“I had waited a long time for her—or rather I was somewhere and she was somewhere else, and from time to time I remembered her and wondered if she liked me. She had told me something was coming in the mail and I knew that when it got to me I might find a roadmap for the future, if any, and however vague. There would be clues, maybe, if I was lucky, veiled behind a show of gratitude. Or perhaps it would be an outright admission of love. But more than likely it would be more strange indifference. And really it was all the same; whatever answers I would find in her words would not bring comfort to me either way. It was all just vapor that, when I was feeling rotten, I liked to believe was more.”