You looked down at your lap and murmured, “Well, I, uh . . . ”
I was watching you, I could tell it wasn’t that you were trying to disentangle yourself from it but, rather, you were fingering each strand of thought in your mind, wondering which one would be solid enough to withstand once you started to pull on the whole ball of yarn.
We had all night, and I was used to staying up late, sitting there, flat out, with a glass in my hand. I was in no hurry. I watched you and still found you just as lovely and I wished my love were still there, to see you. I would have liked to introduce him to you. I would have like to introduce you to each other. He loved a pretty woman with a tender gaze and eyes full of mischief like yours. Of course he would have slipped out at some point but first he would have made us laugh. He liked more than anything to make clever women laugh. It was his way, he said, of making us human and of thanking us for existing and putting up with his presence among us. He got this silly gushing laughter out of us, the better to love us.
Thinking of him brought tears to my eyes and to see me sinking like that gave you the courage to take the plunge.
“Wait,” you said, raising your hand, “don’t cry. I’m going to distract you.”
But it was too late, I was crying. As the kids said, I was fed up with him being gone, plain fed up.
“Did you ever go to boarding school?” you asked.
“No.”
“I did.”
You sat up straighter and put your glass down. You’d found your strand.