Lucy wanted to have the life of a fictional character and her constant whiplash between champagne and tap water amde her seem straight out of a Fitzgerald novel.
We went to the Krispy Kreme doughtnut factory where the Hot Doughnuts Now sign was burning its pink neon light. From the other side of a glass window we watched the doughnuts rolldown the conveyer belt and then drop into the boiling channel of oil where they bobbed, little doughy life preservers, and then were scooped up and rolled through the wall of liquid sugar. They came steadily, in a slow and orderly fashion, sailing off ona higher belt, rounding the corner out of sight. The life cycle of doughnuts was enormously comforting. We watched them for about half an hour.
"God," Lucy said with a sort of reverence, "imagine how great this would be if you were stoned."
It takes a certain amount of effort to be miserable and another kind of effort to be happy, and I was willing to do the work of happiness.
I wanted to keep her as much for myself as for her. We had a wonderful time that visit. Even when Lucy was devastated or difficult, she was the person I knew best in the world, the person I was the most comfortable with. Whenever I saw her, I felt like I had been living in another country, doing moderately well in another language, and then she showed up speaking English and suddenly I could speak with all the complexity and nuance that I hadn't even realized was gone. With Lucy I was a native speaker.
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