Not everything on her mind emerged in the classroom or in conversation with her husband, Caydance thought. She was by herself in an isolated cafe not far from school, eating a solitary lunch in the midst of the next to the last class of the fall 1989 semester. Triggered by the forthcoming trip to Montreal -- as well as by the ancient maps that surfaced in pursuit of the provenance of the Music Box Book of Hours -- she was thinking about Richard Purdy's L’Inversion du monde, a series of complexly realized map-based installations where oceans and continents were reversed.

It was Carl, who had mentioned seeing this installation on the floor and ceiling of a building lobby in Montreal. She did not remember the name of the building, or perhaps Carl had not told her. On the floor was an elegiac world map where the oceans were depicted as continents, and the continents were oceans. Above, if she remembered Carl's description correctly, was a moon-shaped mirror that reflected the floor. It was, she recollected, a work of public art that still resided somewhere in Montreal. Perhaps she would find it, and Griff would accompany her. The issue of the place of art in their relationship was not at the moment troublesome to her. At intense see-and-be-seen Bay Area art openings, artists seldom arrived with their families. But Montreal as a tourist was another world. She finished her lunch of salad, French bread, and white wine and headed up the steep hill, through the courtyard, to the room where her studio class would resume.