The Receipt in the Gray Jacket
People ask me, sometimes, if I regret opening that door.
They mean the motel.
They always mean the motel, and they ask it gently, as though there’s a version where I don’t knock, and I go on ironing that jacket, and everybody stays at the Sunday table.
There is such a version.
I’ve thought about her.
She’s fifty-one now in my imagination, and she still lives on Vernon Street, and she has a very good marriage that she describes as fine.
No.