Andrew Greer

By his forties, all he has managed to grow is a gentle sense of himself, akin to the transparent carapace of a soft-shelled crab.

How can so many things become a bore by middle age—philosophy, radicalism, and other fast foods—but heartbreak keeps its sting? Perhaps because he finds fresh sources for it.

Life was not hard; you shouldered it bravely, knowing all the time that if you sent the signal, help would arrive.

Life so often arrives all of a sudden. And who knows which side you will find yourself on?

Nobody is kidding. They are dead serious.

And Less feels it swelling up within him, the phrase he does not want to say and yet, somehow, by the cruel checkmate logic of conversation, is compelled to say:

“Thank you.”

Less stands below it, experiencing that Wonderland sensation of having been shrunk, by Finley Dwyer, into a tiny version of himself; he could pass through the smallest door now, but into what garden? The Garden of Bad Gays.

“Strange to be almost fifty, no? I feel like I just understood how to be young.”

“Yes! It’s like the last day in a foreign country. You finally figure out where to get coffee, and drinks, and a good steak. And then you have to leave. And you won’t ever be back.”

“No one has ever been hopelessly in love with me.”

“No,” Carlos says. “You always gave them hope, didn’t you?”

And to steal that—to steal his mind—burglar Life! Like cutting a Rembrandt from its frame.