I can see out the corner of my eye that she nods. I try to walk straight on my way out the door.

…Her eyes were gray… When she laughed it felt like my chest was a kite and I’d light up into the sky… Parmin introduced us—I never knew a woman like her could exist…

“Go,” he said.

“But Parmin, Janie has her own work to do, and my team is expecting those B-1 and Trident parts to be integrated into the ships …”

“No. Your deputies can take over for a time, while the two of you go for a honeymoon. Am I not the expert? Have I not been watching your species for twenty of your generations? I will not have two of my department heads distracted later, while things are approaching completion.

“Go, Brad. Look into each other’s eyes, make love, get a baby started. The child will be born on a new world …”

I rest my head against the cool, damp bricks. Around back of the Yankee Dollar, near the garbage cans, I try to keep from crying out loud.

The pain is hot. A searing, almost hormonal rejection, as if my body were trying to throw off a revolting insertion… a transplanted organ, or an alien idea. The agony is dull and sweaty, with a faint delusional quality, and the rejected organ, I realize, is my own mind.

My hands grope against the wall. Fingers dig into the recessed lines of mortar that surround each of the bricks, my anchors. The texture is hard, yet crumbly. Little fragments break off under my fingernails.

The gritty coolness crackles against my brow as I roll it against the masonry… feeling the solidity of the building.

It is comforting, that solidity. Good heavy brick. Bound by steel rods and thick goops of cement that permeate and bond—to hold up the roof. To stand. It’s comforting to think about bricks.

Think about bricks.