Mami tells me he seriously thought of -

and for one heart-stopping second I really thought she might say killing himself, he thought of killing himself of killing of stopping being there -

She watches the shape my thoughts make of my eyebrows. On some days we read each other like this.

(Yesterday when - fire engine shirt, shoulder length hair, Hawaiian wooden beads - drifted past in a haze of aftershave reminiscent of sultry summer days and ice creams at the fountain in wet water-bombed T-shirts, she caught my eye from across the room and we swapped silent thoughts until the corners of her lips began twitching with ill contained hilarity.)

Not that, she says, without dismissing my unspoken suggestion with a laugh. It is not so ridiculous a thought, considering.

- institutionalising her.

I haven’t considered this. Institutionalising, an ugly word. I wonder what it would mean. An institute. I think One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. And Girl, Interrupted.

How serious a thought? And how was it said? I imagine him weeping with his face pressed into the double-glazed glass walls of his homemade prison. Muttered into the pillow, at a dreadful 3am. An ear-piercing painting of ugly words when she refuses again. To be. To do. Everything. And nothing.

Mami says, He rowed very fast across the lake and decided against it.

Thank God.