What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories

outside the bathroom. She was surprised to see me. She smiles and says my name.
    It was right after she said it that we got down on the bed.
    "HOLLY, you're still a proud woman," I go. "You're still number one. Come on, Holly."
    She shakes her head.
    "Something's died in me," she goes. "It took a long time for it to do it, but it's dead. You've killed something, just
    What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
    like you'd took an axe to it. Everything is dirt now."
    She finishes her drink. Then she begins to cry. I make to hug her. But it's no good.
    I freshen our drinks and look out the window.
    Two cars with out-of-state plates are parked in front of the office, and the drivers are standing at the door, talking. One of them finishes saying something to the other, and looks around at the units and pulls his chin. There's a woman there too, and she has her face up to the glass, hand shielding her eyes, peering inside. She tries the door.
    The phone downstairs begins to ring.
    "Even a while ago when we were doing it, you were thinking of her," Holly goes. "Duane, this is hurtful."
    She takes the drink I give her.
    "Holly," I go.
    "It's true, Duane," she goes. "Just don't argue with me," she goes.
    She walks up and down the room in her underpants and her brassiere, her drink in her hand.
    Holly goes, "You've gone outside the marriage. It's trust that you killed."
    I get down on my knees and I start to beg. But I am thinking of Juanita. This is awful. I don't know what's going to happen to me or to anyone else in the world.
    I go, "Holly, honey, I love you."
    In the lot someone leans on a horn, stops, and then leans again.
    Holly wipes her eyes. She goes, "Fix me a drink. This one's too watery. Let them blow their stinking horns. I don't care. I'm moving to Nevada."
    Gazebo "Don't move to Nevada," I go. "You're talking crazy," I
    "I'm not talking crazy," she goes. "Nothing's crazy about Nevada. You can stay here with your cleaning woman. I'm moving to Nevada. Either there or kill myself."
    "Holly!" I go.
    "Holly nothing !" she goes.
    She sits on the sofa and draws her knees up to under her chin.
    "Fix me another pop, you son of a bitch," she goes. She goes, "Fuck those horn-blowers. Let them do their dirt in the Travelodge. Is that where your cleaning woman cleans now? Fix me another, you son of a bitch!"
    She sets her lips and gives me her special look.
    D R I N K I N G ' S funny. When I look back on it, all of our important decisions have been figured out when we were drinking. Even when we talked about having to cut back on our drinking, we'd be sitting at the kitchen table or out at the picnic table with a six-pack or whiskey. When we made up our minds to move down here and take this job as managers, we sat up a couple of nights drinking while we weighed the pros and the cons.
    I pour the last of the Teacher's into our glasses and add cubes and a spill of water.
    Holly gets off the sofa and stretches on out across the bed.
    She goes, "Did you do it to her in this bed?"
    I don't have anything to say. I feel all out of words inside. I give her the glass and sit down in the chair. I drink my
    What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
    drink and think it's not ever going to be the same. "Duane?" she goes. "Holly?"
    My heart has slowed. I wait. Holly was my own true love.
    THE thing with Juanita was five days a week between the hours often and eleven. It was in whatever unit she was in when she was making her cleaning rounds. I'd just walk in where she was working and shut the door behind me.
    But mostly it was in 11. It was 11 that was our lucky room.
    We were sweet with each other, but swift. It was fine.
    I think Holly could maybe have weathered it out. I think the thing she had to do was really give it a try.
    Me, I held on to the night job. A monkey could do that work. But things here were going downhill fast. We just didn't have the heart for it anymore.
    I stopped cleaning the pool. It filled up with green gick so that the guests wouldn't use it anymore. I didn't fix any more faucets or lay any more tile or do any of the touch-up painting. Well, the truth is we were both hitting it pretty hard. Booze takes a lot of time and effort if you're going to do a good job with it.
    Holly wasn't registering the guests right, either. She was charging too much or else not collecting what she should. Sometimes she'd put three people to a room with only one bed in it, or else she'd put a single in where the bed was a