“How can they ask why I feel so angry? Do you see my problem if I never explain it?But then there's you asking me how long. Say something, it's taken me so long.”

“People always ask me how long it takes to do my hair. I don’t know, I’m never there.”

“It's not so," I said. "And how long do you think it will sustain you, feeling and seeing and touching and tasting, if there is no love? No one with you?”

“When I'm with you, I feel a kind of calm I've never felt in my life. I'm tangled up in you and you're tangled up in me and it feels right. Like it was meant to be. I love you, Maddie, and I'm sorry it's taken me so long to say it to you again.”

“She introduces me to a nurse as the Best Friend. The impersonal article is more intimate. It tells me that they are intimate, the nurse and my friend.'I was telling her we used to drink Canada Dry ginger ale and pretend were were in Canada' 'That's how dumb we were,' I say. 'You could be sisters,' the nurse says. So how come, I'll bet they are wondering, it took me so long to get to such a glorious place? But do they ask? They do not ask. Two months, and how long is the drive? The best I can explain it is this - I have a friend who worked one summer in a mortuary. He used to tell me stories. The one that really got to me was not eh grisliest, but it's the one that did. A man wrecked his care on 101 going south. He did not lose consciousness. But his arm was taken down to the bone - and when he looked at it - it scared him to death. I mean, he died. So I hadn't dared to look any closer. But now I'm doing it - and hoping that I will live through it.”

“No.""Why?""No one needs to know," I say."To know what?How long you've lasted?" Vick asks."To know anything about me," I say.”