What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories

king-size. I tell you, there were complaints, and sometimes there were words. Folks would load up and go somewhere else.
    Gazebo
    The next thing, therms a letter from the management people. Then there's another, certified.
    There's telephone calls. There's someone coming down from the city.
    But we had stopped caring, and that's a fact. We knew our days were numbered. We had fouled our lives and we were getting ready for a shake-up.
    Holly's a smart woman. She knew it first.
    THEN that Saturday morning we woke up after a night of rehashing the situation. We opened our eyes and turned in bed to take a good look at each other. We both knew it then. We'd reached the end of something, and the thing was to find out where new to start.
    We got up and got dressed, had coffee, and decided on this talk. Without nothing interrupting. No calls. No guests.
    That's when I got the Teacher's. We locked up and came upstairs here with ice, glasses, bottles. First off, we watched the color TV and frolicked some and let the phone ring away downstairs. For food, we went out and got cheese crisps from the machine.
    There was this funny thing of anything could happen now that we realized everything had.
    "WHEN we were just kids before we married?" Holly goes. "When we had big plans and hopes? You remember?" She was sitting on the bed, holding her knees and her drink.
    "I remember, Holly."
    "You weren't my first, you know. My first was Wyatt. Imagine. Wyatt. And your name's Duane. Wyatt and Duane.
    What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
    Who knows what I was missing all those years? You were my everything, just like the song."
    I go, "You're a wonderful woman, Holly. I know youVe had the opportunities."
    "But I didn't take them up on it!" she goes. "I couldn't go outside the marriage."
    "Holly, please," I go. "No more now, honey. Let's not torture ourselves. What is it we should do?"
    "Listen," she goes. "You remember the time we drove out to that old farm place outside of Yakima, out past Terrace Heights? We were just driving around? We were on this little dirt road and it was hot and dusty? We kept going and came to that old house, and you asked if could we have a drink of water? Can you imagine us doing that now? Going up to a house and asking for a drink of water?
    "Those old people must be dead now," she goes, "side by side out there in some cemetery. You remember they asked us in for cake? And later on they showed us around? And there was this gazebo there out back? It was out back under some trees? It had a little peaked roof and the paint was gone and there were these weeds growing up over the steps. And the woman said that years before, I mean a real long time ago, men used to come around and play music out there on a Sunday, and the people would sit and listen. I thought we'd be like that too when we got old enough. Dignified. And in a place. And people would come to our door."
    I can't say anything just yet. Then I go, "Holly, these things, we'll look back on them too. We'll go, 'Remember the motel with all the crud in the pool?'" I go, "You see what I'm saying, Holly?"
    Gazebo
    But Holly just sits there on the bed with her glass.
    I can see she doesn't know.
    I move over to the window and look out from behind the curtain. Someone says something below and rattles the door to the office. I stay there. I pray for a sign from Holly. I pray for Holly to show me.
    I hear a car start. Then another. They turn on their lights against the building and, one after the other, they pull away and go out into the traffic.
    "Duane," Holly goes.
    In this, too, she was right.
    I Could See the Smallest Things
    I WAS in bed when I heard the gate. I listened carefully. I didn't hear anything else. But I heard that. I tried to wake Cliff. He was passed out. So I got up and went to the window. A big moon was laid over the mountains that went around the city. It was a white moon and covered with scars. Any damn fool could imagine a face there.
    There was light enough so that I could see everything in the yard—lawn chairs, the willow tree, clothesline strung between the poles, the petunias, the fences, the gate standing wide open.
    But nobody was moving around. There were no scary shadows. Everything lay in moonlight, and I could see the smallest things. The clothespins on the line, for instance.
    I put my hands on the glass to block out the moon. I
    What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
    looked some more. I listened. Then I went back to