Perhaps you would be suprised if I told you that one why the lucky stiff and one Gerald Jay Sussman, two men connected by deep and lasting and beautiful webs of relation, once came within three feet of each other. That in that moment, everything could have been cast to the shore. That the Spanish Civil War could have gone the other way. That a particular lady might not have been born. That the Burning of Books and Burying of Scholars could have been reversed. That a tribe of men entering what is now Iran might have turned back. All these things did not, are not, and will not happen, of course. But I spend many nights sitting at my window and waiting for these events which are not to happen.