Last night, we watched Sergio Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. The midsummer Maryland humidity watched the movie with us, and we sat in silence, too hot to laugh, sweating into the couches while the men on the screen sweated into their cowboy hats.

CHEYENNE: You know, Jill, you remind me of my mother.
(Pause. Stare.)
She was the biggest whore in Alameda, and the finest woman that ever lived. Whoever my father was, for an hour or for a month, he must have been a happy man.