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In a sweep the sheet fell away and she was sitting up cross legged. — I mean have you ever heard? it's really children that choose their parents just so they can get born? He muttered something unforgiving at the knee looming there that abruptly, his hand up to bring it aside — no, no wait. I mean sometimes it's like they'll take anybody isn't it, just bringing some man and woman together who have no other reason to be together at all, or they shouldn't, I mean there's every reason they shouldn't be together maybe they don't even know each other, they probably hardly know each other and they could have done something else, I mean they could just have gone sailing or something but instead they, I mean… her face coloured, looking down — don't make fun of me.

— Why would I want to make…

— I mean because you're so, I'm just always afraid you will.

But he'd rolled over on the evidence, his hand resigned on her knee there where it might have been a shoulder, an elbow, crossing a street, taking her arm in to dinner as though they might just have met, a mere courtesy finding themselves seated together by a host who knew one of them slightly enough to abandon them both to the polite fare exchanged before the soup came in — like this friend of mine, she offered, sitting up pert as though this nakedness still lay hid under some décolletage pierced only in the eye of the beholder, proffering her best friend — when we'd sleep over and whisper about being stolen by the gypsies? and she said she thought she'd been stolen from the gypsies. Because her father, I mean if you ever knew Edie's father… a prospect which seemed to rouse his interest even less than that of knowing Edie and the gypsies, his hand on her knee there as it might have been his hand on her knee under the tablecloth while the wine was being poured — because I thought she knew everything, like she'd say that women had this extra layer of fat that men didn't have, for survival? and we were both just as skinny as boards and were scared we might not, survive I mean. And then she'd talk about living in this previous existence and I believed that too. I mean she was really the one that thought of that telescope, if she got far enough away where she could see herself in this previous existence? As what, he wanted to know, or pretended to, his hand stalling along the course of his recent dry run there against her thigh. — It was always different. And I mean she's the one that told me about all these babies trying to get born… The air would be so thick with them you couldn't breathe he said, good God, when you think of all the people who are dead? — Now you are! and all the polite, the politic, the sheet torn away and with it the flimsy stratagem of the tablecloth — making fun of me, aren't you…

But he'd drawn her down, laid out the length of her beside him — no no no, his voice as calming as the hand along her back, it was all just part of the eternal nonsense, where all the nonsense comes from about resurrection, transmigration, paradise, karma the whole damned lot. — It's all just fear he said, — you think of three quarters of the people in this country actually believing Jesus is alive in heaven? and two thirds of them that he's their ticket to eternal life? fingertips running light as breath down skirting the top of the rift, tracing down its edge, just this panic at the idea of not existing so that joining that same Mormon wife and family in another life and you all come back together on judgment day, coming back with the Great Imam, coming back as the Dalai Lama choosing his parents in some Tibetan dung heap, coming back as anything — a dog, a mosquito, better than not coming back at all, the same panic wherever you look, any lunatic fiction to get through the night and the more farfetched the better, any evasion of the one thing in life that's absolutely inevitable… his fingers searching the edge of the rift and down it, deeper, desperate fictions like the immortal soul and all these damned babies rushing around demanding to get born, or born again, easing the rift wider to the moistened breadth of his hand, — I'd come back as a buzzard Faulkner said once, nothing hates him or wants him or needs him or envies…

— Oh! she pulled away, up on that damned elbow again — have you read Faulkner much?

— A long time ago. If then.

— What?

— Never mind. He'd sat straight up, one foot off to the floor.

— But, I mean don't you like Faulkner?

— I don't like Faulker. I don't dislike Faulkner. He'd got hold of his trousers, — I just don't know why in hell we're talking about Faulkner.

— But why are you, I mean where are you going.

— Cigarette… he had one leg in, — I left things downstairs.

— But no… she caught at his shoulder — I mean, you don't have to right now do you? get up I mean?

— Why not.

— Well because you, I mean because we were talking… her hand running down his arm, down where he'd wilted there before her eyes — and you might not come back.

— As what, a dog? a mosquito? He pulled the trouser leg up sharply, freed his leg for the other one — as a buzzard?

— No that's not what I, I mean I didn't mean to upset you about Faulkner I thought you were talking about Faulkner, and I mean I don't know if I've read Faulkner much either. Except The Heart of Darkness, I think I read that once.

He leaned back, simply looking at her, at the effort clouding the clean planes of her face, blurring the light of her eyes. — That's an excellent thing, he said finally.

— Where the girl's body gets sent home someplace down south right at the start? and the hearse keeps breaking down going to the cemetery? He just looked at her. — Because I mean I still mix things up sometimes. Like the men I heard about on the radio whose boat turned over? and they were saved in this thrilling rescue by postcard? Her hand came straying up his calf still bared there on the bed, over his knee, — do you think that's why people write it? fiction I mean?

— From outrage… he eased his leg closer.

— No or maybe just boredom, I mean I think that's why my father made all those things up, because he was bored, reading to this little girl on his lap he was bored so that's why they were always about him… her hand moved on, paused smoothing hairs in its idle course — because what you just said, about being this captive of somebody else's hopes? and about disappointment? I mean I think people write because things didn't come out the way they're supposed to be.

— Or because we didn't. No… his legs fallen wider for her fingertip twisting in a coil of hair — no, they all want to be writers. They think if something happened to them that it's interesting because it happened to them, hearing about all the money that gets made writing anything cheap, anything sentimental and vulgar whether it's a book or a song and they can't wait to sell out.

— Oh. Do you think that? Her hand had come up now to the fork of his leg, opened, as though to weigh what it found there, — because I mean I don't think so, I don't think they sell out she said, her voice weighing the idea as though for the first time, — I mean these poor people writing all these bad books and these awful songs, and singing them? I think they're doing the best they can… her hand closing there gently. — That's what makes it so sad.

— Yes… he shifted almost stealthily, trying to rid himself of those trousers — you're right aren't you.

— And then when it doesn't work… her grasp closed tighter on the sudden surge, — when they try and it doesn't work…

— Yes that's the, when they, that's worse yes… his thumb tugging down at a beltloop with the haste he'd drawn the trouserleg on — that's the, isn't it that's the worst yes, failing at something that wasn't worth doing in the first place that's the…