“Where life and literature meet, there is first and foremost character. We are all heroes and villains, courageous and cowardly, noble and ignoble, loving and hateful. On good days, we are smart and people admire us.
On bad days, we are stupid and people roll their eyes at us.”
—Duff Brenna, quoted in “Thanks to Lady Fortune,
There’s Always an Upside”

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From Jealousy and Doubt:

Ray waits a moment to see if being philosophical makes him feel better. It doesn’t. Where is she? Why isn’t she answering the phone? Instinct tells him it is for sinister reasons. She is out with someone. Or maybe she is home, she and he thrashing on that Persian rug. Or is it Turkish? Yes, Turkish. Ray sees her head thrown back, her mouth open, her hands gripping her lover’s arms. What does he look like? Ray can see him. Slim and dark. Smelling musky like the dark ones do. He has seen how she looks at them. Always younger men. Older women are hot for young studs. An article in the paper this morning told of an older woman arrested for sexually abusing two teenage boys, fifteen and sixteen. The charges included oral sex and sodomy. She got two years. What perversion of the mind made those boys tell? Ray knows that if such a thing had happened to him at that age, he never would have told. He would have made a sacrifice to Aphrodite instead. Found a golden apple to offer her.

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Full Text of Short Stories

[Editor’s Note: Stories from other sources have been formatted and punctuated as necessary for greater legibility.]

Jealousy and Doubt
The Literary Review, Winter 2005

It is one of those evil moments when Ray doubts everyone, even those closest to him. All liars and betrayers. All of them living sordid lives. Not just them, but all humanity. The whole world. Dishonest. Disgusting. He hates them and he hates that he hates them and hates that he has such hateful thoughts about them. But he can’t help it. He trusts no one and believes in nothing. Not even himself.

God, I’m in a mood, he says, exhaling sourly. And it’s all her fault, the little bitch. Look at the time. Where is she? Why doesn’t she call? Should I go looking for her? I could go over to her house and see if she’s home.

Yes, but what if she’s—

No, Ray, no you don’t.

That would be demeaning. Desperate. Pitiful.

Sometimes it comforts him to remember that we all die tomorrow and all our desire and pain dies with us. All striving, caring, loving, hoping will end one day in a great departure of thought. That 5,000-year-old frozen corpse found in the Italian Alps had once been a living, breathing man. Just as greedy for pleasure as anyone alive today. But what did it matter? Embedded in an Alpine niche as the centuries ticked by and no one noticing him. Maybe he had a family. No doubt they had wondered why he disappeared. They cared for a while — where is Ugha? He went up the mountain and didn’t come back. They searched for him. They called out Uuughaaa! Uuughaaa! But all that returned to them were echoes. The moon changed shapes, rose and fell and life is for the living. Must go hunt and gather. Got to stay alive somehow. Ugha’s disappearance remained a mystery to his relatives and friends. The memory of his voice faded as the months went by. The years. Eventually they forgot what he looked like. And his wife and children went on until one by one they wore out and died. As did his grandchildren and his great-grandchildren generation after generation and so on and so forth. All Ugha’s descendents departing. And what was the point? Bodies gripped in ice. Flesh and blood morphing into tusks.

Life is short, Ray mutters, clenching his teeth. Better to acknowledge its brevity and the insentient state to which we sink, all of us great or small. Better to not be fooled by an afterlife that no one’s seen. From whose bourn no one returns. Shrug it away. Be philosophical. It’s coming. So who cares? It may not be today or tomorrow. But it will come. The readiness is all. Said Hamlet. Or is that Lear? No, Lear says ripeness is all. Actually no, it is Edgar saying it to Gloucester. And Gloucester says that’s true too. Because everything is true. And then he died. Hamlet died. Gloucester died. Lear died. Uhga in the Alps died. Need to take death with a grain of salt. The only way to handle such an outrageous fate. The trick is to know when to go. Give me the hemlock; it’s time.

Ray waits a moment to see if being philosophical makes him feel better. It doesn’t. Where is she? Why isn’t she answering the phone? Instinct tells him it is for sinister reasons. She is out with someone. Or maybe she is home, she and he thrashing on that Persian rug. Or is it Turkish? Yes, Turkish. Ray sees her head thrown back, her mouth open, her hands grip ping her lover’s arms. What does he look like? Ray can see him. Slim and dark. Smelling musky like the dark ones do. He has seen how she looks at them. Always younger men. Older women are hot for young studs. An article in the paper this morning told of an older woman arrested for sexually abusing two teenage boys, fifteen and sixteen. The charges included oral sex and sodomy. She got two years. What perversion of the mind made those boys tell? Ray knows that if such a thing had happened to him at that age, he never would have told. He would have made a sacrifice to Aphrodite instead. Found a golden apple to offer her.

He goes into the kitchen, gets the vodka, pours some in a tumbler and adds three ice cubes. Swirls. Waits for the drink to cool. Remonstrates with himself. Why shouldn’t she go for some other guy? No reason not to, not when you’re impotent half the time, old fool. Not when your face looks like a cluster of grapes hanging over her in bed. She never wants to make love with the light on anymore. Your body no longer turns her on. Wrinkly neck. Almost a wattle beneath your chin. Rusty skin on the V of your chest, where the sun used to burn you. Age spots surfacing like seaweed on your forehead. That tiny lesion on your nose is probably a basal cell.

Not your fault, old fool. You tried to warn her. You told her she was too young for you, but would she listen? She said your age meant nothing. That you didn’t look twenty years her senior. Maybe ten years at the most. That’s when you were working out, lifting weights, jogging a mile every morning. And you had more hair. And you used an acid that sloughed the dead skin off your face. Left your cheeks shiny and smooth. You had looked good for fifty-four.

He takes a drink. He swishes it like mouthwash over his teeth. Holds still for a moment breathing through his nose. The vodka bites. After he swallows, his whole mouth feels antiseptic. She claims he never has bad breath. He tells her it is because alcohol keeps his palate squeaky-clean. And that is why he never gets sore throats or rarely catches a cold. Germs can’t multiply in an environment pickled in alcohol. She laughs at that. She joins him in a drink, laughing, laughing. She loves to drink one or two and laugh at his jokes and have fun.

But she’s got control. Not him, not Ray. Once he starts he can’t stop. How many drinks have there been over the course of a decade? Gallons of vodka, whiskey, wine to alter his moods. To tuck away truth. Seek oblivion. They had walled their love in a bubble world for a few hours every weekend, before she had to go home to her husband and kids. It was such a shitty way to live back then. She betraying her husband. Then finally divorcing him. Her willful behavior, the need to have her way at all costs, have taken a ten-year toll on Ray. Knowing that if she would betray her family, she would betray him too. And why not? He’s a burned-out old bag. Heartburn, indigestion, and bowel troubles. Arthritis in his knees. Intermittent impotence. No wonder she gets that look on her face. The look that says, what am I doing here?

She used to say, Sex is how I express my love for you. Sex is the closest we can physically be. You inside of me is spiritual. I never knew I could love this way.

Stuff like that. Stuff she doesn’t say anymore. Like you are my soul mate, Ray. She hasn’t said that in years.

Soul mate. Cynic that he is, he used to laugh at such drivel. Before he met her. As the weeks became months became years with her, he began to wonder if a mate for the soul might be true. Now he knows he was right in the first place. He is a sentimental dupe. He is a romantic old fool. He is what he used to laugh about. He is.

That’s me, he says. And then he says, When I die there will be no one to give the folded flag to. Neither of the kids will come. Maybe one of the grandkids? If a man does not keep pace with his companions—

He paces the floor, goes into the study. Frowns at the bookshelves, the rows of British literature. Shakespeare and his ilk and all things Donne — the metaphysicals. All the lovely words he used to quote to his students. His mind overflowing, endlessly able.

Things are not truly, but in equivocal shapes.

Said Thomas Browne, says Ray out loud, satisfied that he still has a brain.

And next to Browne, incongruously (or maybe congruously?) is Alice in Wonderland. Down the rabbit hole. That’s where life is. Has been. Will be.

Ray puts forth a trembling finger, touches Alice and says—

Speak roughly to your little box:
And beat him when he sneezes!

—a coughing laughter follows. He blows his nose. Wipes his eyes.

Laughs heh heh heh, like a mad scientist.

And then he says, Thou shouldst not have been old til thou hadst been wise! So where is she? Whose arms, whose hands, whose — Jesus, the thought is unbearable! I’ll kill her. I’ll kill myself. Eyes closed, he whispers, Let me not go mad. Oh, Fool, I shall go mad!

He pictures the gun in the nightstand. Tomorrow we die anyway, so why not get it over with? Turn time to zero. You will not wake wondering. You will not feel the guilt you have felt these almost eleven years, you the man who broke up a family. Selfish prick! And you knew it would end this way. You knew in your heart that her passion for you would fade as you aged and the ills of aging started plaguing you, started showing on your stupid face and in the corroded state of your organs. Those gall bladder stones that won’t let you digest fats. That burping routine after every meal. Disgusting. Even more disgusting is the IBS that comes and goes. And also your swollen prostate, the itching, burning in there that has made you short-tempered. Doctors can’t help you. Forget the bastards, the pompous frauds, the phony fakes. It’s a benign hypertrophism, sir. It will be with you always. Nothing to be done about it. Don’t drink. Alcohol is hell on stomachs and prostates. And stay away from spicy foods. Some day we may have to operate if the gland turns cancerous. But surgery is the last resort. They shoved pills at him for his indigestion. Ultram for his arthritis. What a joke that stuff is. Might as well drink snake oil. His ailments overwhelm every elixir, his courage especially. And his love.

But he does wonder why, with so much wrong with him, he continues to drink so hard. Every night at least five or six. Or as many as it takes to calm him down. Make him not care about anything. Stop caring! When you care that’s when life hurts. In his cups he tells himself that he most certainly has a death wish now. Several times he has taken the gun out and put the barrel in his mouth and pressed the trigger and thought — All I’d have to do is flick the safety off and this world will know me no more. And then her coming in and finding him with the back of his head blown off. She would freak out. His children would freak out. Or would they? Would his children care? Sure they would. But they are both grown and have lives to lead and not much time to grieve for the old bastard who left their mother. He had let them think it was his fault. He had never told them that she had had an affair and wanted the divorce. She had told them that his black depression was destroying her. She had given an ultimatum: See a psychiatrist and get some help or it’s over. You’re drowning and I’m drowning too. You’ve got me halfway down the road to crazy, Ray!

Long ago, Ray. Years ago. Let it be, let it be.

Basically it was for them then that he didn’t kill himself. For them and for her too, his increasingly bored lover. Sexy succubus. What man could resist her? Maybe he should kill her first. And then himself. COUPLE DIE IN SUICIDE PACT.

He returns to the kitchen, lifts the bottle. One or two more drinks and it will be empty. Should he go to the liquor store now? Or should he finish the bottle first?

Finish the bottle. Then kill yourself, Ray.

What would she do if he were dead? What did Ugha’s wife do when she realized he was never coming back? He can see her crying. He hears her asking why. He sees her running to her children for comfort. And her parents who had begged her not to break up her marriage for that no-good man. Her friends would be there for her. She has lots of friends. Friendly, popular, always hanging on the phone. He hates it every time the phone rings. It’s never for him. But sure she would miss him. But then she would move on. She loves life. She loves her pleasures. She would find someone else. Someone closer to her own age. People have got to get on after a loved one dies. And besides, women have a life force that men don’t have. Men die easily. Women go kicking and screaming. But they die anyway and 5,000 years later everything and nothing has changed.

He looks out the window. The wind tickling the trees. Go now or wait for her? Where is she? She didn’t used to be so evasive. Always kept her cell phone on. Always prompt. Phone calls always on time. If she said she would call at five, she always did. Give or take a minute or two. The past month or so she has spent lots of extra time at work, lots of houses to show. Houses selling like hotcakes. She is raking in the dough. She has asked him several times to invest, take a chance, but he lives on a fixed income now. He has some savings for a rainy day, but that’s it. Nothing left over to gamble with. No risk left in a man in his mid-sixties. And besides, he doesn’t really want anything more than what he has. The condo is comfortable. He owns all his furniture and his car. He doesn’t need more clothes. Except some new skivvies. The waistband in the old ones are wavy. Maybe she started pulling back when she realized he would never amount to anything more than what he was — a lazy semi-alcoholic wannabe writer who can’t sell his work.

He could have taught school longer. He could have hung in there and piled up five or six more years on his 401K and the bonds and Social Security and his State Retirement fund. He had thought retirement was what he needed. Give him time at last to work on his books. Write everyday. Concentrate. Focus. Create something brilliant — a brilliant work of art that might outlive him. And read all those novels he has piled on the nightstand over the years. He hadn’t realized that when you’re no longer in the thick of things, the writing and reading don’t mean very much. There is only you and the words. Or you and someone else’s words. Only you and the gesture unshared. On the page where no one cares to see it. She is far too busy to read his work and encourage him. He belongs to no writing clubs. He doesn’t do readings in bookstores anymore, because they fill him with anxiety. No one buys literature, anyway. People want thrillers, mysteries, westerns. Scandals that expose the seamy side of celebrated lives. Biographies that cut their subjects down to size. Literary novels? Forget it. Too much mental labor. And he is guilty too. He hasn’t made a dent in the stack he’s been saving. He lacks the energy to read or write or eat out or go to movies or — How in the world has he become so boring? A man like him who used to strip nude and dance like a pagan. Stevie Ray Vaughan or John Lee Hooker blasting. Those were the days when he had had energy to burn. No more. The backs of his hands, his corky arms tell him he is way too old to be living. He should have died at forty, like Jack London. Or like Byron at thirty-six. Instead of this living on and on to no purpose. And becoming what you used to dread.

He finishes the first drink and pours another, whirling the vodka, the ice cubes clicking, the sound reminding him of when he lived somewhere else, drank one drink a night and slept like a child. A place with a wife of eighteen years who betrayed him. The eighteen-year itch. An office romance. She and that guy named — What was that bastard’s name? Smell him on her when she came home. Ray had made love to her knowing her lover had been there first. Probably on her desk. Or in his car at lunch. Ray had thought he could wait him out. And then she came home and confessed. She couldn’t keep her stupid mouth shut. She needed confession. Absolution. Divorce.

Well, you love him, what more is there to say, I’ll move out, Ray had told her. He had even felt sorry for her when she cried so hard.

Love hurts, she had said. God, how love hurts!

Ray had been decent, civilized, full of compassion. Over the years he had become a bit of an actor. As a teacher he had had to learn the art. Always ready with a smile and a wink, a nod of encouragement. Sympathy.

People grow apart, it’s natural, he told her that day. Eighteen years is a long time. You would have to be a saint not to be a little tired of the same old face day in and day out. But maybe, you know, maybe if we quit our jobs and moved away. Maybe just changing our surroundings and being in a place where we were dependent on each other again. Like we were during the first years of our marriage. Maybe it would work? I’m willing to try. I’m willing to put this affair out of my mind and try.

You’ll always hold it against me, she had said.

He protested, but he knew at the time she was right, it was shock and despair talking. Beneath it, rage and hatred. The black depression following. The separate bedrooms. The polite, pointless conversations that finally sunk into days, weeks, months of gloom. The ultimatum given. By then he was bone-weary and just wanted out.

He goes into the bedroom, opens the drawer and takes out the gun. Puts the barrel in his mouth. He slips the tip of his tongue down the muzzle tasting tangy metal. He backs up to the wall. She will find his brains and hair on the wall. He wants that. He wants an image that will stay with her forever. You did this!

He watches the secondhand sweeping a circle round the face of the clock on the dresser. Just do it, he tells himself. Flick the safety off and end time. You’re going to die before long anyway. Get it over with, you fucking coward!

He takes the gun out of his mouth and shouts, Where is she, goddamn her!

He puts the gun in his waistband and phones her again. Her machine says, Please leave a message after the beep. He slams the receiver down and swears. He says, Fuck, shit, motherfucker, whore. He pours himself the last of the bottle and says, Ray, we got to make a booze run. He bolts the drink and feels dimly genial. He feels borderline fine.

Ray’s cool, he says. Everything’s cool, Ray.

He reminds himself to be philosophical. Let her fuck them all, he doesn’t care. What he really needs is another Stoli. What he needs is the indifference it brings. Like a shot of heroin.

After a stop at the liquor store, he finds himself on the freeway. The university where he used to work is in the distance, its gold dome glimmering. He spent twenty-five years there before he managed to work up the nerve to retire. Telling himself, Now I’ll really write! No excuses, Ray. He threw himself into it, turning out two worthless novels that no one wanted to publish. Numerous short stories, all rejected. He wasn’t a writer after all. A sham of a writer making motions. And finally after two years of failure he stopped. He sent nothing out. He wrote a short story or a poem occasionally and put it with the others in the drawer beneath the drawer that holds the gun.

Ray has no ideas. Everything he writes seems stupid. He drinks as much as he can hold every night and he tightens his grip on his anger and he dreams of going postal. Striding down the hall at school and capping the director and the dean and maybe a vice-president or two. Then killing himself. Or maybe battling it out with the police. Take as many of them as he can before they shoot him. He sees the headlines: UNIVERSITY EXPROFESSOR KILLS COLLEAGUES, IS GUNNED DOWN. Something like that. He fingers the gun snug behind his belt. Cars whip by him on both sides. After six and the freeways are still crowded. All these people, where are they going? These SUVs sucking up more than their share of gas. Polluting the air. It would be an easy thing to shoot out a tire, set the motherfucker rolling. Beside him he takes the Stoli from the sack and opens it. Drinks a lascivious mouthful. He is buzzed. Very.

Her house is dark, only the porch light on. The garage door is closed, so he doesn’t know if her car is in there or not. He parks halfway down the street and watches for signs of life. Something tells him she’s in there all right. Oral sex. Sodomy. Older woman losing all her inhibitions with a younger man. Or maybe two younger men. Or two teenaged boys. What had possessed that bitch? Two years in prison for two blowjobs and her butt reamed out. Was it worth it?

At the curb in front is a phallic Miata. Red, the color of passion. How typical. How cliche. Of course she would take up with someone like that. Some stud in a sport’s car spreading AIDs. Fuck him!

The minutes tick by. Half an hour vanishes. Ray gets restless. I don’t really want to know, do I?

On the way back he pulls up behind three other cars at a stoplight. Standing on the center divider is a skinny, long-haired man with a stick in his hand. A homeless panhandler? The man walks over to the first car in line and opens the door and yells, Out! Get the fuck out or I’ll brain you, you stupid bitch! He brandishes the stick, but it isn’t a stick; it’s a tire iron. A woman gets out of the car clutching her purse. The man rips the purse from her and jumps inside and speeds away. Crossing cars screech to a halt. They end up sideways. A man yells, What the fuck, you moron!

The woman stands in the empty space gawking. People get out of their cars. One woman is screaming into her cell phone — A car-jacking, I said! Others have gone over to the victim and are talking to her all at once and waving their hands. Everyone is fuming. If they could just get their hands on that bastard! More cars pull up behind the others in line. The light is green. Horns start honking. The air is filled with blustering horns and car jacking! Car-jacking!

Ray sits benumbed and silent and drained. It had happened so fast! And he had not even tried to do anything. He could have jumped out of his car and shot that bastard. He could have run to the rescue. Saved the day. Freeze, motherfucker, I’ll blow your fucking head off! That’s what he could have said. Why hadn’t he moved?

He didn’t used to be so indecisive. He didn’t used to be so scared. Of anything. Of life. Once long ago when he was thirty-five or thirty-six, he had stepped between a man and a woman who were yelling at each other in a bar. The man was threatening her, his hands reaching. And Ray had jumped off his stool and told the man to back off. The man had sized him up. Calculations spinning in his eyes — can I take this guy? Ray had been in his prime, all muscle from pumping iron. Behind him the bartender held a baseball bat. Everyone waited to see what would happen. The man pointed his finger at the woman and said, I’ll take care of you later, baby! And she said, You can go to hell, asshole! And that was it. The fight was over. Ray sat down and finished his beer. The woman didn’t even thank him. But the bartender did. Thanked him and gave him a free pitcher of Coors.

And here again I could have been the hero, he mutters. And then he reminds himself — I’m too fucking old to be a hero. He burps. He rubs his stomach round and round. He is nauseated. He needs Maalox. Some Immodium too. He slides the gun and the Stoli under the seat. Useless luck, he says and burps again. Strokes his burning colon and keeps a tight asshole.

Oh Ray, oh Ray, he whispers. Oh Ray, oh Ray.

The police arrive. They have the witnesses pull their cars to the curb. Ray tells a policeman that he hadn’t seen anything. He had gotten there too late.

When he gets back home, he puts the gun away and drinks Maalox straight from the bottle. Sits on the pot and lets the poisons flow. Then he washes his face and neck in cold water. Goes to the kitchen and pours another drink. This will stop it, he tells himself. This will numb every thing.

He turns on the lights in the living room and sits on the couch staring at his reflection in the TV. His heart is still pounding fast. He wonders if every old man is a coward. Old and brittle and impotent and a coward. He wonders if a testosterone patch would make him snap out of it. He wonders if he would do anything different if he could live the car-jacking over again. He sees himself in the thick of it. Ordering the motherfucker to freeze. But he doesn’t freeze. And Ray shoots him. Ray shoots him and shoots him.

What kind of car was it, anyway? What had the woman looked like? He can’t remember anything about her except her astonished mouth. There had been an overturned sandal in the street. He could have gone over and picked it up and handed it to her. An act of kindness. A show of compassion. Poor thing. But nothing! He had done nothing. Moment of truth. This is who you are now, Ray.

He sets his drink on the coffee table and leans forward, elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. Readiness is all, he murmurs. Ripeness I’ve got, but readiness, no. No readiness in you, you old worthless fuck. He chokes on the words. He tries to repeat them, to veil them at himself, but a sob gushes out instead. He weeps into his hands. Big baby! Big stupid baby!

What’s wrong? she says. What happened?

He looks up at her. He wipes his eyes. He takes out his handkerchief and blows his nose and wipes his cheeks and she is saying over and over, Honey, what’s wrong, what’s wrong, are you sick? Honey, what’s wrong?

He feels his lips moving. He listens hard, but he isn’t saying anything. The afternoon and evening pass through his mind, her message machine, the vodka rocks, the liquor store, the gold-domed university mocking him, the crowded freeway smothering him, the darkness of her house taunting him. The car-jacker. That goddamn car-jacker! He should have shot him!

I, he says, I thought you had left me. I couldn’t find you. I called and called. I couldn’t find you.

My cell phone died, honey. I accidentally dropped it. It’s all smashed. It’s right there on the counter. She points to it.

There it is. Why hadn’t he seen it? I didn’t see it, he says.

Honey, you never see anything.

It’s been there all this time.

I went to Verizon to buy another. She fishes in her purse, shows him the new cell phone. It cost me an arm and a leg, she says. And they took forever. I hate that place. They knew I couldn’t wait for a special. They knew they had me. They really stuck it to me this time. I paid a fortune for this phone. And I phoned you as soon as I could, but all I got was the answering machine. The freeways were a mess. I could have walked home faster.

He looks at the answering machine and sees the red light blinking.

I went out to get more vodka, he says. And then he adds, I thought you had finally had enough of me. I wouldn’t blame you. I’m old and sick and ugly and all I do is whine. I wallow in self-pity. I’m disgusting. I hate myself. I’m a failure as a man and an artist. What good am I to you? Good for nothing.

Oh, honey, no! Stop thinking like that, honey. You’re not old, you’re not at all ugly. I love you as much as I ever have. I would never leave you. I would never hurt you. I adore you. Only death can part us and that’s the truth. You know in your heart I’m a hundred percent yours, Ray. Tell me you know it, Ray. Tell me.

I’m so depressed, he tells her, feeling the tears welling again.

I wish you would at least try Prozac, honey. It’s helped millions of people. You don’t need to be so miserable. It’s all chemistry. It’s a chemical imbalance.

But it won’t be me anymore, can’t you see? It will distort my mind and I won’t be able to write or do anything creative. Those things make you too mellow. It will be someone else in here (he taps his head), not me. It will be a Prozac person. But maybe that’s what you really want. My moodiness makes you miserable. I know it does. I’m driving you down the road to crazy like I did my ex.

She shakes her head. Her eyes are infinitely sad. He waits for her to tell him that he isn’t finished yet, he has a lot left to give and all he needs is to just keep working and everything will be all right. He’s going to start sending stories out again. He’s going to get back to his desk and write. He’s going to work on his novels. Rewrite them until they’re perfect. Polish them until they’re irresistible.

He needs to hear her say all that. He needs her magic words. Eagerly, like a child he watches her mouth. And he thinks of Browne again, the end of that quote about equivocal shapes: ... real substance beneath that invisible fabric.

She knows what he needs. She sits beside him holding his hand. Stroking his arm. Her voice is soothing and his tears dry and his heart slows as she assures him again and again that his luck will turn, everything will change. Maybe starting tomorrow. Maybe that soon.

Whatever happens we’ve got each other, she says. Don’t ever forget we are soul mates, Ray, and we love each other and ultimately that’s what really counts. I’d die for you, honey. I really would.

And he is thinking, Maybe tomorrow. Maybe that soon.

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