“Never change,” he said.

“That’s it?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“The worst thing you could say to another person?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s weak.” She crushed her cigarette into an ashtray. The butt was smeared with red lipstick. He watched a small cloud of ash and smoke settle around a dozen other lipstick smeared ends.

“You asked a question. I gave an answer.” He raised his drink to his lips. He didn’t like scotch, much, but he liked the way ice sounded in a scotch glass. He sipped, his mouth burned, and ice cubes clinked. Like New Years Eve, he thought.

“You didn’t understand the question, then,” she said, lighting up another cigarette.

“Or you didn’t understand the answer.”

“Enlighten me then.” Her cigarette flared as she took a long draw. Her eyelids fluttered, blue with shadow, like crippled butterflies.

He listened to his ice; heard it settle.

She drew again and blew a plume of smoke. The butterflies slowed, her eyes closed.

“Never change,” she said, smoke curling from her lip. “It means someone is just right the way they are. How is that bad?”

“Everything changes,” he said. “There’s no way to stop it. You can’t catch a sunbeam. You can’t hold a river. You can’t ask a person to never change.”

“What if I asked you to never change?” she asked. An ash fell from the tip of her cigarette, only to disappear into the gray carpet.

He listened to the ice settle in his glass, and let the growing silence answer for him.