What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories

scraped away the ice.
    He turned off the motor and sat awhile. And then he got out and went back inside.
    The living-room light was on. The girl was asleep on the bed. The baby was asleep beside her.
    The boy took off his boots. Then he took off every thing else. In his socks and his long underwear, he sat on the sofa and read the Sunday paper.
    The girl and the baby slept on. After a while, the boy went to the kitchen and started frying bacon.
    The girl came out in her robe and put her arms around the boy.
    Hey, the boy said.
    I'm sorry, the girl said.
    It's all right, the boy said.
    I didn't mean to snap like that.
    It was my fault, he said.
    You sit down, the girl said. How does a waffle sound with bacon?
    What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
    Sounds great, the boy said.
    She took the bacon out of the pan and made waffle batter. He sat at the table and watched her move around the kitchen.
    She put a plate in front of him with bacon, a waffle. He spread butter and poured syrup. But when he started to cut, he turned the plate into his lap.
    I don't believe it, he said, jumping up from the table.
    If you could see yourself, the girl said.
    The boy looked down at himself, at everything stuck to his underwear.
    I was starved, he said, shaking his head.
    You were starved, she said, laughing.
    He peeled off the woolen underwear and threw it at the bathroom door. Then he opened his arms and the girl moved into them.
    We won't fight anymore, she said.
    The boy said, We won't.
    H E gets up from his chair and refills their glasses.
    That's it, he says. End of story. I admit it's not much of a story.
    I was interested, she says.
    He shrugs and carries his drink over to the window. It's dark now but still snowing.
    Things change, he says. I don't know how they do. But they do without your realizing it or wanting them to.
    Yes, that's true, only— But she does not finish what she started.
    She drops the subject. In the window's reflection he sees her study her nails. Then she raises her head. Speaking
    Everything Stuck to Him
    brightly, she asks if he is going to show her the city, after all.
    He says, Put your boots on and let's go.
    But he stays by the window, remembering. They had laughed. They had leaned on each other and laughed until the tears had come, while everything else—the cold, and where he'd go in it— was outside, for a while anyway.
    What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
    M Y friend Mel McGinnis was talking. Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist, and sometimes that gives him the right.
    The four of us were sitting around his kitchen table drinking gin. Sunlight filled the kitchen from the big window behind the sink. There were Mel and me and his second wife, Teresa—Terri, we called her—and my wife, Laura. We lived in Albuquerque then. But we were all from somewhere else.
    There was an ice bucket on the table. The gin and the tonic water kept going around, and we somehow got on the subject of love. Mel thought real love was nothing less than spiritual love. He said he'd spent five years in a seminary before quitting to go to medical school. He said he still
    What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
    looked back on those years in the seminary as the most important years in his life.
    Terri said the man she lived with before she lived with J4el loved her so much he tried to kill her. Then Terri said, "He beat me up one night. He dragged me around the living room by my ankles. He kept saying, 'I love you, I love you, you bitch/ He went on dragging me around the living room. My head kept knocking on things." Terri looked around the table. "What do you do with love like that?"
    She was a bone-thin woman with a pretty face, dark eyes, and brown hair that hung down her back. She liked necklaces made of turquoise, and long pendant earrings.
    "My God, don't be silly. That's not love, and you know it," Mel said. "I don't know what you'd call it, but I sure know you wouldn't call it love."
    "Say what you want to, but I know it was," Terri said. "It may sound crazy to you, but it's true just the same. People are different, Mel. Sure, sometimes he may have acted crazy. Okay. But he loved me. In his own way maybe, but he loved me. There was love there, Mel. Don't say there wasn't."
    Mel let out his breath. He held his glass and turned to Laura and me. "The man threatened to kill me," Mel said. He finished his drink and reached for the gin bottle. "Terri's a romantic. Terri's of the kick-me-so-Pll-know-you-love-me