Why do you care so much?

It became clear we were not going to be friends. We weren’t even friendly. I sometimes wondered if I was attracted to her and created an imaginary perfect life for her as a result of some dissatisfaction in my own life. Because isn’t that what imagination is for? It’s easy to create what you desire there. Harder to make it actually happen.

PARALLEL PARKING BY SACHA MOORE 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 62

I was always surprised we weren’t closer given we both harbored artistic sensibilities and were newly minted in marriage. She lived upstairs from me, along with her aristocratically (I thought) named husband, Hollister McNeal. Mike thought his name was ridiculous and, by dint of that, he was as well. Mike has little imagination and even less patience.

But Lucinda: she was ethereal, with straight honey-brown hair and long tapering fingers. She was thin, almost too thin, wafer-like with large grey eyes, and I always sensed, when I passed her in the hall, that her mind was elsewhere. But I im…