[Oscar's question is answered first by Paul putting his hand over his eyes, his head tipping even farther back, his throat bare and exposed as if he's in perfect safety here. He drags it down his face with a hollow laugh, a dry hah more exhale than amusement.]

You sound like - [he meets Oscar's eyes, his mouth twisted in a slight smile] - like someone I used to know. He'd agree with you, which is another way of saying you're right, and I should know better.

[It's possible Gurney might not appreciate being compared to a teenage boy with a tender greenhouse - but Paul thinks he wouldn't mind it. He might even have found it funny, in his sharply wry way.]

What am I planning. [He pauses, a drawn out span.] To get the fern back, if you'll give it to me. To make as much of a peace between your house and mine as I can, for whatever that's worth to anyone else. Isn't that enough? Can't it be?

[There's too much of the plaintive in his voice, an unseemly desperate thread. Isn't it enough? Can't it be? He asks himself that every day that he strives to be the kind of person who might answer yes.

(Of course it's not. He knows that. But what else can he do?)]