Summary

In first-person narration, lawyer Edgar describes meeting an attractive woman at a party and making flirtatious conversation with her, conversation beginning with the woman asking whether he is Catholic. The narration reveals that the woman is white, and that Edgar is Indian. Further conversation reveals that the woman’s name is Susan, and that she was blinded in one eye in an accident involving her brother, who is also at the party. Conversation also reveals that Edgar is a lawyer, and that he has particular rules about dating women that are not exceptionally attractive, mostly because he does not see himself as exceptionally attractive. When he reveals that he is a Spokane Indian, “salmon people” (41), Susan comments that the salmon are dying.

Edgar then comments that he and Susan got married seven months later. Edgar comments in the narration that her family was not...