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She cannot accept that she needs to be, at least at some deeply hidden level, or even in some insignificant way, accepted, validated like a parking ticket, punched.
She feels the tequila in her blood, her veins. Her lungs fill with air, and again. The room is noisy, the seat hard. She is hungry, tired, sore, tipsy, self-sufficient, pretty, bruised, young, intelligent, unhappy, thirsty from salty goldfish, cognizant that that’s the idea. She can get water. She has an apartment, a gynecologist, mail, cookies, and the means to bake or buy more. There is a government agency that makes sure that the cookies she buys will not harm her, and it works, she trusts in that.
He gets dressed to the music, sometimes dancing with himself in the mirror: will you go out with me? He puts on too much too expensive cologne so he can stink of a different kind of alcohol. Tie done up right and suit looking sharp, he spins on his heel and walks into the living room, where he trips over the low coffee table and crashes through its glass top. He groans once and then starts snoring.
How could she know that there was disarray and devilment wreaking havoc with his very biology.
To him there is nothing more beautiful than the relationship between the reflection of a woman and the woman who creates it.
After all the different things had happened, they looked to him, in his mind’s eye, more like just one big thing, something that he could overcome. So, rather than be not-Al, he stayed and did everything he knew to do to become Al again. But he couldn’t. Then he got old—again, all at once.
Propped up on his pillow with a girl and a bottle is exactly where he wanted to be, and that’s where he is right now.
They are struggling with the bewilderment of finding that a long-held assumption may not be so. They are, at once, seeing for the first time decisions that they may have made and unexpected options that they may now have.
“Sera,” he starts, “I hope that you understand how I feel about this. First of all, you’re welcome to my money. We can buy a couple of cases of liquor and you can have the rest. But I don’t think you’re talking to me right now about money. I think you’re talking about you. I’ll tell you right now that I’m in love with you, but be that as it may, I’m not here to impose my twisted life on your soul. I’m not here to demand all your attentions, to the point where you’re removed from your own life. We know I’m a drunk. That’s part of what we have here, and you’re all right with that. Likewise, we
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“Fuck!” he says aloud to himself, “there sure is a lot of biology in that girl.” He finds this line so amusing that he laughs aloud, alone in the kitchen, until a fit of coughing takes over, and he vomits in the sink.
