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If you decide you want what I want, you can call me. Otherwise you should delete my number. It’s easier that way. Let go the past. Always. Even if it hurts. I always thought we respected that about each other.”
    I nodded. “I always appreciated what we had. I want more now. As you said, we were honest.”
    â€œOh, Harper, we didn’t have claims on each other. That was the point. I was here whenever you asked me to be, and I am not exactly burdened with excess time. I never made demands. We were decent to each other. What else do you want?”
    â€œNot to fight now.” I tried to match her coldness. “Why go deeper into it? Why stop being decent now?”
    â€œMay I ask something personal?” Devi asked. We were standing in the kitchen, and I made coffee to have something to do with my hands.
    â€œWhy not?” I handed her a cup.
    She took a cigarette from her purse and raised her eyes to see whether I minded her smoking in the house. I shrugged, and she opened the window, then sat on the sill. “Have you been in love before?”
    â€œYes. I believe so.”
    â€œAnd it didn’t work out, or else we wouldn’t be here now. I have as well. I do not need that now. It is too, too unreliable. Know what I mean?”
    â€œI believe so.”
    â€œI mean, you think life always works out for the best, if you’re smart and work at it. It doesn’t. Life makes no sense. You work hard, and you’re clever as anyone, and you get banged up despite yourself. If I get banged up again, I at least want it to be beyond my control.”
    â€œYou think we would hurt each other?”
    â€œI know we would. We would look at each other one day, when we were dissatisfied in general, and wonder whether there was more. Something we had robbed ourselves of. As it is, we have exactly the deal we struck. You call me whenever you want. I answer. Neither of us ever has to say, ‘I want you.’ Or ‘I miss you.’ Or ‘I feel alone.’ Or ‘I love you and am devoted for the duration.’” She gestured toward the streets beyond the window. “The messy things that lead to disappointment and worse, when you are still misunderstood and feel alone inside a couple.
    â€œYou gave what you wanted, what you could. So did I. And if I didn’t give any more, I never gave less. But if you start asking me for more now I will give less. Eventually I will hate you for demanding, for needing, and you will hate me for not giving. At least that would be the smart way to feel. But if either of us was emotionally available to the other, we would have owned up to this long ago.” She placed her coffee cup down on the sill, and looked out the window.
    â€œIt’s not a logic problem,” I said, still uncertain what I felt, other than we had achieved the clarity of knowing it was over. “It’s the difference between what we think—I admire this person; maybe we can be happy together. What we feel—this is fun; we like each other—and what we experience, which is that we are not in love.”
    â€œMaybe we are not emotional people.”
    â€œEveryone is emotional. Even us.”
    â€œI am a realist. And you? Maybe when it’s a war somewhere.” She turned from the window to look at me. “Or a disaster, or someone so far removed the camera only looks one way, with no chance of the other person turning it back. Then you understand everything, and feel everything, including your own self-gratifying, morally superior emotion of empathy. What about the person next to you? What about me, who was in your bed?”
    â€œYou said you were not available in that way.”
    â€œMaybe I would have been.”
    â€œThat’s irrational.” I was confused, but it was clear our deepest selves were not present, and would not be. We were simply analyzing the end of the affair, shifting the ruins of a vanquished