I’m not sure why I thought the matter would end there. One day, she caught me over espresso.

That’s not your old typewriter, is it?

No, I told her, it isn’t.

So, you bought a new one?

To this point, I hadn’t been lying. I was careful not to fall into that trap. But each time I sidestepped the question, it felt as though I was.

It was a gift, I told her. That was the truth. Not the whole truth. And she knew it.

A friend?

Yes.

Do I know him?

Shit.

And that had been that. That was as far as I could carry the story without the weight of it crushing me.

A woman, I told Mimi. Naomi Gallant. She fixes typewriters.

MIMI AND I LIE on the bed together. The spiders are gone. I figure that they’re just out foraging and that they’ll be back.

Mimi shifts her weight. “You want to do anything?”

“For instance?”

“A walk,” she says. “I’m feeling better. The rice helped. So did the banana.”

“You want to go for a walk? Now?”

“I’ve been in the room all day. Fresh air might be good for me.”

“Or we could stay here.”

Mimi plays with my ear. “You like it here, don’t you.”

I make the same sound that I make when Mimi bakes an apple pie and cuts me a large piece while it’s still warm.

“Unfortunately,” she says, “my bladder is full, and you’re pressing on it.”

I sit up and run a hand through my hair.

“Oh, Bird, your left eye is starting to swell again.” Mimi touches my face. “Come on,” she says, “let’s get a cold compress on that.”

The eye has not only swollen up, but now the white of the eye is red, as though I’ve suffered a hemorrhage when I wasn’t looking. I stand in front of the mirror and pull the lid to one side.

Red everywhere.

“It’s not eye cancer,” says Mimi. “So don’t go there.”

I work on the eye with a cold towel. I’d prefer that the towel was warm, but Mimi insists that anything hot could encourage the swelling.

“Have you ever thought what your life would be like if you had made different choices?”

“Like what?”

“Everybody wonders about that. What if I had gone into law instead of fine art? What if I had stayed on the reserve? What if I had married Martin?”

“Martin?”

“Or Guido?”

“Guido?”

“They’re just examples, Bird,” says Mimi. “They’re not real people. And I would have shot myself before I became a lawyer. But what if I had? How would my life be different?”

“Okay.”

“What if your father hadn’t deserted the family? What if he had stayed and moved everyone back to the reserve in Oklahoma?”

“In the States, it’s reservations, and the Cherokee don’t have one.”