David sat at the end of the bar, nursing a drink he’d ordered some four hours earlier. It was near closing time, and there were only a few patrons left after the long hyped mega-fight ended two minutes seventeen seconds into the first round – that was three hours ago. It was all over but the spouting. Most of the people left shortly after that, everyone complaining of the abrupt ending to a poorly matched bout. “Who put these clowns together, anyway?” was the common utterance as the largely macho group exited into a misty night. David had come out in part to see the coming together of the champion and his contender – and, in part to watch the gathering of lonely people trying to appear social around a TV screen in a neighborhood bar. He felt one of them, but hated himself for it.

Life had been difficult and lonely for David since Adrianne died of a massive coronary two years ago. She was 26. They had been living together for six years, and were planning a September wedding for this year – that would be next month, a fact that was ever on his mind of late. He had started therapy three weeks after the funeral because he couldn’t sleep, had for all intents and purposes stopped eating, and his friends said he just looked terrible and was talking “crazy.”

As an inveterate introvert, reaching out for help took some doing on his part. He hadn’t spoken of suicide, though the thought passed through his mind a number of times, disguised as either a terrible accident where he’d be run over by a runaway Bekins Van, or something very heavy would fall on him from the upper floors of a tall building. His close friends picked up on his deep depression and were worried for him – so, when he began seeing Dr. Sylvia Neuman, his friends were quite relieved.

It was a relief for David as well, though still very difficult for him. At first, it was too painful to talk about Adrianne, and he spent much of his weekly hour in silence, or touching on a variety of topics he knew were avenues that led away from the well of tears just below the surface. Dr. Neuman knew it, too, but let him take his lead wherever it would take him – at least at the beginning. “All in good time,” she had whispered during their first meeting. David had the feeling, though, that she would only leave him to his own meanderings for a time, but sooner rather than later would prod him to where he knew he had to go. She struck him as a no-nonsense kind of person, who wouldn’t countenance a co-dependent relationship between therapist and patient. David thought that was all right, and soon enough.

Work was at a dead standstill for him, ironic his being an archaeologist, but so was everything else in his life – a virtual time warp, as though the universe had taken a time-out. His friends dropped by fairly frequently, at first coming with meals and flowers that seemed to come in an unending stream. Then they came under the pretense of being in the neighborhood, or on an errand and wanted to just “drop in for a minute” – this, an outer annoyance over his quiet protestations that he was all right, and “thank you for thinking of me, but I’ll be OK.” But David was appreciative that they came by, and began to feel more at ease when they did. The awkwardness of what to say eased, for him as well as them, and he began to feel as though he’d come back from a very dark and forbidding place. They must have felt some of this as well, for they lightened up with his gradual easing.

David had returned to work with a vengeance. He spent long days at the dig site, and even longer nights walking the perimeters of the excavations, the latter still being the most difficult time when the stillness of night seemed to lure dark memories out of hiding.

Adrienne had been a student of the arts, and they’d met at the university cafeteria quite by accident. Normally their paths didn’t cross, but this one day he had an appointment with the Chancellor to discuss the presentation of a paper he had co-authored with Professor Telford Langham, chair of the Archaeology Department, and happened to be in the Student Center cafeteria with the Chancellor’s aide. Adrienne entered with a group of women and sat in the corner of the cafeteria opposite David and the aide. She was dressed in lavenders and blues, her hair in a long braid down her back. Her eyes, steel-grey and deep, stood out like a beacon on a hill. She caught David staring at her, and she smiled and winked an eye. David was smitten.

“Were you flirting with me?” asked David, incredulous, as he walked her to class. “What do you think?” Adrienne replied. “I don’t know,” he said, “I just wondered.” “Why were you staring at me?” she asked. “I wasn’t staring,” he returned quickly. “Oh?” eyebrows arched. “Well, maybe for a moment,” he chuckled like a teenager caught red-handed. “Why?” she asked, “I’m curious and interested.” “I was too,” he answered. And that was the beginning.

“Why don’t you tell me how you and Adrienne met,” asked Dr. Neuman. David eyed her silently, a slight frown on his face. “Take your time,” she added. Silence. David shifted in his chair, and reached up and pushed a lock of hair back from his forehead. “Umm,” he said hesitantly. “Well, we met at the university – it was serendipity, like the ancients were watching over me,” he said.

Dr. Neuman smiled. “You believe that?” she asked. A pause – “I’m not really into any religious stuff`at all, and that’s as good an explanation as any, I guess,” he replied. Dr. Neuman sat without saying a word, smiling. “If I hadn’t had this meeting with the chancellor’s aide, we might never have met.” David fidgeted some more, and stood up and walked around the low coffee table and stood by the window.

Dr. Neuman eyed him, and said nothing. “I couldn’t get over how she struck me when I first saw her – she was this wonderful spirit that was at once full of energy and raucous and fun, and serious and thoughtful at the same time.” “You saw all this in that one moment?” asked Dr. Neuman. “Yes – well, I think so – at least the first part. When the group of women came into the cafeteria, they were having a pretty good time and making a lot of noise. I’m afraid I stopped listening to the man I came to discuss my paper with – he didn’t know what happened,” finished David.

“Then what?”

“Then – we started seeing a lot of each other. By the end of that semester, we were off to meet each other’s parents – it was pretty serious.” David paused, and moved back to his chair opposite Dr. Neuman and sat down. He looked down at his shoes, and flicked a speck of dust off his pant leg. “Adrienne’s parents were a little hesitant about me, and I guess it took them awhile to warm up – well, at least her mother. Her dad never did think too much of me.”

“Because you’re Japanese?” asked Dr. Neuman. David looked at Dr. Neuman and shrugged his shoulders.

“I knew that going in,” David answered. “Adrienne – she was innocent as a lamb, and that thought didn’t hit her until later. At first she thought it didn’t help that I was an archeologist by training.”

Dr. Neuman raised her eyebrows. “Oh, you know – ‘Why don’t you marry someone with a real profession, one that will bring a secure family income?’ was what they thought.” “How did you two deal with all this?” asked Dr. Neuman. “For a while, we didn’t do anything – Adrienne still kept in touch with them, but we didn’t visit very often. And, when we did, we mostly visited with our friends and let it go at that.

One Thanksgiving we had dinner with her parents, but that was a disaster – we ended up leaving because Adrienne got really upset. Her dad said something to her in the kitchen before dinner, and Adrienne said we had to leave. She wouldn’t tell me what he’d said, so I didn’t know why we had to leave – and she never did tell me, ever.”