I move closer to him. He looks nervous. We are standing in the rain beside a bus stop on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He holds a yellow umbrella; I wear galoshes. I think they're ugly but I wear them anyway. Across the street, a neon sign flashes blue and green letters; it looks muddy through the raindrops. He doesn't seem to notice, as he stands a foot from me, that water is dripping off the umbrella onto the left side of my head. I don't feel that I should tell him.

We become restless. The silence is thickening, I glance at my watch. 2: 11, the bus is six minutes late. I am a stickler for punctuality and am getting annoyed. To keep from obsessing about the time, I wonder how we came to this, my husband and I, standing on a street corner on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. I suppose it was the arguments, or maybe if we had both liked tea. Regardless of the reasons, we are about to discontinue the bond of marriage. First we are going to lunch.

I suppose we are both used to the idea of divorce by now. For some reason it seems less frightening as the days go on. The more nights I spend without him make me question why we stayed together for as long as we did. I don't miss him. My mother is disgusted by the entire situation; she constantly makes speeches about the difficult times she had with my father and yet they stuck it out and look at them now. Well, my father is dead now.

My husband is very quiet as the bus pulls slowly in front of us and opens its accordian doors. I am becoming frustrated. I wish he would speak. I find it humorous that the most appealing thing about him seven years ago was his sweet silence. I felt I knew him so well I could understand his silence. I laugh softly to myself. He looks over at me as if he had read my thoughts; he looks a little insecure. I almost feel sorry for him. He must think I am so odd to be acting so indifferently at a moment when we are about to make one of the most important decisions of our lives. He doesn't know that I was laughing because a part of me still loves him. I laugh so that I won't cry. A part of me can't let him go.