Page 128 of ClickBack

I answer with the camera facing the ceiling.

“Turn that around,” she says. “I know what your house looks like.”

“You could have called without video.”

“And given you more room to lie?”

I turn it. She is in the back of a car, holding a garment bag upright against her knees. Something gold and sequined is trying to escape through the opening.

“Where are you going?”

“To return this before somebody decides it belongs to the theater. What is on your counter?”

“A shelf.”

“From what?”

“The refrigerator.”

Di closes her eyes. “How clean can that thing get?”

“It needed doing.”

“It needed to remain assembled.”

I sit at the table. She adjusts the garment bag, thanks the driver for lowering the radio, and looks at me again.

“You missed Sunday,” she says.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not keeping attendance. I wanted to hear from you.”

“I didn’t have anything new.”

“You don’t have to develop a story before you call me.”

For a moment, neither of us speaks. Through her window I can see a man balancing flowers on the handlebars of a bicycle. He moves out of frame while I try to decide how to start.

“I’m embarrassed,” I say.

“About what?”

“How much I care. How much I let myself want before I knew what it would cost.”

“Being with him?”

“Being happy where somebody could see it.”

Di lowers the garment bag. She does not tell me to ignore people. She was there when ignoring people meant walking past the same faces every day and pretending I could not hear.

“I was happy for you when I saw that picture,” she says. “Before I saw anything underneath it.”

“So was I.”

“You get to keep that part.”

I rub a finger along the table. I know she is right. I also know I have looked at the picture enough times to read insults that are no longer on the screen.