But I feel happy hearing it from her. Is that fucked up? I hear about her hopeless junkie brother and my heart feels lighter, knowing someone else out there loves someone who doesn’t exist anymore, though he’s there, the same and not the same. It’s not just that—not just, her story’s like my story and “we get each other.” It’s that I’m thinking about stories, other people’s, in a way I haven’t since before Anne got so sick. I ride the elevator, look at passengers, consider lives outside of my own misery for once. I pity Esmeralda, and other people—I hear Anne’s voice: that’s patronizing—but
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