She listened, and with authenticity, with interest: as Genny shifted from this being of softness, of reservation, into this being of life and laughter, Gloria observed with her own swelling mirth. And so they sat there upon the floor of Genny's flat, in the dust and the clumps of boot-tread mud, sharing stories of books discovered, of foreign shops where one could find the strangest and most wonderful gems for the most inflated prices. Such places Gloria only wished she'd had the patience or wherewithal to find. She knew better, of course, than the palaces that formed themselves in her mind: these forgotten nooks, these cramped cellars of long-unwanted goods and relics of old libraries that Genny described with such fervent detail and excitement, they might as well have been fantasies. And they seemed wonderful and adorable and I wish I could have seen them! and...
Somber, suddenly. And solemn. And yet still smiling, but softly. Avoiding all but those leaf-green eyes. "We will go," Gloria proclaimed, clutching to that delicate, ink-stained hand. "Together. When — when time and ease allows. Perhaps when the days grow long again, and — and the air doesn't hurt so much to breathe. We go, just the two of us, and you show me all the places with the books and the trinkets, and we can forget about everything except us and all the years of words we missed. And nobody will know us, you know? So to — to hell with propriety. We could hold hands if we so chose where everyone could see—"
But the speed at which her words unravelled, they almost lost their path; she realized, only then, that they were holding hands, had been holding hands, and she trickled back into her own body with a wave of sudden coolness. Her dark hair stood at its ends. Gooseflesh sprang awake on the back of her hand.
Apologetically, this: "Only if you wanted to."
Then, like a spasm, her face brightened again.
"Wine. We've got to have wine somewhere."
A final pressure to Genny's hand, before she was up, her wrinkled gown hissing a path across the floor. They parted. Their knees parted. Their hands parted. Gloria moved at a wildling pace, looking through cock-eyed cabinets and in a wardrobe-drawer, doors clacking open and shut until she found a handful of horn cups and — "There," she said — a dusty, half-empty bottle of Derry Red, almost black at its bottom with a blanket of old sediment. She bit the cork from the neck, stood it upright, then began to pour a helping into each cup: a finger, then two, then three, until the neck of the bottle shook this way and that and wine, it splashed like spilled blood on the tabletop, and she could barely hold it straight or level at all when, with her back turned to Genny Tolleson, she asked a helpless curiosity—
"When, Genny? When did you know?"