"Not too much." She lowered his leg. "It looks good."

He rolled onto his stomach and pushed up onto his elbows to stretch his lower back and his abdomen and quadriceps. Maggie massaged his neck and shoulders with ointment. "Your muscles are like rock."

"I’ve been working out."

"My ass."

"I’ve had beautiful thoughts about your ass, Maggie."

"You’d better start thinking about your own. What are you going to do?"

"I’m going to Portland."

"Is your cousin going with you?"

"I don’t know. It’s up for grabs."

"He sure is quiet."

Maggie’s home-made soup burned down Mitchell’s throat. He took a bite of black bread and watched across the hall where Maggie was loading the washing machine in the bathroom with one of the piles she had made from the clothes in his seabag. She started the washer and closed the bathroom door then walked to the bedroom and lay on the bed while he ate, wandering off inside herself. She seemed to Mitchell like a lioness napping, her radiance enhanced in the bright slant of summer sunlight. He admired her beauty. "You’re in love, aren’t you?"

She laughed softly, idly, and pushed the plate of bread farther in front of him. "It’s wonderful. Knowing where I belong," she said, breathing contentment. She turned her eyes to his. "Have you been in love, Mitchell?"

He smiled for her happiness. "I’m still trying to clear my head of all the bullshit." He dropped the cloth napkin and pushed the bowl aside. "You’re an incredible woman, Maggie. I couldn’t have made it in this place without you."

She pulled herself next to him. "You’re arrogant and hard," she said. "But there’s something I love about you. Something unbroken." Her eyes were fixed on her fingertips as she traced the scar on the side of his throat. "It’s amazing. Because these are on the inside, too."

Mitchell reached for her face to lift her chin and raise her eyes to his. "When I had a factory job, I lived in a second-floor rented room. It wasn’t bad," he said. "At night if I wasn’t in the pool hall I used to sit on the window dormer in the darkness listening to the night sounds and the traffic on the street. I studied the people and imagined they had homes to go to, and families, and friends. The strange thing is, I never envied them. Not even after I was paralyzed and had to listen to them call me a cripple and handicapped and disabled. They’ve branded me as incapable and unfortunate. An undesirable. Strangers still ask me how I became paralyzed. Out of curiosity, without any regard.

"If I’m arrogant it’s because I’m tired of ignorant people. People who have no understanding of me as a man. Or of the others like me. I’m hard because this a hard road, Maggie. And I intend to get where I’m going on it."

She stroked his face, her eyes were full of caring. "I will always be your friend," she said.

"There’s the beauty in it, Maggie. The magnificent goddamn irony. Christ knows I never thought I’d ask someone to cook my food or wash my dishes and my clothes."

"I never thought I’d wash them. Not for a man," she said with a throaty little laugh at herself. "I’ve been with men. They wanted a woman who would follow because they thought what they do is important. I console myself with the hope that they’re evolving."