"Did she save your ass?!"

  "There's really something in the tone of your question that implies," a frustrated, tired plop on the sofa.  "Don't get used to that!"  I got up.  "The sofa?" 

  Huhs, little breaths drawn in at a bedroom door opening.  "You girls are up?!" 

  "Coffee?" 

  "Rich and black I would hope."  

  Big cups.  Fresh cream in a carton.  

  "I don't usually, but would it be okay to watch the news?"  

  "It would be, but," the musician woman picked up one end of a long strand of beads and tucked these into a fold of long sweater as she sat on the oversized brown leather sofa with a knee under her.  Competing thoughts took her voice drifting quiet.  The literary woman sipped the coffee, considered the apartment, "Buuuuut, 

  "I 

  "You 

  "Don't have a TV."  A guffaw. 

  "Like in that movie, we don't have a radio." 

  "I do have one of those." 

  "Can we listen?" 

  The radio was turned on and tuned to news.  "Do you mind if I ask 

  No 

  "What are you hoping to hear?" 

  She turned and gave me the evil eye.  "What the fah?" She sighed and sat back down. 

  After listening to what sounded like a regular day's news for a few minutes the literary woman stretched.  "Are you angry?" 

  "Me?  Angry?"  The musician woman picked up a magazine and licked a finger to turn the pages.  She folded the corners up on some pages.  "Can I see?" 

  "No." 

  "But I want to.  I want to know what interests people." 

  "I have no idea where you've been for the last however long, and now we're going to sit here like, like 

  "Like what honey?"  

  She shot the evil eye at the literary woman.  She did not look away. 

  "We ended up in Latin America for a time because, can I say why?" 

  "Oh.  Do you know?" 

  "Was it a revolution?" Heads shaking no while coffee to mouths.  "Drugs?!"  More noooos.  "What then?" 

  "Visiting." The literary woman finally said.  "Cha.  Visiting."  Everyone to the coffeepot for three-way-split refills.