I am helping someone arrange a romantic evening or a seduction, I’m not sure, but I know I am there to act as a surrogate until the actual woman arrives. It is as if the whole thing has to be clearly staged, everyone hitting their mark perfectly, the lighting effects checked before anything begins. The man injects himself with something meant to enhance his prowess and I see his pupils go from large to pin-points, as if he were withdrawing visually from the pain he is experiencing in that moment. This is when someone arrives explaining that we will not be able to “go on with the show” as it were because the woman called to cancel their plans. The man doesn’t hesitate but reaches out to me and takes me and I respond immediately with a surprising enthusiasm. In spite of my response and his need, we go our separate ways but he comes to me later that day or the next, ashamed of himself and what happened. We run into one another in the twilight of the day, while I am out in a garden picking lemons from some trees. (The lemons are quite small because the trees are not very large, but the fruit are plentiful and at various stages of ripeness.) He apologizes but I dismiss his apology as unnecessary. He confesses that he doesn’t think he can be around me, his guilt is overwhelming but I ask him to stay, explaining that we obviously have a connection, something that is deeper than we had realized, and we can’t just throw these things away lightly. I further tell him that I need him to stay, that his leaving won’t change anything; in fact, I predict that his going away will only intensify things rather than diffuse the emotional energy of the situation. I want him to stay, to not avoid what happened, and for the two of us to work it out. We are adults and can control ourselves for the better, regardless of what has happened and how we might feel now.