We were enjoying our billionth screening of Lost In Translation when I stuck my fork into a container of Drunken Udon noodles, hit a particularly succulent green bean and a two-out-of-three pepper rating shot directly into my right eyeball.

“Bwah!” I cried. “Bwah!”

“What?” Jurvis cried back. “What? What’s wrong?”

“Bwah!” I ran into our bathroom and stuck my head in the sink.

“Oh. Did some of that get into your eye or something?”

“Bwaaahh!” Gurgle gurgle. “Bwah!”

“Well,” I said a few minutes later, staggering into the living room, “it still feels like I have a spicy delicious optical nerve. But whatever, I’m sick of throwing water at my face. What’s the worst that could happen, right?”

“My uncle got pepper sauce into his eye and went blind,” Jurvis said.

We returned to the bathroom with a carton of milk, and in this fashion the meal was finished.

I knocked on his door five minutes before closing. The door swung open and I stepped into the darkness. “Hello?” he said.

“Hi. I’m sorry, I know you close soon, but I was in the area and thought I’d just drop in and pick up my camera.”

“Ah. Yes.” He stood there in his pressed navy labcoat and evaluated me for a few minutes. “Remind me what camera that would be.”

“It’d be under Adrianne Mathiowetz.”

No response.

“Canon XSi.”

Silence.

“The compression damage.”

“Ah, yes.”

He brought out a memory card and several lenses so that we could verify it worked, which, as it turned out, it didn’t. There had been more damage than he’d originally seen: the mount had been bent and jammed, which he’d fixed, but a few of the tiny sensors inside which allow the lens to communicate with the camera had also been punched in. He walked to a table with a bright lamp and magnifying glass and bent over the light. “Hmm.” He looked under the magnifying glass again. “Hmm.” His face glowed like a ghost story. “There.”

I was snuggled on the couch and spying on my handsome boyfriend, who was sitting at the table in the other room and finishing dinner at the time. Look at that guy, being all handsome, I thought, as he took a gulp of water. Look at him, drinking that water. Look at that olive complexioned neck. Look at those bear-heaving shoulders. What a beautiful thing. That is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I wish that I carved statues, so I could carve a statue of this man, eating dinner like that.

Jurvis turned to face me, tilting his head. “I am going to poop rice krispie bars,” he announced. “Fully formed.”

“. . . What? Don’t look so disgusted. I know you’re impressed.”