“I wish we could be married and have five sons,” the Colonel said.
“So do I,” the girl said. “And send them to the five corners of the world.”
“Are there five corners to the world?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It sounded as though there were when I said it. And now we are having fun again, aren’t we?”
“Yes, Daughter,” the Colonel said.
“Say it again. Just as you said it.”
“Yes, Daughter.”
“Oh,” she said. “People must be very complicated. Please may I take your hand?”
“It’s so damned ugly and I dislike looking at it.”
“You don’t know about your hand.”
“That’s a matter of opinion,” he said. “I’d say you were wrong, Daughter.”
“Maybe I am wrong. But we’re having fun again and whatever the bad thing was is gone now.”
“It’s gone the way the mist is burned off the hollows in broken ground when the sun comes out,” the Colonel said. “And you’re the sun.”
“I want to be the moon, too.”
“You are,” the Colonel told her. “Also any particular planet that you wish to be and I will give you an accurate location of the planet. Christ, Daughter, you can be a God-damn constellation if you like. Only that’s an airplane.”
“I’ll be the moon. She has many troubles too.”
