Frame 1

She shut the laptop and pushed it away from her with a sigh.

"How much did you get done?" I asked her.

"Just seven. It's hard," she rubbed her eyes. "It's one thing to listen to them and to jot down notes, and it's another entirely to try to recreate them. I think all the stories just ending up sounding like it's me, as if they're all MY best first kiss stories."

She got up and stretched and started taking off her clothes, still talking. "I start writing and I'm scared that I can't get it right because I don't really GET how some of them were feeling. But then by the end I feel I do understand." She stepped out of her pants. "And I don't know if that means I was successful, or if I changed it somehow." Rocking back and forth on her feet, she continued, "some of the stories... I don't know that I WANT to understand them. Know what I mean?" She sat to pull off her socks and then stood up naked, her clothes on the floor where she dropped them. "And the last one - I had to try to sound like a guy."

She was still muttering to herself as she went into the bathroom. "I'm going to take a bath," she called out.

"You could ask me to read it, you know," I told her. There was no answer. "Kate? Did hear me?"

"What? Max, did you say something?" I heard her call out from the bathroom.

"You could..." I paused. I had already lost this battle. Her girlfriends read every sentence she wrote, practically in real time. But she looked at me with horror whenever I suggested that she show anything to me. "You going to pick up your clothes?" I had to yell, to be heard over the running water.

Her head appeared in the doorway and she smiled. "Well, I was thinking I'd just put all the same shit back on again." She crossed her eyes at me before disappearing again and I shook my head.

I checked my voicemail, finished the email I was writing and sent it along its way. I got up and walked by the bathroom. I could hear her singing. I picked up her clothes while "let me entertain you... let me make you smile" drifted out from under the door. It was late and I had an early meeting the next morning. She'd be awake for hours yet so I put her clothes in the hamper, draped a robe over the chair next to the bathroom for her to find, and went to bed.