Maybe I should get her a Valentine. No, that would look funny, not to mention the cards were three to four dollars and who knew if I would get any mon...y today. Right now those four dollars would guarantee I ate lunch. I took another step to the front of the store then stopped again. What was wrong with me? The woman had been far better to me than anyone else in my life right now including a girl who allegedly loved me. Now here I was with a chance to make her smile and I was hedging.I went back. Anita acted as if she did not notice that time.Anita did not wear a watch and when they were nearing her home she asked Sam the time. Sam told her it was ten forty.Anita was quiet for a few minutes then asked Sam if since she did not need to be home for another hour and twenty minutes had she said or done something to make him mad.Sam told her that she had been perfect as a date but that he had a terrible stomach cramp and needed to get her home so he could cure it.Anita seemed to accept that. She couldn't know, but sensed, that his days were numbered in the scores, not hundreds. Then, her turn couldn't be far off."Oh, stop!" She chided herself. Self-pity had never been their refuge. "When one takes a partner for life, there is a beginning, middle, and an end."She wiped a trickle of perspiration from her brow, reminded of the warmth of the season. She resumed her thoughts, traveling back in time to another hot summer night. A calendar would mark it a past tense memory of long ago. In. As her bruises faded, Louise gradually began telling us more about her life with Phil. Then, after dinner on her third evening with us, she told us about her brief movie career. Louise hadn’t known about Phil and Steve’s college friendship until Bette told her the previous day. Instead, Phil, that lying bastard, had told her that he had gotten in touch with the studio through a newspaper ad. ‘Frankly,’ she said, ‘I wasn’t at all keen on becoming a porno star — imagine what our friends would say.