Of course it’s real. See the signature? Authenticate it however you like.
This is worth … Well, this is worth a tidy sum, to tell you the truth.
Tidy enough for you to want it?
Yes, definitely enough for that, let me make a phone call.
What next?
A bag, the bag that Regan had always known she’d one day pack, only this time when she stopped to place the things that mattered inside it she’d find that nothing here had mattered at all. Instead she’d throw nearly everything into garbage bags, countless balloons of bulging plastic to contain all her immaterial materials, and that would be another conversation. Two conversations, actually.
The first would be short: Regan, I’m walking into a meeting, what is it?
Nothing important, just letting you know I won’t be there when you get home, thank you for the shape you took in my life but it’s over now, it doesn’t fit.
Then the second: May I help you?
Yes, how much is all this worth?
Well, I really don’t know, this is an entire wardrobe.
Yes, I know. How soon will you know?
Maybe … maybe tomorrow? The next day?
That’s fine, take your time, here’s my phone number.
Where are you located? If we can’t accept some things—
I don’t know yet. If you can’t accept it, just donate it.
Are you sure? This is a lot of stuff, most of it looks expensive.
Yes, I’m sure.
Then, when everything was gone, she’d find something, anything. Three hundred square feet? Sure, fine, she didn’t need space. What did she possess? As long as the light was good, it would do.
We’ll need to run a standard credit check, obviously. You understand.
I can give you a year’s rent upfront.
You … you can?
Yes. Cashier’s check okay?
Well … alright, yes, fine.
（It’s not the best neighborhood, but not the worst, either.）
She wouldn’t throw her phone in the river or the lake. That was running away, which she wasn’t doing.
She wasn’t running away. She wasn’t running at all. She was coming back, and it would only look and feel like running until she knocked on Aldo’s door and he pulled it open, and then it would go like this: Are you ready?
And she would say: Yes, I’m ready.
Come on, Rinaldo, let’s start again.
part four, firsts.
THE FIRST TIME WITH HER is rushed, embarrassingly so, faster than he’d like. The first night is her at his door, saying words he can hardly hear through the effort of straining to recognize reality, to stop his head from saying, Is this a dream? Haven’t we dreamt this?, and reminding himself that no, this was real, this was real because behind him the water will boil soon, the salt will go in and then the pasta, the oven will beep and dinner will come next. His brain is not thinking, Oh, she’s here, I knew it, instead his brain is no use to him at all. It is thinking, What time is this?, and it doesn’t mean six o’clock, it doesn’t mean evening, it doesn’t even mean dinnertime, it just means, Where are we in the cosmos, because I have lived this so many times in fantasy that it has become six different forms of reality and now, tell me, which reality are we?
The first time, he doesn’t ask any questions that would count as questions; nothing journalistic like when, how, where, what, and most importantly, why? As in, why him, why anyone at all, but most especially, why him? But he doesn’t ask anything informative, he only steps aside, permits her through. She glances around at the simmering water and the pasta and the chicken in the oven; she recognizes she’s entered a room which did not previously have plans to contain her and now has to expand. She opens her mouth to apologize and he, unthinking—thinking only that he doesn’t want her to be sorry, that in fact ‘sorry’ from her tongue should be reserved for only the most capital of offenses, such as disappearing from his life forever—he takes her hand and holds it, urgently. She looks down and closes her mouth, and maybe her heart beats faster. Maybe her breath quickens, maybe it stops. He can’t hear the sounds of her physicalities over the loud rushing in his ears. He is a mathematician, a scientist, and he is precise in his waiting, so she is the one who graciously fumbles for him, towards him, on his behalf. He lifts her onto the kitchen island and they’re both still mostly-clothed when he fills her, right there next to the pasta that will soon be cooked. His forehead presses to hers as her hips lift from the countertop which might be marble, might not, he’s never been an expert in materials but he knows that she feels soft and smooth, like velvet. He knows her tactility now and he can never go back to not knowing. The water boils and he comes, he doesn’t know if she does, he asks her and she laughs. She pulls his mouth to hers, says to his tongue and his teeth and his shortness of breath, I’m hungry, what’s for dinner?