I was driving along a road somewhere and silently in the passenger seat the product of my thirty years was listening to me. First I reminded her of all the ways that we had failed to meet, then of the things I had not liked that I would some day cherish in her against my will, like the day I went in the shop which had long since closed, and she was standing there at the counter smiling as if to say that everything - the entire world - is impossible.

Sometimes she said nothing; other times she said only what I wanted to hear, which is less than nothing when you are driving by yourself and do not know where you are going or even if it is possible to arrive.