She woke up, forty-five seconds before the clock, as usual, so that she had time to put the clock to sleep. She pulled the covers, to have a last glimpse of her lover's body, even though she could hardly see anything but the outline of his chest against the grey light coming through the curtains. She let her fingers play a little, searching for little ridges of scar tissue, on his left side, down the ribcage, still sensitive after all those years, and yet he would not wake up unless she poked him really hard. She'd seen these marks before, on other men, and they were usually much more discreet, nothing more than a thin white line, like the short-lived impression of a fingernail on a very tight skin. Perhaps he had wanted it that way, as a reminder of what he had done, of what he meant for her. But he'd never talk about the operation, not with her anyway. It was a private place he had never invited her in, though she had no doubt that doctors, nurses, and a few hundreds medical students would know all that there was to know. Perhaps she could do a literature search and find papers describing this particular case. But what was there to know anyway ? Some unimportant, expendable, disposable part of him had been removed and transferred to another place. That was a part of him she didn't have anymore, that's all, and not one that had been particularly playful. Somebody else was walking the earth with it.

Then he rolled over, prompted by a funny dream, and she couldn't touch