You used to wonder what he saw when he looked at you, staring like he could see through you, through your flesh down to the bone. At first you didn't know he'd gone, bugged out to some place where you couldn't follow. But once you knew, it made you worry that one day his mind would take off for good, leaving his body behind like a shirt on a clothesline flapping in the breeze.

It all happened so long ago. Why didn't he just forget, put it all behind him? And sometimes it did seem forgotten, as if he'd put it all away. But now that you know a little more, you know he won't ever put it behind him, not completely.

You first met him on a mid-September morning, when he interviewed you for a job in the production department of that backwater publication. There he was, a gracefully aging preppie in cotton chinos and a powder-blue oxford shirt. As you shook his hand, you realized he was the guy who'd padded down the stairs to check you out. You saw that penetrating glance in your direction and thought he might be the one you'd be talking to. But that unlined face didn't match the low graveled voice you'd heard on the phone, the voice of a man twenty years older.

He still spoke low as he asked questions about your background, school, interests. You gave cogent answers, so you thought. But after each reply came a lull as he stared through the window, occasionally pointing out some type of bird he hadn't seen in a while.

After the sighting came more silence. Was it a diversion, dissatisfaction with what you'd said, or was he losing it? Just as you had that thought, he looked back at you, gauging your reaction to his strangeness. If you accepted it, the conversation continued. He would use that technique again, often. It was an odd trick you eventually learned to wait out. After an hour plus of questions, he suggested a tour of the Tudor-style offices he said were once a convent. You surmised something of the sort because the place still had that air about it, removed from the world, tucked away there in the pines. Later, when somebody made a joke about dead nuns in the attic, you laughed. But you remembered that first meeting and couldn't help wondering if they were the only ghosts in the place.

You took the tour despite the heat that slowed your mind to a crawl. You did it because you were curious about that old building and about him, and you didn't mind dogging his steps as he spoke just above a whisper. He took you through a hallway with signed photographs of presidents you took for granted, but he never did. He'd committed even the cracks in the plaster to memory, and you could swear he took you through passages you never found again.

You were flattered by the stories he told as you walked along. They all meant something to him, and you got the feeling he was letting you in by sharing them. Maybe he thought you were of kindred spirit if not kindred politics and would accept culture as common ground. In the end, the tour took more than an hour, though you never once looked at your watch.

When he brought you back upstairs and drew the interview to a close, you found yourself hoping you'd get a chance to work with him, though you had a hard time imagining him as your boss. You could see him talking like this at the marina in those loafers and chinos, just not with you. But he did talk with you, and out of interest, not just because of the job.

Not only did he care about people, but also he was honest. He told you there were other contenders for the position. He admitted that he didn't have the final say, that he'd have to run your name by the higher ups. But he made sure you knew, without his coming out and saying so, that you were at the top of his list.

So you left his office with a good feeling. And as you drove home that blistering September day, you recalled the details of the conversation, remembering how for the most part he had put you at ease. There was just that one hitch; sometimes he seemed so far away.

On slow days from what soon became your safe little office, you tried imagining what it was like in that faraway place, that land he'd been to years before. To you it seemed a place of extremes. Deadly silence and deafening noise, huddled families and isolated individuals, flagrant fascism and stoic indifference. In the end you got no sense of continuity, just random thoughts.

But when he talked about it, which wasn't often, the place took shape. He told of scenery lush and green, like Brazil. Of three-canopy jungles, with the most exotic wildlife you could imagine. You cracked some joke about the animals being a little far out too. But then, you'd have said anything not to think about the rest. And you wondered who you were trying to spare, him or you.

Truth was, you wanted to know. But you didn't know how to ask, or what to ask, or whether to ask at all. You were afraid it would open things up again, wounds that wouldn't close. So the questions remained mostly unspoken, hanging between you both like the heat of a summer morning after a rain.

Meanwhile, you began learning about deadlines and layouts, and like a good boss, he let you. It made your first month on the job a breeze. Even the commute was easy, half an hour's drive to a Brigadoon-like setting where you could work for a steady paycheck and ideals you believed in.

But the honeymoon was short. You soon realized that the guy whose list you once topped didn't trust you right away and that his trust wouldn't come easy. It wasn't that he didn't think you'd work out, although he was a little surprised when you did. Neither was he hung up on always being right, but he hated to miss the mark on a character judgment. People he trusted were hard to come by, and he didn't want his confidence in you to be unfounded. If it was, his respect for you would evaporate. You would have been able to fool him.

After you proved yourself discreet, able to keep your mouth shut about office politics, he warmed up. It started with those corny jokes he'd only tell the few people who appreciated his warped sense of humor. And in those lighter moments you talked. He got a kick out of the fact that you knew the old buzz words and the chorus of "Alice's Restaurant." He even showed you some of his writing and told you that you were the only person besides himself to read it. That was a long time after you heard him mention his work and some time after you admitted that you wrote too.

But there was little time for writing that year as the Indian summer stretched through to the end of October. Your office in the afternoons was like a potter's barn, with the pitch roof radiating sunlight through the window like an oven. You were melting, but he was fine with it. You don't remember him breaking a sweat, even in those long sleeves.

Fortunately, you had that old fan that doubled as an ottoman. Round and solid, it sat close to the floor and offered at least the illusion of circulating the air, keeping you from suffocating. But he didn't like that fan. In fact he couldn't stand it for the sound of the blades.

It was a sound like chopper blades made cutting through an even more oppressive heat. But - you didn't hear about that from him, and you didn't hear it right away. It was just that whenever you turned on that fan, in he'd come like you'd set the place on fire. You were amazed he'd even heard it, so you tried to ignore him because even though he might not mind sweltering, you did.

But medics couldn't mind the heat. They always ran in it, toward the sound of the blades or away. The whir of steel was a warning that once you made a run for it, you were an easy mark. Well, fine, you thought, once you knew. You'd get rid of the damn fan, if it bothered him that much. But when your annoyance and embarrassment ebbed, paranoia stole in as you considered what other things from daily life triggered those memories waiting in the wings. Yet you could only walk on eggshells so long until finally you relaxed, somewhat.

Then one Monday morning you went to work and told stories of the circus you'd been to on Saturday. You mentioned the elephant rides and how you'd decided to go on one yourself, never having had occasion to ride an elephant. Most of all you noticed its skin, like a brush, with the hairs like bristles. His eyes lit up over the elephant as he asked you about the smell. Hadn't you noticed smell?

Well, no, you said, feeling like a fool. You had a poor sense of smell and apparently were unobservant. Besides, you figured elephants smelled like any other animal. No, he said, elephants were different. He explained that on the Trail they were used as pack mules, partly because they were familiar with the terrain and partly because they were, of all things, quiet.

Oh, really, you said, trying not to sound as stupid as you felt. But as you composed yourself, you saw the light still there in his eyes. He wanted you to ask about the elephants. He wanted to talk about them, talk about things.

You asked a couple of questions. He gave a detailed review. Elephants apparently had everything going for them; dexterity, intelligence, stealth. All except that one thing. You could always tell when they had even been near a place by the smell.

You stood there, smiling because you didn't know where to go with that. You'd have been fine except for the look on his face, the smile and the disgust. So you smiled back until mercifully the phone rang, and the weight of the conversation dissipated. Only in the lull at the end of the day did you think of it again, of the elephants and the heat, of him and his oxford shirt and his loafers, of the incongruity of it all.

What you saw in that mode of dress, in the keen blue eyes and straight shoulders was breeding, old money, New England royalty. But over time you learned from the hints he left along the way that for a host of reasons he was still an outsider, even of the realm of his wealthy family. And once you came to terms with that, you saw past the boyish features and realized that at thirty-six his hair was almost white.

If the externals of his life made little sense, his personality was even harder to peg. He'd attended some of the best schools in the Northeast and had exited most of them. He had a discerning mind but an independent spirit. In his early twenties he decided to pan for gold out West instead of mining it on Wall Street. He'd been a rebel, but when it came down to it, he'd joined.

But a fighter, him? He was the one who went miles out of his way to avoid confrontation. Maybe it was because he'd seen enough. Still, it was hard to unravel the quirks so you could tell which were his and which he'd taken on like a character in a play to keep people guessing.

Other times he came more into focus. He seemed undisciplined, but that was because his form of discipline didn't match anyone else's. He had a way of following rules that made you sure he was getting around them, though you had no idea how. He had a politician's knack for not answering questions, but not because he didn't have the answers. He just knew how to get himself out of a jam. After all, he'd done it often enough.

But his convictions were his life. The guy with the John Lennon shades and leather bomber jacket had a screwball respect for what he'd done. So what if he wasn't always too vocal about things. He'd gone, volunteered. Wasn't that enough?

So what, too, if he kept his distance. The fact that he could do that probably kept him alive, and sane. He had a way of hanging on the edge of what happened around him - staff changes, budget cuts, conflict, rumor of conflict - ever waiting for it all to blow over without getting in too deep. It was only in those other moments, the ones that had nothing to do with the immediate, that he'd go so far away.

In those moments, the door to that other place would open up, and he'd be pulled back inside. Sometimes you could see him look at you from in there like he didn't know you anymore. And when you saw his eyes like that - open and staring - you thought, God, what if he doesn't come back this time. But he did come back. It was like something took him by the hand and led him back, because you're sure he couldn't have come back alone. He said they always did things in pairs there anyway. Still you wondered, as you did in those moments, and you watched to make sure he was, for the most part, okay.

Then suddenly he'd catch you looking at him fish-eyed, and he knew you weren't totally ignorant. So to put you at ease, and because your staring was making him nervous, he'd crack some off-the-wall joke. You suddenly found yourself trying to make sense of what he'd just said, and he'd done what he'd wanted to do, distract you. When you realized later that he'd given you the slip, you weren't offended. You'd seen him in a vulnerable moment, and after all a man's entitled to protect himself.

He was big on protecting things. He told you stories of the animals near his house and how inconsiderate his neighbors were to have pulled their own brush from their own backyard to make their own garden, destroying an entire animal kingdom in the process. He explained in numbing detail how long it took animals to build their homes.

Then he wondered aloud over the ease with which humans destroyed them. It's like those fishermen, he said, who took the swan eggs out of the nest to get a closer look. People just didn't care. As he talked, you recalled the meeting you'd both been to the week before and the wasp he wouldn't kill, despite how near it was to you, and you understood - maybe a little better now than you did then.

When he spoke, you took mental notes to make yourself more careful with everyday things like phones and fans and wasps. You kept those records a long time, but eventually you got used to his quirks and to him, so used to him you could finish his sentences. You did that through several more seasons, through holidays and parties, hardships and disappointments, until you knew your days there were drawing to a close.

Finally, one spring it came time for you to leave for what you figured were better things. You don't remember how you told him. The words hadn't seemed important, just that you needed to go. Oh, really, he said, and looked out the window of his office onto the lawn and the big pine tree where all those noteworthy birds had always seemed to appear just at the right time. He looked out there for a while, but then he looked back at you. And you knew that this time he hadn't left.

But he didn't try to dissuade you either. In fact he encouraged you all while telling you that you'd be missed. But as he spoke, the blue eyes for a moment became bluer. He might have said, oh, really, again just to be sure that you were sure. When you sounded determined, he let it go.

You mistook that response for lack of interest. But you had forgotten the New England breeding that still ran so deep and kicked in always on cue. For some moments you sat together in relative silence. After those moments, you left his office. After the requisite two weeks, you left him and you left that place. But you never forgot, as you're sure he never forgot.

Compared to other places you went in life and other jobs you took, that place wasn't much, not the way the world would see it. It was just an old building stuck away in the pines. But from time to time you recall it, as you recall him. How he held on despite the problems. How he found solace in that place, as you had. How he knew by instinct and by training not to leave before time.

That was the kind of knowledge he passed on through the stories and the awkwardness, the silences and the vulnerability, the hard things and the less hard things. That was the wisdom he passed along in the quiet, in that place of shelter.