“Isabel turns down Oak toward the little vintage shop at Fourth Avenue, thinking of lunch—the Chinese place in Old Town, casting around inside herself for hunger, imagining the tastes of things.”

“Before Isabel could read, she loved books.”

“It's a strange product of infatuation, she thinks. To want to tell someone about mundane things. The awareness of another person suddenly sharpens your senses, so that the little things come into focus and the world seems more beautiful and complicated.”

“Her sister read that spiders have book lungs, which fold in and out over themselves like pages. This pleased Isabel immensely. When she learned later that humans do not also have book lungs, she was disappointed. Book lungs. It made complete sense to her. This way breath, this way life: through here.”

“They are in the middle of the sidewalk, face to face, between a tobacco shop and a trash can. Everything they’ve never said flows into the narrow space between them.”

“They read. The sounds of paper between them as they turn and crease and carefully avoid touching each other.”

“We do not last, she thinks. In the end, only the stories survive.”