Frank led me downstairs and as he took off my shirt I said, “Wait!”

I’d spotted a giant sepia photograph of two people holding a baby, framed over the fireplace, and I asked who those people were, because they were beautiful.

He said that they were his parents, and that the baby was him, but that when his parents got divorced his parents hated each other so much that neither of them could stand to look at the picture anymore, and were going throw it away, so he took it.

I put my shirt back on, because maybe everything just winds up terrible in the end and there’s no point at all and we couldn’t possibly fuck with all that tragedy watching over us, could we?

Frank took my shirt back off, but not unkindly.