He sat on the loveseat with his pale hands between his knees, knowing now that there was a difference between what was experienced and what was explained, and the words dropped out from between his dry lips slowly, softly, but deliberately. He knew that with each he could rein her in, as a frantic stallion could be tamed with a still hand and gentle coaxing; he knew without knowing that he could walk out of her office free, free once more. So he let them fall on the carpet beneath her feet without trying to hasten their descent, trusting that what would come, would come, that what was not experienced could not be felt.


All the clocks in his room were set to different times. He would sit at his desk some nights, with the end of his pen between his lips and the stark white paper at his elbow, watching them and thinking. They never chimed; and though on each the hours and minutes differed, they all ticked in unison, like some great bomb waiting to go off inside his head—but just when, he could never say. He would sit and watch them, twirling the pen between his fingers, ever unaware of the ink stains on his skin. And he would think that time was passing, and thought it strange how the passing mattered, but never the time. Then he would bend over the page again and write.


Look, he told her. I am everything you thought I was but I am not everything you want me to be. Please, he said, do not hold it against me when you realize I cannot be. I am more robot than man but I am flawed too. Please, he whispered into her hair, as he whispered all the words he imagined he would tell her but never could, please, I am broken but I need someone too.


There were times he rode the bus to work, and when he rode he hated them, hated all the ugly quirks of their humanity. He sat with his body cupped by the hard plastic seat and thought

                   If there is anything uglier in this world I have not found it yet

while the infants screamed and writhed and the girls chattered mindlessly into their phones and the fat sweaty men in their suits looked on in disdain. He thought

                                               There is nothing uglier

and wished for his stop, for the chance to escape from them, if only for a moment.
        Then there were times he walked, and he gazed into the faces behind the dirty glass and saw they were all the same; and he pitied them. They were all the same, all alone, and he pitied them for their sad eyes, the same sad eyes he saw every morning in the mirror. He could not hate them then.


The picture they printed in the newspaper was in black and white, small and grainy. It listed the date, his age, all the names of all the people he had left behind, and the words He will be Remembered.
        Remembered, that Remembered with the capital R, made her set down her coffee, the foggy brown liquid already half-cold, untouched. She stared at the word and was plagued first with a swarm of misery, misery and then anger, a barely contained rage that they had gotten this, his last message, wrong even by a single letter. But the longer she stared at the word, the less it bothered her, until at last she could read it with a strange sort of affection, mostly sad, and yet, part warm—like her coffee.

                                                       Remembered.

she thought.

                                                    Yes, Remembered.

Somehow it seemed to suit him.


We understand so little, he told her once, mumbling into her warm brown hair the words that seeped into her dreams. We understand so little, but the important thing is not to understand, but to believe. Believe with your unnamed senses, with the feelings you feel but cannot describe, and then you can know without ever needing to understand.


The painting hung in the hallway, the painting of the two figures with their heads bent on their necks, their faces crooked. Their eyes were round black holes with specks of white at the center, one in each, and they seemed to be staring out at them from very far away.
        They are like Owls, she said. They are staring right through us.
        They are broken dolls, he said, and they are looking the wrong way.


She feared for him, some nights. Those nights when he shut himself up in his office to think or write. She would sit outside the room and watch that eerie blue light flickering through the space between the door and the carpet, ON and off and ON and off in irregular, nauseating patterns. Her eyes would fill with the blue light, growing wide and glassy, and she would imagine that behind the door was an operating table, where silent surgeons with silent scalpels picked into his skull. She could almost hear his silent screams, and her face would grow gaunt and pale, pale and blue.
        When he finally returned to bed, she would say nothing, but would cling to his white back in the darkness. Somewhere deep within her, she knew without knowing that he was dying.


She displayed her weaknesses like badges of honor on her breast. It was the one thing about her that always surprised him, the one thing he could not understand. He wanted to tell her to

                                                            Hide them

wanted to tell her

                           In this world of strangers, there is no one you can trust

but she wore them so boldly he could not bring himself to speak. She did not know; it was not something he could teach her.


He was cold that night. She was fast asleep in his arms but somehow her still body against his own could give him no warmth. The light from the streetlamp outside slipped in between the curtains, and it hit his face, illuminating there in sickly yellow his thin cheeks and his vacant eyes. No thought came to him, but somehow the feeling of the light upon his lips filled him with terror. He clutched her against him and felt her nestle closer in response, still sleeping, ever unaware of the cold only he could feel. He pressed his lips to her ear.
        Remember, he whispered. Remember me.


Once she had a dream that she was drowning. Everything around her was blue, blue and still, and when she opened her mouth all that came out were bubbles, small and feeble. She could feel herself sinking, and her limbs hung weightlessly, uselessly beside her, and the blue light above grew dimmer. Then she felt fingers brush against her own, entwine themselves between her own, and saw him floating beside her, just as weightless, just as immobile. They stared at each other as they sunk, and all around them the blue faded slowly into black.
        She woke thinking only

                                If we must drown, we will drown together.


There were no stone angels to mark his grave, no crosses or monuments. The stone there was simple, adorned with nothing but his name and the two dates. When she visited she did not leave flowers, and when she knelt on the grass before it and trailed her fingers across the cold, smooth surface, she never said a word.
        She felt there was nothing left to say.