You don't remember this?

 continued from
  You don’t remember this? 

 “You don’t remember this?” I said.
      Roz: “No.” She didn’t say, “How could I?”

Zayna & Nemet

“Look at me,” Roz said (again) a minute later. (Maybe it wasn’t a minute, it could have been right away; but it seemed longer: it seemed longer than right away, it seemed longer than a minute.)
     I did. I looked up out of my hands in my lap, and I looked at her. She is heartbreakingly beautiful, Not like Tess of the d’Urbervilles or Eustacia Vye or like Julie Christie in Far from the Madding Crowd. Her glasses were slipping down her little nose again. Her face is, especially in the evenings . . . “careworn” is the word. But that’s what makes it so beautiful. She cares. For me she cares.
     “I know,” I said. “Not possible, is it?”
     She shook her head. I looked back into my lap.

“Ted,” she said. I looked up. She raised a finger. “A minute,” it said. And she got up and went into the kitchen.
     She came back with bowls of oatmeal and raisins.
     “So, tell me about it,” she said. “Remind me.”
     “What?”
     “When Nemet and Zayna were here,” she said.                                                          to be continued

 12.04.20