What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

IN the kitchen, he poured another drink and looked at the bedroom suite in his front yard. The mattress was stripped and the candy-striped sheets lay beside two pillows on the chiffonier.

There was this funny thing of anything could happen now that we realized everything had.

“I’ll put out some cheese and crackers,” Terri said.
But Terri just sat there. She did not get up to get anything.

I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone’s heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.

“Laura, if I didn’t have Terri and if I didn’t love her so much, and if Nick wasn’t my best friend, I’d fall in love with you. I’d carry you off, honey,”

She grabbed for the baby’s other arm. She caught the baby around the wrist and leaned back.

But he would not let go. He felt the baby slipping out of his hands and he pulled back very hard.

In this manner, the issue was decided.

Is that what happens when a friend dies? Bad luck for the pals he left behind?

“Women,” he said. He said, “That’s what the wrong kind of woman can do to you, Jack.”

BUT I don’t think Dad really believed it. I think he just didn’t know who to blame or what to say.

A big moon was laid over the mountains that went around the city. It was a white moon and covered with scars. Any damn fool could imagine a face there.

He looked at them as they sat at the table. In the lamplight, there was something about their faces. It was nice or it was nasty. There was no telling.