[They’re sitting there. We’ve read some Mansfield–all of us–Bliss, The Garden Party, Something Childish But Very Natural. I’m listening to their conversation. I have been for days now. The one with the beard is in love with the other one. He is the giggling geek who can’t see that they wouldn’t be any good together. Not even a little bit.]

O, it’s nice the place my folks have up North. You get a body of water in front of you, and you just kind of–you get that body of water in front of you… You’re relaxing at the cottage.

You like that?

Yes–I like having bodies in front of me. Of water…

[I am just going through the day’s events. I am parsing others’s conversations. I am not writing. I am picking the thin bones of bodies that don’t belong to me. There is nothing here that belongs to me. My teeth clack against a dusty white finger, like keys against a typewriter. In the air are clouds of chalk.

What page was that couple on?]