The Thought Of Christmas Overwhelms Him. He

It Didn't Matter That I Wore Clothes From Sears; I Was Still Different. I Looked Different. My Name Was Different. I Wanted To Pull Away From The Things That Marked My Parents As Being Different.

It Is A Magical Thing For A Handful Of Words, Artfully Arranged, To Stop Time. To Conjure A Place, A Person, A Situation, In All Its Specificity And Dimensions. To Affect Us And Alter Us, As Profoundly As Real People And Things Do.

I Am Drawn To Any Story That Makes Me Want To Read From One Sentence To The Next. I Have No Other Criterion.

Pet Names Are A Persistant Remnant Of Childhood, A Reminder That Life Is Not Always So Serious, So Formal, So Complicated. They Are A Reminder, Too, That One Is Not All Things To All People.

In The Days That Follow, He Begins To Remember Things About Moushumi, Images That Come To Him Without Warning While He Is Sitting At His Desk At Work, Or During A Meeting, Or Drifting Off To Sleep, Or Standing In The Mornings Under The Shower. They Are Scenes He Has Carried Within Him, Buried But Intact, Scenes He Has Never Thought About Or Had Reason To Conjure Up Until Now.