escape with a remnant of dignity? That was the question.

“Our reservation is in twenty minutes,” Dr. Oh called from a distant doorway.

“We go to dinner,” she explained. Constrained emotion appeared on her forehead as sinuous creases, geological strata in cross section, a record of upheaval.

I fell mute. She took up the slack.

“You were at Florida last night. You flied?”

Her voice was higher than usual: taut vocal cords.

“No, I drove.”

Dr. Oh called to her again, “I’ll be in the den.” Apparently he’d concluded that he had nothing to fear from me. I couldn’t disagree.

“You look very nice,” I said—the only words within reach.

“Thank you.”

“I just wanted to see you. I’ll go.”

She interrupted my departure. “This haircut looks good. And the red burn from sun.”

Funny—these small kindnesses opened the door to resentment. What kind of woman walks out on her man because a better provider shows up? There’s a name for people like that.

“Angus, what you came to tell me?”

Nothing. There’s nothing to say. That seemed the only possible response—but Ellsworth Bardo had a different point of view. You just drove a thousand miles to tell her you’d do anything for her. If you leave it unsaid, you’ll spend the rest of your life wondering, What if? Go ahead, make a fool of yourself. That’s what the situation demands.

Here, then, is my little oration, my self-abasement, as best I remember it:

“I’m sorry, I made a mistake. I thought if I came galloping up here and told you how wrong I was to let you go, I thought you might—but I guess I’m too late. I need to tell you this, though: the reason why I didn’t ask you to stay was that I didn’t think I had the right, when you could have all this. But once you were gone . . . Oh, the melodrama. Forgive me.”

I wonder whether the outcome might have been different if I’d made my plea without hedging. But that’s like wondering whether the Axis would have won World War Two if Germany had made use of its Jews instead of killing them—a badly designed thought experiment, an impossible hypothetical—because while I was speaking, her frown kept growing steeper. It seemed that she hated me for saying what I said. On the way up, I’d imagined tenderness, not this. I found it harder and harder to string syllables together.

She didn’t attack me, though.

“I can’t say to you any bad thing. You did too much good for me. Do you know, I thought you would be my husband? But you didn’t tell me, ‘Please stay,’ you only said, ‘Good-bye’—after I showed you I want to stay! This gave to me too much pain. Why you waited for now to tell me? I can’t go away with you. I try to make this my life. Lawrence is good, he helps me to study for nurse examen. Soon I begin flute lessons, because always I dreamed of this, but forgot. I can’t leave here, this would hurt him terrible. You should say these things to me before, Angus. I wish you did.”

This isn’t helping.

There’s no reason to write another word—except that the story isn’t finished.

Hauling my remains away, I twisted an ankle on a round-topped stone. The fear that I would fall in his driveway (and that the Mercedes would run me over) led me to dance a jig, which destroyed my dignity but kept me on my feet.

My view of Eka has only darkened since then. She looks no more angelic to me now than she did when I used to hear her haranguing her mother across the ocean. I can’t blame her for choosing prosperity, but she could at least have taken responsibility for the choice. Really: she knew I loved her. She should have known I couldn’t ask her to choose me over the healthy, wealthy, and well-groomed Dr. Oh. It was selfless of me to walk out that door. What more does she want?

I’ll tell you what she should have done. She should have taken Dr. Oh’s proposal as a flattering compliment and never mentioned it. Then, once we were married, whenever I disappointed her, she could have thrown it in my face. Why I didn’t marry this important doctor?

I thought I was the arch-cynic, but she outdid me. While I, wide-eyed as a Disney princess, dreamed she would leave her castle for love’s sake, she was bedecking herself in finery, reducing me to a mere pang.

I see now where misogyny comes from.

Dr. Oh’s street winds down a slope. Lacking the will to do otherwise, I let gravity pull me down, past the wide, dark lawns and the school-sized houses.

In the valley, I came to a small shopping plaza and parked in front of Krauszer’s. People went in empty-handed and came out with newspapers, lottery tickets, milk. A frail Indian woman behind the register peered out at me frequently. I stayed behind the wheel, limp.

Eventually, two police cars pulled into the lot and parked on either side of me. They weren’t there for coffee. Holding a flashlight by his ear and shining it in my face, a young cop gestured to me, a two-fingered bye-bye. I didn’t understand at first; then I did. Complying, I turned the engine on so I could lower the window.

“License, registration, and insurance, please.”

I was too battered to resent the intrusion. Had he charged me with a moving violation, I would have mumbled, Yes, sir, whatever you say.

In the glove compartment, I found sucking candies and a forgotten screwdriver before I located the documents. The cop had to move his free hand away from his holster to accept them. His partner kept an eye on me from the passenger side. While a third cop checked out my record, Officer Fernandez asked, “How long have you been sitting here?”

“I’ve lost track. A while.”

“Is there some reason why you’re staying in your car?”

He looked as if he’d graduated from the police academy last week. He spoke politely, and wore a trim leather jacket with a brand-new shoulder patch. For one so young, he projected authority well.

“I just drove up from Florida to ask a woman to marry me, and she turned me down. Now I’m trying to figure out how to keep breathing.”

He hesitated only long enough to blink. “I’m sorry about that, sir. But sitting here so long, you’ve got the store owners worried.”

“Ah. Will you give them my apologies?”

“We’ll explain.”

The third cop mumbled a message in his ear, and Officer Fernandez handed back my papers. Apparently, my record is clear. (That I’ve never gotten pulled over after drinking is nothing short of a miracle—the only way in which I can be called lucky.) I was ready to back out and go home, but the young officer stayed by my window. “Is there someone we can call for you? A friend or family member?”

The concern in his baby-smooth face—the fear that I might hurt myself, or run down an innocent child—changed my opinion of him. He had reminded me of a boy playing dress-up; now he seemed a good man, uneasily balancing instinctive compassion against his stern new role.

“No, but thanks. I just want to go home.”

“Do you think you’d feel better if you talked to someone? We could give you a ride to headquarters, or to Mountainside.”

The hospital, that is.

“I appreciate that. But I think I’ll just go to bed.”

He asked me to wait, and went to confer with his colleagues. Returning, he said, “I’ll follow you. Just to make sure you get home safe.” He added awkwardly, “My Dad always says, ‘No matter how dark it gets, the sun will rise again.’ ”

His youthful solicitude touched me, but the police escort quickly lost its charm. His headlights assaulted my eyes in the rearview mirror, all the way home. I had to come to a complete stop at all Stop signs—a first—and signal each turn well in advance. Oppression had its benefits, though: with him and his partner watching, I couldn’t let myself sink to the ocean floor.

They drove off once I parked in front of Mrs. N’s house. The relief was short-lived.

It’s painfully cold in the car. The hour is late—almost midnight. It’s December 21st, the day that was supposed to be my last. My deadline.

How neat.