Rating: ★★★★☆ Tags: Mystery Detective, General, Fiction

When I’m down and feeling blue
There’s only one place that will do
.
That one turned out to be the Alice in Wonderland
statue at Central Park, which Amy had told me – she’d 
told
me, she 
knew
she’d told me 
many
times – lightened her
moods as a child. I do not remember any of those
conversations. I’m being honest here, I just don’t. I have a
dash of ADD, and I’ve always found my wife a bit dazzling,
in the purest sense of the word: to lose clear vision,
especially from looking at bright light. It was enough to be
near her and hear her talk, it didn’t always matter what she
was saying. It should have, but it didn’t.
By the time we got to the end of the day, to exchanging
our actual presents – the traditional paper presents for the
first year of marriage – Amy was not speaking to me.
‘I love you, Amy. You know I love you,’ I said, tailing her
in and out of the family packs of dazed tourists parked in
the middle of the sidewalk, oblivious and openmouthed.
Amy was slipping through the Central Park crowds,
maneuvering between laser-eyed joggers and scissor-

---

legged skaters, kneeling parents and toddlers careering
like drunks, always just ahead of me, tight-lipped, hurrying
nowhere. Me trying to catch up, grab her arm. She stopped
finally, gave me a face unmoved as I explained myself, one
mental finger tamping down my exasperation: ‘Amy, I don’t
get why I need to prove my love to you by remembering the
exact same 
things
you do, the exact same 
way
you do. It
doesn’t mean I don’t love our life together.’
A nearby clown blew up a balloon animal, a man
bought a rose, a child licked an ice cream cone, and a
genuine tradition was born, one I’d never forget: Amy
always going overboard, me never, ever worthy of the effort.
Happy anniversary, asshole.
‘I’m guessing –five years – she’s going to get 
really
pissed,’ Go continued. ‘So I hope you got her a really good
present.’
‘On the to-do list.’
‘What’s the, like, symbol, for five years? Paper?’
‘Paper is first year,’ I said. At the end of Year One’s
unexpectedly wrenching treasure hunt, Amy presented me
with a set of posh stationery, my initials embossed at the
top, the paper so creamy I expected my fingers to come
away moist. In return, I’d presented my wife with a bright red
dime-store paper kite, picturing the park, picnics, warm
summer gusts. Neither of us liked our presents; we’d each
have preferred the other’s. It was a reverse O. Henry.
‘Silver?’ guessed Go. ‘Bronze? Scrimshaw? Help me
out.’
‘Wood,’ I said. ‘There’s no romantic present for wood.’
At the other end of the bar, Sue neatly folded her
newspaper and left it on the bartop with her empty mug and

---

a five-dollar bill. We all exchanged silent smiles as she
walked out.
‘I got it,’ Go said. ‘Go home, fuck her brains out, then
smack her with your penis and scream, “There’s some
wood for you, bitch!”
We laughed. Then we both flushed pink in our cheeks
in the same spot. It was the kind of raunchy, unsisterly joke
that Go enjoyed tossing at me like a grenade. It was also
the reason why, in high school, there were always rumors
that we secretly screwed. Twincest. We were too tight: our
inside jokes, our edge-of-the-party whispers. I’m pretty sure
I don’t need to say this, but you are not Go, you might
misconstrue, so I will: My sister and I have never screwed or
even thought of screwing. We just really like each other.
Go was now pantomiming dick-slapping my wife.
No, Amy and Go were never going to be friends. They
were each too territorial. Go was used to being the alpha
girl in my life, Amy was used to being the alpha girl in
everyone’s life. For two people who lived in the same city –
the same city twice: first New York, now here – they barely
knew each other. They flitted in and out of my life like well-
timed stage actors, one going out the door as the other
came in, and on the rare occasions when they both
inhabited the same room, they seemed somewhat
bemused at the situation.
Before Amy and I got serious, got engaged, got
married, I would get glimpses of Go’s thoughts in a
sentence here or there.