Literary Mashup

When Good People meet Hills Like White Elephants.

            They were up on a picnic table by the edge of the lake, with part of a downed tree in the shallows half hidden by the bank. It was springtime, and the park's grass was very green and the air suffused with honeysuckle and lilacs both, which was almost too much. The girl wore a thin old checked cotton shirt with pear colored snaps with the long sleeves down and always smelled very good and clean, like someone you could trust and care about even if you weren't in love. He did not ever include it - that word - for had he once said it, avowed that he did lover her, then it all would have been transformed. But he could not say he did: it was not true. He did not do this now. It would be cruel and indecent.
             One thing he did do was reassure her again that he'd go with her and be there with her. It was one of the few safe or decent things he could really say.
            "It's really an awfully simple operation. Its not really an operation at all."
He thought he knew how she must have felt as it got closer and closer and how she must be so scared. She'd only talked about it that once.
           "I'll go with you and I'll stay with you all the time. We'll be fine afterward. Just like we were before".
           She did not reply. He could not read her heart- she was blank and hidden. That he'd be thinking about her and feeling bad for her, she knew, but he couldn't be in there with her. The girl did not say anything. She knows he does not love her, not that way, has known it all this time.
          "If I do it you'll be happy and things will be like they were and you'll love me?" 
          "I'll love it. I'd do anything for you."
          "Once they take it away, you never get it back. Doesn't it mean anything to you?"
          "I don't care about me."
          He knew it was wrong, knew something was required of him that was not this, but he pretended to himself he did not know what it was that was required.
         This was on awful thing.
         The shallows lapped from different directions at the tree as if teething on it. He could look at her head, but not at her.  He pictured in his mind an image of himself on a train, waving mechanically to something that got smaller and smaller as the train pulled away.  A head peaking out from underneath a skirt.
        "We'll be fine afterwards. Just like we were before."
        This lie is not a sin. The worse he felt, the stiller he sat. He looked more like a picture than a man. Two hearted, a hypocrite to himself either way.