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brief and pointless and he’s been living in Green Point ever since. He walked across the bridge right after the planes hit, made his way to me. Must have arrived right after I left with Lou.
    We look at each other a long time. There is no big conversation. No more questions. No push for repentance. For once we’re calling it even. I’m here. You’re here. That’s all we need. In spite of everything, and because love stories never end when they should, I believe we still have a chance.
    We tuck into each other like origami, fall asleep like captive hamsters, our lips touching, pretending we’re each other’s reasons for surviving the cataclysm. We’re good for a while, too. Build a pretty pattern of peace—me cooking us dinner, Nico playing with my hair and counting all the ways we’re perfect together, starting with the fact that we wear the same size jeans.
    I think this is it: the near-death experience we needed to make us work.
    For a moment, I’m happy.
    It will be months, and most of the wreckage will have already been cleared, before we admit it’s not enough. It willbe uneventful, the way most life-changing moments are. You don’t see them happening.
    An April morning. Getting ready for my new job. I will be making my coffee the way I like it: dark, bitter, thick mire with no milk or sugar. He will come up behind me, press his naked chest to my back. He will slip his hand around my mug and take a sip, make a spitting sound and ask how I can drink this shit—say, “Leave it to a Colombiana to ruin the coffee,” push me out of the way, “Let me show you how it’s done, baby.” And I will decide without his knowing, without ever saying, with only an amended gaze that he will never notice, to let the story end.

GREEN

Your mom just called to tell you that Maureen, the girl who tortured you from kindergarten to high school, who single-handedly made it so that you were never welcome in Girl Scouts, soccer, or yearbook, is dead. Maureen, who said you weren’t invited to her ninth birthday party because you were too tall and your head would bust through the roof of her house. Maureen, who said that your skin was the color of diarrhea, that your Colombian dad dealt drugs, that boys didn’t like you because you looked like their maids, is finally, finally dead.
    Officially it was some kind of organ failure, but Maureen is dead because she hasn’t eaten in years. You know Maureen went through years of food rehab till her family’s money ran out and then she went into the free experimental programs at Columbia Pres. You know Maureen’s dad died a few years ago of brain cancer, diagnosed and buried within three months. You know Maureen was a little bananas at theend, because, of all people in the world, she started writing letters to you—not sure how she got your address. You’ve moved a dozen times since high school, when you had your last blowout with her right after the graduation ceremony. She called you a shit-skinned whore in your white dress, miniature red roses in your French twist. She’d only just started losing weight and you shouted back that she was a fat albino midget no diet would ever save, something you will always regret.
    You never knew why Maureen picked you to hate. Her brother was a nice person—made it to Yale and was the family pride. He always asked you how things were going when you ran into him in town. And Maureen’s parents were okay people. They even showed up at your grandfather’s funeral, said they knew him from the Rotary Club. But Maureen was a monster in a short, tight gymnastics body, thick ankles and black hair from her Portuguese mom, freckled like a dalmatian thanks to her Irish dad.
    Your mom is sighing because it’s really tragic when a girl you’ve watched grow up dies.
    “And her mother,” says your mom. “That poor, poor woman.”
    She says she’ll go to the funeral and maybe you should send the family a card like you did when the interior