অবান্তর

Over the years, our friend develops a certain expression of public intimacy for her husband: whenever they’re standing together, she absentmindedly puts a finger through his belt loop. He dies, our friend remarries, and we see her enacting the same move on her new boyfriend. Who would judge this? Well, everyone. We want to believe that love is singular and exclusive, and it unnerves us to think that it might actually be renewable and somewhat repetitive in its habits. Would your current partner ever call his or her new partner by the same pet name he/she uses for you, once you are dead and buried? Well, why not? There are only so many pet names. Why should that bother you? Well, because you believe it is you, in particular, who is loved (that is why dear Ed calls you “honey-bunny”), but no: love just is, and you happened to be in the path of it. When, dead and hovering above Ed, you hear him call that rat Beth, your former friend, “honey-bunny,” as she absentmindedly puts her traitoro