it is interesting how the things that you never mean to happen inevitably do, and how, having happened, it is impossible to imagine that it could have been any other way.

he thought this to himself as he watched her laying in the half-light of the very dark evening and one weak lightbulb. he thought it again as she looked at him with that particular expression that he could not avoid and could not seem to let be. it moved across her face like a curtain (the dusty ones, crimson and heavy, that hid the theatre stage in high school), that expression of bemusement but of entertainment as well. It introduced her as partly resigned and partly enthralled. It seemed to be her saying,

"Well, shit."

She lay on her back now, and she stared at the ceiling. Or rather, at the black sky, beyond the roof, beyond the ceiling. Her hands were at her sides, her black hair waving about like night on the bedspread.

He knew, watching, that there were not words for the ideas that were arranging themselves in her head. no topography for the landscape of feelings that branched from her chest and filled her up like water.