“you ask me what I'm looking for, and I outline you.you don't recognize the shape, offer other names.you say my time will come, and I hope.”

“I don't even know what I'm looking for, although I hope I'll know it if I find it along the way. Sometimes I want to simplify my life into a simple bare thing. And other times I want to complicate it so thoroughly that everything I touch will become bound in some way to me. I've become quite aware of my contradictions, but there's no true resolution in that.”

“Are you two inseparable now?" I asked you.You laughed. "Don't you know, Evan? People are always separable."I wanted to say I had once thought the two of us were inseparable.But that would have only proven your point.”

“So what else can I tell you?" I asked. "I mean, to get you to reveal Lily to me."She triangled her fingers under her chin. "Let's see. Are you a bed wetter?""Am I a...?""Bed wetter. I am asking if you are a bed wetter."I knew she was trying to get me to blink. But I wouldn't."No, ma'am. I leave my beds dry.""Not even a little drip every now and then?""I'm trying hard to see how this is germane.""I'm gauging your honesty. What is the last periodical you read methodically?""Vogue. Although, in the interest of full disclosure, that's mostly because I was in my mother's bathroom, enduring a rather long bowel movement. You know, the kind that requires Lamaze.""What adjective do you feel the most longing for?"That was easy. "I will admit I have a soft spot for fanciful.""Let's say I have a hundred million dollars and offer it to you. The only condition is that if you take it, a man in China will fall off his bicycle and die. What do you do?""I don't understand why it matters whether he's in China or not. And of course I wouldn't take the money."The old woman nodded."Do you think Abraham Lincoln was a homosexual?""All I can say for sure is that he never made a pass at me.""Are you a museumgoer?""Is the pope a churchgoer?""When you see a flower painted by Georgia O'Keefe, what comes to mind?""That's just a transparent ploy to get me to say the word vagina, isn't it? There. I said it. Vagina.”

“All this hoping for something- or someone- that's maybe hopeless. I'm having a hard time processing what I am supposed to believe, or if I'm even supposed to. There is too much information, and I don't like a lot of it.”

“But we comforted ourselves with what we really meant to say, which was: "I don't normally feel this good about what I'm doing."Measure the hope of that moment, that feeling.Everything else will be measured against it.”

“I use the chopsticks to outline the biggest heart possible. Then I use the Sweet'N Low packets to fill it in. I borrow some from two other tables when I run out.When I'm done, I point to the heart on the table."This," I say, "is only about one ninety-millionth of how I feel about you."She laughs."I'll try not to take it personally," she says."Take what personally?" I say. "You should take it very personally.""The fact that you used artificial sweetener?"I take a Sweet'N Low and fling it at her."Not everything is a symbol!" I shout.”