Reading Laurence Sterne in bed

I've forgotten what my wife looks like. She takes it personally--to her it's like forgetting which planet revolves around the sun--but it's really on me. This has been happening a lot lately, mostly when she sleeps on her right side and I can't see the big dimple I like to climb into when the doorbell rings unexpectedly.

Yesterday, browsing through Powells Books in Portland, I was followed by a man pushing a baby stroller. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't shake him, not in fiction, not in poetry, not in art, sports, cooking, or Staff Favorites. He's a tall lad with a blond beard and a nose ring, the baby looks like Samuel Beckett; together they disappear into a biography of Charles DeGaulle, 'The Last Great Frenchman.'

Outside, soft recyclable leaves fall from the Maple trees. At first the leaves sleep alone, but within a few minutes they find each other and pair off into soulmates.

I apologize to my wife at first light. She wouldn't be caught dead wearing a houndstooth coat with a bright blue hat.