Time to go

“You hate this. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to bore you.” She snapped the book closed.

“How did I not know about this?” he asked, pointing at the room.

“What was there to know?”

“You have never asked for one of these.”

She shrugged. “It’s your home and your apartment. You never wanted to know, and you told me to leave your place as it was. That it was perfectly functional.”

“What have you been doing the past couple of months?” he asked.

“Reading.” She moved back behind her machine. “A lot of reading. Watching some television.”

“But do you want one of these at our place?”

“Our place?”

“Laura, we are married.”

“We don’t have to be,” Laura said. “All you have to do is say the words, and we can get our marriage annulled. I even looked into it. If neither of us contests it, we can have it done so fast. You can go

back to your old life, and I can go back to mine.”

“Is being married to me really so bad?”

“You don’t want to be married to me, and besides, didn’t you once tell me I wasn’t good enou