“We ate in the dining room alcove looking over the hillside and the silent dark rooftops of my neighbors. The lights of the valley glittered below.We were both tired but we smiled at each other, and I felt a kind of happiness growing inside me. It was good to look across the table and see someone, and I thought maybe it was time to start thinking about that again—about finding someone. Sharing my life maybe.Or maybe just getting more friends around. Except when I pictured the friends I wanted around, they all looked like Dan, and when I thought about trying to find someone to share my life with, he too looked a little too much like Dan for comfort.”

“I gave a helpless laugh. “Damned if I know. I think…we seem to have reached impasse.I feel betrayed by your friendship with Verlane. I realize that’s not logical. I realize that if I’d made the mistakes Verlane has made, I’d want my friends to stand by me, hope that someone would help me when the time came. I just…”“What?”I met his eyes. “I just need to come first for someone, Guy.”

“I felt the warm brush of his fingers pushing the key into mine all the way to my heart. I focused on the key because if I looked up, I'd see what he was feeling. Worse, he'd see what I wasfeeling -- in a minute what I was feeling was going to be spilling out of me, and it didn't make any sense. It had been over long ago; we had just finally got around to saying good-bye, that was all.”

“I liked you the first time I saw you. You were sitting on the floor surrounded by books, and you looked up when I opened the door and smiled right at me. It felt like you had been waiting for me, like you were welcoming me home.”

“She didn‟t look like the athletic type to me.” “Maybe Nemov carried her. He looked like he could.” “He looked like he could carry his SUV. I don‟t know why he didn‟t.”

“I thought I recognized you."Really? He remembered me looking like Swamp Thing? How flattering.”

“And I thought maybe I didn't need to worry about my heart anymore because it had stopped beating a couple of seconds earlier, and I was still sitting there living and breathing-though admittedly I wasn't feeling much of anything.”