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Peanut stared at Frances. “It’s like you’re autistic.”
    Frances smiled like a wolf. “Do you know what that means? To be autistic?”
    â€œOf course I do. Don’t quiz me.”
    â€œJust tell me what you think it means.”
    â€œIt means someone who can, you know, rattle off all the prime numbers, but not, like, say hello.”
    Frances chewed her steak and swallowed. “I’m like that?”
    â€œYeah.”
    Frances was surprised by how much this hurt her feelings. She continued to eat and wanted to cry.
    â€œI just wish you would speak,” said Peanut. “You could say anything.”
    â€œNo,” Frances snapped. She set her fork and knife down. “You want me to say something
specific
. You want to have a conversation where you write both sides, like a play.”
    Peanut looked at her potato and wanted to shriek. It was true that she often staged conversations with the hope of eliciting particular responses from Frances, but for this she felt no remorse. It seemed to Peanut that Frances didn’t know how to talk to people. She could be unduly frank, accidentally mean. She needed help.
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    On the table in their hotel room there were cheap butter cookies in a plastic wrapper. Beside them a card read,
To Our Guests: Because this hotel is a human institution to serve people, and not solely a money-making organization, we hope that the peace of Jesus Christ will rest on you while you are under our roof.
    â€œYou believe this shit,” Frances muttered. On the card she wrote:
This is actually really offensive to Jews and Muslims,
then sat in a maroon chair and ate both cookies.
    Peanut was too tired to maintain her cold exterior. She turned on the television and took off all her clothes, then poured herself stomach-down into bed.
    Frances apologized from the maroon chair, though shestill didn’t know entirely what for. She walked to the bed and stood there.
    White sheets covered Peanut’s ass and legs. Blue TV light blinked on her back. She peered over one shoulder to see Frances’s expression and then put her face back on the pillow.
    Frances sat on the edge of the bed and stroked her head and back carefully, as if she were touching a terminally ill animal. Peanut’s mouth fell open. She let out a little groan, loving to be touched this way, like she was sick and precious. She cried in a small way that soon opened into a breathy sob.
    Peanut was flipped over and explored. She continued to cry and it felt fantastic. Between gasps she explained that the last few hours had been lonely. “And you should have called me back in San Francisco.”
    Frances nodded sincerely. She was moved to see Peanut cry.
    Peanut wiped her face with her fist and sat up, relieved enough to notice how uncomfortable she was. “I hate a tucked sheet,” she said and began tugging the sheets loose.
    â€œI like it tucked.”
    â€œI like one leg out.”
    â€œWell, you’ll like menopause then. That’s all it is. One leg out all the time.”
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    Later the two lay naked in bed, idly touching each other’s bodies, lights out.
    â€œYou sound like you’re crying when you come,” said Peanut.
    â€œThat’s so embarrassing.”
    â€œNo, I like it. It actually sounds somewhere between crying and laughing.”
    â€œYou sound like a puppy being rolled off a cliff.”
    â€œNo I don’t,” Peanut laughed.
    â€œYou do. And your back tenses. It has this great indent like an ass or a peach. A long peach.” Frances held Peanut’s jaw. “Please spend the rest of my life with me.”
    â€œYou mean our life. Spend the rest of
our
lives together.”
    â€œNo, my life. I mean, yours will go on after mine,” she said in an oddly casual way, as if she was talking about someone else’s death.
    â€œYou don’t know