“I saw people mentioning it in the personals online, but I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t know places like that existed. In the Missed Connections, there were ads that made clear that men were having sexual encounters of some kind there, in what I pictured as a Wild West of promiscuity.”
“Promised K I’d get out of it. Had every intention. Mornings I’d lean against the counter drinking coffee watching Lizzie make a smoothie. The speed with which she can do things in the kitchen used to dazzle me—tops popped on plastic containers, bits of banana, blueberries, whatever tossed into the blender. A handful of ice. The freezer kicked shut while she tipped in the soy. Masterful.”
“He is unlike other people. And the girl, too, unlike other people. Sometimes when he is crouching alone in the lilacs waiting for the moment to quicken, for the world to start over, it does. Suspended in the shadows, he sees her windows come to life and when this happens it is as if the first stars have caught fire and he is vividly alive, he embodies expectation, flush with longing for a look at the One Child, the One Girl: Asthma.”
