He is hyperaware of her presence. Sometimes, when she moves near him, the room seems to shift a little, its center of gravity adjusting in some way that he cannot see or feel—but he tastes it sometimes, which makes no sense. Gravity doesn’t have a taste. But if it did, Manny thinks it would taste like sudden salt moving across the tongue, from slightly flavorless and sweet into a bitter, metallic weight that makes his eyes sting and his nose burn and his ears itch a little.
