It’s a decision too large to contemplate, and I can’t even get in the car without thinking about the moment between staying and leaving and dropping everything in a scatter on the garage floor and picking it up and wishing just to have to pick it up for some time so I don’t have to decide anything else, but just concentrate on this one thing—keys and wallet and books, and the lipstick rolling under the wheels as it does. On that very day of the lipstick my best friend decides to take a lover. She tells me about the joys of living with someone, the coziness of it all, and how he and she do this and that together, and shop and cook meals together, side by side, rhapsodic in the kitchen with the tile he bought from a wrecking company and put in himself. She’s chosen him all right and says everything will be perfect, so she says. She says it is just as if it were all meant to be just as I am cramming everything back into my purse and getting in my car and closing the door. I ask her via e-mail why she is so taken with this new arrangement and why, given her gifts at irony, she needs be so over-the-top.
