No one's a Mystery: a Review

No One's a Mystery (An Affair Twenty Years Later)

Twenty years later, the narrator (whom we'll name Jill) and Jack see each other. Many years have passed, but their past isn't exactly a long time ago. Jill lives in Casper while Jack still resides in Cheyenne. Jack still lives with his wife, but claims to only remain due to her inability to live without him. Jill says she understands. She still writes in the diaries that Jack would buy her every five years. He says he enjoys her writing about him. It makes him feel loved. Jill asks if his wife makes him feel loved. He says his love for her is more

obligation than overwhelming need. Jill asks why they never brought Little Jack and Eliza Rosamund into the world, even if it were a secret that she would be willing to hide.

Jack says he didn't believe in the fairy tale that Jill did. Jill cries and writes about her tears. Jack still drives his dirty pick-up truck and visits Jill. He still teaches many things about love and sex; especially sex. She enjoys being in his arms. Jack doesn't hold her as she would like him to. Their sex is brisk and bare; enough to pacify her. Enough to satisfy him before he heads back to Cheyenne. Back to his wife, where he sleeps. Jill curls up next her diary and the musk of his sex and cigarettes in her sheets and she dreams of the "bittersweet smell," of loneliness. The irony of vanilla from the candle that she keep lit when he arrives and after he leaves.