QUOTE : In years to come, if the book was still in his possession, I wanted him to ache. Better yet, I wanted someone to look through his books one day, open up this tiny volume of <i>Armance</i>, and ask, <i>Tell me who was in silence, somewhere in Italy in the mid-eighties?</i> And then I'd want him to feel something as darting as sorrow and fiercer than regret, maybe even pity for me, because in the bookstore that morning I'd have taken pity too, if pity was all he had to give, if pity could have made him put an arm around me, and underneath his surge of pity and regret, hovering like a vague, erotic undercurrent that was years in the making, I wanted him to remember the morning on Monet's berm when I'd kissed him not the first but the second time and given him my spit in his mouth because I so desperately wanted his in mine.