One last effort to see Everest. They check-out of their lovely nest prepared to compete for tickets. In the chilled damp of zero eight-thirty, the prophesized crowd does not exist and tickets take only seconds to secure.

She wants to try a new place with him, the 14 Carrot Café. They don't eat breakfast except on vacation together, when they eat a full meal for every meal and snacks in between. They would grow fat together if it weren't for the fact they both exercise.

There are other people who love him and who can claim some of his time. Two and a half hours are spent out of private in this regard. Then he is hers again.

From another bookstore, she has called and found a room for the night in what must be the cheapest hotel in all of downtown. The Camlin: An old building like the one in which she is currently living. Someone has scribbled a penis onto the graphic of a figure walking down the stairs in case of an emergency, when the elevators have returned to the basement. They laugh. The room is bare and cold in comparison to the hideaway they left behind hours earlier. This would be a five-star joint in Seoul. There's the obligatory rubber blanket with the fuzzies. They laugh again.

Shopping, this time buying. They both get jeans. He buys candles for her.

Everest. One last time they try and fail. It is so broken, the rumor goes, that specialists are being flown in. She asks, why didn't they fly them in yesterday? Two more free vouchers. That makes for four total, minus the lack of desire to see it at all in his absence.

They try to share tiramisu, but the woman dressed for some disco scene long past denies any vacancies. There are other places to eat, she just has to think about it a bit.

She wants to share Coastal Kitchen with him, she says, a place she first visited with Anita so long ago. He notices that the hostess gazes at her too long and says, I think she likes you. She agrees. Hands weave between dishes and glasses to join, eyes meet above the conversation, and the two are content to eat fine food. She is happy to introduce him to a new place.

On the way to the car he fails to resist a used bookstore. He buys two old books on Napoleon. Now they are late and must rush through another bookstore - for now his sojourn is drawing toward an end and all the things that must be completed before departure press upon them. He buys that new book about Shakespeare. She buys truffles a few doors down.

The finale: Saving Private Ryan. All this past summer she has seen this title and each time she has said to herself, I want to see it but I won't see it without him. This is their only chance and they joke that it too will malfunction. It doesn't. The film is so disturbing that she loses her appetite and lets the bag of truffles drop beside her onto the floor. Not disturbing, they discuss, in the sense that it was gory violence, but disturbing because it so painful to witness the suffering - even suffering so distanced in time and place from the real event. Fascination with war is something they share. In quiet evenings at home they have in the past talked at length about it, pulling out of their particular interests knowledge that combines perfectly to create something toward a whole understanding of this terrible and seemingly unavoidable human creation. Who else would hold her sobbing body tightly while they waited on a dark street corner for the signal to change? He accepts and loves the part of her that can reach down into that aquifer of massive and universal suffering, drink it in, and make it her own. It is the tragic truth of living - the horror of dying - all of the loss she endures along her own path, the pain in the lives of those she loves and in the lives of those whom she will never meet. He holds her there so she doesn't have to be alone in it.

The room is not the Salish, the blanket is not filled with down. All she can recall later, when he is gone and she wants to remember, is soft skin like billows of feather and air.

The morning finds them back again at the 14 Carrot huddled to one side of a round table. Breakfast is cheap and good enough. They order a cinnamon roll saturated through and through with butter, so rich it is unconquerable. At the airport he worries over the absence of people at his gate. Upon inquiry he learns the Western world has fallen back an hour. In their world time is a constant. He laments being at the airport early but she says it only matters that they got an extra hour together. It goes by fast enough. People watch them hug and kiss goodbye. They continue to watch as she moves over to the wall, pressing herself against it just so she can watch the back of him walking away from her and turn the corner.

What does the woman do when her love leaves? She returns the car in her own time, taking a detour to drive for comfort before she has to sit with the empty space beside her where he should be. She rides her bike home and for quite a time just sits in the chair before the monitor, looking off above it at the bland grey wall.