With Susan away for the weekend, the temptation might be to engage in activities that her presence might otherwise discourage, like consorting with loose women and other human captives to vice. Instead I thought maybe I'd do something I've always previously done with her and see if it felt any different. So I knocked off work early on Friday and went ice skating.

The NBA all-star game was in DC this weekend, and the local police presence was already ramping up to levels not seen since the World Bank protesters were in town dangerously brandishing their oversize puppets of James Wolfensohn. With street parking blocked off in some sections of downtown, I decided to take the Metro, which offered the added incentive that I'd be able to spend a lot of time out in public with my hockey skates slung over my shoulder. They make me feel so excessively cool that it is easy to forget that I am a novice skater who falls down a lot.

I decided to go down to the rink in the sculpture garden on the Mall. I'd never skated there before; Susan and I checked it out once and found it packed with people. We felt nervous about going around at high speeds in close company of a lot of strangers with knives strapped to their feet, so we retreated to our customary rink at Pershing Park.

The afternoon was unseasonably, almost weirdly warm. I put on my reptile-eye holographic sunglasses, which were given to me as a joke but soon became my only pair when I quickly lost my usual specs. The glasses replace my eyes with those of a predatory creature, complete with vertical slit pupils, and though they have the prismatic quality of cheap holograms they frequently provoke double-takes from passersby. As I walked to the Metro I pretended that I was really wildly famous and that these astonished looks were really the result of being "recognized" by fans on the street.

The rink at the sculpture garden is about five times the size of the one at Pershing Park. A large group of schoolkids shrieked and swiveled around the rink -- enough people to jam my usual rink solid with humanity. With less shade overhead, the ice was mercilessly exposed to the bright sun, and the surface was pretty swampy. Entire stretches were covered by a sheen of meltwater, and little wakes trailed behind people's skates, like they were piloting twin boats. I strapped on my new hockey skates and took to the ice. When I eventually fell, I actually splashed, and came up soaked through on one side.

Still, nothing could spoil the afternoon. I felt buoyed up by the obvious pleasure of my fellow skaters, who ricocheted off the walls and collapsed into the puddles with thrilled screams. As I warmed up, I became more adept at moving in and around the clots of handholding kids, and sudden slippery turns felt almost effortless. As Frank Sinatra sang in the springlike air, I looked out past the rink enclosure to see groups of people hanging out in the park and watching the goings-on with bemusement. People chatted on the ice. I was one of those odd urban moments when a spontaneous community seems to develop among strangers. Usually it takes a disaster to prompt people to let their guard down.

The lights in the sculpture garden went on as dusk gathered, and when my feet could no longer tolerate the tight laces of the skates I finally left the ice. But I was reluctant to leave this little lamplit island, and so I hung out for a while on the benches around the rink, my ice skates slung jauntily over my shoulder, listening to the music and watching the people slide around and around.

There are days when everyone I see looks ugly and pinched, but at that moment everyone seemed luminous and attractive. I strolled back to the Metro and descended the escalator for the ride home. Even in the netherlight of the trains the people around me were strangely beautiful.

Susan phoned in almost as I was walking in the door. As I described my afternoon, I think she experienced an emotion that doesn't quite have a name: the sensation when what you know you should feel is different from what you really feel. Although she believed wholeheartedly that one's mate should have their own experiences and identity, something in her wouldn't have minded hearing that I stayed home and moped.