“Maybe you make wrong decisions. Christ knows I’ve made a few and too many men are dead from when I was wrong.”
“I think, perhaps, you exaggerate. I don’t believe you made many wrong decisions.”
“Not many,” the Colonel said. “But enough. Three is plenty in my trade, and I made all three.”
“I’d like to know about them.”
“They’d bore you,” the Colonel told her. “They beat the hell out of me to remember them. So what would they do to some outsider?”
“Am I an outsider?”
“No. You’re my true love. My last and only and true love.”
“Did you make them early or late? The decisions.”
“I made them early. In the middle. And late.”
“Wouldn’t you tell me about them? I would like to have a share in your sad trade.”
“The hell with them,” the Colonel said. “They were made and they’ve all been paid for. Only you can’t pay for that.”
“Can you tell me about that and why?”
“No,” the Colonel said. And that was the end of that.
“Then let’s have fun.”
“Let’s,” the Colonel said. “With our one and only life.”
“Maybe there are others. Other lives.”
“I don’t think so,” the Colonel said. “Turn your head sideways, beauty.”
“Like this?”
