Wednesday, November 28, 1990. 5:54 P.M.I sleep on Rose’s couch for a few nights after my unsettling dream. She took one look at me when I got to the restaurant on Monday, poured me a big mug of coffee, and steered me to the mismatched but comfortable chairs in the tiny break room.
“We have fifteen minutes before our shift,” she said. “Talk.”
So I told her about the late-night phone calls from Lou, how his deep voice reciting poetry to me broke my heart again and again and how his bleeding regret made me to both want to yell at him—this is your own damned fault!!—and sweep him up in my arms and shower him with love and comforting kisses.
I don’t tell her about how listening to him recite Walt Whitman makes my insides squirm or how I torture myself by replaying his messages over and over
