She hated his hat.

“It’s orange,” she said.  He was deeply offended that anyone—let alone her!—would call his hat orange.  It was brown.  He was always amazed when two people could disagree over the color of a thing.  It seemed impossible, unholy.  And hadn’t she so often said, “You should get a hat?”  Hadn’t she even said, “You have a hat face?”  Those are words that every person wants to hear: you have a hat face.  

And now she hated it. 

“I didn’t mean any old hat,” she clarified.  “I meant a nice hat.”

But he had thought this was a nice hat.  He still thought it was a nice hat.  They would go out and she would say, “You look nice today.  Except for the hat.  Other than the hat, you look really good.”  When the weather got warm she would say: “Aren’t you hot?  Don’t you want to take your hat off?  Don’t you think you’d feel better without that hat on?”

But he had grown attached to the hat.  Despite what people may think, he wasn’t just pretending to spite her.  People may think that, but it was not true; he really did enjoy that hat.  The hat made him a new man.  Not a drastically different man, not an entirely different man; just different enough to make the hat worth keeping even though she didn’t like it.

The one day he got in their car, in the driver’s seat, and without thinking (Stupidly!  Stupidly!) put the hat on the passenger seat—just for a moment!  Just to fix his hair!—and she opened the car door and did not see it and sat right on it.

No one could say this was intentional.  No one could claim this was her fault.  Even he couldn’t say that.  Fate had decided that this hat was destined for God; she who sat on it had merely been Fate’s tool, Fate’s instrument.  That was plain enough, and no one could say otherwise.

She was not genuinely sorry, but she pretended to be so.  He thought that was nice of her. 

“We’ll get you another one,” she said.  “I’ll buy you a new hat.  We’ll pick it out together.”

“Thank you,” he said.  “That’s nice.”

“You know, I always hated that hat anyway,” she said, as if she had never said it before.

“I know,” he said.  “I know.”

Sara Gran is the Author of Dope, Come Closer, and Saturn's Return to New York.  You can read about her work at her website, www.saragran.com, and read her blog at saragran.blogspot.com.  Ms. Gran lives in New Orleans.