There had been a moment, in the car, when everything was still open.

When one decent choice could have changed the entire course of what came after.

I had handed him that moment, and he had laughed and hung up and gone back to reassuring his mistress, and by doing so he had chosen this room, this vote, this ruin, as surely as if he had voted for it himself.

He said he loved me.

Perhaps, in whatever narrow way he was capable of, he even believed it.

But love that only appears once everything else is gone is not love; it is the panic of a drowning man reaching for the nearest solid thing.