What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories

closed his eyes and opened them. He moved the curtain aside and looked out at the backyard. He saw a bicycle without a front wheel standing upside down. He saw weeds growing along the redwood fence.
    She ran water into a saucepan. "Do you remember Thanksgiving?" she said. "I said then that was the last holiday you were going to wreck for us. Eating bacon and eggs instead of turkey at ten o'clock at night."
    "I know it," he said. "I said I'm sorry."
    "Sorry isn't good enough."
    The pilot light was out again. She was at the stove trying to get the gas going under the pan of water.
    "Don't burn yourself," he said. "Don't catch yourself on fire."
    He considered her robe catching fire, him jumping up from the table, throwing her down onto the floor and rolling her over and over into the living room, where he would cover her with his body. Or should he run to the bedroom for a blanket?
    "Vera?"
    A Serious Talk
    She looked at him.
    "Do you have anything to drink? I could use a drink this morning."
    "There's some vodka in the freezer."
    "When did you start keeping vodka in the freezer?"
    "Don't ask."
    "Okay," he said, "I won't ask."
    He got out the vodka and poured some into a cup he found on the counter.
    She said, "Are you just going to drink it like that, out of a cup?" She said, "Jesus, Burt. What'd you want to talk about, anyway? I told you I have someplace to go. I have a flute lesson at one o'clock."
    "Are you still taking flute?"
    "I just said so. What is it? Tell me what's on your mind, and then I have to get ready."
    "I wanted to say I was sorry."
    She said, "You said that."
    He said, "If you have any juice, I'll mix it with this vodka."
    She opened the refrigerator and moved things around.
    "There's cranapple juice," she said.
    "That's fine," he said.
    "I'm going to the bathroom," she said.
    He drank the cup of cranapple juice and vodka. He lit a cigarette and tossed the match into the big ashtray that always sat on the kitchen table. He studied the butts in it. Some of them were Vera's brand, and some of them weren't. Some even were lavender-colored. He got up and dumped it all under the sink.
    What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
    The ashtray was not really an ashtray. It was a big dish of stoneware they'd bought from a bearded potter on the mall in Santa Clara. He rinsed it out and dried it. He put it back on the table. And then he ground out his cigarette in it.
    THE water on the stove began to bubble just as the phone began to ring.
    He heard her open the bathroom door and call to him through the living room. "Answer that! I'm about to get into the shower."
    The kitchen phone was on the counter in a corner behind the roasting pan. He moved the roasting pan and picked up the receiver.
    "Is Charlie there?" the voice said.
    "No," Burt said.
    "Okay," the voice said.
    While he was seeing to the coffee, the phone rang again.
    "Charlie?"
    "Not here," Burt said.
    This time he left the receiver off the hook.
    VERA came back into the kitchen wearing jeans and a sweater and brushing her hair.
    He spooned the instant into the cups of hot water and then spilled some vodka into his. He carried the cups over to the table.
    She picked up the receiver, listened. She said, "What's this? Who was on the phone?"
    "Nobody," he said. "Who smokes colored cigarettes?"
    "I do."
    A Serious Talk
    "I didn't know you did that."
    "Well, I do."
    She sat across from him and drank her coffee. They smoked and used the ashtray.
    There were things he wanted to say, grieving things, consoling things, things like that.
    "I'm smoking three packs a day," Vera said. "I mean, if you really want to know what goes on around here."
    "God almighty," Burt said.
    Vera nodded.
    "I didn't come over here to hear that," he said.
    "What did you come over here to hear, then? You want to hear the house burned down?"
    "Vera," he said. "It's Christmas. That's why I came."
    "It's the day after Christmas," she said. "Christmas has come and gone," she said. "I don't ever want to see another one.
    "What about me?" he said. "You think I look forward to holidays?"
    THE phone rang again. Burt picked it up.
    "It's someone wanting Charlie," he said.
    "What?"
    "Charlie," Burt said.
    Vera took the phone. She kept her back to him as she talked. Then she turned to him and said, "I'll take this call in the bedroom. So would you please hang up after I've picked it up in there? I can tell, so hang it up when I say."
    He took the receiver. She left the kitchen. He held the