"What is the thing you regret most in life?" he asked her, standing close. There were perhaps a dozen empty bottles, and she and Tom methodically tipped every one them upside down, held them up to the light, sometimes peering into them from underneath. "Nothing but dead soldiers here," he murmured. "I'd like to say optimistically that they were half full, not half empty, but these are just totally empty."
"Unless you have a life of great importance," she said, "regrets are stupid, crumpled-up tickets to a circus that has already left town."
His face went bright with amusement and drink. "Then what happens to the town?" he asked.
She thought about this. "Oh, there's a lot of weather," she said, slowly. "It snows. It thunders. The sun comes out. People go to church and sit in the sanctuary and sometimes they see escaped clown sitting in the back pews with their white gloves still on."
"Escaped clown?" he asked.
"Escaped," she said. "Sort of escaped."
"Come in from the cold?" he inquired.
"Come in to sit next to each other."
He nodded with satisfaction. "The past is for losers, baby?"
"Kind of like that." She wasn't sure that she agreed, but she understood the power of such a thought.
"His stance grew jaunty. He leaned in close to her, up against the kitchen counter's edge.
"Do you ever feel that no one knows what you're talking about, that everyone is just pretending--- except for me?"
"She studied him carefully. "Yes, I do," she said. "I do."
"Ah," he replied, straightening his posture. He clasped her hand: electricity burst into it then vanished as he let go. "We're all suckers for a happy ending."
Lorrie Moore, Subject to Search
