The Lover's Dictionary Read Online Free PDF Page A

You’d talk effortlessly with our friends.
    Three drinks and you started to get going. Encouraging everyone else to drink. Joking around with me, if you could tell I was in the mood to joke. Talking to strangers. Saying you loved life.
    Four drinks and you stopped reading my cues. You joked regardless of my mood, sometimes mercilessly. Everyone was now your friend, except maybe me.
    Five drinks and you were the funniest person you’d ever heard, and you were charismatic enough to make everyone else believe it, too. Sometimes, at this point, you’d tell everyone how much you loved me. Or you’d ignore me.
    Six drinks and you were ready to fall.
    Of course, it would all depend on the drink. But eventually I learned to take that into account, too.
    I would always wait to take you home.

grimace , n.
    Yes, I keep the water next to the bed in case I get thirsty at night. But it’s also for the morning, so you can take a sip before you kiss me.

guise , n.
    It was a slow Sunday. You were reading the paper, and I was cleaning up after breakfast. The light between the slats of the blinds was making your hair glow in a pattern that shifted every time you moved. You sensed me watching, looked up.
    “What?” you asked.
    “I just wonder,” I said. “How do you picture yourself ?”
    You looked down at the paper, then back at me.
    “I don’t know,” you said. “I don’t ever really see myself. And when I do, I’m usually still an eighteen-year-old, wondering what the hell I’m doing. You?”
    And I told you: I think of a photograph you took of me, up in Montreal. You told me to jump in the air, so in the picture, my feet are off the ground. Later, I asked you why you wanted me to do that, and you told me it was the only way to get me to forget about the expression on my face. You were right. I am completely unposed, completely genuine. In my mind’s eye, I picture myself like that, reacting to you.

H
    halcyon , adj.
    A snow day. The subway has shut down, your office has shut down, my office has shut down. We pile back into bed, under the covers — chilly air, warm bodies. Nestling and tracing the whole morning, then bundling up to walk through the empty snowdrift streets, experiencing a new kind of city quiet, then breaking it with a snowball fight. A group of teenagers joins in. We come home frozen and sweaty, botching the hot chocolate on first try, then jump back into bed for the rest of the day, emerging only to wheel over the TV and order Chinese food and check to see if the snow is still falling and falling and falling, which it is.

happenstance , n.
    You said he wasn’t even supposed to be at the convention, but one of his co-workers had gotten sick, so he was filling in at the last minute. He wasn’t supposed to be at the bar when you went there with Toby, you told me. As if that in some way made it better, that fate hadn’t planned it weeks in advance.

harbinger , n.
    When I was in third grade, we would play that game at recess where you’d twist an apple while holding on to its stem, reciting the alphabet, one letter for each turn. When the stem broke, the name of your true love would be revealed.
    Whenever I played, I always made sure that the apple broke at K . At the time I was doing this because no one in my grade had a name that began with K . Then, in college, it seemed like everyone I fell for was a K . It was enough to make me give up on the letter, and I didn’t even associate it with you until later on, when I saw your signature on a credit card receipt, and the only legible letter was that first K .
    I will admit: When I got home that night, I went to the refrigerator and took out another apple. But I stopped twisting at J and put the apple back.
    You see, I didn’t trust myself. I knew that even if the apple wasn’t ready, I was going to pull that stem.

healthy , adj.
    There are times when I’m alone that I think, This is it. This is actually the natural state. All I need are my thoughts