Where Reality Begins

Please please, he thought to himself, keep me from drawing up my Index of the Last.

Was that the last time I will ever kiss her? If not the last, was it Last-minus-N? Assuming the value of N to fall in a range from...

Stop, he told himself. Try to think something constructive.

"Run away with me," he whispered in her ear. "Let's just pack up and run away to the real world."

"What world is that?"

"You know, the place where people have cars and kids and mortgages. Where they only read books when they're on vacation, and then only Danielle Steele and Tom Clancy. Nowhere over the rainbow, someplace very real. Near Cincinnati, I think."