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Beneath the high-culture atmosphere that surrounds them, art songs have one subject: love. The permutations of love (lust, solitude, and loss) are present in abundance, of course, but for the most part they are simple vehicles for the expression of that one emotion. I was reminded of this as I played through the piano parts. As much as I concentrated on the music in front of me, I couldn’t help but notice that my employer stood next to the piano, singing the words sometimes toward me, sometimes away. She was rather courageously forcing eye contact on me. She kept this up for an hour and a half until we came to the Chanler settings, when at last she turned slightly, singing to the walls.

As before, her voice broke out of control every five seconds, giving isolated words all the wrong shadings. The only way to endure it, I discovered, was to think of her singing as a postmodern phenomenon with its own conventions and rules. As the victim of necessity rather than accident, Karen Jensen was tolerable.

When we were done, she asked, “Sure you won’t stay?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“You really haven’t another engagement, do you?”

“No,” I admitted.

“I didn’t think so. You were scared of me the moment you walked in the door. You thought I’d be crazy.” She waited. “After all, only ugly girls live alone, right? And I’m not ugly.”

“No, you aren’t,” I said. “You’re quite attractive.”

“Do you think so?” she asked, brightening. “It’s so nice to hear that from you, even if you’re just paying a compliment. I mean, it still means something.” Then she surprised me. As I stood in the doorway, she got down on her knees in front of me and bowed her head in the style of one of her songs. “Please stay,” she asked. Immediately she stood up and laughed. “But don’t feel obliged to.”

“Oh, no,” I said, returning to her living room, “I’ve just changed my mind. Dinner sounds like a good idea.”

After she had served and we had started to eat, she looked up at me and said, “You know, I’m not completely good.” She paused. “At singing.”

“What?” I stopped chewing. “Yes, you are. You’re all right.”

“Don’t lie. I know I’m not. You know I’m not. Come on: let’s at least be honest. I think I have certain qualities of musicality, but my pitch is … you know. Uneven. You probably think it’s awfully vain of me to put on these recitals. With nobody but friends and family coming.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Well, I don’t care what you say. It’s … hmm, I don’t know. People encourage me. And it’s a discipline. Music’s finally a discipline that rewards you. Privately, though. Well, that’s what my mother says.”

Carefully, I said, “She may be right.”

“Who cares if she is?” She laughed, her mouth full of food. “I enjoy doing it. Like I enjoy doing this. Listen, I don’t want to seem forward or anything, but are you married?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.” She picked up a string bean and eyed it suspiciously. “Why aren’t you? You’re not ugly. In fact you’re all-right looking. You obviously haven’t been crazy. Are you gay or something?”

“No.”

“No,” she agreed, “you don’t look gay. You don’t even look very happy. You don’t look very anything. Why is that?”

“I should be offended by this line of questioning.”

“But you’re not. You know why? Because I’m interested in you. I hardly know you, but I like you, what I can see. Don’t you have any trust?”

“Yes,” I said finally.

“So answer my question. Why don’t you look very anything?”

“Do you want to hear what my piano teacher once said?” I asked. “He said I wasn’t enough of a fanatic. He said that to be one of the great ones you have to be a tiny bit crazy. Touched. And he said I wasn’t. And when he said it, I knew all along he was right. I was waiting for someone to say what I already knew, and he was the one. I was too much a good citizen, he said. I wasn’t possessed.”

She rose, walked around the table to where I was sitting, and stood in front of me, looking down at my face. I knew that whatever she was going to do had been picked up, in attitude, from one of her songs. She touched