"There was nothing to bury. They made sure."
I do not move. I do not speak. I do what she did for me in the warehouse at the end of the fight, which was to let me bleed into her jacket without naming the bleeding.
I let her not bury her aunt without naming it.
After a long minute, she says, "She had a saying."
She tells it to me in Italian first.
Un uomo che chiede il latte nel caffè è un uomo che non si fida del proprio palato.
She translates.
"A man who asks for milk in his coffee is a man who does not trust his own tongue."
"It is funnier in Italian."
"It is not funnier in Italian."
"It is."
"Translate it again."
She does. The translation is bad.
I laugh.
The laugh is small. The laugh of a man whose woman has just made him laugh in the middle of a story about the woman who died holding her name. The laugh of a man who is realizing the universe is going to permit him to laugh in the middle of grief.
She is fighting her own laugh.
She loses.
We laugh together.
She looks at me.
"That is the first time I have said her name out loud in a year."
"I know."
"Thank you."
"For what?"
"For laughing at the end of the story."
"You translated it badly on purpose."
"I did."
"Thank you."
We sit.
I put my hand over hers on the cushion between us.
She does not move it.
