MARTY
that stove is going to look bare one day without your kettle on it.

TROY
where's my kettle going?

MARTY
when you die.

TROY
that's a lovely morning thought to get my day off to a booming start.

MARTY
i do what i can.

shortly after marty and i began dating, in one of those early relationship questions, i asked marty if i died how long she thought it would be before she would date someone else. she thought for a few moments before saying, in a fully seriously tone, "i'm sure it would be at least a week."

a week! a week! now i'd be the first to admit the three years i wished she would say might have been a touch ambitious but a week. in seeing my startled response she quickly adjusted, saying, "not a week -- longer than a week" and then as if bracing for a firecracker to pop added probingly, "like a month -- three months". marty is pragmatic even in matters of the heart, even in matters of new love. but without this cut to the bone approach, marty wouldn't be marty.

she did pay for her cruel offense by shouldering six months of jokes about trying to pick up guys at my funeral and if it would be gauche to invite cute fellas who didn't know me to the funeral just so she could get a jump on the replacement relationship.

several years later when our path together looked a bit more certain, in a quiet moment marty said out of the blue, "ok. so maybe i'd need more than a week before taking up with some new guy." nicer words were never said to my young, longing heart.