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“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…

As a young man, in his first marriage, he had done some erotic dabbling: one-night stands whose causes, he now knew, were alcohol, night, and vanity. This had only scratched his marriage: a little blood showed, nothing more; for his wife had also fallen from grace, and in the same way. Theirs was a…

“I know you’re having an affair.”

“That’s all it is. It just ended.”

“Because my legs are broken?”

“I don’t know. Yes. Because your legs are broken.” She held her breath for a moment, then released it. “It’s not my first.”

“No.”

“I need a cigarette for this.”

His body started to s…