I walk past her and go into my office. Half an hour later, I’m still sitting there at my desk and she walks in and sits where Bradley Smith had sat just a few fateful weeks ago. She’s dressed in sweats and running shoes and a long-sleeved T-shirt with a peace sign on it. Her hair is a mess and her nose is as red as an apple, and her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are rimmed in pink. There’s a smear of eye-liner between one eye and the cheekbone.

“What’s going on down there?” she asks.

“We’re in business again.”

“We haven’t made anything in over a year.”

“The first twenty units will come off by the end of shift.”

“Units of what?”

“Nothing you’ve seen. Nothing you know about.”

“Where’s all the paperwork, the bids and counters and best and finals?”

“That was all done with a handshake.”

She looks at me with suspicion, then her eyes erupt with tears. “He left me a note. He said he couldn’t do it. He said he loved me. He’s driving to Colorado. My family is here from all over the country. His, too. We’ve got wedding gifts piled up in the extra bedroom. He said he couldn’t do it. I am totally humiliated and I miss him so much.”

I sit, stunned by the enormous turn of events. It takes me a moment to speak.

“ Sharon. I’m… very sorry for you.”

“Please don’t say anything right now. All you can say is the wrong thing. Do you know what I feel like doing? This is terrible. But I feel like shooting him. I’m not sure if I want to shoot him all the way to death or not, but I want to put at least one bullet in him. I think I should wait until I’ve settled down to answer the death question. When I can think clearly.”

“I know I’m not supposed to say anything, but don’t shoot him. He’s not worth ruining your life over.”

“He’s already ruined it.”

“That’s absolutely not true.”

“I know it’s not. But you weren’t supposed to say anything.”

“I’m going to say just one more thing, Sharon Rose.”

“I hate my middle name and don’t call me that ever again.”

“Okay. Now, I won’t say anything else, but you have to. You have to keep on talking. If you keep talking, your feelings will become clear. If your feelings are clear you can proceed to… um, well…”

“To where?”

“Checkout?”

She looks at me. I didn’t know a human nose could become so red and shiny. It looks waxed. Above it and on either side, her eyes are blue lagoons.

“Marriage was my idea,” says Sharon. “I couldn’t ever make a commitment or keep a promise until I met Daryl. Then I met him and I fell in love with him. I did everything in my power to make him ask me to marry him. I loved him and worked hard at loving him and I gave him all the rewards and punishments I could think of. But after six full months, nothing. Then I simply told him that we were getting married. He agreed. It was easy. Maybe not as romantic as being asked, but the result is the same. And I was aware of who I am and what I could expect on the open market. He was much more desirable than I am. He was handsome. He was talented-he wrote me the most beautiful love poems a girl could want. He writes technical manuals on the installation and operation of marine waste systems-you know, yacht toilets-and he wants to be a real writer someday. But the closer we got to tomorrow, the further away he went. In his mind and in his heart. Even with his body. He was drinking a lot and no sex. Almost none. I mean, really lousy sex. I didn’t know there was such a thing. When I asked him what was wrong, he’d say nothing. Nothing was wrong. Nothing, nothing, nothing. And I believed him because I wanted to believe him. And, well, yes-I might have a stronger will than his and a clearer idea of what I want and less reservations about getting what I want. But what I wanted was him. And last night I threw all my houseguests out of my apartment because I wanted to be with only Daryl and make all his problems go away so I could see his smile on our wedding day, and I tried so hard to do that, but nothing worked, so I just said Daryl you fucking dweeb you fucking wimp you fucking fag just tell me what the fucking fuck is wrong with you or get the fuck out of here. Out he went. I threw myself around and drank some vodka and called a girlfriend and she came over and I conked out before midnight. I just shut down. And in the morning, this was taped to my front door. He could have just texted but not Daryl. Mr. Written Word, practicing to be Tolstoyevsky.”

Sharon leans over and pulls a folded sheet of paper from a rear pocket of her sweatpants and flies it to me. My heart flutters because the paper is warm and contoured by her butt.

I unfold the cooling letter and read aloud the handwritten words:

Dear Sharon,

I cannot express the sadness through which I write this letter, and I can never be absolved for what I have done to your innocent heart. I cannot go through with this. I cannot be a husband now. I do not fully understand this nor do I expect you to. Know that I love you and know that if I could remove this pain from you, I would gladly hand my soul to the devil. I know that in a few short years you, Sharon Novak, will think of these words from time to time and realize that what happened between us happened for the best. I’m driving to Colorado because I don’t know a single person in that state. Last night with a heart both heavy and hopeful I prayed that in your future you would receive all the happiness that heaven will allow.

Your Daryl

“That’s sad,” I say. I fold the letter and set it toward her on the desk.

“I don’t want it.”

“Keep it. He’s right about your future.”

“You apes are all the same.”

“You’ll come to see that he was right.”

“When I hear his words, I hear his voice and don’t want to shoot him.” She pockets the letter.

“I’ll make coffee,” I say.

“I don’t want coffee.” She stares at the carpet for a long while. She chews both thumbnails. I can feel that something in her is giving up, trying to give up, but it’s going to be a long time before it gives up all the way.

“Let’s go down to the test range,” I say. “We’ll get some fresh silhouettes up, name them Daryl, and you can blast them to smithereens. We can tape that letter over the heart if you want. Pretend his words are his guts. Sound good?”

She looks at me. “Do we have any of the big guns around, the forty-calibers?”

“Sure. And a new one I invented. I think you’ll love it.”

“You invented it?”

I nod. Sharon has always been drawn to inventions. I remember trying to impress her with my own inventions over the years. There was a battery-operated toilet bowl sweep based on the sweeps used to clean swimming pools, a device that kept umbrellas from folding up backward in the wind, a pepper-spray attachment that would fit any cell phone, and a better mousetrap that actually was better but far too expensive to build. I never sold any of them, though I came close with the toilet bowl sweep.

I can only imagine what she’ll make of the Love 32.

“Come on,” I say. “Rise and shoot.”

“I want to go say hi to some of the guys. Marcos here?”

“You bet. I’ll go with you. It’s really great having this place up and running again. And, Sharon? I’m really glad you’re here.”

“I realized this is the one place I can go where I have something to do and don’t have to explain myself.”

“It’s good to have a place like that.”

She sighs and stands and shakes her head. She looks at me for a good long time and I look back at her.

Of course I blush and of course she knows why.

“Ron, that’s insane.”

You get what you take, my man.

“No, Sharon. It’s the definition of sanity. I love you and always will and we both know it. It’s a simple truth. It has nothing to do with what you say or do. Deal with it.”