This morning, in Cheyenne, after I’d woken and had gotten out of bed and had gone into the kitchen, in my pajamas, to put water on the stove, for coffee, I stood for a moment in the dark and tried to remember the name of a person from my high school who’d appeared in my dream, while I’d been sleeping, or who anyway my mind or my subconscious had caused to appear, by whatever narrative it had happened upon, through the mystery and complexity of its workings, but I couldn’t quite come up with his name just then, for this person had not been a friend of mine, or even a classmate, but someone who’d been a year or two ahead of me and who I’d only ever passed in the corridors from time to time, and with whom I don’t think I ever even exchanged a word, though there had been, I remember, some tragedy associated with him, which I’d heard about, like that he’d lost both his mother and his father in a car accident, which fact or hearsay (I’m not even sure which it was) I relied on to explain to myself, whenever I saw him, why he seemed to carry himself with such separateness and reserve, and why, as well, while he wasn’t what anyone would’ve called ‘popular’, neither was he ever made the object of mockery, at least that I saw, but instead went along through his days almost invisibly.