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"You want some information?" I asked her. My voice was trembling, thickening. "I'll give you some whether you want it or not. Okay? You're breaking my heart here. That's the information. You're breaking my goddam heart."
"I'm not, though," she said. "Hearts are tough, Pete. Most times they don't break. Most times they only bend."
* * *
Then I turned on the radio and the music made things a little better. The music always does. I'm past fifty now, and the music still makes things better; it's the fabled automatic.
* * *
My eyes filled with sudden unexpected tears. I put my hands over my mouth to hold in the sob that wanted to come out. I didn't want to wake Nate up, didn't want him to see me crying. But I cried, all right. I sat there at my desk and cried for her, for me, for both of us, for all of us. I can't remember hurting any more ever in my life than I did then. Hearts are tough, she said, most times hearts don't break, and I'm sure that's right . . . but what about then? What about who we were then? What about hearts in Atlantis?
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… Of course when things started falling all around you you got forgetful and the first thing you were apt to forget was where your best interests lay.
* * *
What good was it if it brought you to such things? Bad eyes and bad blood-pressure were one thing; bad ideas, bad dreams, and bad ends were another. After awhile you wanted to say to God, ah, come on, Big Boy, quit it. You lost your innocence when you grew up, all right, everyone knew that, but did you have to lose your hope, as well? What good was it to kiss a girl on the Ferris wheel when you were eleven if you were to open the paper eleven years later and learn that she had burned to death in a slummy little house on a slummy little dead-end street? What good was it to remember her beautiful alarmed eyes or the way the sun had shone in her hair?
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