“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

And Jane looked at me and said, “I want you to live forever.”

I know now that I should have said, “I want you to live forever too,” or at least I should have thought it. But instead I retreated back to the security blanket of scientific discovery. I said, “Oh, Jane, ‘forever’ depends on gradients of time. It’s a relative term.”

She slept on the couch that night, wrapped in an extra sheet.

At this point, Mica interrupts me. “My uncle was hospitalized for a broken heart. Swear to God. After my Aunt Noreen was hit by a truck. Two days later, my uncle went into spasms.”

“Technically it was cardiac arrest,” I say.

“Like I said,” Mica insists, “a broken heart.” She arches her eyebrows, as if to say, I told you so. “What happened after that?”

“Nothing,” I tell her. Jane got up and made me lunch and kissed me goodbye like nothing had happened. And since neither of us died, we never had to test the theory.

“Look,” Mica says, “do you think you can fall in love more than once?”

“Of course.” Love has always seemed to me such an ethereal issue one cannot pin it down to singular circumstances.

“Do you think you fall in love more than one way?”

“Of course,” I say again. “I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t like talking about things like this.”

“There’s your problem right there, Oliver,” Mica insists. “If you’d given yourself a little more time to think about it, you wouldn’t be sitting in this stupid diner crying into your coffee.”

What does she know, I think. She’s a goddamned waitress. She watches soap operas. Mica walks around to the other side of the counter so that she is facing me. “Tell me what it was like in the house after she left.”

“It was nice, actually. I had a lot of free time, and I didn’t have to worry about letting my work get in the way of other things.”

“What other things?”

“Family things. Like Rebecca’s birthday, for instance.” I take a sip of coffee. “No, I really didn’t miss them much at all.” Of course I couldn’t get any work done, either, because I was crazed with anxiety. I couldn’t stop picturing Jane. I picked up and left an important research excursion just to get them back home.

Mica leans forward so that her lips are inches from mine. “You lie.” Then she pulls on her apron, and heads in the direction of Hugo. “I don’t listen to liars.”

But I’ve been waiting for her all day. I’ve been waiting for Mica to listen. “You can’t leave me.”

She turns around on her heel. “Can’t stand to be deserted twice, can you?”

“Do you want to know what it was really like without her there? I could still feel her in the house. I can now. The reason I won’t go to sleep is because sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I can sense her, if that means anything. Sometimes when I’m alone I think she’s standing behind me, watching me. It’s like she never left. It’s like it always was.” Oh Jane. I lean my cheek against the cool counter. “For fifteen years I kissed her hello and goodbye and I didn’t make anything of it. It was a habit. I didn’t even notice when I was doing it. I couldn’t tell you what her skin feels like, if you asked. I couldn’t even tell you what it’s like to hold her hand.” All of a sudden I’m crying, something I haven’t done since I was a child. “I don’t have any memories of the important things.”

When my eyes focus again Mica is talking to Hugo, and pulling on her faux leather coat. “Come on,” she says, “I’m taking you back to my place. It’s in Southey, and it’s a hike, but you can make it.” She puts her arm around me, almost as tall as I am, and I lean on her to get off the stool. It takes us fifteen minutes to walk there and the whole way, as idiotic as I imagine I look, I can’t keep myself from crying.

Mica opens the door to the apartment and apologizes for the mess. Strewn across the floor are empty pizza cartons and textbooks. She leads me into a sideroom barely large enough to be a walk-in closet, which holds a white futon and a floor lamp. She loosens my tie. “Don’t get the wrong idea,” she says.

I let her take off shoes and my belt and then I practically collapse onto the low futon. Mica gets a washcloth and a bowl of water and leans my head in her lap, sponging my temples. “Just relax. You need to get some sleep.”

“Don’t leave me.”

“Oliver,” Mica says, “I have to go to work. But I’ll be back. I promise you that.” She leans close to my face. “I have a good feeling about this.”

She waits until she thinks I am asleep, and then she edges my head off her lap and creeps out of the room. I’m pretending because I know she needs to go back to the diner. She needs the money. She turns off the lights and closes the front door behind her. I have every intention of getting up and walking around, but suddenly my body has become so heavy it is a hardship. I close my eyes and when I do I can perceive her there. “Jane?” I whisper.

Maybe this is the way it would be if you had died. Maybe I would be crying, wishing there had been one extra minute. Maybe I would spend my time and money contacting mediums, reading up on the spiritual world, in hopes of finding you so that I’d have the chance to tell you things I hadn’t. Maybe I would look twice in the reflection of mirrors and store windows, hoping to see your face again. Maybe I would lie in bed like I am now, with my fists clenched so hard, trying to convince myself you are standing, flesh and blood, before me. But in all likelihood, if you were dead, I wouldn’t have any chance at all. I would not get to tell you what I should have been telling you every day: that I love you.

With the moves of a practiced dancer, the man twists the ram onto its side, catching its haunch in the crook of his leg and rolling it, a cross between a pas de deux and a half-nelson. With the ram breathing evenly, he peels away the fleece. It falls away in one continuous piece. It’s white and clean, the underside.

When he finishes he tosses the shears on the ground. Pulling the ram to its feet, he leads it by the neck out of the fenced gate. He slaps its behind and it runs off, naked.

“Excuse me,” I say, “do you work here?”

The man smiles. “I suppose you could say that.”

I take a few steps closer, watching the wet hay to see that it doesn’t stick on my still-white sneakers. “Do you know someone named Joley Lipton?” I ask, looking up. “He works here too.”

The man nods. “I’ll take you to him in a minute, if you’d like. I’ve got one more to shear.”

“Oh,” I say. “All right.” He asks me to help, to make it go faster. He points to the door of the barn. I turn to Rebecca, mouthing, I don’t believe this. I follow him into the barn.

“Hey little lady,” the man whispers, “hey my pretty little lamb. I’m gonna come a little closer. I’m gonna come a little bit closer.” As he says this he is creeping forward, and then with a shout he sinks his hands into the wool of the sheep’s back. “Take this side. She’s young and feisty, and she’ll get away.”

I do what he has done, and hunch over with my fingers roped into the fleece. All three of us walk out to the brown mat. “Where would you like me to put this?” I ask, wondering if I should just go off on my own to find Joley. God only knows how long this will take.

“Put her over here,” the man says, nodding his chin several feet forward. He lets go of his side, and, following suit, I do the same. The sheep takes a quick look at me and runs away. “What are you doing! Catch her!” the man yells.

Rebecca lunges at the sheep but it darts in the other direction. The man stares at me, incredulous. “I thought it would just stay put,” I say, explaining. The least I can do is catch the damn thing. I run to a corner of the pen and try to sink my fists into the wool of the sheep’s neck again. But suddenly I’ve lost my balance and though I reach for the fence, for Rebecca, I grab at nothing at all. I fall with an audible squelch and gag. “Rebecca,” I choke out, “get over here.”