Let the snake that bit you bite me back. Let it bite me on the lip. Die with me.

Perhaps all this gave him a second wind of silliness, of youth.Perhaps he had already been 'there' years earlier and was stopping for a short stay on his return journey home.Perhaps he was playing along, watching me.Perhaps he had never done it with anyone and I'd showed up in the nick of time.

Our star life, yours with mine. As someone said over dinner once, each of us is given at least nine versions of our lives, some we guzzle, others we take tiny, timid sips from, and some our lips never touch.

Yours, I realize, is the first real card on the table. I admire this. Mine had been just a joker.

Find Cupid everywhere in Rome because we'd clipped one of his wings and he was forced to fly in circles.

I wanted to scream. When I'm with you, I feel I can take what others call my life and turns its face away from the wall. My entire life faces the wall except when I'm with you. I stare at my life and want to undo every mistake, every deceit, turn a new leaf, turn the table, turn the clock. I want to put a real face on my life, not the drab front I've been wearing since forever. So why can't I speak to you now?

But no one can prepare for the worst. The worst doesn't only dash hopes; it tears through everything in ways that are almost meant to hurt, to punish, to shame. Despite my most sobering forecasts, life can still play the cruelest card and scuttle everything—and just when I thought we were sailing past the shoals.

Ours, I began to fear, was a script without parts.

We made our way deeper into an extremely quiet alley, then through another, as if drawn through these unreal and sticky goblin lanes that seemed to lead to a different, nether realm you entered in a state of stupor and wonderment.