Sensuous

Начало книги

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. It is also Sunday, which means that no mail will be delivered. But Monday’s mail will bring me no valentines. I have sent none. I will receive none.

My twenty-seventh Valentine’s Day. On my twentieth Valentine’s Day I got a present, a silver chain bracelet from the boy who would marry me four months later. On each of the next two Valentine’s Days he gifted me with candy.

I never liked candy. Hate gifts of it. Here, the box shrieks. Here, eat me and get fat! You might as well. No one cares if you’re fat or lean. No one.

Typical of Gary. So anxious to please and so incapable of it. Never flowers, which I would have loved. But candy, which I hate.

Typical, too, that I never told him. Two of us under a roof for two years and three months, neither of us ever able to take the clothing from our minds.

No one ever sent me flowers.

No one ever sent me a valentine.

I found the silver chain bracelet while packing things. On the floor in the back of the dresser. Tarnished, which seemed symbolically correct. Always — Gary. Always Gary, but not always Arlene’s Gary. Gone now four years and five months. Gone forever, and good riddance to both of us.

Читать дальше →