Nothing could be written about his waving from the crosswalk as he walked away, looking back up Homer Street to Finch’s where they’d had their lunch. And he could not describe the way she’d paused to wave back, smiling, standing by the opened driver’s door. None of this would be allowed; everything before and after must be unrecorded and would soon be gone.

According to their agreement he could only write about events between her arrival, smiling — she was always smiling, although he could not write about the many times he’d seen her smile before their lunch — and the moment she’d responded to his question:

“So what are the terms? How many words, the deadline: that kind of thing.”

“Let’s say 400 words. By Thursday, 4:00.”

“And what are we to write about?” he’d asked.

“Anything and everything between the moment I arrived at your office…”

“…smiling…” he reminded her.

“Yes, smiling… Anything from then until this second.”

He couldn’t even say that he’d agreed, because his “Done!” came an instant too late according to their terms. As was his feeling of regret too late: that he hadn’t argued for a less-constraining exercise.

What kind of piece, he asked himself as he walked — waving — away, could be conjured from his avocado salad, her prosciutto sandwich, and the detail that both dishes had had walnut garnishes: what might they mean, those walnuts? What would it mean if he wrote about the way her sandwich had been delivered in a butcher-paper sling, as if it were an odd sort of infant, the waitress a kind of stork in human form?

If he wrote of those events, those objects, used that metaphor… then surely they must hold special meaning; for was there not a purpose in the inclusion of some things and the exclusion of all else?

It began to seem too much for him, these post-modernist concerns; and who would care? For all would be forgotten unless he wrote it down, and according to their terms he could write none of these things down.

What if he simply wrote about the way the April sunlight poured through plate glass windows onto their table top, and spilled onto the worn, wooden floor, with him watching it all, and her across from him? That one tick of time, the past and future falling off on either side.

Yes: he could do that.