four.

"along the rim of the hole, the Christmas lights are soft and mysterious, and Sarah takes her place in my arms. I don't know what to tell her, except it wasn't our universe.

she seems to stiffen.

'such bullshit," she snarls. "I'm in the other universe. nothing here! washout- colossal fucking drag. you should've loved me. you know that, don't you? we could've been happy. all those places we could've seen, Paris and East Berlin. that honeymoon that I never had. oh Christ, we could've had it. diapers and rattles and all those nights together. Is that too sentimental? I don't mean to sound morbid, but I'm dead, and there's only one universe that counts. you should've loved me. that's all I mean, we should've made promises to each other and kept them, like vows, and we should've unzipped each other and crawled inside and been honest and true and loving, just loving, all the time, and we should've done everything we didn't do. we should've taught each other things. we should've had Christmas together- is that silly? eat lobster and open the presents and make love and go to church and believe in God and make love again and light candles on the tree and listen to records and have oyster stew at midnight and go to bed and smell the pin needles and sleep and wake up and still be together. it's a little sad, isn't it? it's sad that we could've been so happy."

- the nuclear age. tim o'brien.