Natalia decided that when the x-ray tech spoke, he’d say something wrong about the weather. That’s how she would know that they were beginning. She read it in the stars--in the last three years she had become an expert in astrology, and had even invented some theories of her own. If he called the weather correctly, they must never speak.

He came through her department every Thursday between seven and seven. Today was the fourteenth day she’d seen him. It was also the summer solstice which might bring her fortune.

As she shuffled through paperwork, Natalia glanced at the back of his head. It reminded her of the back of the President’s head, which was promising. She found it stately, well - groomed, balding, and smug. It repulsed her in a most delightful way.

Jupiter and Venus said that Gregory-not Greg--would buy her earrings one day. (She didn’t know his name; only felt that it must be Gregory. In any case, it must not be Steve. ) He would open the box of glittering rocks and say, "Wouldn't they look lovely against your lace?" She would tell him why she hated lace; how her sister wore it on the wedding day that never should have been. He would apologize, throw the earrings to the side, take her in his arms, tell her how everything was right. No. That was too poetic. He would stare. But it would be a good stare.

Gregory was pulling an old woman on a gurney off to the MRI machine. Natalia thought about the president. The president shouldn't wear blue; it made him look fatter than he already was. Gregory was thinner than pulled sugar and looked twice as brittle. That made him superior. Natalia fanned herself. Stop blabbering Natalia. I'm sick of your blabbering, she told herself.

Gregory would charm the thoughts from her mouth like a cobra and then never put them back. He’d end the freeze that plagued her since the day when the breeze smelled like October even though it was May and Steve stood beside the sister in lace--but Natalia past is past. Don't remember the thickness of silence and the slow of time caused by panic when you read the stars and saw--Natalia, why don’t you shut up for once? How was it she chatter so inanely on the inside and be so shy? She could feel sweat threatening to carve tracks down her shield of make-up. Gregory must save her.

Funny the day should stick with her so--her horoscope had warned her. She hadn’t taken the stars seriously until then

Natalia drank some water from a cup on the table. The heat of her hand worked to melt the ice. She put the cup down, overly aware of the grating ice.

The stars had said that they shouldn’t marry or take the plane to Macao. The stars had known. Steve had not been meant for Sarah; that’s why the plane crashed. Natalia shook her head. But no one had listened. Since she screamed that at the double-funeral, she had not spoken to anyone from her family. Nor had her so-called friends understood; they thought that it was because she had been jealous of Steve. It was so unfair--that hadn't come into play at all, it was just an unfortunate circumstance. But the three year silence showed no sign of ending, and she was thousands of miles away now. If only it were silence.

No eraser for memories of pain. She read that on a 6-word forum once. She almost made an account to enter the conversation. But she thought that someone she knew might be online.

Gregory was back with the empty gurney, struggling to maneuver it around a corner.

He caught sight of her watching him. His face trembled into a smile and her lungs inflated with hope, until he said, wiping sweat from his forehead.

"Hot day, isn't it?"