But then I heard him clapping his hands behind me.

I turned around and he motioned for me to come to him.

I wanted to run away from him, and I wanted to go to him.

I went to him.

He asked if I would pose for him. He wrote his question in German, and it wasn't until then that I realized he had been writing in English all afternoon, and that I had been speaking English. Yes, I said in German. Yes. We made arrangements for the next day.

His apartment was like a zoo. There were animals everywhere. Dogs and cats. A dozen birdcages. Fish tanks. Glass boxes with snakes and lizards and insects. Mice in cages, so the cats wouldn't get them. Like Noah's ark. But he kept one corner clean and bright.

He said he was saving the space.

For what?

For sculptures.

I wanted to know from what, or from whom, but I did not ask.

He led me by the hand. We talked for half an hour about what he wanted to make. I told him I would do whatever he needed.

We drank coffee.

He wrote that he had not made a sculpture in America.

Why not?

I haven't been able to.

Why not?

We never talked about the past.

He opened the flue, although I didn't know why.

Birds sang in the other room.

I took off my clothes.

I went onto the couch.

He stared at me. It was the first time I had ever been naked in front of a man. I wondered if he knew that.

He came over and moved my body like I was a doll. He put my hands behind my head. He bent my right leg a little. I assumed his hands were so rough from all of the sculptures he used to make. He lowered my chin. He turned my palms up. His attention filled the hole in the middle of me.

I went back the next day. And the next day. I stopped looking for a job. All that mattered was him looking at me. I was prepared to fall apart if it came to that.

Each time it was the same.

He would talk about what he wanted to make.

I would tell him I would do whatever he needed.

We would drink coffee.

We would never talk about the past.

He would open the flue.

The birds would sing in the other room.

I would undress.

He would position me.

He would sculpt me.

Sometimes I would think about those hundred letters laid across my bedroom floor. If I hadn't collected them, would our house have burned less brightly?

I looked at the sculpture after every session. He went to feed the animals. He let me be alone with it, although I never asked him for privacy. He understood.

After only a few sessions it became clear that he was sculpting Anna. He was trying to remake the girl he knew seven years before. He looked at me as he sculpted, but he saw her.

The positioning took longer and longer. He touched more of me.

He moved me around more. He spent ten full minutes bending and unbending my knee. He closed and unclosed my hands.

I hope this doesn't embarrass you, he wrote in German in his little book.

No, I said in German. No.

He folded one of my arms. He straightened one of my arms. The next week he touched my hair for what might have been five or fifty minutes.

He wrote, I am looking for an acceptable compromise.

I wanted to know how he lived through that night.

He touched my breasts, easing them apart.

I think this will be good, he wrote.

I wanted to know what will be good. How will it be good?

He touched me all over. I can tell you these things because I am not ashamed of them, because I learned from them. And I trust you to understand me. You are the only one I trust, Oskar.

The positioning was the sculpting. He was sculpting me. He was trying to make me so he could fall in love with me.

He spread my legs. His palms pressed gently at the insides of my thighs. My thighs pressed back. His palms pressed out.

Birds were singing in the other room.

We were looking for an acceptable compromise.

The next week he held the backs of my legs, and the next week he was behind me. It was the first time I had ever made love. I wondered if he knew that. It felt like crying. I wondered, Why does anyone ever make love?

I looked at the unfinished sculpture of my sister, and the unfinished girl looked back at me.

Why does anyone ever make love?

We walked together to the bakery where we first met.

Together and separately.

We sat at a table. On the same side, facing the windows.

I did not need to know if he could love me.

I needed to know if he could need me.

I flipped to the next blank page of his little book and wrote, Please marry me.

He looked at his hands.

YES and NO.

Why does anyone ever make love?

He took his pen and wrote on the next and last page, No children.

That was our first rule.

I understand, I told him in English.

We never used German again.

The next day, your grandfather and I were married.

THE ONLY ANIMAL

I read the first chapter of A Brief History of Time when Dad was still alive, and I got incredibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how, compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn't even matter if I existed at all. When Dad was tucking me in that night and we were talking about the book, I asked if he could think of a solution to that problem. "Which problem?" "The problem of how relatively insignificant we are." He said, "Well, what would happen if a plane dropped you in the middle of the Sahara Desert and you picked up a single grain of sand with tweezers and moved it one millimeter?" I said, "I'd probably die of dehydration." He said, "I just mean right then, when you moved that single grain of sand. What would that mean?" I said, "I dunno, what?" He said, "Think about it." I thought about it. "I guess I would have moved a grain of sand." "Which would mean?" "Which would mean I moved a grain of sand?" "Which would mean you changed the Sahara." "So?" "So? So the Sahara is a vast desert. And it has existed for millions of years. And you changed it!" "That's true!" I said, sitting up. "I changed the Sahara!" "Which means?" he said. "What? Tell me." "Well, I'm not talking about painting the Mona Lisa or curing cancer. I'm just talking about moving that one grain of sand one millimeter." "Yeah?" "If you hadn't done it, human history would have been one way..." "Uh-huh?" "But you did do it, so...?" I stood on the bed, pointed my fingers at the fake stars, and screamed: "I changed the course of human history!" "That's right." "I changed the universe!" "You did." "I'm God!" "You're an atheist." "I don't exist!" I fell back onto the bed, into his arms, and we cracked up together.

That was kind of how I felt when I decided that I would meet every person in New York with the last name Black. Even if it was relatively insignificant, it was something, and I needed to do something, like sharks, who die if they don't swim, which I know about.

Anyway.

I decided that I would go through the names alphabetically, from Aaron to Zyna, even though it would have been a more efficient method to do it by geographical zones. Another thing I decided was that I would be as secretive about my mission as I could at home, and as honest about it as I could outside home, because that's what was necessary. So if Mom asked me, "Where are you going and when will you be back?" I would tell her, "Out, later." But if one of the Blacks wanted to know something, I would tell everything. My other rules were that I wouldn't be sexist again, or racist, or ageist, or homophobic, or overly wimpy, or discriminatory to handicapped people or mental retards, and also that I wouldn't lie unless I absolutely had to, which I did a lot. I put together a special field kit with some of the things I was going to need, like a Magnum flashlight, ChapStick, some Fig Newtons, plastic bags for important evidence and litter, my cell phone, the script for Hamlet (so I could memorize my stage directions while I was going from one place to another, because I didn't have any lines to memorize), a topographical map of New York, iodine pills in case of a dirty bomb, my white gloves, obviously, a couple of boxes of Juicy Juice, a magnifying glass, my Larousse Pocket Dictionary, and a bunch of other useful stuff. I was ready to go.