“Shut your mouth,” Ginger said as she looked at Errol. He was looking at a green parrot squawking in a tree.

“I didn’t even say anything,” he objected. She knew that he hadn’t said anything; she meant that his mouth was hanging half open.

“You do that all the time,” she said. “You look silly. Sometimes I look around to see if people are looking at you. They must think that I'm your caregiver.”

He apologized, saying he’d try to keep his mouth closed when he was looking at parrots. “Not just when you’re looking at parrots. Whenever you’re not using your mouth for talking, you should keep your mouth closed. Look at me,” she said. She demonstrated his “open mouth” position while looking at the parrot. “See how dumb I look?” she said.

He laughed. “You look as smart and pretty with your mouth open as you do with your mouth closed,” he said.

Since they’d already been dating for four years, he asked, why hadn’t she said anything before now? She said that she hadn’t wanted to hurt his feelings before. But now that she’d decided that they weren’t going to get married, and maybe they weren’t even going to continue dating, she felt it was okay to be completely honest with him.

He asked her if there were other things she had not told him.

“Your underarms smell,” she said, “even after you take a shower.” He told her that the musky smell was actually attractive to some women. “Well, feel free to share it with them,” she said.

He hoped she wasn’t serious about that, but he decided against asking her.