"Do you live with someone?" he asked the next day for he`d made a point of9 asking to meet her again.

"Just myself," she answered. He felt a qualm10 in his stomach, and it was more in memory of his own loneliness than anticipation of hers.11

He came to like to feel the white handles in his grasp, to walk between the two white-rimmed metal wheels. And he grew almost more familiar with the slight wave at the back of her hair than with her eyes or her mouth. The chair was a moveable wonder; he loved the feeling of power and strength it gave him for so little exertion.12 Once, he said to the wave at the back of her hair, "I hope I`m the only chair-pusher in your life," but she had only smiled a little and her eyes had admitted nothing. When he looked up, he noticed a white bird flying from one tree toanother, tracing their route with them.

She cooked dinner for him once in June. He expected her to be proud of her ability to do everything from her seat in the wheelchair ?nbsp;and was faintly disappointed to see that she would not feel pride at what was, for her, simply a matter of course.13 He watched his own hand pick up the salt shaker14 and place it on one of the higher, unused cabinet shelves, then awaited her plea for assistance. He didn`t know why he`d done it, but the look in her eyes a moment later gave him a shock in his easy joy. He felt as though he were playing poker and he had just accidentally revealed his hand to the opponent.15 To make her forget what he`d done, he told her about the little white bird in the park.

"I`ve seen it, too," she said. "I read a poem once about a little white bird that came to rest on a window sill and the lady who lived in the house began to put out food for it. Soon the lady fell in love, but it was a mis