Why don’t I do this more often. Circling and loitering around malls, a hideous reprise of secondary-school desultoriness. Scrabbling for congenial topics and failing, trotting out dull civilities and common-places. “Out upon such half-faced fellowship.” This curious compulsion to sustain derelict relationships, to protract an association whose founding circumstances have ceased to exist. Woody Allen in Annie Hall says something like, “a relationship is like a shark. It has to keep moving forward, or else it dies. And I think what we’ve got on our hands is a dead shark.”

Having become habituated to the company of dexterous interlocutors, sharp wits, mellow temperaments, engaging raconteurship, empathy and commiseration, the slightest departure from these conditions is enough to put me into a sullen, stoical mood. I can feign considerable concern for indifferent matters with some effort, but evincing even a wan interest in tiresome topics is almost onerous work (among sham emotions, I am most tight-fisted about dispensing false enthusiasm. Insincere sympathy is fairly easy to come up with, don’t you think?).