Atmosphere

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

“Well, this is what I think the color blue looks like right now,” Joan says. “I think that you want to come home and sleep in your warm bed. I think you want to go out for milkshakes and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And watch Marlon Brando and Paul Newman movies. I think you want to know what David Bowie is going to record next. I think you want to listen to Joni Mitchell albums with the stereo on low, staring at the ceiling at midnight. And lie down on the grass with a picnic blanket and look up at the stars and wonder if all the answers are up there. I think you want to play Scrabble at a kitchen table with a ten-year-old girl. I think you want to go to weddings and slow dance. I think you want to live in a two-bedroom bungalow, and when the hinges on the cabinet are broken, you’ll fix them. I think you want to take the people you love flying over the Rockies at dawn. I think you want to be here to find out which, of all the things we believe to be impossible, we figure out next.