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[...] Before he got to the passenger door, I was feeling that first wave of thrill. Oh, thrill is dangerous; living is dangerous. He filled the seat. I gave him a cigarette and a light and lit mine. He’s divorced and isn’t with his children enough; he doesn’t go home to them and wake up with them. …

“A crush. I have them all the time. I have one on the guy who delivers springwater.”

“You, too?”

“We have the same guy?”

“I had an affair with one. It ended my first marriage.”

They stopped and looked at each other. LuAnn said: “That’s why it ended, and you never told me?”

“It was ei…

The traffic light changed and they crossed the street and she led him down a brick alley between brick shops, then across a courtyard. His life was repeating itself, yet it felt not repetitious but splendid, and filled with grace. He lowered his eyes to rain moving on darkened bricks. God in heaven…

At the restaurant a flaxen-haired young waitress flirted with him as a matter of course. This was Doreen Brodie. She was tall, and her limbs looked stronger than his. Some nights he had an after-hours drink with her, sitting at the bar, and her blue eyes and thin red lips aroused his passion and, m…