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nothing had ever been there, nothing had happened or if it had, had disappeared without a trace, everything erased but for the giant shadow of a cone superimposed on the landscape of a drawing someone had made in soft pencil.
    This is the way she was thinking as she was driving the car. And then she thought she wanted to shake him, to wake him up as if he’d gone off to sleep, not that he actually slept more hours, in fact fewer than she did, but that he was of a weight, a sleepiness, possessed it in his being, in his genes as some might say, turned that ring around on his finger in slow motion, and wouldn’t tell where it came from or why—given his addiction to the minimal and the strict rules he followed—he consented to wearing jewelry at all. It stood out against his olive skin.
    Her mother used to shake her by the shoulders, though not to wake her up, more to bring her down, to calm her, to get her to stop from running in circles, though why she thought shaking would do the trick, she never knew. Afterwards, when she was especially agitated, she thought about it, wished for it, though of course—she pleaded with her memory to yield up its secrets—she never could have been thrown against a wall, too big of course, and no one does such things, and she couldn’t remember even being pushed against a wall or against anything else for that matter, though she did remember being shaken, and she would like to shake him to get him to attend, although since he was excruciatingly attentive to certain things, she wasn’t sure what she wanted him to attend to.
    It was an affair of storms and calms, one that was longer than either had expected and over before anyone would have, if asked, predicted. Which isn’t to say that she didn’t make extravagant gestures which unnerved him, and which they both knew unnerved him. You must have Don Giovanni, she exclaimed. No one exclaims any longer, but she did, rushed out and bought it, forced it upon him and turned it up loud. It filled the room with clashing and passion. He was suspicious, wary of extravagance and made her take it away. She rushed at him. He backed away and she rushed.
    She rushed through the market when what he wanted, though not as an articulated desire, but more as a neutral fact, was to touch the world lightly, to disturbthings less than anyone could imagine possible. He sliced his bread thinner each day and it had to be carefully handled not to tear at the center as he moved it to the toaster; if the butter was too hard, it broke the toast. But he was careful. He had fewer clothes than anyone she’d ever known. It wasn’t just that he made do or that he couldn’t have bought some few more, although he did have to “watch his pennies” as her father had used to say, but that his pleasures came from having a drawer with four t-shirts, washed out, folded and set one on top of the other. He was especially pleased if they were all the same, all white or all gray or that color they became after many washings, and she thought he ironed them, they were so perfectly flat, or perhaps it was a way of folding she never had time for.
    When they went to the market together, she watched him walk the aisles as if he had all the time in the world, had no place to get to, wasn’t hungry, didn’t much care what he bought. Her trips were always “catch-as-catch-can” between work and home, one thing and another, always some gathering of items in a rush, unbalanced in her arms, the same over and over, but his walking—and it was walking in a way she’d never thought of before—as if what one did in a supermarket wasn’t wheel or race, but walk in a desultory and appreciative way. He never bought more than four or five things, whatever he needed for a day or two, but he took so long at it and spent so much extra time at the magazine rack looking over all the new magazines, especially the ones on