8:30am. Saturday. With company.

What is there to say? We look both ways. The air is wet as ocean breath, but not so salty. We pass the cultured lawns and their flower beds, avoiding the steep hills and the back ways with their ambiguities. I carry a phone in a small pouch pinned over my belly, in case there is need to call for help. She tells me I would love whatever she loves. I try not to let it rile me, but no, I snap,  As if simply to smile and nod would be a poisoning, a sharp insertion between the ribs. You like it though, don't you? I offer back, a kindness, a suggestion that it is ok for our likes to be different likes, our likes can be different likes and still there be sweetness between us. Oh, she says, This is so fun.

We pass the sleeping dead without making any mention.