What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories

said.
    "Honey, I love you," Mel said.
    He leaned across the table. Terri met him halfway. They kissed.
    "Terri's right," Mel said as he settled himself again. "Get those seatbelts on. But seriously, they were in some shape, those oldsters. By the time I got down there, the kid was dead, as I said. He was off in a corner, laid out on a gurney. I took one look at the old couple and told the ER nurse to get me a neurologist and an orthopedic man and a couple of surgeons down there right away."
    He drank from his glass. "I'll try to keep this short," he said. "So we took the two of them up to the OR and worked like fuck on them most of the night. They had these incredible reserves, those two. You see that once in a while. So we did everything that could be done, and toward morning we're giving them a fifty-fifty chance, maybe less than that for her. So here they are, still alive the next morning. So, okay, we move them into the ICU, which is where they both kept plugging away at it for two weeks,
    What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
    hitting it better and better on all the scopes. So we transfer them out to their own room."
    Mel stopped talking. "Here," he said, "let's drink this cheapo gin the hell up. Then we're going to dinner, right? Terri and I know a new place. That's where we'll go, to this new place we know about. But we're not going until we finish up this cut-rate, lousy gin."
    Terri said, "We haven't actually eaten there yet. But it looks good. From the outside, you know."
    "I like food," Mel said. "If I had it to do all over again, I'd be a chef, you know? Right, Terri?" Mel said.
    He laughed. He fingered the ice in his glass.
    "Terri knows," he said. "Terri can tell you. But let me say this. If I could come back again in a different life, a different time and all, you know what? I'd like to come back as a knight. You were pretty safe wearing all that armor. It was all right being a knight until gunpowder and muskets and pistols came along."
    "Mel would like to ride a horse and carry a lance," Terri said.
    "Carry a woman's scarf with you everywhere," Laura said.
    "Or just a woman," Mel said.
    "Shame on you," Laura said.
    Terri said, "Suppose you came back as a serf. The serfs didn't have it so good in those days," Terri said.
    "The serfs never had it good," Mel said. "But I guess even the knights were vessels to someone. Isn't that the way it worked? But then everyone is always a vessel to someone. Isn't that right? Terri? But what I liked about knights,
    What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
    besides their ladies, was that they had that suit of armor, you know, and they couldn't get hurt very easy. No cars in those days, you know? No drunk teenagers to tear into your ass."
    "VASSALS," Terri said.
    "What?" Mel said.
    "Vassals," Terri said. "They were called vassals, not vessels."
    "Vassals, vessels," Mel said, "what the fuck's the difference? You knew what I meant anyway. All right," Mel said. "So I'm not educated. I learned my stuff. I'm a heart surgeon, sure, but I'm just a mechanic. I go in and I fuck around and I fix things. Shit," Mel said.
    "Modesty doesn't become you," Terri said.
    "He's just a humble sawbones," I said. "But sometimes they suffocated in all that armor, Mel. They'd even have heart attacks if it got too hot and they were too tired and worn out. I read somewhere that they'd fall off their horses and not be able to get up because they were too tired to stand with all that armor on them. They got trampled by their own horses sometimes."
    "That's terrible," Mel said. "That's a terrible thing, Nicky. I guess they'd just lay there and wait until somebody came along and made a shish kebab out of them."
    "Some other vessel," Terri said.
    "That's right," Mel said. "Some vassal would come along and spear the bastard in the name of love. Or whatever the fuck it was they fought over in those days."
    "Same things we fight over these days," Terri said.
    What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
    Laura said, "Nothing's changed."
    The color was still high in Laura's cheeks. Her eyes were bright. She brought her glass to her lips.
    Mel poured himself another drink. He looked at the label closely as if studying a long row of numbers. Then he slowly put the bottle down on the table and slowly reached for the tonic water.
    "WHAT about the old couple?" Laura said. "You didn't finish that story you started."
    Laura was having a hard time lighting her cigarette. Her matches kept going out.
    The