Love
“My love,” he told her, "knows no bounds.”
“That's nice.”
“It’s Shakespeare, I think. Or Yeats.”
“Yes,” she said. “Would you like another potato?”
“It wouldn’t be Lawrence, now, would it?”
“T. E.?”
“No. D. H.”
“I doubt it. More meat?”
“What?”
“More meat? If not, I’ll keep it for tomorrow.”
“Yes. I may have heard it at school. We had this extraordinary teacher.”
“Tilley.”
“No, the other one. Stevens.”
“It’s amazing how some things stick.”
“Isn’t it! ‘My love knows no bounds.’ I think I’ll have another potato. You want one?”
Dance?
Her lips may have formed words, but the music was deafening, so he read her hands instead and then fast-forwarded his life past early thrills to wedding, flat, child, car, a second child, a house, a second car, strain, quarrels, empty looks, long drawn-out silences, distressing counselling, a flat, nights in the pub, divorce, no car, no flat, a bed, slow mindless wanderings, shortness of breath and—the tape was winding down now—death. Looking up from his open coffin, he saw that she had vanished. Oh well, it wouldn’t have been worth it, would it? Would it?