Yet Thisbe is already trading smiles with Madame, like the electric ripples with which eels signal the boundary between my hunting ground and yours. These gazes are mutual admiration, Madame and Thisbe admiring each other as the sprinter admires the weightlifter against whom she will never vie. Their games do not share the same goals, not even rules, but they do use the same pieces, and the same board, this same fragile blue orb.
