The optician staggered a step to the right, as he did now and again. For a moment, he looked inebriated. Last year, Selma had talked him into getting a medical exam because of his sudden staggering. The optician had driven to the county seat with Selma. A neurologist had examined him but had not found anything. Inner voices, of course, cannot be detected by medical instruments. The optician had only gone to the neurologist so that Selma would leave him in peace. He knew in advance that nothing would be found; he knew he staggered because his inner voices jostled him.

“Shut up,” the optician repeated even louder as he picked up his pace. “Selma rarely finds anything threatening or unsightly.”

He was entirely correct but had unfortunately revealed more to the voices than he should have.

“That doesn’t mean she won’t think your love unsightly,” the voices hissed. “After all, there are reasons you’ve kept the truth hidden so long,” they continued.

“Cowardice,” the optician said, and shifted the leather bag to his other hip because the bumping of the bag and the jostling of the voices had started to hurt.

“It was prudence,” the voices retorted. “Fear sometimes gives good advice,” they said, and hummed the show’s theme music.

The optician’s steps slowed. The walk to Selma’s house, which only took ten minutes, suddenly seemed like a day’s journey, a long day’s journey with piles and piles of luggage.

He passed more houses, all full of secret truths, and as he walked he dredged up all the sayings about courage he had ever read. There were a lot of them. Whenever he drove Selma to the county seat so she could do her weekend shopping, he waited for her in front of an out-of-the-way gift shop. It was the ideal place to wait for her because she would never catch him smoking there. Nowhere were you safer from Selma than in front of a gift shop.

Waiting for Selma to do her errands had given the optician time to read through the gift shop’s entire ninety-six-card display while bathing it in cigarette smoke. Each postcard showed a landscape that had nothing whatsoever to do with the county seat—in other words, an ocean or desert landscape or one with a waterfall—along with an inspirational quote that had nothing whatsoever to do with the optician. Now, having nearly reached Selma’s doorstep, the voices still growing ever stronger and he ever weaker, he began to run through the quotes out loud.

“Courage stiffens the spine,” the optician said.

“We already knew that,” the voices answered.

“Fortune favors the brave,” the optician said.

“Brave, schmave,” the voices answered.

“Better to stumble on new paths than to get stuck on old ones,” the optician said.

“Better to get stuck on old paths than to stumble on new ones, fall badly, and fracture a few vertebrae,” the voices answered.