All summer long, I tried to read John Irving, but something else came up. There was a concert, maybe, or a thunderstorm, or I had to catch the train to New York. There was this guy named Crumps, or period cramps, or tax forms to sign. There was an apartment to pack up, books to pack in cardboard boxes to cart down the street to the storage by the river where the trains once ran, where I’d soon live and nurse a couple colds. And there was the new place itself, a lonely stone wonder on a tree-lined street, whose yearly summer inhabitants left boxes of bathing suits in the attic and a neglected piano in a dining room. Bathed in starlight, front porch frequented by cats who don’t belong to us.