We stayed up all night. For me it was because I didn't want to waste any of the remaining time together. It wasn't difficult really: we had the energy and even after all those hours, we still hadn't run out of things to talk about. A short vacation from our pretenses. I trust her... she me... confiding in the other. Our burdens wear heavy and for this day and a half we unloaded them each, carrying them between us like those old ladies waddling the streets of Korea, helping one another. Sisterhood is sacred, she taught me. It's the 3-D glasses we both own, the ones that reveal meaningful metaphors in ordinary occurrences.

We had Hunt Club and the winking waiter, orchestras of moving furniture while we sipped gin-and-tonics. The city on the water, of course. Steel drums and the lady in polyester with a beehive stacked on her head. Lewd postcards she told and sold to us through the lenses of those cat-eye glasses: Our Lady of Misspent Youth. Tragedy: Bus careening off the Aurora bridge, the proximity of which shook us into reality for we were nearly under it. Pink Door with the one whose hair fades from blue and the precocious little burlesquer. Elizabeth drew our attention back to the sack of disguises hanging between us.

Unabashed laughter of women is powerful and magnetic… threatening. We carry the spirits inside us and exhale them in waves of song that is woman's joy. I learned it from the shamans and witches and nuns and the warm center of my belly - it's the truth. In another timeplace they would murder us (out of envy) to own it, but we are free and shrouded in the soft light of this restaurant this house this car this café this country.

We will always have the perfect moment: He wanted us.