“Goodbye friend,” Otto says, and laughs.

He slips his white, wrinkled feet back into his sandals and walks over to his smoking chair by the window—it looks out to Dauphine Street in New Orleans where shop owners unlock their metal gates, a barber sweeps the sidewalk, and the steam from the laundromat underneath Otto’s apartment looks milky in front of his eyes. Men around Otto’s age play dominos, and three little black girls jump double-dutch, and sing out, “Soups in the kettle, get your ladle, fill it all up, fill it all up!”

Otto sings along as he sits down, puts one lump of sugar in his tea, and looking at its surface, sees steam reaching out above his table and mixing with the vapors from outside.

Drink the tea you love the tea go ahead take a sip oohhhhh that’s too hot damn it I shoulda known.

He feels like his whole life his tea has either been too hot or too cold. Room temperature is how he likes it, but he’s always ended up talking to the person across from him, thinking to himself about Max Roach and singing Doo-Wop on street corners with the Bottom’s Up Boys, and how he secretly wished he was black, and before he realized, the tea was cold.

Otto came to New Orleans to play jazz trumpet then found out he was a better improvised talker. He drove a taxi, married four women, one right after the other, having one child with each. Then at some point he figured out he loved all women, rather than just one, and also that he made more money playing poker than driving a cab. So he configured his life around those two things—being around as many women as possible, and playing poker. Every now and then he’d find himself at an altar, sliding a ring on a girl’s finger, if she asked him, or said they couldn’t make love without it, and they’d do that and have a kid—but he tried not to.

“Soups in the kettle, get your ladle, fill it all up, fill it all up!”

In 1962, he looked like a Norse God. Tall, blonde, broad shoulders.

Can’t live off of music Otto. You got a pretty face man, people would kill for that face. You’re gonna rot away livin’ around here.

Here was Elizabeth, New Jersey. He ran away to the city for other plans.

He didn’t know what to expect, and was amazed when he was even hired at a bar. He left that day to walk around Greenwich Village, seeing art galleries, strange looking people drinking coffee underneath awnings at cafes, smoking long cigarettes—he didn’t want to walk through their doors, through their crowds, scared he would say or do the wrong thing.

He knew very little, but he did have the feeling that the world was offering itself to him, and that he didn’t know what to do with it.

He worked at Moran’s Tavern on Bleecker and Charles, built in 1862 with all the original mahogany and taps in place, all refurbished, stained wood shining out reflecting the light of spring. A small room with the bar, and a few tables for dinner. There was a grandfather clock in the corner, pictures of the owners relatives, Irish immigrants with curly moustaches, and a bronze antique cash register behind the bar with keys like a typewriter, making cha-ching sounds, and numbers flipping above when Otto rang in beers.

He stood at the register, with his back to the door, playing with the keys, admiring its charm, when a couple entered.

A young, beautiful olive-skinned couple, and Otto assumed they were movie stars. He had never seen anything like it, only working in the bar for about a month, and growing up in a tenement basement with parents that couldn’t read English.

And when the door closed behind them, they stopped and surveyed the bar, taking off their sunglasses, seeing that no one was there. Except Otto. They looked at him standing there smoking a cigarette, staring at them with a blank face, short hair greased and combed to the side with sideburns.

They approached the bar. The woman wore a long white dress that was tight around her hips and legs, which was where Otto’s eyes began, then moving up, he saw it loosened with a piece that hung down her chest, revealing her small shoulders. She had white high heels on, was taller than the man with her, with a black sash around her waist, long curly black hair, red lips, and eyes like jade.

The man, also with a white suit, and a black shirt unbuttoned down his chest, pulled out her chair for her, and sat down.

Otto stubbed out his cigarette, placed both hands on the bar in front of them, and swung his right foot behind his left leg. “What’re you drinking?” he asked them, keeping his focus on the man. Otto was taught this by the bartender that trained him—he said that sometimes men felt easily threatened.

“Mimosas,” she said looking at him, forcing Otto to look at her. She had some kind of accent, but Otto didn’t know from where. He thought they were Italian, but felt that maybe that was too easy–that they were probably from some place he had never heard of. He was also troubled, not having any idea at what a mimosa was. Otto considered asking her, saying something like, “What a great wine, which year?” And then maybe through her response he could figure it out. He turned his back to them and said, “great choice,” then looked through a drink manual he had stashed in a drawer. He kept his head bent down, the manual inside the drawer where they couldn’t see what he was doing. Mimosa wasn’t listed.

Shit.

Otto was taught how to make the popular drinks: martinis, manhattans, mixed drinks like gin and tonics, and he could pour a beer, but that was it.

“Say that again?” he asked her looking back, his eyes on the book, hoping he misspelled it, or heard her wrong.

“Mimosas,” she repeated.

“Oh right,” Otto said, and flipped back through the M’s. Not seeing anything, he turned around, smiled big with his white teeth showing, looked at the man and said, “What’s a mimosa?”

“Champagne and orange juice,” the man said. “It’s all we drink.”

“Great choice,” Otto repeated, then rifled through the wine bottles in the cooler beneath him. In the back corner he found a bottle of champagne with the label falling off. Otto put it on the bar, reached up into the glass rack, and set out two wine glasses in front of them.

“No flutes?” she asked.

“Nah,” Otto told her, feeling comfortable enough to glance at her, moving his eyes between the two of them. “I tried to get some music in here, but the owner wasn’t cool with that idea.”

They both laughed, grinning at each other. “I mean champagne flutes,” she said.

“Oh,” Otto said, smiling at her. He reached up and grabbed two long skinny glasses. “These right?”

“Perfect,” she said.

The top of the champagne bottle was trapped in a little metal fortress, and Otto wasn’t sure if when you removed the fortress if it automatically made the popping sound. He knew champagne bottles could explode, shooting the cork across the room, and he didn’t want to embarrass himself. But, he still wanted the popping sound.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Oh nothing, I just think these bottles are amazing,” Otto said.

“Have you ever opened one?” the man asked.

“Of course, but all bottles are different,” Otto said.

“They are?” she asked. “They all look the same to me, but then again, I just drink them, not open them. Can I try?”

“Sure,” Otto said, taking a deep breath, handing it over as soon as she offered. As the bottle left his hand, Otto’s fingers brushed against hers. The woman had soft skin. Easy to touch, Otto thought, and noticed she had no ring on her finger.

The woman untwisted a piece of metal that stuck out, then removed the little metal fortress.

That’s how you do it? Shit I coulda done that.

Pop!

“And one for you?” she asked Otto.

“No, thank you,” he said. “I’m good on my drink.” He picked up a small glass next to the register with ice and an inch of whiskey.

“Ha ha ha,” she said, laughing, sipping her mimosa. “You have tricks up your sleeve.”

“The owner doesn’t care, so it’s not much of a trick. Cheers,” he said, and they all tapped glasses.

“Salut,” they both said.

“Where are you guys from?” Otto asked them, nervous that their response would make him feel uninteresting.

“Argentina,” she said.

Otto was right. He had never heard of Argentina.

“And you’re American?” The man asked.

“Yeah, I’m from Jersey,” Otto said, trying to match their proudness. “But my family’s right off the boat.”

“Where is your family from?”

“Norway.”

They spoke in Spanish to each other for a minute. They motioned their hands away from the tops of their heads, like they were miming horns growing from their skulls. Otto hoped they weren’t calling him a devil.

“You’re a vikingo!” She said.

“Vikinkgo?” Otto asked her.

“No,” the man said, “Vikings. Right? They are Vikings.”

“Si si si,” she yelled. “Vikings!”

“Oh yeah,” Otto told them. “Norwegians were Vikings. I’m not sure if my family was though.”

“You look like a Viking,” she said.

“So you came over on a ship, not a boat,” the man said and laughed. “Salut,” and he tapped Otto’s glass.

“Yeah, but don’t worry. I’m not going to steal your buried treasure.”

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Otto.”

“Otto, I’m Marcela, and this is Claudio. Mucho gusto.”

“Mucho gusto,” Otto said, feeling like a poet.

They all laughed and drank the entire afternoon. They asked Otto about growing up in America and Norway, and he didn’t know anything about Norway, so he made up his answers, trying to make them seem exciting.

“Say something in Norwegian Otto,” Marcela asked.

“Vee-den, flugen, yee-den, you-gen,” Otto said, hoping they knew less about Norwegian than he did.

“What does that mean?” Claudio asked.

“It’s very nice to meet you my friends.”

“How nice!”

After they finished the bottle of champagne Otto went to the downstairs cooler to find another. He couldn’t find one, so he took money from his drawer, and went to a liquor store in the neighborhood to buy a couple more. When he returned Marcela said,

“Otto, mi amor, I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting.”

“Waiting for what?” Otto asked.

“I’m waiting for my mimosa. I’m waiting for you to take me to dinner, and I’m waiting for you to kiss me.”

Otto blushed, his heart pounded, and as he poured her a drink of champagne he looked at Claudio, thinking he would be angry at what she had just said. But Claudio wasn’t angry. He smiled at Otto, and looked like he was also waiting for Otto to kiss her.

“Well you’ve done the first thing,” Marcela said, tilting her head, moving her hand towards Otto’s laying flat on the bar. “Now the second.” She closed her eyes, and pouted her lips.

Otto looked towards Claudio, who bowed his head slightly. Otto leaned over the bar and kissed her softly on the lips, keeping his lips on hers, and he thought he could marry her right there. Taking his lips away, he looked down and saw her legs crossed, her body shifting back into the bar stool after leaning towards him. He stood back, not believing what had just happened.

“The third thing?” Marcela asked.

“We did the third thing,” Otto told her.

“Then the second thing, the fourth thing, the hundredth thing, who cares?” And she smiled, going on to explain that her and Claudio were only good friends that had moved to New York from Argentina to attend college. Their families were business partners, and they set them up with an apartment in the area. Marcela kept flirting with Otto, staring into his eyes, talking to him in Spanish, reading his palm saying he had a profound love line. Telling him all the things she’d love to do with him in the city.

Otto said, “Anything with you would be a great time.”

“Oh Otto, you are such a beautiful boy,” she said.

Otto felt drunk from the whiskey, and Marcela couldn’t keep still in her stool. Her and Claudio had finished the three bottles of Champagne.

“So,” Marcela started, looking over at Claudio, then back to Otto. “Do you have a beautiful young Viking girl for Claudio then?”

“Yeah, I have a girl for you Claudio,” he said. “Do you like redheads?”

“Yes, very much.”

“Is she a good kisser?” Marcela asked.

“A good kisser? Yeah, she’s a good kisser.”

“Have you kissed her?” she asked, putting an arm around Claudio, and moving her hand towards Otto’s on the bar.

“No,” Otto said, “But she has nice lips.”

“As nice as mine?” Marcela asked.

“No,” Otto said, “Not as nice as yours.”

“When are we all going out to dinner then?” Marcela asked.

“All of us?” Otto said to her.

“Yes, we will all have dinner,” she said.

“Go dancing,” Claudio said.

“Go back to our apartment and have drinks.”

“Do you paint Otto?”

“No.”

“Sing?”

“No. I play trumpet.”

The phone rang and Otto turned around to answer it. He heard giggling.

“Moran’s Tavern,” he said. “No, Vincent’s not here. He comes in tomorrow usually around three, or whenever …” and as he glanced back he saw Marcela’s tongue entering Claudio’s mouth. He stopped talking, watching her hand caressing the back of his head. His hand rubbing her face. Both of their eyes were closed as they kissed deeper, rubbing each other, and her face looked pleased, like she needed nothing else. Otto turned back around, saying, “Yeah, he works tomorrow. Just call back tomorrow.”

Otto stood still facing the wall. There were single malt scotches and gin, a picture of the owner with Humphrey Bogart, and Otto stared out thinking, Why did she do that? I thought they were just friends, and wondering if the whole afternoon was just a joke, that they’d been making fun of him the entire time.

He hoped that when he turned back around, they’d be gone.

Otto looked into the mirror behind the bar, and saw they stopped kissing, but remained holding each other’s hand, and talked in Spanish, giggling still. He walked over to the register, pretending to count his money. When they saw him move closer they let go of each other’s hand.

“So when are you done working today?” she asked.

“In about an hour,” Otto said closing the register, and turned back to them.

“Meet us here,” she said, and slipped him a piece of paper with an address on it.

“Sure.” He looked at the paper. He knew where the address was.

They asked for the check, and Otto gave it to them, charging them for half of what they drank. They paid the bill, stepped off of their stools, and put back on their sunglasses.

“Adios Otto,” Claudio said, extending his hand.

Otto accepted his hand. “You too,” he said.

Marcela leaned over the bar and kissed his cheek. “And later you’ll bring your friend,” she whispered in his ear. “Yes?”

“Sure,” Otto said, and kissed her back, keeping his eyes on her chin.

After they left the bar was completely empty. He sat down at the last stool and finished his drink. After a few minutes the night bartender came in to relieve him. Otto counted out his money, thinking about what he could’ve done differently, how he could’ve made her only want him and not Claudio. He thought about her eyes, and making love to her, how she would’ve looked to him as he pleased her. He imagined a white sheet falling down off of her hip, her naked body in the light coming in from the bedroom window. She’d be darker than the light, but lighter than her shadow, and Otto would’ve loved every piece of that room, and the smell that came from the bed, behind her ears, as they held each other’s bodies. He wondered if she ever could’ve even liked him, after telling her about basement tenements in Elizabeth, with hot cement and clotheslines criss-crossing the street, and illiterate parents.

Soon after Otto moved to New Orleans to become a jazz player, a cab driver, a poker hustler, a lover—he hadn’t thought about that moment since.

And this was not how Otto remembered it.

This isn’t how he’s remembering it sitting there in the New Orleans late morning, with the light shining on his tea and Cameroon. He remembers leaving the bar with Marcela, and after going to a gelato shop, they both conspire to ditch Claudio, run out, and leave him standing there with coconut flakes hanging from his lip.

“Where you go?” Claudio said, shaking his head as they disappeared around the corner.

They drank cognac, danced tango, and all these other wonderful things Otto had never heard of, all these things he couldn’t pronounce, and she giggled about it, at how sweet and warm he was.

“Like this Otto, like this,” and she moved her feet and hips in and out of his, holding him, forcing his large frame to move with the music.

She was impressed with his rhythm, that he could pick up tango so quickly.

“Very good Otto, very good.”

He smiled, trying to take control of the dance, stumbling a bit, but she loved it anyway. Otto’s eyes were on her, but the club, with its palm trees and tan bricks, the band on the stage ahead, candles and couches with short skirted women, filled the room with everything that was that night, that moment, and they were in the center filled with dizziness, long bouncing black hair blanketing Otto’s eyes.

She whispered Spanish in his ear as they danced.

Tienes ojos lindos, Otto.

“Soups in the kettle, get your ladle, fill it all up, fill it all up!”

He stubs out his cigar, takes a piece of paper and a pencil out of the drawer, and starts writing down the words to their next song.

He takes a sip of his tea.

oh damn it

And feels like his whole life his tea has either been too hot or too cold.

She wore cut off jean shorts and had thin legs, crossed them and I could see the stretch marks that ran down from her hips. She had freckles on her thighs and arms. Her hair was long and blonde and she had gotten it cut and styled recently. She had enough makeup on to hide her age.

I continued to the back of the bus like I usually did. After a few minutes with my book, there she was, with that boy and moving to sit in the seat in front of me.

“It’s not as cold here,” she said to the boy. “Do you want the aisle or the window?”

The boy told her the window, and as she sat down, she gave me a good, long stare.

I tried not to think about it. It wasn’t uncommon for a woman to look at me that way, and what was the accomplishment in turning on a 43-year-old suburban mother or grandmother?

A few minutes later, for no reason, she got up and rested a coffee cup in the crook of the seat across from me. She was bent over for awhile and I was getting hard.

And then that stare again. When she sat back down she reclined her seat and I watched her cross her legs in front of me. When she scrolled through, her eyes on her I-Phone, I checked for a ring on her finger. She didn’t have one.

Maybe she took it off when she was still in the front and came to the back hoping for the best. Maybe she was just waiting for the next time, the last time, the first time in a long time, to screw a younger guy in the back of the bus or in a roadside motel. I was just a guy with a backpack. Could be going anywhere. Could be up for anything.

I thought about my girlfriend who I was very much in love with. I knew, or thought, she would never go this far. She wouldn’t stare at a man or look for his ring. I thought about what a friend had said, that monogamy is a cultural institution. In a thousand years maybe we would live in a world where people would fuck at will: on a bus, street corner, field, wherever they wanted. So it would be okay, and maybe even expected, if I said to the woman, “Excuse me, do you know how to set these seats to recline. I can’t get it to work.”

And she would say, “Sure. Hit that button.”

“Which button?”

“Here.” Then she would get up. “I’ll show you.” She’d sit next to me and I would move my things to the floor. “Right here,” she’d say. And when she reached over we’d look at each other, knowing this wasn’t about that. She’d start rubbing my cock over my pants and she’d start blowing me while her son or grandson slept in front of us. She’d pull her head up from my lap and walk into the bathroom in the back of the bus. As she cruised down the aisle, I’d watch her hips move from side to side, thinking about how I was going to fuck her so hard, her loud moans echoing throughout the bus.

I was getting harder, watching her legs.

The woman got up again to retrieve her cup across from me and didn’t look this time.  She must’ve been over me.

I thought that I had fantasies still, like fucking a random older woman on the bus. I felt dirty for thinking this.

Eventually I went back to my book, my i-Pod, whatever I could grab to stop thinking about her. I listened to a podcast and watched her bounce her right leg as it draped itself over her left. I wondered if the day would come when I wouldn’t be affected this way, when I could calm down and not get hard on public transportation. I felt like there was something wrong with me.

And then suddenly, this: I thought how my girlfriend would one day be as old as this woman, and if I was lucky, I could make love to her then too. I could look in her eyes and think about our history together, the world we built. That could be my life.

Gary was beloved. He was the wise one. The funny one. The scary one. And today marked the greatest achievement of Gary’s life, at least that’s what he told people around the coffee urns. It made Kurt sick, the blind and indomitable devotion to sobriety. It was a struggle for all of them, they were addicts, but Gary made it look easy. The stupid, grumpy, old bastard went forty-years without a drink. Kurt made it a year once. He got a chip for it. He didn’t know where it was now.

The large room was sparsely lit from above. On his way to the podium, Gary’s hairless head bobbed in and out of the hanging, flimsy light. Reflections of light moved circularly around his head, and they all watched him. The women’s backs were arched and their necks were long. The men were all grinning. They all loved him. He stood at the podium now, looking out at the small crowd. And Kurt held him between still eyelids, not blinking, not smiling. Everyone else just watched.

“Most of you already know me, but in case there’re any newbies here tonight, my name is Gary.”

“Hi, Gary,” the veteran crowd responded.

“Today is my anniversary,” he said. “Now it’s not the anniversary of my marriage, though earlier this year I did celebrate my forty-fifth year with Meredith,” he paused, allowing for some light clapping. Kurt often wondered about Gary’s marriage and the marriages of his other fellow alcoholics. He had met a few of the spouses. The wives and husbands of sober alcoholics were broken people. Something about them seemed so sad—to have such devotion to someone so troubled, so prone to narcissism and abusive behavior seemed to Kurt like a waste of commitment. Most of them were already on their second or third marriages, which actually tended to last longer because everyone was closer to dying. But Gary, an admitted wife-beater in his drinking days, had been married for forty-five years to one woman. Kurt’s only marriage to date had lasted two.

“Thank you,” Gary continued. “No, today’s not the anniversary of my wedding, but in some respects this is a bigger anniversary, a more important anniversary.” The audience was rapt; their faces were blank, waiting. Kurt wanted a cigarette.

“Without this anniversary my marriage would have ended years ago,” Gary paused and looked down. “Maybe my life too, but I’m alive today and today I have been sober for forty years,” he finished and looked up.

With this, the small crowd stood and exploded with applause. Their faces were beaming. One man even let out a blasting whoo-hoo. Kurt stood with them and clapped softly. Gary raised his arms and began trying to calm the crowd. Then he shook his head, feigning bashfulness, but his face wasn’t red, and his movements were calculated. He was prepared for such a response. He had counted on it.

“Please, please,” Gary said gesturing with his arms and shaking his head. “Please sit down.”

Kurt took his seat. The rest of the crowd let out a few more soft claps before falling back into their metal chairs with a collective crunch.

“Now some of you may be asking how did he do this? Those of you who know my story and the kind of man I was might think it, at the very least, improbable that I’d be standing here before you forty years sober. Many of you probably want to know my secret.”

The audience’s faces moved with Gary’s words. They were sober-faced now, sober-faced and serious. Gary could speak. The truth was almost everyone in there could speak. The room was filled with alcoholics, alcoholics and orators.

“In truth I wish I could take more credit for my sobriety, but I can’t. I wish I could tell you it’s been a true test of my will and spirit and that I have come out the other side victorious—single handedly vanquishing urge and cynicism. A part of me wishes I could say that, but the truth is that there are only two reasons why I am still sober today. Those reasons are God and Alcoholics Anonymous.”

Applause, once again, spilled from the crowd. This time though, they came out controlled, almost regimented. Gary stood in silence, letting AA and God collect their deserved acclaim. He would let the clapping fade naturally—there would be no rush this time. When the soft applause faded, he began again.

“We have a little saying in AA. It goes like this. If you want what we have, you’ll go to any length to get it!”

“That’s right,” a woman in the back shouted in affirmation.

“And I know it’s hard out there,” he continued, “But I still believe that even with all the lies, decadence and corruption in the world that this place, this place is a fortress of temperance—a shelter against the destructive urge.”

Gary was getting worked up. His pudgy, old face was moistening and his gestures were becoming more involved and dramatic. He was preaching now—all fire and brimstone. Gary would rant until he was beet red and near dripping with sweat. Then he would tell a joke, something about his wife—a silly anecdote about marriage. Then the other old bears would present him with his forty year chip and there would be more cheering, more cheering followed by a break for coffee and donuts. The smokers would go outside, smoke, and then the meeting would continue. Someone else would talk and then it would all be over. And this is how they did it. This is how the kept themselves from drinking.

“The kids today don’t know what the world is . . .” Gary continued. Kurt shook his head lightly, privately. He thought he must have drifted off for second. Gary was already on to the kids. Kurt didn’t want to hear about the fucking kids. That’s all these septuagenarian ex-drunks talked about, the god damn kids and their god damn hair and their god damn goofy pants and their god damn expensive sneakers and their god damn sexy music. Perhaps that sort of fodder was acceptable around the coffee urns, but to bring it to the podium on such a day made Kurt furious. He needed a cigarette, and the smoky smell of his yellowish fingers wasn’t going to fucking cut it. So he stood up slow. He had had the foresight to sit in the back, but he couldn’t escape totally unnoticed. A few glances found him. He recognized them—they were the scowling side-glances of the old guard of this AA parish. They were the ones that controlled the disapproving sentiments of the heard. They were the elders—the boss drunks. There was one face, though, that wasn’t sullen. It belonged to a woman, a younger woman, maybe in her thirties. She was wearing a flower-print sundress and her pale breasts were nearly pouring out of it. Her brown hair was cropped short and her name was Carol. She was watching him. He looked at her, made eye-contact briefly, and slipped away from the dimly lit meeting into the florescent hallway.

Outside the community building he smoked his cigarette. It was his second since he’d walked out of the meeting. He was sitting on a bench near the sidewalk, smoking and examining a name etched in the warped and flaking wood of the bench, Jason. He wondered how long alcoholics had been meeting here, he wondered what Jason drank—vodka fortified with white wine, that’s what Jason drank. He heard the doors open behind him and out they came, the rest of the smokers. The forty year chip had been distributed. Kurt made it a year once—they gave him a chip for it, his old group. He remembered the triangle: hope, service, recovery. He remembered the metallic scent the coin left on his fingers. He wondered where the coin was now, probably in a landfill somewhere. He wondered what the forty-year chip looked like, but he knew. He knew the only difference was the Roman numerals on the back. He knew everything else was the same. He wondered if Jason had wanted what they had, really wanted it.

The smokers huddled together underneath the metal canopy that protruded over the glass doors. They huddled there as if it was raining, as if it was cold, but it wasn’t—it was 74 degrees. They whispered excitedly about what had just happened. Kurt peered back over his shoulder. A few were looking at him, but they turned away. One of them spewed out a forced laugh, the others joined in, and then she walked out. Carol pushed the doors open and, without hesitation, began moving toward the bench. Kurt twisted his head forward. He could hear her flats scrape against the concrete.

“Mind if I join you?” she asked already in the process of sitting.

Kurt took a drag off his cigarette and shook his head.

“So, I’m kind of new. I don’t think we’ve talked before.”

“No, we haven’t,” Kurt replied dryly.

“Well I think we should talk,” Carol said fishing into her purse.

“Okay.”

She pulled out a pack of Marlboro’s and a large Diamond brand matchbook—the red, white, and blue kind you light charcoal with. She stuck the cigarette in her mouth and sat the box on her lap. She pulled out a match, examined it closely, and struck it. She carefully held the match to the end of her cigarette. She inhaled, flipped her wrist and tossed the finished match to the ground. Kurt watched her. She pursed her lips and exhaled.

“I like the taste of sulfur, that’s why I use the matches, matches are made with sulfur,” she said, putting the matchbook back into her purse.

“Okay,” Kurt said, letting his eyes wander away from her.

“You think that’s weird?” she asked, knocking her knees together once, then twice, then a third time. Then she slowly let her knees touch, and stilled them.

Kurt glanced at her knee caps and then the dress, and then looked away again. “I don’t know what it is,” he said.

“It’s not weird—here have a drag, tell me you don’t taste the difference,” she extended the cigarette toward him.

“No thanks.”

She let her arm hang out there for a moment, but Kurt’s eyes stayed away.

“Suit yourself,” she said. They smoked quietly. “You missed quite a show in there.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

“No really, when he got the chip he nearly cried.”

“Well that’s because Gary’s an emotional wreck. He’s angry, he’s sad, he’s all over the fucking place,” Kurt said. He took the last drag of his cigarette, flicked it, and watched the tiny embers explode against the concrete.

“I like, Gary,” she said.

“Everybody likes, Gary.”

“But you don’t?” she asked.

“I have my reasons,” he leaned back into the bench. “A life filled with discipline and nearly finished, and all he wants to do is bitch. Bitch and preach, he should be on a.m. fucking radio.”

“That’s funny,” she said with a soft chuckle. “And what do you do?”

“Construction, some custodial work, whatever I can get,” Kurt replied a little too quickly. He was nervous—she made him nervous.

“I knew it,” she exclaimed. “It’s those hands of yours, they look rough,” she signaled to his hands with her cigarette.

Kurt looked down at his hands and turned them over. He ran his fingers across his callused palms. He put his left one over his right and squeezed it. He didn’t respond.

“He’s my sponsor,” the words fell idly from her mouth.

“Who?”

“Gary,” she said with a humorous inflection.

“What? How old are you?”

“Thirty-two.”

“A thirty-two year old woman and Gary’s your sponsor. Christ this is a fucked up group,” Kurt said leaning forward, still wringing his hands.

“He invited me to dinner at his house tonight, meet his wife and stuff. He said he knows that it might be strange him being my sponsor, but that his wife would take an active interest too. Some guy he was sponsoring died not too long ago. I think he was anxious for a new project,” she said, opening her legs and then knocking her knees back together again.

Kurt wondered what Gary’s house was like. He imagined the couches were wrapped in plastic. “Did they pass the coin around so everyone could touch it?” Kurt asked. She nodded. “I hate it when they do that,” he said.

“I think it’s kind of nice, I like the ceremony, it’s fun.”

“Fun?”

“Yeah, you know the pageantry, fun, like church.”

“Like church?”

“Yeah. When I was a kid, I was too young to receive the blood of Christ, so my pastor would just place his hand gently on the top of my head. The feeling of his hand, well, it was absolutely sublime. I would go to church more often if the pastor would just touch my head. He can keep the blood of Christ—I just want his hand,” she said. She paused and looked at her cigarette. She was watching the smoke swirl away from her fingers. She was watching it swirl away and disappear. “I just love ceremony. It’s the best part of everything,” she finished.

“You are weird,” Kurt stated plainly.

“And you’re grumpy,” she said. “Good for you I like grumpy.”

Kurt tightened his eyes and looked at her. “And why is that?” he asked.

She didn’t say anything. She just looked at him and smiled. All her teeth were straight except for one in the bottom corner of her mouth, it stuck out. She was pretty. She was prettier than any woman he’d been with in recent memory. She kept smiling. She smiled like a child. Kurt was forty-two, but he felt ancient next to her..

“They’re looking at us,” she said giving a soft nod back at the other smokers.

Kurt turned and looked at them. He did so boldly. Kurt stared, stern faced, until they looked away.

“They were looking at me,” Kurt said, turning back to Carol.

“Oh, and why not me?” Carol asked.

“I’ve missed a couple meetings. They think I’m gonna slip. They think I’m on the edge.”

“Are you? On the edge?”

“Aren’t we all?”

Carol didn’t respond. She put her fingertips to her lips, inhaled, and then flicked her cigarette in a swooping arch. It landed quietly on the street with no splash of tiny fire. She stood up and looked down at Kurt. She stayed like that for a moment, quietly waiting for Kurt to stand. He did, and they walked toward the glass doors. They walked past the smokers. A couple of them said hi, but Kurt and Carol didn’t respond. They moved through the doors and into the bright tiled hallway and then they slipped back into the dim meeting.

They were in her bed, naked. She was underneath his arm. Her head was on his chest and they were quiet. They weren’t sleeping, or trying to sleep, they were lying there, naked in the light. It was nice. Their pale imperfect bodies locked together. His belly, her hips, his balding head, her crooked tooth. They both lay there like that for awhile, quietly aging.

“You know what they call this?” she asked, knowing the answer.

“What?”

“This,” she said moving her hand in a quick wave.

“Cuddling,” Kurt said timidly. He tried to sound gruff, manly, but it just made the word sound more out of place. She smiled and let out a whispered giggle.

“No, they call this something, when two people in the program fuck they call it something. Do you know what they call it?”

Kurt thought for a moment. He wanted the silence to return. “Yes,” he answered. “I know what they call it.”

“What?” she asked, wanting to hear him say it.

“They call it the thirteenth step,” he said.

She smiled. He could feel her lips spread against his chest in a faint smile. It was quiet again. “Isn’t that cool,” she said after a while. “The thirteenth step,” she sounded amazed, like a child. “Have you done it before?”

“What?”

“You know what, ‘taken the thirteenth step?’”

“No, I haven’t.”

There was no response from her. And Kurt was thankful, he hoped she would remain quiet for longer this time.

“Who’s your sponsor?” she asked, still toying with his coarse hairs.

“No one you know,” Kurt responded.

“He doesn’t go to our meetings?”

“No.”

“Where is he?”

“Peoria.”

“Is that where you’re from?” she asked, her voice touched with synthetic sweetness.

“It’s where I used to live,” Kurt said slowly.

“Is that where your ex-wife is?”

“Yes.”

“Your ex-wife and your sponsor…anyone else?”

Kurt didn’t answer for awhile. He took his time. She knew. Gary had probably told her. It could have been anybody though, they all knew by now. There are no secrets in AA.

“My daughter. But you knew that.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, her head flying off of his chest. “I didn’t mean to pry, I just, well . . . it’s just terribly interesting.”

“It’s terribly interesting that my ex-wife and sponsor are married and raising my daughter, that’s terribly interesting?” Kurt’s voice remained calm. He spoke plainly.

“Fuck yes it is! I mean, it’s horrible, but it’s such a fantastic predicament,” she was gazing away now, daydreaming. “It makes you interesting Kurt,” she looked at him, “It makes me want to fuck you all over again.”

Kurt sat up, “What time is it?”

“I don’t know. Ten o’clock maybe.”

“I’ve got to go to work,” Kurt said, stepping out of the bed. He began dressing.

“But it’s late.”

“I clean a bookstore most nights,” Kurt slipped into his pants. “It keeps me busy.”

“You’re not upset?” Carol asked.

“No,” Kurt replied.

“I was married too, or, am married, but I’m getting a divorce, so I have an idea about how you feel.”

“Okay,” Kurt said, buttoning his off-white shirt and standing by the door. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“Okay,” Carol returned. She pulled a blanket over herself and laid back into the bed. Kurt turned and stepped out the door. “Hey Kurt,” she called to him.

“Yes?” he said standing in the doorway.

“I like being your thirteenth step.”

He smiled at her and left.

Kurt liked being alone with the books. It’s why he took the job. He was in college when he got Susan pregnant. She kept the baby. He dropped out and found his way into construction. He dropped out before declaring a major, but later he realized it should have been English. He should have been a teacher. He liked being alone with books and he liked cleaning up around them. He felt like it was important.

There was a boy sleeping in the children’s literature section. Kurt had already buffed the tile near the bathrooms, scrubbed the counters in the break room, turned the lights on in the front of the store and began vacuuming. He always started vacuuming in the kid’s section, it was the messiest. And that’s when he saw him. A little boy, maybe nine or ten, curled up under a plastic table, using a big purple sweatshirt for a pillow. His legs were sticking out from underneath the table—his stained, once-white shoes were still tied. And Kurt stood there, frozen, frozen and looking at the boy’s shoes. The vacuum kept screaming.

He flipped the switch and shut the whirling machine off. He took a tentative step in the boy’s direction. Was he awake? He had to be awake. Kurt had to wake him if he wasn’t. So Kurt moved toward the boy and squatted down next to his feet, his skin looked soft, unruined, but Kurt didn’t want to touch him.. He squatted down and stared at the boy’s feet.

“Hi,” a soft voice came out from under the plastic table.

“Hi.”

The boys feet moved underneath the table and his head popped out the adjacent side. His brown hair was matted. He had freckles, not a lot, but some.

“Do you work here?” the boy asked softly.

“Sometimes.”

The boy nodded. “I don’t live here.”

“I know,” Kurt returned.

The boy nodded again and let out a theatrical sigh—a sigh begging to be adult.

“I had the craziest dream,” the boy said, crawling out from underneath the table. “I was at home and wanted to go out and play, but the screen door wouldn’t open. It was shut and wouldn’t open. I could hear the wind and smell the outside, but it was shut.”

“It was shut?” Kurt asked.

The boy nodded somberly. He stood up looking lost. Kurt could smell him now, he reeked of cigarettes. His pale blue cotton shorts were too small and his grey t-shirt was too big. Kurt was still squatting. The boy was at eye level with him now. The boy stood there and Kurt couldn’t move.

Kurt went to another meeting the following week. He hadn’t called Carol since he left her place, and she hadn’t called him, but he wanted to see her. He told himself that he didn’t, but he did. He showered and shaved. He changed his shirt twice in the process of dressing. He cursed his indecisiveness and damned himself for caring about what she would think. He knew he shouldn’t. He knew that she didn’t really care about him and he knew he really didn’t care about her, but it was the thought of potentially caring that spurned this fit of self-consciousness. He wanted her to like him and he hated it. He sprayed himself lightly with some cheap cologne he’d picked up at the drug-store—Drakkar Noir. He liked the noir part. He sprayed, cursed the smell of the perfume, and then left for the meeting.

She was the first one he saw when he walked in. She was wearing a dress nearly identical to the one she had worn last week. She was standing next to the coffee urn, smiling. Smiling and watching Gary. He was telling a joke of some kind, had to be, because everyone around him was smiling. Kurt watched them as he walked by. They all laughed, and Gary smiled. Carol laughed the hardest and he couldn’t tell if the laughter was forced or legitimate and he couldn’t decide which would be worse. Kurt walked slowly—he didn’t know where to go. He had no one to talk to. He had no jokes to tell. He sat in one of the metal folding chairs and waited for the meeting to begin. No one else was seated yet. Kurt sat alone, and when Carol sat, she sat with Gary. She didn’t look at Kurt. She gave him one quick glance, but she never really looked. Kurt was quiet the whole meeting. He listened to the stories—some were funny and some were sad—some were both. The good ones were both. When it was time to smoke he did. He sat on the bench, ran his thumb across the lonely carved name (Jason) and waited, but Carol never came out. He went back in, had a cup of coffee, and listened to a couple new-comers speak. One was fresh off his first DUI. He was a young man and unsure of himself. He didn’t know if he had a problem and he didn’t want to offend anyone. Kurt knew that the young drunk just wanted to be home, and home was a bar somewhere with a girl and a stool and some other guy drinking with that girl, sitting in that stool. When the meeting was over Kurt stood slowly and walked out. He did not approach Carol, he didn’t say anything to anyone—he just went to work and never came back.

After finishing the tile floors Kurt lit a cigarette. He wanted one and he wanted to smoke it inside. He walked into the bathrooms with a bucket full of bleach and water. His right hand was sheathed in a large yellow glove and it carried a long handled scrub brush, but his left hand remained uncovered and Kurt kept smoking with it. He opened the first stall door and looked at the toilet. The seat was covered with piss and the bowl was stained with shit. Kurt thought it must be the coffee. The coffee had to be to blame for the state of the bathroom. The readers would come in, drink coffee incessantly, read, and then shit and piss like maniacs. Kurt began scrubbing. He smoked and scrubbed until all the toilets were clean. Then he went to get the vacuum.

He flipped the switch and the whirling began. He headed toward the kid’s section, as he did every night, and there he was. The boy was sleeping in the same spot he had been a week ago. Kurt shut off the machine and walked over. His heart was racing. He squatted down and grabbed the boy’s foot. He shook it.

“Hey!” the boy said, sliding his foot away from Kurt, deeper into the shadow of the plastic table. “I’m not sleeping you know.”

“What are you doing?” Kurt asked.

“Reading.”

“You can’t be here. I told you that last time. You have to go home.”

The boy popped his head out of the other side of the table. “Okay,” the boy responded. His tone was casual, unable or unwilling to grasp the seriousness of the situation. “Will you give me a ride again?”

He seemed fine, the boy, seemed unafraid, but there was something sad about him. It was his eyes. There were dark circles beneath them—circles that didn’t belong on a child, circles that didn’t belong on anyone. His eyes were blue and sparkling above of the dark bags. The boy was still pale, perpetually pale. He was wearing the same clothes from the week before and judging by the smell, the clothes hadn’t been washed—maybe not even changed. The cigarette stench was strong. Before Kurt had supposed that the stench of cigarettes had come from the boy’s parents—now he wondered if the boy was smoking himself. He told the boy he would take him home as he had done before. He didn’t want to have to call the police. He didn’t want to be bothered with it. He just wanted to clean the God damn bookstore and go home. He wanted to be alone with his books.

The boy climbed into Kurt’s 98’ Honda civic and buckled his seatbelt.

“Do you remember how to get there?” the boy asked.

Kurt nodded and started the engine. He drove, it wasn’t far, and Kurt did not speak to the boy, but the boy spoke to him. The boy told Kurt about the story he was reading in the bookstore. The story was about a boy that lived in a sandbox. The boy would play in the sandbox all day and all night—he would build remarkable castles, maintain them for a while, crush them, build them back up, and then crush them again. Kurt thought the story sounded ridiculous, but he didn’t say anything. That’s as far as the boy had read, but he supposed that in the end the castle would be destroyed for some reason or another. The boy said most stories worth reading were sad ones. Kurt told him that he was wrong—that he couldn’t be more wrong. The boy just laughed.

When they arrived, Kurt parked the car next to the curb across from the house. The house was small and dark and abandoned. Kurt had wondered about whether or not anyone lived in the house legally the first time he dropped the boy off, but now he knew for certain that no one lived there. He knew that no one should live there. The boy hopped up, said bye, and exited the car. Kurt drove off almost instantly. What could he do? It would be nothing but a hassle.

But then Kurt remembered the boy’s eyes. The sparkling, puffy, weary eyes. Kurt pulled a u-turn and headed back toward the tiny dilapidated house. He parked the car, got out and walked up. The door was open, but there was no one inside. Kurt called out, but no one answered. On the floor, amidst the dirt and the grime, there was a pack of Marlboro Reds. Kurt picked up the pack, removed the lone cigarette left, and slid it behind his ear. He looked around a bit longer. He found a sleeping bag and a lighter upstairs in one of the bedrooms, but that was it. So he picked up the lighter and left. He drove around and looked for the boy. He searched for an hour, but he found no one. The little neighborhood was empty. It belonged to no one and no one belonged to it.

I told Brenda’s father that I was a bus boy in a dining hall. We had been together almost a year but she told me, if he asked, to say it had only been a few months. He didn’t. I said I was twenty-one and that I was going to URI in the fall. He looked at Brenda and she tried to force a smile even though she hated the idea of moving. Brenda was twenty-three and already had a degree in women’s studies and comparative lit from a small college in Massachusetts. He paid for it. He paid for everything.

I said I was going to be a pharmacist. He looked at Brenda and said, “Well, that’s great,” and changed the subject to tennis. She didn’t defend me. She just asked about his doubles partner. He didn’t tell me to get lost or stay away from his daughter or anything like that. Just ignored me. He knew he was better than me and that Brenda could do better. I was nothing. They talked for what felt like four days. The waitress refilled my water six times. He didn’t even shake my hand goodbye.

“I think that went well,” she said. We were in her Oldsmobile on the way back to her apartment. It was really her dad’s apartment since he owned the building, but he hardly ever showed up.

“He hates me. We’re dead. We’re pretty much over already.”

“Oh shut up.”

“You let him run your life.”

“Don’t be an asshole.”

“I want to take care of you,” I said. She stared at lines on the road. I watched them too. They jumped all over the place because they had been scuffed away by snowplows and salt. I wondered how someone painted them and if he ever planned on doing it again.

“Don’t let him get to you,” Brenda said. She put her hand on my thigh and I started kissing her and she had to pull over. You could fuck anywhere in Vermont. No one cared.

She never got pregnant, thank God. She always forgot to take the pill and it worried me constantly. I paid for it. That was one thing I paid for, because she was too embarrassed to pick it up. She worried that the pharmacist might be a man who would make a face or, even worse, a woman who would judge her. She had anxiety. She would try to leave the apartment to pick it up and instead she would walk in circles and cry at the foot of the door with her shoes and jacket on. When I had a pharmacy degree it would be cheaper. Or I could steal pills for her. I could get her anything she needed.

The night after I met Brenda’s father, I stopped at Darlington’s doughnuts on my way home from work. Best maple crullers in Vermont. Ray was reading at a booth. I needed weed or pills or whatever he had. He usually just sat there and read until close. He was seventeen or eighteen or something. High school kid. Once he didn’t have anything to sell and some guys from Maine beat him to shit. It might have been a coincidence. I asked him about it one time and he didn’t want to get into it. I had the impression that he would always be there, reading dumb magazines every night anyway.

There was a jukebox at Darlington’s that stopped being serviced in 1988 when Mr. Darlington died in a car accident and left the business to his wife. It still worked. The songs were never updated. Some of the records were scratched and would skip constantly. It had a lot of Journey. “Borderline” by Madonna was a crowd favorite. We never saw Mr. Darlington’s wife. Everyone said she only came in once a month to check on things.

I went to the jukebox and played “La Bamba.” It only cost a quarter. I was in love with that jukebox.

“Let me ask you something, Ray,” I said. “You’re a pharmacist.”

“I’m not a pharmacist.”

“I’m gonna be a pharmacist in six years.”

He nodded. He was reading some car magazine with a bright yellow one on the front. It looked like the mustard on a hot dog in some commercial.

“I got accepted to URI, but Brenda doesn’t want to move.”

“Brenda is your wife?”

“Girlfriend. I’m only twenty-one.”

Then I asked him why he performed this community service. He seemed confused, and I explained that he was serving the community as a pharmacist. He was easing the pain of many. He was providing vacations for those who could not otherwise afford them.

“I’m not doing shit, Sam. I just want to get out of Vermont.”

“You know why I want to be a pharmacist? For Brenda. For her and to serve the community.”

“Is she sick?”

“She takes more pills than I do.”

I gave a dollar to the woman who served me. Maureen was in her mid-thirties. She tied her smock loosely and always wore cheap earrings. If she were an animal she would be an owl-shark. Something about the location of her eyes in relation to her ears. I wanted to take her outside and lie on the grass beside the highway and look up at the stars. She would tell me about her estranged children. There were three: Allen, Mark and Becky. She loved them. She had changed. She wasn’t a young woman anymore. She wouldn’t make the same mistakes. I would rub her back and loosen her fears.

I drove home but the road was white. It was mid-July so I knew it wasn’t snow. It was an illustration. A storyboard. It wasn’t complete yet. I could tell. Some of the lines were out of place, so I guessed where they ended and new ones began. It didn’t matter in a storyboard.

I applied to three schools, but not the University of Vermont because I didn’t want to stay in the same state and be the same person anymore. Brenda was pissed about that. She had to spend every summer at her stepfather’s vacation house in Newport all through high school and college. She said the whole state was full of people who knew everything about you and all they wanted to do was spread rumors and ruin lives. Vermont was where her dad lived. He ran some investment group from his giant moose house. She could be secluded here.

But she wouldn’t move with me. I kept asking and she kept saying no and our conversation was a carousel with horrible music and piss-scented horses. URI was the best program for me. I didn’t get in to UC San Francisco and St. Joseph in Connecticut just wasn’t as good. I would say everything I could think of to convince her, that we could live by the beach but not in Newport, that we could get a big yellow dog and name him Troubadour, that she never had to leave the house, that I would learn to cook new things and would clean our place every Sunday if she just moved down there with me. Nothing worked.

I didn’t sleep around—honestly, I didn’t. And I would have done anything to get her to move, to stay together. She was a teacher’s aide at the Little Red Apple preschool. She chased the children around and played games with them and kept them from running into traffic. That was important to her, doing something real, something that helped people. I argued it was fifteen hours a week, no real money and she could do it anywhere, but it was her routine, and routines meant everything to her. Waking up at exactly seven-twenty every morning, jogging for half an hour, taking a fifteen-minute shower, eating a bowl of oatmeal and half a grapefruit and leaving the other half in a zip-top bag in the refrigerator. It all kept her calm.

She thought I was unsteady, that I didn’t know what I was asking or that I hadn’t thought through my promises, because I fell in love with every girl I met. She knew this. I told her from the beginning.

I collected them like baseball cards. Girls in their nicest dresses in the dining hall, girls lying out on the quad when it was warmer than sixty degrees. I wasn’t one of those I-need-to-fuck-everybody guys at all. I didn’t think I could offer any of them anything special that some other bus boy couldn’t. I knew I couldn’t even offer Brenda anything yet, I was trying. I would be able to if she would come to Rhode Island with me. It made me feel old to see all of these beautiful women I would never know.

There was one thing I wished I hadn’t done in the beginning when we were still new together. It was eleven weeks in, when we were starting to define what we were and when every morsel of new information was an honor to carry. I was sleeping at Brenda’s place a few nights a week, and she even came to my apartment once in a while back then. We were going out to dinners and seeing movies. We saw all five of the Oscar-nominated films. She loved movie theaters. I would complain because it was dark and we couldn’t talk and I would say, “But then I can’t look at you all night.”

But there was a girl named Lauren who ate in the dining hall with her friends and I would take her dishes and smile at her or she would ask me how it was going. One night we were short a station cook and they stuck me at stir-fry and she came over and ordered a veggie with ginger scallion sauce. Afterwards she came back, told me it was delicious and stood there, waiting for me to ask when we could spend time together. She was hips and dimples and dirty blonde hair and I felt like the asshole I was when I called her after I punched out. I felt even worse when we met outside her dorm and I was still in my whites and striped apron.

We got into Brenda’s car. The floor of the front seat was covered with old taco wrappers and a bunch of empty plastic cups. I threw them all in the back and she giggled a little. I don’t know what I thought I was doing.

“How old are you?” was the first thing she said, and I made some joke about forgetting my cane and Life Alert bracelet at home. But she didn’t remember those commercials even though she couldn’t have been younger than eighteen and I was barely twenty-one.

I drove us to Appletree Bay and she told me about her major, something I always asked college girls about because they had a lot to say. She asked about working in the dining hall and I said, “You don’t want to hear about that. It’s fine.” But she was adamant because it probably felt like I was putting her down so I just said, “It’s nothing exciting. Just a shitty job. You’ve had a shitty job before, right?” and she said the only jobs she ever had were babysitting and tutoring in the academic resource center and she liked both of them. And by the time she told me that that she liked me, it was already nine-thirty and Brenda was calling me, wondering where the hell I was.

We kissed for a while and then I told her I couldn’t do it, my hand was on her tit when I said I had a girlfriend, one I was falling in love with. She laughed. To her, that was the funniest thing I said all that time in the car, but then she realized I meant it and she said, “Then why did you call me? Why did you bring me out here?”

I couldn’t think of anything to say. She got out of the car and I begged her to get back in. I told her I was sorry and that I would drive her back and she didn’t have to talk to me anymore, didn’t even have to look at me on the ride back. But she said she would call a friend to pick her up. She wanted to say something but wanted it to come out just right and I stared at her tiny chin and willed her to call me any number of curse words and get it over with.

“You can’t treat people like this,” she said and she walked away from the car. I drove to the far end of the parking lot, a hundred yards away, and I waited until a blue Camry came to get her.

I wished she had called me a name. An asshole, a prick—anything.

Brenda and I met at a concert in Burlington, at the Showcase. I was there to see Small Houses. There were three bands playing that night and she was there to see the opener. I forget their name, but they were from Rhode Island; that’s how she knew them. She was standing in front of me and we said a few words to one another; I might have asked her what time the bands were going on or something dumb like that, and then I pulled her hair while Small Houses were setting up. It was long and wavy and light brown and it felt soft but tangled. I couldn’t see the snarls until it was in my hands. I was running my fingers through it as gently as I could, I didn’t mean to pull it. She was angry, naturally, so I told her she had the most beautiful hair I had ever seen and she told me to go fuck myself. I apologized and bought her an Amstel because she was holding one when I pulled her hair, but she wouldn’t take it. She called me a creep, actually, and I was in love with her.

When Small Houses started playing, we were singing along near each other and she looked at me and I offered her the beer again and she took it and threw it in the trashcan behind me. Before the encore, I went outside to smoke a cigarette and wait for her.

When she came out, I told her I normally wouldn’t have touched anyone’s hair. I didn’t know why I had done it. And I said I knew it was a shitty thing to do, to violate someone’s space. She started walking away and I asked her how I could make it up to her. She told me I could never talk to her again and laughed. The way she said it made me wonder if guys acted like this around her all the time, if they called her baby and made kissy sounds as she walked by. And I hated them, the guys I imagined, and hated myself even more for being one of them. She was trying to hail a cab and I offered to pay for it and after a few drove past she said fine, as long as I left her alone. But when one finally pulled over and she got in, I looked in my pockets and I only had four dollars left. She laughed. I gave her the four dollars, even though that wasn’t nearly enough, and she felt bad about how pathetic I was. That’s what she said later on, after we had been together for a few months; she felt bad for me. That’s why she asked for my number and said we could get a drink some night. I was surprised when she actually called a few days later.

When I opened the door to her apartment Brenda was pouring a glass of water. She only bought designer water. She said the water in Vermont was full of toxins.

“How was work?”

“I want you to come to Rhode Island with me,” I said.

“I don’t want to talk about URI anymore.”

“Fine, then let’s talk about Maureen at the doughnut shop. If you don’t come with me, I think she might.”

She told me to shut up and took a big sip of the water.

“She’s beautiful.”

“Who isn’t to you?”

We started yelling at each other like we always did. She told me I fancied myself this progressive, full-hearted person, but that it was all a fantasy. Because I saw women the way a tourist sees a skyscraper. I was a fool and I was lucky to have her, lucky that she wasn’t the jealous type; that she saw my flaws as things she could live with. Something passed through the room, a ghost or spirit, something neither of us could see, because everything was suddenly hushed and calm and the light seemed softer. I looked into her eyes and told her I was sorry, that I didn’t mean it about Maureen. That I was stupid.

“I want to do this for you, Brenda. To take care of you.”

“I don’t need you to take care of me. I like everything the way it is. Everything is fine now.”

She went into the bedroom and shut the door behind her. I sat on the couch and took four more of the pills Ray gave me. I should have headed home. I could have watched a nature show and fallen asleep in my own bed. I should have taken my contacts out, at least. Instead, I woke up on the couch with all the lights still on at three in the morning. My eyes were confused and wouldn’t clear out. There was a layer that made everything blurry. I opened the door to her bedroom and she was asleep, curled in a ball at the top of the bed.

“Brenda, help. My eyes,” I said.

She was confused and upset that I woke her up. I said it again and she got out of bed and walked me to the bathroom. She squeezed my hand and sat me down on the toilet before she squirted saline solution into my eyes. She asked me if it was better and I nodded and then she ran warm water over a washcloth and held it against my eyes and rubbed my head with her other hand.

She said she loved me and took the washcloth off of my eyes. I ran my fingers through her hair and asked her to come with me one last time.