Matt's apartment was warm and inviting. His life was all together different than my middle class suburban one. Matt's apartment was small. I remembered that when we were together that he had been waiting to change his living arrangements. He had planned to move into my house so during the years we were together he spent many nights at my house and he kept the apartment near his theater because it was practical. Or that's what we had said. Of course, I never agreed to go farther than engagement. I wondered if I had been more committed to him whether he would have let go of his studio apartment?

It had been a long time since Matt and I had broken up. He had been married briefly, just a few years. He and his wife lived in his small, writer's apartment. Sometimes I had daydreamed that I could have lived that sort of life. Maybe not once I was a mother, but sometimes I wished that I'd know there were opportunities like that. I wished I'd been given those choices.

It was heavenly. I loved being there. I always had. It was like the set of a play with its small kitchen in the center of the space. He had a futon bed off to the side in a dormer alcove. It abutted a small living room area where he had a couch, a couple of leather club chairs and floor lamps. Very often over the years we'd sat in the living room reading scripts either with other actors or just us. I would sit with him and often I'd be the first person to read the lines of his new play.

I carried my things into the apartment. "It looks like I'm moving in, I know." I laughed.

He shrugged and walked over to me and kissed me on the cheek. "Are you all right?"

"I am. I realized coming over here that I'd already had a couple of scotches. I don't know how much wine I should drink given that I have to get up and go to work."

"We don't have to drink any. Come in." he said. I saw several take out boxes of Chinese food on the counter. Chopsticks.

I took off my coat and then sat on the couch.

"Are you hungry yet?" he was in the kitchen pouring himself a glass of wine. "What do you want to drink?"

"Ok." I smiled. "I'll have wine."

He came and sat next to me. He gave me my glass of wine. He held up his "to mad first wives."

I smiled. "Shh." I said "she'll hear you."

He laughed. "you haven't summonsed a ghost have you?"

"I don't need to summons her. I brought her with me."

"Have you? Where is she?"

"That's why I called you." I was still whispering. He was looking at me with affection and amusement. "I'm not kidding you. She is addressing the entries to me."

He furrowed his brow for a moment. "Jesus. Eve. That's weird. I wouldn't want to be home alone either." He took a sip and shook his head. "They're real, aren't they? Jeff didn't plant them there?"

"No. I'm certain they're real. I've found other things of hers before. Letters. Diaries."

"Yeah, I guess it sounded too crazy even for Jeff. Well we'll read them after we eat. I'll be your medium."

"You're scaring me."

"You don't believe me but I have a reputation for talking with the dead."

I hit him on the arm. "Don't say that! I won't be able to sleep."

"You know something?"

"What is it?" I shook my head and took a sip. I swished the liquid.

"We could turn this into a play."
"The journal?"

"Hell ya."

I leaned back and put my legs up on the coffee table. I looked up at the plaster ceiling. "You could. You can have it if you want it." I put wine down on the table and rested my hand in my lap. I leaned back again and closed my eyes.

"Do you want to eat?" he asked.

I opened my eyes and when I looked at him I remembered all the nights we'd spent bed together reading plays, or talking or watching TV. There had been so many times that we'd eaten take out and drank wine. In fact that was the only way I remembered us eating take out in his apartment. When the children were young, I'd made dinner for all of us including Matt. Somehow he wasn't so much a part of the family even at that. I guess I wouldn't let him fill that absence.

I stood up and stretched. "Maybe we should put on our pajamas and eat in bed. We can bring the wine and her diary."

"Eve," he said softly. "You're one of my closest friends."

"I know I am." I said. "You're my closest friend."

"There's nothing I'd like more than to get under the covers and read it with you. We haven't really done anything like that since you got back together with Jeff."

"I know we haven't."
"Eve." He touched my hand. "I am not going to let anything happen between us."

"I know."

"I know that's probably not what you were suggesting, but I want to tell you—"
"OK. Matt. I'm sorry. I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable." I pulled my hand away.

"I want to be with you. I wouldn't do that with you until you figure this stuff out with Jeff. Because—"

"Really— I didn't ask you to sleep with me. Don't you think you're overstepping here--"
"Because it would hurt you. It would make things hard. And, because Eve. You're vulnerable."

"Well, I don't feel vulnerable."

"But—" He smiled at me and kissed me on the cheek. "I bring our food over while you get into your pajamas."

I smiled at him. "Thank you." I stood up and retrieved my overnight bag. "And, it's a nightgown. I don't own any pajamas. You should remember. The least you could do is remember I wear nightgowns.."

"Oh that's right. I remember that about you."

"You were probably thinking one of your other neurotic lovers."

"I was."

I smiled at him. "You were?"

"Yes. She wears pajamas.."

It was absurd to think that nothing would happen between us with me in my silk nightgown and Matt wearing a t-shirt and sweat pants, both of us eating Chinese food from take out cartons. Matt was very handsome and it had dawned on me many times since we'd been broken up that he dated less often than he could have. Our friendship mostly waned during his short marriage. I didn't like her at all, and they weren't a couple that Jeff and I would have gotten together with--obviously. So, during that time our paths still crossed but there was a noticeable distance. Honestly, he'd never seemed happy with her.

He looked at me and smiled. "More fried rice?"

I shook my head.

The bed was pushed against a wall near a small window. The space was almost an alcove, the ceiling was a little lower. There was only room for one bedside table, stacked fruit crates. Our glasses of wine were both on the top of the crates.

"I'm full." I said, "but I'll have a little more wine." I didn't know why I didn't ask him to get it for me, I reached over him to get the glass. Being that close to him made me want to kiss him.

He intercepted and picked up the wine and handed me my glass.

I took a sip. "Are you ready to open the crypt?"

"I'm ready." He said.

I was close enough to smell his clean, soapy smell. He was younger than Jeff by almost ten years, closer to my age. We were both approaching 50. It seemed impossible that we'd started seeing each other in our early 30s. It seemed impossible that I'd known another man as intimately as a husband and yet these two intimacies were so vastly different. I loved Matt too, but it wasn't as emotionally entrenched. For that reason, it was a calm security compared to an unpredictable intensity. I took a deep breath and let it out.

He smiled at me. His eyes were hazel and they seemed green in that light. I felt something stir in me when he raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders as if to say I know. I know what you're thinking.

I felt embarrassed and looked down at the diary. "Are you sure you want me to read this to you?" I looked back up at him.

"Hold on. Hold on." He said. He poured us both another glass of wine.

I opened the diary to the page I'd stopped at. "First," I said. "This is what made me call you--Well, first I want to show you this part." I read him the part where Margaret said he'd kissed her.

When I finished Matt had a look of distaste. "That's really disturbing. She was obviously very ill."

I shrugged. "Well you know Jeff. I'm sure in that moment, it made sense to seduce her."

"OK." Matt said. He took on a tone he used as if we were a group of actors and writers trying to nail down a plot. "We don't know yet, if anything this woman says is true. It is the classic case of an unreliable narrator. Which makes it interesting just confusing for our poor audience."

"Our poor audience? Us?"" I smiled at him.

"It's really what makes the story so fascinating."

That was what I loved about him. How intellectual and funny he was. I also liked that he could dissect and deconstruct this story with me. It gave me power over it, the ability to see the absurdity and tragedy in it.

"This is the part that really scared me." I read from the book.

"I'm writing to you, Eve. You know that don't you? You've figured that out by now, haven't you?:

"This is meant for the stage. God. Jesus. You know that don't you, Eve?"

I smiled at him. "You'll have to write it."

"Really? You'd give me license to do that?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"It's personal. Jeff wouldn't like it."

"It won't be personal the way you'll tell it. You'll expand it into something larger—archetypal. By the time it reaches the stage it won't resemble this at all. It will be brilliant."

He smiled and kept his eyes on me. "Go on."

"Go on with the story or --?"

"Yes. Keep reading." He took a sip of wine but kept his eyes on me.

"That's where I left off. From now on it's all new to me too." I continued reading aloud.

I recognize her. Of course I do. Without lenses or any such thing. It wasn't so plain at first. When a woman, in particular, is ethereal she moves in a way that disguises the effects of light. She –this Anna—is that way. She enters through means I'm not at liberty to divulge. I said to him—how can you bring a young woman into this untethered house?

As usual, as was his way ever since the dress, he just laughs at me. I ask him about another inclination. I still sit with him. By this time my hands are tied by the yarn, no more knitting it's too messy for that. I sit with him. Sometimes he looks up from his drawings.

"why would you take the air from this room?" I said to him. I'm saying it right now, Eve. I'm asking what happened to the carbon dioxide. I have read, sometime before this that exhalations are all carbon monoxide and as such they complicate oxygen intake.

His eyes look up over the paper. He smiles at me. "What is it little girl?" he asks.

"Am I really so young? I must be at least thirty by now."

"You're not."

"Will you still kill me?"

"likely." Then he tells me the strangest thing. That it's easy to kill a girl, but hard to get rid of her shadow. It's true. I'd heard that before.

"Why would you draw one girl and marry another?"

"Anna?"

"Yes." I realized how foolish it was. Some girls are on paper and others sit and watch. While a third, more delicate type becomes a wife.

I looked up at Matt. "well?" I swallowed down my wine.

"I think we'd need to work on the dialogue so it makes some sense."

I laughed. "No. I mean—well what do you think about about what she wrote?"

"She must have been a woman girl, before she went crazy. She's a writer. That's apparent. Her writing is poetic. And, she knows about science." He touched the page. "It's sad though—the eyes through which she sees things. She seems frightened and confused, doesn't she?"

I nodded. "Do you think Jeff really took advantage of her like that?"

"You know him better than I do."

I thought for a moment. "It doesn't seem right. Jeff likes the challenge, he manipulates but I wouldn't say he exploits or..." I looked at Matt. "why are you looking at me like that?"

"I can't stand that guy Eve."

"I know. I'm sorry. Should I keep reading?"

"Do you want to?"

"I do. I don't know why—but, when I talked to Jeff today he asked me how I'd feel if he were reading my first husband's diaries behind his back."

Matt nodded slowly. "I can give him that."

"But the things is, he won't do this with me. He won't tell me the truth and he won't find out the truth for our children."

"You don't have to convince me. "
"A part of me knows he's right."

"Yeah. Well, we don't have to read them."

"A larger part of me wants to know. He's been so afraid of what they say."

"Well then read them."

"OK." I handed him my glass of wine. "I'd better stop. I have to work tomorrow."

He took the glass and put it on the table near the bed. When he looked at me again, we both kept our gaze fixed on the other. I leaned closer to him and kissed him. This time he kissed me back. I pulled away a little and touched his hair. "I care about you so much," I whispered.

"Eve. Do you think you'll want to try again with me?"

I moved back a little and looked down.

"The reason I'm saying this is because I've been waiting for you." He let out a breath. "But, there is someone that I've been seeing and I care for her very much."

I looked at him. "You're seeing someone?"

He nodded. "But, if you think there's a chance with us, that you'll want to try again. Then, I'm willing to. I want to. I know it sounds unkind to her—maybe desperate of me, but I've told her how strongly I felt for you and what we had together. It wasn't an easy conversation and she asked me to take some time and talk with you. She wants me to sort it out."

"I don't think I do want to." I confessed.

"OK." He said. He was quiet for a minute. He let out a breath. "I think I knew that."

"I love you. I really do. And, I'm very attracted to you. More than anything I like you. I sometimes think you're my best friend."

"You've been my best friend."

I nodded. "I think I've known Jeff too long. I've been with him too long."

"I appreciate you telling me the truth. You've always been honest with me."

I nodded.

"And Eve. For what it's worth I don't think you're a fool."

"Thank you." I touched his hand. He held mine. "You're the only one who thinks that." I looked at him. "Should I go home?"

"Only if you want to. Do you?"

I shook my head. "Do you want me to read some more?"

He was my friend again. "God yes."