Jenny Erpenbeck

Be seeing you, he said. Be seeing you. Didn’t even take her hand. Could she have been so utterly mistaken? But just then he says, behind her: Or shall we spend the evening together after all?

We mustn’t make each other miserable, he says, groping for her sex. She smiles: Isn’t it too late already?

My grandfather used to take me fishing when I was little, she says.

He has a sudden vision of her sitting on a pier, bare legs dangling, holding a fishing rod. The power of a simple sentence like that, he thinks. Makes you see something, whether you want to or not

It was her treat for the summer, but the summer is now a different summer.

Do you suppose a mirror remembers all the people it’s ever reflected?

Maybe, he replies, but you know I — I will remember the picture of you in this mirror as long as I live.

So will I, she replies.

And they go on