LENA

I was going to let it cost me something.

I sat on the floor and I let the cost be what it was, in the particular and careful way of a woman who had learned, over the specific and long accumulation of years, that the only way to keep a feeling from occupying all of you was to give it a specific and bounded portion of you and let it have that portion fully rather than letting it spend its time trying to expand.

I gave it ten minutes.

I know this because I was watching the time on my phone, which I still held, in the specific and...