“The story?” Ann asks.

        A few hours later, we're all resettled on the floor of Phil's living room, ready for the tale.
        “So anyway,” Phil begins, squatting yoga-style in front of the glass doors to the lanai, “five of us were having dinner at Mark Wilson's apartment. Steve and Mary, Anita Povich and me, and Mark. It was after dinner, actually, and we were listening to, mmmm, Frank Sinatra, I believe . . .” Phil looks at me for confirmation.
        “Ella Fitzgerald is what I remember. Tell Sheyene where Mark's apartment was.”
        “Up Wilhelmina Rise, right above Diamond Head . . .”
        Phil's voice rises, carrying us up the slope of the mountain the students of Punahoe named Mount Olympus. As Phil sets the stage for the drama to follow, I find myself chasing the echo that brought Sheyene and me here tonight, replaying the scene simultaneously in my own mind's eye, blending Phil's vision with my own, reliving the night when my own story could have ended, but didn't . . .

        You don't know your standards, Phil is telling me as the smooth voice of Ella Fitzgerald lilts over the darkening lanai. Mark Wilson's apartment is the lower half of a mountainside house. His landlady, Mrs. Krause, lives upstairs. Phil, Mary, and I are leaning against the railing of the lanai, taking in the cool evening air, while inside the house Mark, my former American lit. professor, jitterbugs with Anita Povich, the editor of Hawai`i Review. Anita is Phil's student and current girlfriend, but for some reason Phil isn't dancing tonight. Through the living room window I catch a flash of Mark twisting and jiving to an up-tempo tune I don't recognize, and I have to smile. Despite his early '60s beatnik goatee, Mark is the straightest arrow I know: a Mark Twain and Henry James scholar who in the years that follow will become so dismayed by the influence of theory on literary studies that he will retire nearly a decade before his time.
        The dancers both spin into view now, moving with easy grace to the lively beat underlying Ella's scat vocals. Anita is tall and lithe, a perfect partner for Mark. The rest of us have retreated to the lanai to avoid gawking at the two of them in helpless admiration. Neither Mary nor I know how to jitterbug, and thus are excused from any embarrassment for not participating. The truth is, I don't dance, no matter what's on the stereo. I didn't even dance with Mary at our wedding. The dull, immutable fact of this is on my mind—and probably Mary's as well.

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