ALL night. Part, all, she didn’t know how long she’d been awake and how long she’d slept. Do you remember how we used to have hope? she wanted to say to Am. He had returned to the apartment late, long after she had gone to bed, and had lain motionless beside her. She did not speak when he came to bed. There was whisky on his breath and the smell of whisky in the room. So much hope, she wanted to say. For anything, for everything. We were so young. We wouldn’t have known what to call it then. Our energies worked toward loving each other, even though we didn’t say that in so many words. We needed no confirmation of love; it was just there, moment by moment, day by day. How did we allow that part of us to drain away? she wanted to ask. But she could not and would not ask. Because what she was this morning, this moment, was a woman who loved another man so dangerously, so recklessly, there was no turning back. What was done could not be undone. Every action she took would be swallowed by the town.
