What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories

bed.
    But I couldn't get to sleep. I kept turning over. I thought about the gate standing open. It was like a dare.
    Cliffs breathing was awful to listen to. His mouth gaped open and his arms hugged his pale chest. He was taking up his side of the bed and most of mine.
    I pushed and pushed on him. But he just groaned.
    I stayed still awhile longer until I decided it was no use. I got up and got my slippers. I went to the kitchen and made tea and sat with it at the kitchen table. I smoked one of Cliffs unfiltereds.
    It was late. I didn't want to look at the time. I drank the tea and smoked another cigarette. After a while I decided I'd go out and fasten up the gate.
    So I got my robe.
    The moon lighted up everything—houses and trees, poles and power lines, the whole world. I peered around the backyard before I stepped off the porch. A little breeze came along that made me close the robe.
    I started for the gate.
    THERE was a noise at the fences that separated our place from Sam Lawton's place. I took a sharp look. Sam was leaning with his arms on his fence, there being two fences to lean on. He raised his fist to his mouth and gave a dry cough.
    "Evening, Nancy," Sam Lawton said.
    I said, "Sam, you scared me." I said, "What are you doing up?" "Did you hear something?" I said. "I heard my gate unlatch."
    / Could See the Smallest Things
    He said, "I didn't hear anything. Haven't seen anything, either. It might have been the wind."
    He was chewing something. He looked at the open gate and shrugged.
    His hair was silvery in the moonlight and stood up on his head. I could see his long nose, the lines in his big sad face.
    I said, "What are you doing up, Sam?" and moved closer to the fence.
    "Want to see something?" he said.
    'Til come around," I said.
    I let myself out and went along the walk. It felt funny walking around outside in my nightgown and my robe. I thought to myself that I should try to remember this, walking around outside like this.
    Sam was standing over by the side of his house, his pajamas way up high over his tan-and-white shoes. He was holding a flashlight in one hand and a can of something in the other.
    SAM and Cliff used to be friends. Then one night they got to drinking. They had words. The next thing, Sam had built a fence and then Cliff built one too.
    That was after Sam had lost Millie, gotten married again, and become a father again all in the space of no time at all. Millie had been a good friend to me up until she died. She was only forty-five when she did it. Heart failure. It hit her just as she was coming into their drive. The car kept going and went on through the back of the carport.
    "Look at this," Sam said, hitching his pajama trousers and squatting down. He pointed his light at the ground.
    What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
    I looked and saw some wormy things curled on a patch of dirt.
    "Slugs," he said. "I just gave them a dose of this," he said, raising a can of something that looked like Ajax. "They're taking over," he said, and worked whatever it was that he had in his mouth. He turned his head to one side and spit what could have been tobacco. "I have to keep at this to just come close to staying up with them." He turned his light on ajar that was filled with the things. "I put bait out, and then every chance I get I come out here with this stuff. Bastards are all over. A crime what they can do. Look here," he said.
    He got up. He took my arm and moved me over to his rosebushes. He showed me the little holes in the leaves.
    "Slugs," he said. "Everywhere you look around here at night. I lay out bait and then I come out and get them," he said. "An awful invention, the slug. I save them up in that jar there." He moved his light to under the rosebush.
    A plane passed overhead. I imagined the people on it sitting belted in their seats, some of them reading, some of them staring down at the ground.
    "Sam," I said, "how's everybody?"
    "They're fine," he said, and shrugged.
    He chewed on whatever it was he was chewing. "How's Clifford?" he said.
    I said, "Same as ever."
    Sam said, "Sometimes when I'm out here after the slugs, I'll look over in your direction." He said, "I wish me and Cliff was friends again. Look there now," he said, and drew a sharp breath. "There's one there. See him? Right there where my light is." He had the beam directed onto the dirt
    / Could See the Smallest Things
    under the rosebush. "Watch this," Sam said.
    I closed my arms under my breasts and bent