The only other customers were a young couple completely engrossed in each other, their legs entwined under the table. A bored, pierced boy served her. Carol took plenty of time doctoring her coffee with heavy doses of cream and sugar while she savored Mitch’s happy-to-see-you smile and prolonged the anticipation of feeling loved from right across the table.
In a sort of Escherlike optical illusion, Mitch always looked thinner after Carol hadn’t seen her in a while—her eyes set a shade deeper, the hollows of her cheeks an even greater contrast to her elastic mouth. Worrying about her was easy but useless since change and Mitch weren’t well acquainted. Besides, with Mitch’s overdeveloped sense of responsibility, anything Carol could think of to worry about had already been monumentally hand
