LENA

He looked at me.

His expression was the direct one. Not the professional composure and not the managed surface. The specific and unguarded expression that I had been accumulating a vocabulary for since October, the one that appeared in the specific and unguarded moments of a man who was not performing anything. He was looking at me with it now, in the quiet and complete way of a man who was present in the room and was not managing his presence.

"I know," he said.

Two words.

I have thought about those two words many times since. I have thought about them in the way you thought about words...