Lynn is standing at the sink now, measuring out rice, and looking at me with those bright-green eyes that say, “I know what I’m doing here.” She looks like an angel. My knees begin to buckle, and I just want to put her down on the kitchen floor and start the trouble all over again. I want to bare her breast and nod on her nipple. I’m her baby. She’s my baby. Everybody’s somebody’s baby. Let’s make a baby.

Lynn says, “What else besides rice?”

“Do you want salad?” I say.

In April we put a garden in the backyard. The land behind our house is flat. It gets both sun and shade. The grass is long and lush and light green, and right now there are some dandelions. It’ll need mowing soon. The garden was our team project, although the day we rented the tiller Lynn was sick and I did everything, and I’d just as soon have Fritos over a vegetable any day of the week. But we both like looking at the garden.

After dinner we go and check out the garden, walking between the rows, careful of where we step. Sometimes she’ll pull weeds. When it gets dark we lie on the cold metal basement doors and watch the sky. Above us, the clouds are silently on the move, backlit by the moon. The smell of cut grass is everywhere. The sweet smell and the crickets, and the slick noise of lawn sprinklers hissing in the dark. Grass smells good. There should be a name for it.

“I’ll get the salad,” I say. There’s a basket we use for the vegetables. I take it off the top of the refrigerator.

“I’ll do it,” Lynn says. “I’m in the mood.” She pulls the basket out of my hands and goes out the back door, the glass doorknob banging against the wall.

The sun is going down. Flat, ginger-colored light is sprayed against every surface inside the kitchen, across the counters and the refrigerator door and the walls that are the color of yellow wine. I hear her say hello to Whiskey, the cat. The people next door own him. Strange name for a cat.

It’s Tuesday. It’s almost seven. Time to eat.

We said we’d get a cat, but what I really want is a dog— dogs are better—but cats are less permanent. If we had to move, you could give the cat away, or leave it. No one would do that to a dog, and anyway it’s against the law. A dog would starve to death.