She could hear the rumbling in his chest as he formed the answer in his throat: "What is 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'?" It was an answer directed to no one in particular, but the television confirmed that he was correct.
They lay there like this often, cuddling on the love seat. It was the most comfortable place in the house.
"What about Tanzania?" he asked. This time it was a question, and not an answer, and it was directed at her.
"What about it?" she replied.
"We've never been. Don't you think we should go?"
"Um." She paused. "What's in Tanzania anyway?"
"I don't know, but who cares? We've never been. Remember that cold winter when we were both swamped and we said 'fuck it, we're going to Hawaii,' and just up and left? We'd never been to Hawaii, but we went anyway. We didn't have any money, but we went anyway. And we figured it out, and it worked out, and we had a great time. Things have a way of working out like that, I think."
"That didn't really happen."
"What?"
"Hawaii. That trip. It didn't actually happen. We just talked about it, we didn't actually go. We finished our work and went to The Coal Mine and got drunk on New Years. That was the night that you hurt your leg, 'cause you slipped on the ice, remember?"
The clock chimed out that it was 7:30. A few seconds later, the cuckoo clock went off as well. He made a mental note to get them perfectly in sync (he never got around to it).
"Well, we should have. I certainly didn't enjoy going to work in the snow all winter," he replied after thinking it over for a minute. He often did that, because he often couldn't tell the difference between dreams and reality because neither one turned out the way he wanted.
"So let's go." she said, after another short pause. (He had turned the TV off, and the silence was deafening).
"What?"
"To Tanzania. Let's go. We can tour the world. We've been saving for a while, I'm sure we could find the money. We could stop off in Europe beforehand and see Paris and see the alps, and then head to Africa and see the pyramids and see Mt. Kilimanjaro and then go to Tanzania."
She was quite serious, although from most other mouths, it might have been taken as sarcasm. He knew her well enough to know what she meant.
"Mt. Kilimanjaro is in Tanzania."
"Even better!" she said as she grinned up at him.
He smiled that smile that only she could elicit from his weary face.
"I think I'll talk to a travel agent tomorrow," he said, as he ran his fingers through the blonde highlights in her hair.
They sat there for a few minutes like that, happily reflecting. Eventually he turned the TV back on and flipped to the end of the evening news.
He forgot to call the travel agent.