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Show •197 l i t t l e g i r l in t h e park l o s e s her yellow b a l l o o n and i n s t e ad of crying watches d r e a m i l y as i t a s c e n d s , d i m i n i s h i n g , into the awful b l u e. "How can you love me?" Fancy s a y s . "I'm always picking f i g h t s with you." "Oh I guess i t ' s j u s t m a g i c , " I say. Whereupon she drops the groceries we've just bought and stalks away without a word more. Strolling New Yorkers stare while I pick up a carton of eggs, a frozen chicken, ears of corn, a wide-eyed fish and six yellow grapefruit rolling along the sidewalk like the little fallen suns I used to dream about when I was a child. "Take me seriously you son of a bitch," was what she meant. I didn't always know how. She had her bizarre side. Dreams could frighten her for days. She read the future in the timing of traffic-lights as we came walking up to them. She watched the sky for signs and could be gloom-stricken for a week if the cloud-shadows over the city shaped up wrong. This time when I get to the apartment, panting and loaded down with our battered foodstuffs, she takes the packages out of my hands and kisses me passionately. "You must think I'm no cinch to live with sometimes," she says. "I love you," I tell her. But when we went out for a walk I never knew for certain |