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"I've had a rough day."
"How about a drink. George Dickel, isn't it?"
"How do you know about George Dickel?"
"That's your drink, isn't it? I'm supposed to know these things."
"Don't tell me—You have a lot of brands in that cupboard."
"I don't do inventory until spring. If you're still around in spring, you can check the store."
This is my favorite excerpt. She's using that snappy, tough, good-girl sound of a young Lauren Bacal. She's noted his brand of bourbon, and that suggests her interest in him, and she returns his nasty remark with a warning shot that he'd better behave if he wants to know her better. The exchange suggests an intimacy, an affectionate familiarity, but when does it take place? She's living in her own place, and that means she hasn't moved in with him, as the previous out-takes indicate. On the other hand, maybe she's kept her apartment, a wary gesture, as a place of refuge, and he sometimes comes there for a visit, and they replay some of the old thrill of their early lawlessness.
But just a minute - what if I had picked this particular notebook out of the pile first? Encountering this little scene first - before that fateful afternoon in his office - would affect their relationship and require a whole new chronology. Every history is shaped by the order of its telling; even in memory, we make selections that configure the past, so the narratives of a single life can be contradictory and truthful all at once, reshuffled like cards and picked up and played out as different hands.
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