Tying Him Up

On October 31, 2007, the previously indisposed heroine of this story, whom no one has seen or heard from for some time, returns by phone to announce that she'll be going back to rehab the next morning.

"It's definitely for the best," she adds. The line crackles. And then: "Can you believe it?"

That same month, Mr. H ends his excellent Giornale Nuovo, begun five years earlier in October 2002.

Meanwhile, at a Halloween party on East 12th Street, a young man known to some at the party (but not to others) is dressed as Genghis Khan, and a woman having a cigarette shows him a pair of handcuffs.

Says the young Genghis Khan: "That's just my size!"

At another party, on Thompson Street in Soho, a second woman with handcuffs expresses an interest in the name Pippy. Later she uses her handcuffs to attach herself to a man wearing an eye patch and they go off together, singing.

Remember what the American psychologist Raymond Chandler said at an international conference in 1952. If you like solving complex math problems in your head, and she likes tying you up with rope in the garage and leaving you there for days, without food or the radio on, then she and you can be happy together. It's that simple.