He blurred his thens and his nowsin a fantastic drunken distortionwith the thisness and thenness of now and before, re-spectively; wisps of Bburke with Jane infiltrated him without her, the way dry oars still taste of salt. And it made Bburke trace Janes silhouette in his bedsheets with his lips, wondering if his sadness and loneliness was of any import to the grander human comedy, like the swooning soul of Joyces Gabriel, lost amidst a universe of snowbecause, in small, unnoticeable ways, must not the sea taste of oars?