They waited on the
shoulder. No traffic came by. She was chewing hard. Not gum, he thought. Her
last quarter-inch. Or maybe half of it. She could have torn it in two,
thumbnail to thumbnail. I’ll leave you to work out the timings. He hoped she
knew what she was doing. It wasn’t working like it had before. She wasn’t calm.
Maybe the last quarter-inch never was. How could it be? It was like swinging on
a trapeze, letting go, flying through the air toward nobody, hoping somebody
would get there and catch you before you fell. Maybe the new gold standard for
insecurity. An addict with an empty pocket. Suspended above the abyss. Nothing
in reserve. (ibid, p. 337)
