I'm an extra in your story. Well, you're an extra in mine, boy.

The Heart of Fairyland is a story," she said, and she felt so warm and light and full of rightness of it that she thought she might faint.

She walks into my life legs first, a long drink of water in the desert of my thirties. Her shoes are red; her eyes are green. She's an Italian flag in occupied territory, and I fall for her like Paris. She mixes my metaphors like a martini and serves up my heart tartare. They all do. Every time. They have to. It's that kind of story.

Life is like that. Death sweeps it away. That's what death is for. That's why they keep telling this story. It's the only story.