“I have.”
“I wouldn’t want that. You wouldn’t want to be married to a broker and live in New York.”
“Why do you have to be a broker?”
He sighed then and she saw for the first time that he was the one trapped, the one who would not escape. “What else can I do?” he asked.
“You can break with all this.” She was fighting.
“But what could I do? I have to do something. I have to be something.”
“Why do you have to be something? Why do you have to do things that you don’t want, that make you unhappy?”
“Everyone has to. Besides, I’m not sure that I am unhappy.” She was defeated at that moment. The dream she had been fashioning disappeared and there were no traces of it left, only a lingering sadness and an open wound.
He went on talking and she answered him but there was nothing left for either of them to discuss.
Then after a while they both stopped talking. They sat side by side looking out the window, or rather looking at themselves reflected in the black mirror. Holton turned out the light and Carla was able to see the stars again.