“Oh, please don’t be stalking me.”

“I’m not stalking. That would imply hiding. I want you to know I’m still close by. Walking the perimeter.” She pulls Cate in by the front of her sweater. “Especially now.” Cate feels her shoulder getting damp with tears. Dana is an easy crier, but even so, Cate’s moved. She stands still, but inside is trying to back up. Really trying.

“You have to remember we’ve entered a new time frame. We’re not close anymore. We’re supposed to be going on with our lives without each other. Shouldn’t you and Jody be getting married? Now that it’s legal?”

“I don’t want to talk about weddings.” This is exactly the part of conversations with Dana that she hates. Sidesteps out of the way of pointed questions. Like now. Does Dana mean she hates flowers and dresses with trains? Handel? Or the weddings of friends, how corny they can be? Or is she saying she and Jody, on the other side of an opaque barrier from Cate, have already gotten married? Cate doesn’t want to ask, because that would indicate she cares about the answer, and she does not want to indicate that. She’d like to keep her distance from Dana’s real life, as though it’s a play and she has a seat in the last row of the balcony. Between scenes, she can hear the shushing of pieces being pushed around while the stage is dark and the events to come are fine shadows made of dust, reassembled into new, colorful items, already in place when the lights come up again. But still, far, far away. She tries again to get this across.

“Every time I see you, you seem to be operating on the assumption that I’m still waiting for you, that nothing has changed with us. When in fact everything has.”

“Unfortunately, for me anyway, not enough has changed. I still think about you way too much. You, too, maybe? Your hand is shaking. Your little half-hand.” Dana takes it gently, by its two fingers. “Oh, baby.”

“I’ve got too much going on now. In my life and in my head. I can’t get back into it with you.”

“Maybe now is exactly when you need me. To understand where you are.” And then she’s pushing Cate against a wall, wiping her wet hands through Cate’s hair, holding her head as if it needs protection. Then, instead of saying any of the things anyone else would say—how sorry she is that this has happened, how traumatized Cate must be, how brave she was—she puts her mouth over Cate’s ear and says, “You must feel so fucking powerful.”

No one else has guessed this.

bludout