I HAD BEEN SEEING Mai for a few weeks when she abruptly left me for a drummer. And not just any drummer but Giorgio Marrakesh, the rhythm provider for one of New York’s most enduring indie rock ensembles. Mai was my kind of woman: a few years older, self-accomplished, intoxicatingly neurotic, a spicy summer cocktail of the dangerous and ridiculous, well shaken. She had her own TV show, which was called The Mai Show. She would emerge onto the stage of The Mai Show in her lovely pink tablecloth-looking dress as spellbound fans from everywhere applauded furiously. She would spin and lean on her hip.

We had met at the Strand Bookstore downtown on a Wednesday afternoon. I had been paging through reproductions of 17th century Swedish imperial maps; she had been reading a feature article about herself from 1994. She had just finished filming the day’s episode. She was sipping from a coffee cup. She wore those big glasses that famous people wear, to both draw attention to themselves and to avoid being seen. But those pink lips gave her away. It was all going swimmingly and summerly until Giorgio re-entered the picture. She went back to him at once. “He’s a drummer,” she said and shrugged. She related the end in a careless and wonderful way.

A drummer. Drummers sat in the back, surveying all before them. Drummers were steady, reliable. Drummers kept the beat. Drummers had their own philosophy. “But he’s just a drummer,” I wrote Mai. I sent telegrams to her apartment every hour on the hour, relayed by real messenger boys. “He’s just a drummer,” I continued. “He knows about cymbals, he knows about snares and tom toms, he knows if it’s 4/4 or 6/8. Would a drummer write you a haiku?”

He’s just a drummer / Always playing with his sticks / Can’t write a haiku

A drummer, she was with a drummer, not a writer. But what is a writer? A writer is always writing. A writer is found in bookstores. A writer runs his fingers along old paperbacks by Salinger and Vonnegut, wishing he had written them, but secretly feeling superior to both.

“But can a writer also be worthy of your love?” I penned Mai. She read the letter while she was lounging around in her loft apartment, eating macaroni and cheese and talking to her agent. She never wrote back.