Somewhere in a Lorrie Moore story, the heroine describes the voice of the Older Man she's just met on the subway as "slightly British, or upper-crust Delaware". I'll be thinking about that line for a while.

Rain all afternoon and into the evening: hard, steady rain down from the north. I can hear it rushing down through the trees out past my apartment complex. Still a warm rain--- still Indian summer here.

I really want to get a cardboard box and build a Fort. I need a Fort and a place to go hide. Right now I really miss having a gentle and lovely girl say to me in the Three Year Old Voice, Come under the covers. It will be Safe. I miss that--- miss kindness and playful affection. I miss having a Fort under the covers, having a place where we could read by flashlight and have Yummy Treats and feel Safe. I miss gentle affection more than I can say.

Once upon a time in October of the Year Six Miss Lissy at _iwenthome wrote me from Baltimore to say--

By the way, there's a small room just beside mine, underneath the stairs. There's no use for it except for the storage of clothes that are too big for me now. I could clean it out and buy some carpet and a desk and a bookshelf and hide you in there... You wouldn't really live there all the time--- it's very small, too small for a bed. You would have use of the left side of my bed and access to my washroom and the television down the hall, and the kitchen while I am at school and the house is empty.

I did like that a lot. I liked the idea of living in a hidden room and being a ghost lover. Or perhaps a kind of valued Small Companion, like a treasured stuffling or a small, long-eared desert (or dessert) hedgehog.

I really must get a cardboard box and build a Fort. I would sit with a loved companion and read to her and we would have Yummy Treats and just be...Safe.