I sipped tea. Hot, bitter, dark. The way Cesca brewed it. "I have been
considering acquiring children." I laughed. "I mean, you see,
a sort of orphanage."
"Sort? What sort?"
She sounded like Ossie when he was petulant and impatient.
I laughed again. It was easy here, swaying, drifting, suspended between
time and distance, but the intensities of thought and commingling
friendship were the contrast to that, not mellowed by it, yet all,
being diffuse and interpenetrating, heightened. So heightened.
Like rarefied air, that was Cesca's effect on me.
And she seemed to like it.
"Well, not a normal orphanage."
"No, I wouldn't expect that."
"On the other hand..."
"Yes?"