If my love must be a rodent, then shall I be anything but a rat?

Everything downtown doesn't have to be a skyscraper.

I wish I could say he was a French professor, a French chef, or even a bilingual tutor, but I can’t. He worked in a factory and spent his summer evenings at a reenactment village as a blacksmith or something equally masculine. But it didn’t really matter. He was the kind of man I had dreamt of, one who could bring a touch of the exotic to my small-town existence. (No doubt he would make love as passionately as he spoke French.)

If you never fall, how can you land?

It will be impossible to catch all the rats, my love,” he says. His hand brushes against mine. “Sooner or later, one will squeeze through the cracks. You need to be more careful.

I'm deathly afraid of rats.