I was saying to Roz

  I was saying to Roz 

 “I was thinking,” I was saying to Roz, “that in retrospect that was kind of fun.”
     “What was?” Roz said.
     “I thought we were talking about Nemet and Zayna.”
     “What?” Roz said. “Who?
     “We weren’t talking at all,” Roz said.
     “Oh,” I said. “I thought we were.”

She looked at me. “Are you okay?”
     “Of course, I’m okay.”
     She looked back into her book, something by Louise Penny; that’s who she’s reading lately. I was watching Law & Order, the one where Lennie’s daughter is arrested for dealing drugs, just the pictures, no sound. Then: “No,” she said, looking back up. “Look at me,” she said.
     “I am looking at you,” I said as if I had been all along, but I was now anyway. Away from Lennie and the daughter arguing in a cell.
     “Who are Nemet and Zayna? Nemet and Zayna who?”
     “Kristovia,” I said. “You remember Kristovia.”
     “Yes,” she said, “I remember your telling me about Kristovia.”
     “We went there.”
     “Yes. So you said. You told me after you’d gotten back.”
     “Oh,” I said again. “We,” I said, though maybe to myself.

Garden of Gethsemane Cathedral, Pompeijo

“What did I tell you?” I said after a long minute.
     “We went by boat,” she said. “And we stayed in Pompeijo—is that right?”
     “Yes.”
     “In a hotel near the harbor—we could almost see it out of our window. And we visited the cathedral, and we went out to eat, and we went to a photography exhibit, and . . .”
     “That was Nemet’s,” I said, “the photographs.”
     “And we were going to stay for a while, maybe a long while. Only we didn’t because you came home instead.”

 I didn't say, “We." I said, “But later Nemet and Zayna, that was his girlfriend whose mother was going to teach us Kristovian—they came to see us here.”
     “When?”
     “I don’t remember. A year ago. More, I think.”
     “How could they have?” Roz said.                                                                            to be continued

  12.03.20