A man and a woman are laughing. They are lying in a darkened room or bumping elbows at the kitchen table. They are licking butter from their fingers or shuffling cards or sweeping up green glass or telling jokes aimed at the blue strobe of the television or the heavy white globe that is their moon.

Then comes the knock at the door, the trill of the phone, the ding of the email, the scratch of folded paper slid beneath the door, an emerging emergency. He says he'll get it, no, she says, she will, and neither of them moves until one of them does. One of them does not.

And nothing ever is ever the same.