"I used to want to know all the secrets, and every time I learned one, I
felt like I'd taken -- a step. On a journey. To a place. A destination:
To be the kind of person who knew all this stuff, the way everyone
around me seemed to know all this stuff. I thought that once I knew
enough secrets, I'd be like them.
"I don't want to learn secrets anymore, Andrew." She shrugged off his
arm and took a faltering step down the slope, back toward the road.
"I'll wait in the car, okay?"
"Mimi," he said. He felt angry at her. How could she be so selfish as to
have a crisis *now*, *here*, at this place that meant so much to him?
"Mimi," he said, and swallowed his anger.
#
His three brothers stayed on his sofa for a week, though they only left
one wet towel on the floor, only left one sticky plate in the sink, one
fingerprint-smudged glass on the counter.
He'd just opened his first business, the junk shop -- not yet upscale
enough to be called an antiques shop -- and he was pulling the kinds of
long hours known only to ER interns and entrepreneurs, showing up at 7
to do the books, opening at 10, working until three, then turning things
over to a minimum-wage kid for two hours while he drove to the city's
thrift shops and picked for inventory, then working until eight to catch
the evening trade, then answering creditors and fighting with the
landlord until ten, staggering into bed at eleven to sleep a few hours
before doing it all over again.
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