A and B

A man was in the habit of travelling from A to B. A little later he would follow this by coming back. Time spent in A, then back to B, and so on.The pauses between movement varied a little but not greatly, as did the durations of travelling between each. If when on the journey the man was asked where he was, say he'd been phoned by his wife, he would promptly respond, 'I am between A and B', or if on the return journey, 'I am between B and A.' Where on the journey he might be was irrelevant, near the start or finish, the answer would always be the same: between one point and the other. If his wife rang when he had arrived at B, 'I am at B' is what he would happily inform.

One day he set out from A, informed his wife along the way where he was - between A and B - but when he got to the place where B always was there was no B. B and the place had of course been inseparable, one and the same, but now there was only the place, though in the absence of B you could hardly recognise it, and with the difficulty in recognising this was the unconvincing solace he tried to offer himself, that he wasn't in the right place, and B was in truth somewhere else around, in the spot it always was. His wife called in the midst of all his perplexity - 'Where are you now?' she asking, but there was no response. From his end just quietness. Baffling.

Though he wandered on and around, hoping that he had indeed somehow erred, there was no mistake and B failed or refused to surface. Finally and disconsolately he turned to return to A. Again while in transit his wife rang, asking the usual question on the way but again, stymied presumably by the impossibility of telling her he was between B and A, she met with silence. He did though, to her relief and perhaps his, arrive home, and the first thing he did upon entering was to say, was it with a little defiance and without his customary lightness of tone, 'I am in A!' He knew, whatever you tried to claim, exactly where he was. He hadn't even been asked.