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and sought her eyes. They were huge.
    I dove right in. “Jinny, listen to me. I want to marry you. I ache to marry you. You’re the one. Not since that first moment when I caught you looking at me have I ever doubted for an instant that you are my other half, the person I want to spend the rest of my life with. Okay?”
    “Oh.” Her voice was barely audible.
    “You give me what I need, and you need what I can give. I want the whole deal, just like you’ve told me you want it—old-fashioned death do us part, better or worse monogamy, like my parents. None of this term marriage business, no prenup nonsense, fifty-fifty, mine is thine, down the line, and I don’t care if we live to be a hundred. I want to marry you so bad, my teeth hurt. So bad my hair hurts. If you would come with me, I would be happy to walk to Boötes, carrying you on my back, towing a suitcase. My eyeballs keep drying out every time I look at you. Then when you’re out of their field of vision, they start to tear up.”
    Her eyes started to tear up. “Oh, Joel—you do want to marry me.” Her smile was glorious.
    “Of course I do, Skinny you ninny. How could you not know that?”
    “So it’s just—”
    “Just a matter of financing. Nothing else. We’ll get married the day we can afford to.” I loosened my seat belt, so I’d be ready for the embrace I was sure was coming.
    Her smile got even wider. Then it fell apart, and she turned away, but not before I could see she was crying.
    What the hell had I said now ?
    Of course, that’s the one question you mustn’t ask. Bad enough to make a woman cry; to not even know how you managed it is despicable, but no matter how carefully I reviewed the last few sentences I’d spoken, in my opinion they neither said anything nor failed to say anything that constituted a reason to cry.
    Silver slowed slightly, signaling that we were crossing the Georgia Strait. We’d be at Jinny’s little apartment on Lasqueti Island, soon. I didn’t know what to apologize for . But then, did I need to? “Jinny, I’m sorry. I really—”
    She spoke up at once, cutting me off. “Joel, suppose you knew for sure you had your scholarship in the bag? The whole ride?” She swiveled her seat halfway back around, not quite enough to be facing me, but enough so that I was clearly in her peripheral vision.
    I frowned, puzzled by the non sequitur. “What, have you heard something?” As far as I knew, the decisions wouldn’t even be made for another few weeks.
    “Damn it, Stinky, I’m just saying: Suppose you knew for a fact that you’re among this year’s Kallikanzaros winners.”
    “Well…that’d be great. Right?”
    She turned the rest of the way back around, so that she could glare at me more effectively “I’m asking you: If that happened, how would it affect your marriage plans?”
    “Oh.” I still didn’t see where she was going with this. “Uh, it’d take a lot of the pressure off. We’d know for sure that we’re going to be able to get married in as little as four years. Well, nothing’s for sure, but we’d be a whole lot more…”
    I trailed off because I could see what I was saying wasn’t what she wanted to hear. I had to shift my weight slightly as Silver went into a wide right turn. I didn’t have a clue what she did want to hear, and her face wasn’t giving me enough clues. Maybe I ought to—
    Wide right turn?
    I cleared my side window. Sure enough, we were heading north; almost due north, it looked like. But that was wrong: we couldn’t be that far south of Lasqueti. “Jinny, I—”
    She was sobbing outright, now.
    Oh, God. As calmly as I could, I said, “Honey, you’re going to have to take manual control: Silver has gone insane.”
    She waved no-no and kept sobbing.
    For a second I nearly panicked, thinking… I don’t know what I was thinking. “Jinny, what’s wrong ?”
    Her weeping intensified “Oh, Jo-ho-ho-ho—”
    I unbuckled, leaned in, and held her. “Damn it,