Oh, it’s useless. Susan thinks it’s all about Juan, and decides that the story of my life is just an objective correlative for her life. I’m being overwhelmed by her mundane Midwesternism — mock orange bushes, fruitless Russian olives, lilacs (they bloom only two weeks a year!), outlet malls, ugly blue jeans, straight highways, cornfields and that delicate substance that should never be experienced directly, but only brought down in the panniers of donkeys from the high mountains, and served in golden goblets: snow. Doesn’t she remember how she felt that year after she came back from Spain, when she used to cross the park to the bus stop in a near blizzard? Well, down here in this faded compartment of her brain I can still find her ancient tears, her heavy sighs, her gut-wrenching regret. That year her heart almost broke at the thought of all she had left behind, not just Juan, but all those nights in the gardens of Spain.

Susan spies someone coming down the gravel path, and when I quickly compare the face of the approaching male with the stored images of her husband, I know it’s him, Paul, the landscape designer. I watch him nervously, for I’m going to have to kiss him and have sex with him pretty soon, and I’m not exactly impressed by his tall, bulky frame and his red sideburns. His face is lightly freckled, and his chin is too big. He’s wearing a tan bill cap that reads “AJ’s Seafood, Destin, FL” and wrap-around sunglasses. He has a camera around his neck, and a notebook in his back pocket.

“Hot enough for you?” he grins, and Susan and I both wince. He sits down on the bench beside her, plucking at the collar of his damp T shirt. “I’ve got some great ideas for that terrace I’m working on out at Lake Minnetonka.”

Once upon a time I thought I really would stay here forever, but Susan will soon be returning to the Midwest with this man, and taking me, Princess Zora, with her.

“Good,” Susan says. “I thought you’d be inspired here. It’s so beautiful.”

“You getting bored? There are some other spots I’d like to photograph.”

“Heavens no,” she says emphatically. “I could stay here forever.”

She doesn’t know what she’s saying. Once upon a time I thought I really would stay here forever, but Susan will soon be returning to the Midwest with this man, and taking me, Princess Zora, with her. I look out her eyes at the orange trees, at the aloe hedge, and down at the rose garden below the terrace. I can hear water trickling from a high fountain down the aqueduct to lower fountains and pools just as it did centuries ago, but there’s also a faint constant buzz from the automobile traffic in the city below. The Sierra Nevada, always so clear and sharp on the horizon, is lost in smoky pollution haze. Before my enchantment, I used to try to count the arroyos and canyons cut into the mountains from my tower window, and I’d cool my eyes on the snowy summit on hot days.

At Susan’s house, I’m going to have a view of a redwood picnic table and a swing set and a stucco garage and a birch tree circled with wood chips. Large orange pots full of petunias and begonias are situated on top of the wood chips. Someday Paul plans to landscape the yard, but he’s always so busy. He’s left it up to Susan, who doesn’t have time to garden, either, because she’s always driving on the freeway. She works as the print buyer for a large health care company, and serves as chauffer for two middle school children who take music lessons and play soccer and volunteer as stage hands for every school play and pageant that comes along.