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Show 90 Hall catches his breath. Tears are pushing at the corners of his eyes. 'Real?' he thinks: 'real?' What's 'real?' His head starts dizzying, as though he were under water. --We'll talk about it, he says. - I'm talking about it. --Tonight. Your place. --I'll be there. Jewel laughs and hangs up. 'Real.' That evening they make love, and, embraced, Hall tells Jewel about his headaches. About equilibria. About his elegant terror. And when he is finished, he is sobbing. Then laughing. Then both. He reaches for Jewel: He hasn't asked her questions; still, he expects answers. Instead, she slides from the bed and walks across to her window and stands there, palms flat against the glass, fingers spread, looking out. Outside, there is the elevated interstate, heading north to Michigan, south to Cincinatti, its arclights entering and wrapping her tight and tapered torso like filmy hands. Hall feels himself in a car on black ice. Jewel leaves the window, the bedroom. Hall finds her in the kitchen eating leftover Chinese chicken wings. She won't talk. She won't look at him. When they start an exchange, every word is spare, opaque, brittle. -Wings, Hall says as an opener. -Wings, Jewel repeats. -Leftover wings. Cold. --Would you like a microwave? Hall asks. Jewel looks at him, trying, he feels, to enter his eyes. -Would jrou? she asks. The next morning, Hall leaves Toledo. It is the most inexplicable move |