It had to teach her to think of love as a state of grace: not the means to anything but the alpha and omega… — Gabriel García Márquez

The lesson was not interrupted, but the girl raised her eyes to see who was passing by the window, and that casual glance was the beginning of a cataclysm of love that still had not ended half a century later.

He had made notes of these premature observations, intending to write a practical supplement to the Lovers’ Companion, but the project met the same fate as the previous one after Ausencia Santander sent him tumbling with her old dog’s wisdom, stood him on his head, tossed him up and threw him down, made him as good as new, shattered all his virtuous theories, and taught him the only thing he had to learn about love: that nobody teaches life anything.

Florentina Ariza had kept his answer ready for fifty-three years, seven months, and eleven days and nights.

'Forever,' he said.