Chris Corning

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I really prefer to avoid being around people if it’s at all possible. I’ve been working a second-shift job for the last three years, so I’ve found that it gets easier to avoid people all of the time. “Open Late” drive-thrus are really great, even better than twenty-four hour department stores. When Meijer’s first came to town, people were surprised that it was open all night, and a lot of people seemed to go there just for the novelty of it. There was a lull when the novelty had worn off, but lately the number of late-night shoppers has been slowly growing. It’s probably a lot of people like me, who get uncomfortable when there are lots of people milling around, giving weird looks and buying stupid shit. It’s a college town, so during the school year, there are quite a few students around doing shopping for their dorms and frat parties and shit, but just as many people leave town for the summer as stay, so it gets easier to shop then. And there are like three of the twenty-four hour stores in town now, so I usually just go to whichever one has the fewest cars in the lot. Sometimes that means driving through the lots of all three, only to go back to the first, but it’s not too bad. I’m sure all of the stores don’t hire union labor and buy a lot of their shit from sweatshops or whatever, but if that’s what it takes so I can avoid all the people who are out during the day, I guess I can get over it.

I went to the Super Wal-Mart one night after driving through the parking lots of the other two stores. The one I ended up going to was pretty far out of the way, a mile or two south of the main part of the city. There wasn’t more than a half dozen cars in the lot; there had been somewhere between ten and twenty cars at Meijer’s and Super K-Mart. Of course, it still would’ve been nothing like going to one of those stores during the day, when people stand around and give you funny looks. I don’t like it when people watch me. I got inside Wal-Mart and tried to remember what I needed to buy. I always start off by going to the electronics section to see what sorts of DVDs and CDs they have. I would have time to think about what I needed while I looked around there. Just as I was walking through the scanners at the electronics section, sure as shit, I had to pee. It happens every time I come into these places. It’s better than going to a bookstore or library, where I always end up having to take a shit. Public restrooms are the worst, but I just had to pee and there weren’t too many people around. I’d probably have the bathroom to myself. I walked down the aisles wondering if the guys watching the security cameras at night sit around and talk shit about the customers. They’re probably sitting back there right now, I thought, laughing at me for walking all the way to the electronics section only to turn around and go back to the bathrooms. I was tempted to flip the bird to one of the black plastic globes on the ceiling. I wonder if those guys even really watch the cameras at night. They sure did during the day; I had come to one of these stores with some friends in high school to steal CDs and shit, and just as we got to the door, a couple of guys grabbed my friends and searched them. I was lucky—they didn’t have the CD I wanted.

I walked into the bathroom and headed for the urinals. Making my way to the last urinal, I saw someone’s feet, pants around the ankles, under the first stall. I was screwed. If I could pee fast, I would be able to get out of there before the dude even made it out of the stall, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I took the middle urinal so the guy wouldn’t be able to see my feet, and I stood there, waiting. Come on, pee, I commanded myself. It wasn’t working. The guy in the stall grunted. Motherfucker, I just want to pee and get out of here. I wondered if he heard me walk in. Maybe I should just go out and wait for him to leave. I stood there, trying to concentrate, when I heard him flush. Great, he’s going to walk out and see me standing here at the urinal, not peeing. He walked out and I stared at the wall in front of me. Don’t look over; don’t look over. I looked over when he got to the sink. He nodded at me. I mumbled an attempt at “how you doing,” but it probably just sounded like I was coughing or something. God, he probably thought I was a fucking idiot. Just wash your hands and leave, goddammit. He finally left and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to pee. I flushed the urinal anyway and just left. Whatever I needed, cat food probably, was going to have to wait. Motherfucking public restroom. I didn’t even feel like I had to pee anymore.

I went ahead and stopped at the McDonald’s drive-thru on the way home. I just get their double cheeseburgers most of the time. They screwed up bad when they put them on the dollar menu. I could go there with four dollars and get three plain double cheeseburgers—a satisfying meal. I don’t like getting all of the other crap on there, and I don’t like drinking soda with them. The burgers have a good flavor, and all of that extra stuff ruins it. Sometimes the cheeseburgers are a little too greasy; other times they put too much of the seasoning on them. If I go to the same McDonald’s at the same time of the night, they’re usually just right. Enough grease so that it drips on the paper, but not so much that it drips on my pants. And enough of the seasoning that I can taste it, but not too much so I feel like I need something to drink afterwards.

My brother, the vegan, always gives me a lot of shit for eating at those places. He tells me that I’d probably lose weight if I didn’t eat garbage all the time, but if it means not being a self-righteous prick like him, I’ll stay fat. He went vegan when he was a sophomore in college, and we were about the same size back then, each weighing in around two-twenty. I’d been a senior in high school then, and I didn’t end up going to college for long. I took classes at the University for like three semesters before deciding that I wasn’t all that into it. I hadn’t picked a major and I was getting really tired of all the classes that would never have anything to do with whatever I want to do with my life. Anyway, he just graduated with a degree in plant biology, and all he does is work at a stupid organic co-op, and he doesn’t seem to want to look for a real job. Good thing he took out so many student loans, asshole. He probably weighs like one-sixty or one-seventy now, and I’m up to two-sixty, but I’m a good five or six inches taller, too.

I’m sure I’d lose some of this weight if I wasn’t working in telemarketing, but it pays the bills okay, so I’m gonna stick with it for now. Especially since I don’t have to deal with people face-to-face. People are so much easier to deal with over the phone. Sometimes people cop an attitude about being called in the middle of the evening, but if I get straight into telling them why I’m calling, they usually come around. I wouldn’t want to be the type of telemarketer who sells magazines or other garbage. We call and solicit contributions to charitable organizations, and people usually like the idea of trying to help out. The ones who don’t want to give anything feel bad enough about it that they don’t want to give me a hard time for calling them during dinner.

My co-workers can’t fuck with me too much because we have separated cubicles. All I have to do is call the numbers on my screen and talk people out of their credit card numbers. I even get to smoke a cigarette every hour by giving up my lunch break, and the supervisors are lenient about letting me smoke two if I want to. I usually wait until I see people coming back from cigarette breaks before I go out. Once in a while someone comes out when I’m smoking and I have to make small talk with them. One of the guys who’s come out a couple of times is pretty nice, but he’s always pressuring me to take my cigarette breaks with everyone else or come to some of the parties they have on weekends. A lot of the people who work there are college students and only work two or three days a week. I know that if I went out with all of them, people would just push for personal information or make smart-ass comments about my weight or the fact that I’m not in school. I don’t want to deal with that shit.

I was ready to pee by the time I made it home with my McDonald’s, and I pressed the play button on the answering machine as I danced my way into the bathroom, trying to hold it until I got my pants unzipped. I sighed in relief as I try to hear the answering machine. It sounded like my brother Will. We were supposed to go to lunch with Mom the next day. There was really only one place where he could get his vegan garbage and I could dine on seared mammal flesh. It’s a pain in the ass to go there, but I know Mom gets worried about us if she doesn’t have lunch with us once a month. I set my alarm for eleven in the morning and went to bed, experiencing the monthly frustration of knowing that I’d have to get out of bed early.

***

“What’s up, Curt,” he greeted me getting into my car. “Where are we having lunch?”

“Where else,” I mumbled, looking to the left to see if I was good to pull out of the parking lot and onto the street. I drove toward the “Smart Heart Café.” I never would’ve thought that I’d find something good to eat in a place with a name like that, but I found something that would work for me when Will forced me to go there with him a year or two ago. They serve omelets made with low-cholesterol egg-substitute, but it turns out that you can get real eggs by request. The waitresses there always give me dirty looks, because I ask for the real eggs, and I ask them to use real butter to cook the omelet instead of cooking spray. If that wasn’t enough, I always have to ask for butter too, so that I can choke down their dry-ass “extra-lean low-cholesterol” sausage links. I sometimes ask if the sausages are tofu, just to see if one of them will slip up and admit that real meat couldn’t taste that bad. They keep their stories straight and always give me their spiel about free-range pigs that do cardiovascular exercises, or whatever it is they say to justify serving sausage links in a heart-friendly restaurant.

“You know, you could be a little more open-minded about taking care of yourself. You could end up like Grandpa or Uncle Jeff, if you’re not careful,” he started. I’d heard the same lecture half a dozen times in as many months. “Our family doesn’t have the kind of hearts that can take the way you eat.” At least he was coming up with new ways to say the same old shit.

“Come on, man. None of them probably had a heart as big as mine,” I joked. It was true; they were a lot smaller than I am. “Besides, they drank all the time. I probably haven’t been drunk twice since my twenty-first.” I’m twenty-three now, and I’m sure that getting drunk once a year isn’t going to do any harm that my body won’t overcome. “Besides, it’s not like it makes that big a difference, anymore, whether you’re fit or not. Unless you’re trying to hook up with someone. Strippers and porn are happy to take my money no matter how much I weigh, so why would I want to go to all the trouble to lose a hundred pounds to give my money to some chick who’d probably dump me if I forgot to buy her flowers?”

“Strippers and porn don’t put someone in your bed with you at night, do they?” he asked. He knew plenty about having people in his bed, ever since he’d been working at that co-op full-time, he’d been on and off with all sorts of hippy girls.

“Why, so they can steal the covers and kick me and leave my pillow smelling like patchouli? No thanks, Will. I’ll do the job just as good, or better, myself, and then I don’t gotta worry about making breakfast for anyone,” I fired back. I was starting to get mad. He can’t get over this idea that everybody wants to have somebody. He tried for a couple of months to get me to go out with some girl he worked with, probably a fatty, and I tried to get it into his head that I couldn’t give a shit less about hooking up, whether it was for twenty minutes or twenty years. I have a hard enough time dealing with him, Mom, and the people I work with, let alone some companion who’d want all sorts of shit from me.

“Whatever, Curt. Don’t miss the turn,” he said.

“Yeah, I see it. You wanna drive, buy a car,” I said, pulling into the lot. I parked next to Mom’s car and we walked into the restaurant together.

We spotted Mom sitting at a table on the right side of the restaurant, toward the back. The place was pretty busy, and I had to walk past all of these tables of people, squeezing in between chairs and brushing up against people. I must’ve said “excuse me” seven or eight times before I finally made it to my seat. The fucking people were probably looking at me as I walked past, but I kept my eyes on our table. Will had a smirk on his face when I sat down, and I wasn’t sure why, but I mouthed “fuck you” to him when Mom wasn’t looking.

“The waitress was just here; I hope she doesn’t take a long time to come back,” Mom said, trying to spot our waitress. “How are you boys doing?”

“Work’s been crazy-busy, lately,” Will said. I knew I could count on him to take care of the conversation. I looked through the menu to see if I’d missed something before, or if maybe they’d added some dish with substance to it since the last time I’d come. I was disappointed as usual, and geared myself up to explain the order to the waitress. Mom and Will were talking about the co-op still, and I looked around, trying to figure out if we were going to have a waitress who’d served us before or somebody new. I hated trying to explain my order to new waitresses; they would raise their eyebrows at me while I explained things, and they wouldn’t bother writing any of it down. They’d look around the restaurant after I finished my order, like they were looking for someone who would come tell me to fuck off. I’d have to explain nicely that I placed the same order all the time; I knew they could do it my way. I was relieved when one of our regular waitresses approached the table.

“How ‘bout for you, hon,” she asked when she’d taken down Mom’s and Will’s orders. “You get that special order, don’t you,” she smiled.

“Um, yeah. The ham omelet. Extra portion of ham and cheddar cheese, with real eggs, not the fake ones. And make sure they use three eggs? Cook it in butter, not spray. An order of sausage links on the side, and can you make sure they aren’t too dried-out?”

“Did you want that with the toast, or some granola?”

“Oh yeah, toast, please. White, buttered.” This was the only restaurant that I’d ever been in that didn’t butter your toast unless you asked.

“Something to drink, doll?” she asked, still scribbling furiously on her notebook.

“A glass of whole milk with the meal, please, and some coffee right now.”

“I might have to check on the milk, okay? But I’ll be right back with your coffee,” she smiled. She sure was a nice waitress, one of the few in the place.

“You know, it’d make lot more sense if you had breakfast before meeting with us,” Will said, “it’d make it a lot easier for you, and you could eat all of the real meat you wanted. You know that stuff they’re giving you isn’t real meat, right?” he chided.

“Fuck you. And it is real, they just take all of the good stuff out of it.”

“We don’t need that language here, Curt,” Mom said casually, taking a drink of her orange juice.

“I mean it, those sausages are soy-based,” he went on. “We started getting them at the co-op. And they’re organic, too, so you’re not even getting any of those pesticides or preservatives you love so much,” he said, grinning wide. I stood up and he flinched a bit, so I faked like I was going to throw a punch before walking past him to a little stand where people put their newspapers when they were done with them. He held out his hand, middle finger extended, as I walked past. I returned to my seat and looked through the front page as the two of them talked about family or politics, or family politics. Mom always ends up talking about the same things, and Will knows everything about everything, so I don’t even pretend to be interested in the conversation anymore.

Once or twice, when Will couldn’t make it for lunch with us, Mom and I went out by ourselves. She did most of the talking, but she’d also ask me how things were going. She liked to ask when I would be signing up for classes again and whether or not I still wanted to go into medicine. I tell her every time she asks me; I haven’t wanted to go into medicine since I was seven. I asked for a Fisher-Price medicine kit and she’s thought I wanted to be a doctor ever since. Sometimes she talks about what Dad was like before he left. Apparently he thought a lot about going into medicine when he and Mom met in college. She was studying nursing and graduated the same year they started dating. He ended up moving in with her and then dropped out of school. She worked full-time and he smoked a lot of pot and partied with his college buddies. They graduated and moved away, so he started driving a truck. They never got married, and when I was eight, Dad left for a run to Ohio and didn’t come back. Mom always seemed so sad after that, and anymore she just seems disconnected. The last time we ate lunch together, she asked if I still wanted a class ring. I’d been out of high school for at least three years.

I considered going outside for a cigarette, but the last time we’d come, one of the waitresses came out and asked me to go stand in front of the neighboring store because I was “offending” the customers. They can’t stand to see someone enjoying themselves, I responded, dropping the cigarette on the sidewalk and stepping on it. Usually I put the cigarette out and put the butt in the trash somewhere, but I wanted to leave them a reminder that they’d spoiled my few moments of pleasure. I wouldn’t even bother trying to smoke here anymore.

I glanced through the obituaries in the local section, checking the ages. I liked to speculate about how people had died, but old people were no fun for that. They died because they were old. I’d always find the youngest person and try to see if there were any clues in the obituary. Sometimes they would say that donations could be made in the name of the deceased to the leukemia foundation, the motocross club, or the skydiver’s association. Those were easy ones. I took a drink of my coffee and realized I’d forgotten to add cream. Er. CreamER they had here. Goddammit.

After lunch, we walked Mom slowly back to her car, listening to her talk about the cats as we did. Her silly cats…she had like eight of them or something. And there was always some sort of drama between them. I hugged her good-bye before Will and I walked back to my car. I lit a cigarette before starting the car.

“Fucking smoker,” he said, rolling his window halfway down. “Let me get a couple of drags,” he added, after a pause. I passed him the cigarette and he took a couple of slow drags. He gave a little cough as he handed the cigarette back to me. We arrived at the co-op a few minutes later. “Alright dude, take it easy, huh?” he said, holding out his fist. I made a fist and hit his.

“Yeah, man. Have fun with your hairy-pit bitches,” I laughed.

“Whatever dude, I make them shave that shit if they’re gonna get with me! Peace.”

“Peace.”

I put in Nine Inch Nails’ “Downward Spiral” when he got out, cranking the volume for track one. The track has great heavy riffs. I jammed out on the way back to the apartment.

When I made it back to my apartment, I started quickly up the wooden stairs. It was the type of staircase that they put on the side of a house when they split it up into apartments. They were a little rickety, but not too bad, though I had to be careful when it was wet, ‘cause they’d get pretty slippery. I was going up them pretty quickly that day, until I got about three-quarters up. I had to stop. Then I started to feel it. Thud. Thud. I could feel my heartbeats just behind my ears. They were far apart, and my fingers went numb. The edges of my vision were fluttering, closing in. My skin was cold, all of a sudden, but it felt like I was sweating. I tried to squeeze the railing as hard as I could, but I felt like my hand wasn’t closing. My mind was racing. Could this be it? It was as though I could feel myself being pulled away from my body. I was terrified, but it was invigorating. I felt like my entire body was going numb, so I might not have been able to tell, but I would swear that I nearly got a hard-on when I felt like I was just about to blink out. I could still see, though, I was staring at a cigarette butt at the top of the steps. I couldn’t see anything else, but I was concentrating on keeping that in my vision. Thud. Thud. Thud. It started to pick up pace again, each beat feeling like it could make my neck burst. I closed my eyes slowly, opening them again to see that my vision was coming back. I turned myself around, still gripping the railing, and set myself down gently on the step I was on. I took my hand off the railing and held it out in front of me. I was getting back to normal. I looked out at the street and watched the cars pass by. I pulled out my cigarettes and lit one up as I soaked up the afternoon sun.

The best sort of hitchhiker, I’ve found, is the guy who asks for rides at the truck stop. They’re a little smarter than the ones who get out on the road and walk for a while, first. I’ve heard some folks complain when they see someone standing around with a sign like that, saying if the guy really wanted to get there, he’d be on the road walking until he caught his ride. I see what they’re saying with that, but it’s a lot easier picking a guy up when you’re already stopped.

I was stopped at a truck stop just inside Iowa when I saw a guy holding a sign that said Council Bluffs. I was taking a load out to Omaha, so I could get him all the way without going out of my way. I went inside the truck stop and picked up a few things for the road—two-liter of soda, couple packs of crackers with peanut butter, pack of Lucky Strikes, and a Snickers bar—and went back outside to see if my guy was still there. Sure enough, there he was waiting, so I headed over to him.

“Tryin’ to get to Council Bluffs, are ya?” I took a look at the guy’s shoes. Sometimes you can figure out what sort of guy you’re working with when you check out his shoes. He had on a pair of some tennis shoes that looked like they had a real flat bottom. They were real low cut, looked almost like slippers. They were pretty clean, and his pant legs rested on the tongues and covered up the back of the shoe. I couldn’t see a brand name on the shoe anywhere, but then I took notice of those jeans. They weren’t denim, but a dark-colored canvas, or something like that. Hadn’t really seen pants like that. They were pretty clean, but looked like they had been around for a while. They were in that good phase in between the time when pants are too new and stiff and the time they start falling apart and getting holes. If I had to guess by his pants and shoes, I’d say this guy wasn’t a bum—he’s got some idea of the value of a dollar and isn’t a stranger to work—but he seemed like the kind of guy who works real hard at doing jobs that don’t break your back, something like managing a record store or a mom-and-pop restaurant. I couldn’t see him working in some chain place.

“Yeah, trying to get out and see family.” He lifted his bag and let his sign drop beside him. “Are you going that way?”

I told him I was going that way. I could get off I-80 early and go right through Council Bluffs. We walked over to the truck and I climbed in my side and unlocked his door. I’ve got some nice air-ride seats and a sleeper in the back, so it’s a pretty comfortable rig. We didn’t say anything as I got the truck fired up and made my way back onto the interstate. I turned on the radio, to a classic rock station that I thought might be agreeable. We rode along for an hour or so before I decided to pull out a joint to loosen things up a bit. It was seven o’clock or so when we left the truck stop, so it was just starting to get dark, and I didn’t want him falling asleep on me. That’s always uncomfortable. “You wanna burn one with me?” I held it up so he could get a look. He stared at the joint for a moment and looked up at my face. I caught a look on his face and knew I’d made him uncomfortable. I looked at the road ahead. “It’s alright if you don’t want to, but do you mind if I do?” I looked at him again. He sat up in his seat and breathed in deeply.

“Well, I guess I’d rather you didn’t, if that’s okay,” he said after a pause. “See, I am trying to get clean.”

“Yeah? From pot?”

“Yeah. I’m an addict. It doesn’t really matter what drug it is for addicts, but pot was my drug of choice.”

“I guess I hadn’t ever really thought somebody would get so out of hand with pot that they had to quit.” And I hadn’t. I was kinda thinking that this guy might just be melodramatic or something. “You had a pretty big problem with it?”

“Well, all I did after I graduated high school was smoke pot. That’s been about ten years ago. I went to the community college where I lived for a couple semesters.” He took out a pack of cigarettes and pulled one out. I handed him my lighter, the Zippo instead of the Bic, and he lit it before he continued talking. “I just never wanted to do anything but smoke though. That second semester, I just stayed around in Mom’s house playing video games and getting high all day. I missed a lot of classes and ended up flunking out.” He took a long drag from his cigarette.

“That sucks,” I said. I still didn’t think it meant he was a drug addict. School isn’t for everyone. “What were you studying?”

“That’s just it; I didn’t even know. I started by getting the basic classes out of the way, but I didn’t even know what I wanted to get into. I was a decent student through high school, but nothing ever really stuck out to me that I liked. So it didn’t seem like a big deal to me that I flunked out. I just figured I’d find a job and eventually move out of Mom’s place.”

“Can I get one of those cigarettes?” I couldn’t smoke my joint; I might as well smoke something. “Thanks, man. So did you get a job?”

“Yeah, I ended up getting an assistant manager job at the video store where I always went to rent games.”

“Ha! I had you pegged for a record store guy! Video store isn’t far off!”

“No, guess it isn’t,” he responded, a smile briefly interrupting the thoughtful look on his face. He finished the rest of his cigarette without talking. I was kinda interested in his story, but I figured he was lost in reflection, so I left him alone for a while. Forty-five minutes passed before he started talking again.

“Want another cigarette?” he asked, holding his pack out to me after pulling one out for himself. He looked around the cab like he was waking up from a dream, trying to remember where he was. He glanced back at the sleeper.

“Don’t mind if I do,” I said, taking one of the cigarettes. I told him how comfortable that sleeper could be after driving for hours on end and he nodded.

“I was actually doing pretty well for myself for a while, after I got that job at the video store, that is,” he went back into his story as if we’d been talking all along. “There was this girl working there when I started, Katie. She was really something special. Light brown hair, shoulder-length, dazzling green eyes. I was in love with her the moment I saw her—my first day on the job. Her shift ended just as mine began. I knew it would’ve been too much to hope for that we would work the same shift. And I was surprised that I’d never seen her before, since I went there to get games all the time. She always worked the same shift, though, and I never got there that early in the day. Funny how six in the evening can seem so early when you’re up playing video games until three or four every night.”

“I know what you mean,” I said, not wanting him to feel like I wasn’t interested in the conversation. I wasn’t saying much, after all. “My sleep schedule is never the same working this job. Sometimes it seems like the middle of the day to me when people are just getting up in the morning. Other times, it’s hard to imagine that people have put in a full day of work by the time I’m getting my first coffee of the day.” I watched as a sporty-looking car zipped by on my left.

“Yeah, exactly. I liked that about working at the video store—I could sleep until three or four in the afternoon and still have a few hours to kill before going to work. The best thing was always rolling in ten or fifteen minutes early to make small-talk with Katie. She was there every time I came to work for like the first two weeks. I just started to assume she’d be there every day. Then I came in and some guy was working. He was a guy who’d worked my hours before I started; I used to rent games from him. I asked him where Katie was, and he said she didn’t work Wednesday afternoons, usually. ‘She kinda digs you,’ he told me. I asked him if she’d said something, and he told me that she’d said something about a little crush she had on the new guy. I was floored. I mean, this girl was really a catch. What would she want with me?”

“Hey, give yourself some credit; you seem like a good-lookin’ kid. And you seem pretty charismatic, too.” I hoped he didn’t think I was trying to hit on him. Everybody’s heard at least one creepy story about truck drivers, but I don’t swing that way. He didn’t seem worried.

“Thanks, I appreciate that. I sure didn’t think that at the time. I was sorta awkward in high school, you know, and I didn’t do much afterwards but hang out and play video games. Even my pals who smoked pot with me and played video games were either putting more time into school or getting some kind of real jobs. I kinda felt like they were abandoning me because they were tired of my shit or something. I was pretty surprised when Katie asked me out.”

“Wow, she asked you out? Sounds like some kinda girl!” I really hated that when I was younger, the girls who played coy and waited for the guy to do the asking.

“Yeah, I’m telling you. I came in for work one day, early as usual, and just before she left, she asked me if I’d be up for going out sometime. ‘You mean like go out with some friends to a bar, or like go out to dinner and maybe a movie,’ I asked. I didn’t want to get the wrong impression. She laughed at me and said ‘dinner, silly.’ I told her I’d love to. Neither of us had to work that following Saturday, so we made it a date.”

“Cool. Did you go someplace nice?” I asked.

“Yeah, a really nice place. French-Vietnamese place called ‘Le Mekong.’ It was great. We agreed when we first sat down that we would go see a movie after dinner, but we ended up having such great conversation that we sat around drinking the Vietnamese coffee until the place almost closed. We didn’t want to leave. We drove there separately, and I walked her to her car, where we stood talking for another half hour or so. Before she got in her car, I kissed her. I’d had a few girlfriends before that, but no kiss was ever like that one. It left me speechless.”

“I know the type,” I said. I’ve had week-long affairs with women that weren’t half as exciting as a three-second kiss with the right girl.

“I knew I had it bad after that,” he went on. I took out the two-liter and offered him a drink before taking a swig myself. “We ended up dating for six months or so before getting an apartment together. I’d been itching to get out of Mom’s place for a while, and Katie’s lease was ending. We found a cozy little place not too far from the video store and got settled in. She was going to school during the day and working afternoons, and I was still working four evenings a week and like one or two afternoons. We didn’t get to spend a lot of time together. It’s weird, ‘cause it was like we were spending less time together after moving in than when we lived in different places. I’d cut down on my pot smoking during those first six months, but when we moved in together, I started smoking more again. We’d talked about me getting into classes again, but I began to doubt it a few months in. Long story short, after we’d been living together for six months, she told me that she didn’t think that things were going to work out. ‘You smoke too much,’ she said, ‘and you don’t seem to want to do anything with your life.’ I tried to talk her out of going, telling her that I’d really get involved in school, and I wouldn’t have time to smoke so much once that happened, but she knew that it wasn’t true. She went and stayed with a friend for a few weeks until she found a new apartment for herself. She told me that if she couldn’t help me up, she’d have to help me down.”

That’s pretty cold, I told him. She must’ve cared a lot about him or a lot about herself. Probably herself.

“I went on working at the video store—she apparently found another job right before she broke up with me—and stayed in that apartment, smoking day-in day-out. Eventually I got behind on rent, and my landlord called and threatened to evict me. I only had two months left on the lease, so I went ahead and moved back into Mom’s. I think he must’ve figured that it wouldn’t have been worth the time to sue me, ‘cause I never heard from him again.”

“That’s a lucky thing. That looks really bad on your credit.” So he wasn’t cut out for school and couldn’t handle paying bills. I still wasn’t sure about the drug addict thing, I’ve known plenty of lazy bastards in my time. I asked him what his mom thought.

“Mom always really liked Katie,” he told me. “She either didn’t know that I smoked so much pot, or was too timid to say anything, ‘cause all she ever told me was that I should try to work things out with Katie. ‘You were doing so well for a while.’ I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Katie couldn’t stand it that all I ever did was smoke pot. Anyway, that was all like eight years ago. Things stayed the same—me living at Mom’s and smoking all the time—until about a year ago. I had seen Katie walking down the street one day, looking just as good as I remember her, if not better. I just kept driving, but thought about her a lot for the next few days. I was in the Laundromat that weekend and saw a poster on the bulletin board. ‘Do you use drugs,’ it said. ‘If you do, that’s your business. But if you want to stop and can’t, maybe we can help.’ It had a phone number on the bottom. It had a symbol on it, but nothing that said who it was or anything. I kept thinking about it. I decided later that I would just see how long I could go without smoking on my own.”

I’d done that a few times, myself. I obviously hadn’t quit, but that was always a good way to cut down when I felt like I was smoking too much. I asked him how well it worked for him.

“Horribly. That first night, I only played video games for like half an hour before I couldn’t even pay attention to what I was doing. I just wanted to smoke. It was all I could think of. I think I actually made it forty-five minutes before breaking down.”

“That’s pretty bad,” I said. I can usually go a week or two before I break down.

“Yeah, I thought maybe I’d give it a few more tries. I did the same thing every night, holding out as long as possible. I made it an hour and a half on the second night, two on the third, and three on the fourth. When I got home from work on the fifth day, I started right back in again. Smoked from the time I got home until I went to bed. It stayed like that for the next two weeks, and I’d almost forgotten that I even tried to quit. I had to do laundry again and Mom still hadn’t gotten the machines fixed. I saw the sign again and it really freaked me out that I hardly remembered trying to quit at all. I couldn’t think of how long ago it had been. I wrote the number down before leaving and went home and got high.”

“Sounds like you did have a bit of a problem, huh?” I was figuring that he just didn’t have much will power.

“That’s for sure. I sat there playing my games all night without even thinking of the phone number. When I got ready for bed, I took all the shit outta my pockets and found the number again. I looked at it for a bit, thinking that if I didn’t call then, I probably never would. I looked at my alarm clock. It was three-thirty. The number was an eight-hundred number, though. Might as well give it a shot. You want another cigarette?”

“Sure, man.” We lit our cigarettes and didn’t do much talking as we drove through the city. We were going through Des Moines, a little more than halfway through the trip, and the city lights lit the dark cab off-and-on like a strobe light. We got through the city and finished our cigarettes. I asked him about the phone number he called.

“Well, it was one of those twelve-step programs. They had an answering service to answer questions about the program and put drug addicts in touch with other drug addicts who’d quit using. They told me when I could go to one of their meetings. I had to wait around for my next evening off, and I made a note and left it on my coffee table.”

Nothing’s better than potheads leaving notes for themselves. True comedy.

“I kept smoking on the nights until that meeting, but I ended up remembering the meeting and went to check it out. They all seemed to have their shit together, and a lot of them were saying that the only reason they were able to do anything with their lives was because they got clean and ‘worked a program.’ After the meeting, I went up to one of the guys who seemed to know what was going on. I asked him how I was supposed to ‘work the program.’ He told me that I should get a sponsor. I asked him if that meant that I should have companies pay me to stay clean. I knew that wasn’t what he meant, I was just trying to be funny. He laughed and said he could sponsor me for a while, if I wanted. I said sure and asked him what that meant. He said we should get together sometime to talk about recovery. I told him that I usually only had two days off each week, and he told me I should meet him at the noon meeting the next day, that we could go out for coffee afterwards. Noon seemed awfully early to be doing anything, but I knew I wasn’t going to kick this habit myself. I said I’d do it. I went home and went straight to bed.”

“No smoking?”

“No smoking. I met him the next day, and kept going to that noon meeting every day. He told me I should go to ninety meetings in ninety days. It sounded bad at first, but I realized quickly that I would have to be doing something to keep my mind off smoking pot.”

“Wow. So how long you been clean?”

“About three days.”

“But that was like a year ago, right?”

“Yeah. I did good for like six months. That’s when Mom died. It was so out of the blue. And she was all the family I had. Some of the people from the meetings were kinda cool, and my sponsor was always willing to bend over backwards to help me out, but I didn’t tell him that she died. I didn’t want sympathy or anything like that. I went to her funeral by myself and went and got a bag when it was over. My old dealer was happy to see me again!”

I bet he was, too. This kid was gonna be back to smoking an eighth every night and playing video games until all hours of the morning. I don’t know how these kids do it. I played some space invaders years ago, and I couldn’t stand the shit.

“And that’s what I’ve been doing the last six months. My sponsor left me a handful of messages that first week, but he must’ve gotten the hint after that.”

“So you do smoke or you don’t?” I was curious; he’d declined my joint. Why wouldn’t he want to smoke it if he wasn’t in the program anymore? I opened my pack of crackers and held them out to him.

“No, thanks. Here’s the thing: I changed jobs when I got clean that first time, and I was having a lot of problems being a librarian after I started smoking again. For the last week or two, I’ve really been considering trying to quit again or going to see if the video store has any open positions. I figured going back to the video store would be easier. I was going to tell my boss at the library the other day, but then I got a letter. It was addressed to my mom. It was a regular old first-class mail, not an ad or anything, so I went ahead and opened it up. It was from some girl who said that she’d been given up for adoption years ago. I’d heard Mom and Grandma talking about something like that twelve or thirteen years ago. The dates matched up for when Mom lived in Indiana, sometime after she got out of high school, she’d told me about it when we were driving out to Cleveland a long time ago. She asked if I knew that she’d lived in Gary, and when I told her I didn’t, she just said, ‘Well, I did, a long time ago.’ She seemed really sad and quiet for the next few hours. The evidence really seems to add up, so I think I have some family left, after all.” His voice cracked on those last few words.

“Can I get another one of those cigarettes,” I asked. We smoked in silence. Council Bluffs was only another forty-five minutes or so. “So she’s in Council Bluffs?”

“Yep. Letter said she’d been living there all her life. She’s married and has two sons. After I read the letter the other day, I called my sponsor up. We got together and I told him about how Mom had died and that I’d been back to the pipe. He said that he figured I was back on the pipe, but had no idea that my mother had died. I told him about how I felt, having no family. I just couldn’t deal with both having no family and being such a worthless person. He said that after being in the program for ten years, he considered the people in the program more his family than his regular family. ‘There’s a part of me that my family just won’t ever get. It’s something that only people in the program will ever understand. It’s this disease.’ I know what he means. That’s why I decided to give this getting clean thing another chance. I have blood family, again, and if I get back into the program, I’ll make a new family for myself there.”

“So what do you mean by disease?” I had kinda heard this terminology before, but I’d never wanted to look like a dumb-ass asking about it. Who better to ask than somebody who has it? I put my turn signal on and got into the left lane, passing some little Honda that seemed to be having a hard time keeping up.

“Well, I guess what I mean by disease is that I can’t control my use of any mind- or mood-altering substance. Sure, pot was my particular flavor, but I know that when I was in high school, partying with the guys and that sort of thing, I always just did as much as I could of whatever we had. When I was clean before, I started to realize that my disease wasn’t just about using drugs. They say ignorance is bliss, right? Well, that was what I wanted. I wanted bliss. I couldn’t just un-think and un-feel all of the thoughts and feelings I had, so ignorance wasn’t really an option anymore. The first time I got high, I became oblivious to shit. Being oblivious is the next best thing to being ignorant. When I was high, I didn’t have to think about the fact that my dad deserted us when I was five. I didn’t have to think about how terrified I was of women. I didn’t have to think about how Katie had proved that I would never have a successful relationship. I didn’t have to think about Mom being dead and me being all alone. I just sat for hours in front of the TV screen, playing RPGs and ripping bongs.”

What’s the difference? I had to wonder, clean or using drugs, you still got all of the same problems. Using drugs might not make those problems go away, but getting clean doesn’t, either.

“The biggest thing that changes is my attitude. They say that the core of the disease is self-centeredness. I was always so worried about myself that I couldn’t handle my thoughts and feelings. Everything was always about what was going my way and what wasn’t going my way. In recovery, my goal is to just see how things are going, and go with them. That way I don’t get so worried about me and how I’m going to get what I want or need.”

“I guess that makes good sense,” I said. “But if you know that, then why not go ahead and smoke? Your attitude was your problem, right? Couldn’t you just keep on smoking weed and try to keep a better attitude—you know, smoke weed every now and then, but try to make a life for yourself in the meantime?”

“That’s just the thing. I don’t know if I’ve always had this disease, or if it was something that came on over a period of time, but I can’t make it go away. I know that any time that I use, weed or anything else, I can’t predict how I’m going to act. Maybe it’d go well for a while; I could smoke two or three times a week and be responsible and productive the rest of the time. But eventually I’d get tired of dealing with real life and just want to go back to smoking non-stop. I already know that drugs will give me that oblivion…” He trailed off for a moment. “Oblivion. That’s what it is. I want to be oblivious to things, and I end up numbing myself to oblivion.” He looked over at me and smiled. “I want to have a life. And I know I can’t handle it if I smoke.”

“I’m glad for you, man. I hope you can keep on with it.”

“Long as I stick with the meetings, I think I got a shot.”

We rode along quietly for a while longer. Only about fifteen minutes to Council Bluffs. I got this habit of speeding up when I get closer to the destination, so I picked it up a little bit and got in the left lane to pass a couple of the trucks I was rolling with.

“So your sister knows you’re coming?”

“No. This trip was really an impulsive thing. After I talked to my sponsor, I decided to do this. Just seems like it will make a nice way to get my new beginning rolling. I didn’t want to tell her over the phone that her mom, our mom, is dead. I’ve never even met her. I could’ve planned this out a little more, taken the time to make sure I had a ride and all of that, but I just want to get things moving.”

“What are you going to do when you get to town?”

“I figure I’ll get a room in a motel and stay the night. Tomorrow I’ll give her a call and see if she’d like to get together. I have enough money for a cheap room, a decent meal for two, and a bus ride home. After that, I’ll go home and get back into this recovery thing.”

I told him it sounded like a good plan. I liked this kid. I hoped he could take care of himself.

It was eleven-thirty or so when I took the exit to 24th Street. I knew a hotel in Council Bluffs with a restaurant built-in. I told him I’d drop him off there so he could get himself a good breakfast before taking off. We didn’t say anything else as I made my way to the hotel.

“Hey, I appreciate the ride, man. And thanks for listening. I feel like I talked your ear off.”

“No worries, pal. Anything to break the monotony of being on the road alone all the time. Tell you what, man. Take this money,” I said, pulling a fifty-dollar bill out of my pocket. “Make sure you take your sister someplace nice, and maybe try to get out and buy her something nice.” He looked at me and down at the bill I held out to him and started to shake his head. “Take it, I’m serious,” I told him. He looked ahead. I forced it into his hand.

“Are you sure, man?” he asked.

“You got it,” I said. “Now go on, get yourself some sleep.” He thanked me and I told him to get going. He walked up to the motel, turning to wave good-bye as he opened the door to the office. I gave the air-horn a little pull and got back on the road. I shook my head and made a little wish for him that things would go well with his sister. Then I pulled out my joint.

Oblivion. I like it.

I should tell you about the trip I took on my motorcycle a few summers back. You know I don’t like to work too much if I don’t have to, and at the time, I’d set enough money aside from helping assemble those modular homes for about a year. I stuck with the guy until his business folded, which I thought it was gonna do, and made a lot of good money doing that work. That’s the nice thing about working really long hours—you don’t end up having much time to spend the money. Usually the women I’m with help spend it for me, but being married to a woman who works changes that, too. Lori sure wasn’t the type of woman I usually got involved with, but our relationship was much more practical than any that I’d been in before. And she knew that it’s good for couples to spend some time apart now and then to keep from getting sick of each other. So when I’d been out of work for a month or two, not only did she not mind that I wanted to take a trip on my bike, she encouraged it. Maybe she just didn’t like cooking for me every night after she got back from work. So I set out on the new Harley with about a thousand in cash and some camping gear. No map, no plan. I had enough pipe tobacco to last me about two weeks; I’d probably turn around after the first week to head back.

I take the back-roads when it’s possible, taking part in the scenery. I must’ve picked the perfect time of summer for my trip, because the weather was beautiful. The sky was bright blue with sparse fluffy white clouds and the plains and woods were thick and green. The wind was nice against my face, not too cool, and the sun warmed me, but not too hot. I enjoyed the ride, feeling all the while like a part of the world around me. I popped onto the interstate in Colorado somewhere after about five days of aimless riding, wanting to speed the trip up a bit so I could go through Taos. I’d been through a number of times in the first years that I was riding bikes, so I didn’t want to miss out on it this time. Maybe I was just feeling nostalgic.

I got on the interstate near a city, and apparently there was some kind of accident or construction slowing things down. Traffic was merging from the left lane to the right, but there was a whole lot more traffic than there was road. I was on a westbound road and looking for the southbound connection, so I’d already been in the right lane for a while. As I got closer to the bottleneck, I ran into more and more people who weren’t looking out for me, trying to roll into my lane because they didn’t see me. Nothing pisses me off like people in cars who aren’t looking out for motorcyclists. The sun beat down a little harder when the wind wasn’t blowing through my hair, and I must’ve avoided half dozen collisions in the space of a half mile. I was getting close to my exit, so hope was in sight. Then I saw that the left lane ended just where the exit began. People were still squeezing in, showing no regard for those of us who were already in the right lane. When I came within ten or fifteen yards of the exit, I could see that a jeep on my left side was going to try to edge into my lane. They pulled ahead of me by a bumper and then I pulled ahead of them by a fender, and we took turns being ahead until right when we got to the bottleneck. The last of the cars ahead of the jeep merged into my lane ahead of me. It was down to the two of us and I was clearly ahead of their front bumper by a full front tire. I looked over at the driver for the first time; he was looking back at me. His girlfriend looked at me, then at him. She rolled her eyes at him and folded her arms over her chest. He accelerated, edging into my lane. I pulled forward to keep him from getting in front, but he wasn’t stopping. He tried to get around and I continued rolling forward, and soon his bumper was within a foot of my bike. I stopped and looked over at him. He looked pissed off and threw his hands up as if to say that I should have let him in. He started to creep forward, getting even closer, so I reached into my vest for the gun I keep in a shoulder holster. As soon as he saw me reaching for it, his eyes got really big. He cranked the steering wheel to the left and hit the gas, driving over road cones into the closed lane. I could hear his passenger screaming as they headed down the closed lane of the highway, probably looking for a spot where they might be able to try again to merge. I edged forward in my lane until I was clear to exit to the right.

Aside from that little moment of excitement, the trip to Taos was pretty relaxing. The heat got worse as I continued south from Colorado and became unbearable in the last stretch before Taos. I stopped under an overpass at one point and sat in the shade, no breeze to cool me off, and drank some water. I took off my shirt and put it into my saddlebag, content to drive down the highway with only my vest on. When I rolled into Taos, I stopped at the first little bar I passed. I had quit drinking years before, but I am usually more apt to run into my types of people in little bars like that. Even if there weren’t any people to talk shit with, I could get a burger and a coke and enjoy the air conditioning. There was only a car and a bike in front of the place, and I looked forward to some peaceful relaxation, not always possible at seven o’clock in a bar.

The cool air hit me like a city bus when I opened the door. The sweat on my face and arms felt like it froze on contact. I went in and found myself a comfortable seat, tossing my vest on the booth before pulling on my t-shirt. I walked up to the bar and ordered my coke and asked for an ashtray. I glanced over at the three people sitting at a table on the other side of the bar, a man and a woman sitting close to each other with their back to me and a woman opposite them who smiled at me when I looked over. Right after smiling at me, she looked down at her drink, which she was stirring slowly with a straw. I recognized that quick smile; I’d seen it hundreds of times before. When I’d been a drinker, those looks were sure signs that I’d be going home with someone that night, or fighting someone’s boyfriend or husband, anyway. I didn’t seen that look nearly as often when I stopped drinking, and it felt good to see it again. Some of my tension and frustration from the heat and the highway wore off, my shoulders loosened up and I walked back to my seat with a newspaper I’d found on the bar. I sat and smoked my pipe, reading through the paper to see what was going on in the world. Every once in a while I’d look up when I went for a drink of my coke and meet eyes with the girl on the other side of the room. She smiled every time. I did my best to smile back without giving her the “I’m gonna take you home” look. After half an hour or so, I walked back up to the counter and asked what kind of food they offered. The bartender let me look at a menu and I picked out a sandwich. I went back to my seat to wait for the food.

As the bartender was getting my plate together, the woman from across the room walked up to the bar. She spoke briefly with the bartender, turning to look in my direction after a few words. The bartender looked at me too, and then nodded to her before she walked back over to her seat. He brought me my sandwich and asked me if I wanted something to drink, “on the lady.” I told him that I was okay with the coke and looked over at her, holding up my drink and nodding as the bartender walked away. She smiled. When I’d finished my sandwich, she walked over to my table.

“Hey there,” she said. “You didn’t want a drink?”

“No, but thank you,” I said, “I just don’t drink anymore, is all. I appreciate the gesture.”

“You seem like you’re a long way from home. You need somewhere to stay tonight?”

“Well…I appreciate that offer, too,” I said, showing her the backside of my left hand, wiggling my ring finger, “but I’m married.”

“If you change your mind, handsome, this is where you can find me.” She placed a napkin on the table before walking away. “Have a good night, either way.”

She and her friends left the bar, but business had started to pick up while I was eating, so there were a few handfuls of people for me to sit and watch as I smoked another pipe. I looked at the address written on the napkin a few times, contemplating the whole thing. As it was right now, I’d have to go find a spot somewhere and set up the tent. I usually didn’t have a problem finding places to set up where I wouldn’t be bothered, it was just a little one-man pup tent that fit into my saddlebag when it was all wrapped up. I stayed in the bar for the rest of the night, sipping coke and occasionally talking with people about the weather and my trip and bikes. When the bar closed at one in the morning, I walked out the front door and thought about what I’d do with myself. I decided to at least go see what the woman’s house looked like.

I pulled up in front of the house, which hadn’t been too hard to find, and looked it over. It was a small ranch-style home and the porch light seemed to be the only light in the place that was on. I sat on my bike for a few minutes, thinking about my wife and our marriage. I couldn’t ask for a better wife. I thought about the little tent and sleeping alone, and I thought about the woman who’d been so bold as to invite me to stay in her house. I got off my bike and walked up to the door.

After a few sharp knocks at the door, I heard stirring inside. She pulled open the main door slowly, peeking out at me with sleepy eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t want to wake you.”

“No, no, it’s okay,” she said. “I told you to come if you changed your mind.” She closed the door and undid the security chain. She opened it again and opened the screen door. “Come on in,” she said, “the bedroom’s this way.”

“Uh, before we go there,” I said, “I want to let you know, I don’t want to take advantage of this situation.”

She gave me a funny look and then motioned to the seats in the living room. I took a seat as she wandered off. I thought she might be telling me to sleep on the couch, but soon she came out with a can of coke and a glass of water.

“You’re probably one of the strangest guys I’ve ever met,” she said, taking a seat next to me as she handed me the coke. “You want to just talk?”

“Sure,” I said, not sure where to begin. She started, though, telling me that she didn’t usually ask random guys to come stay the night at her house. She explained that she’d been divorced for about three months and knew most of the guys that lived in the area, especially the ones who went to that bar. She didn’t want to have anything to do with any of them. The loneliness of the divorce really began to set in during the last week or so, and when she saw me walk into the bar, she knew that it might be her only chance for an indefinite amount of time to meet a new guy. I talked to her about my marriage and what my life had been like before, when I was still drinking. I told her that she might’ve had me for a lover if she’d met me three or four years before. She laughed and said it was nice just having some good conversation. We talked about other things, sitting up together for at least an hour or two before it was obvious that both of us were growing tired.

“You can still sleep with me,” she said after I yawned in the middle of something I was saying, my yawn causing me to forget what I was talking about. “I think you’re about ready to get some sleep, and I am too.” I looked at her, amazed that I was at the same time more and less inclined to sleep with her then than I had been when I first arrived. I’d gotten to know her and cared about her feelings, so I didn’t want to sleep with her, but I’d also grown to like her and felt reassured that she wasn’t crazy or clingy, and felt more attraction because of that.

“I don’t know. . .” I said.

“I don’t mean have sex, either,” she said. “Lay in my bed; hold me; sleep. That’s it. Even if I wasn’t too tired for sex, your wife sounds too cool. I would kick your ass for her if you cheated on her,” she said, laughing. I smiled and she led me to the bedroom. We got into bed, she in pajamas and me with nothing but jeans. It felt good to hold her, new and exciting, and I could imagine how easy it would be to start having sex. It’s so natural; it was a conscious effort to keep myself from going there. I did, though, and soon I found myself dripping into a soft, relaxing sleep.

In the morning, I woke to the smell of bacon and pancakes. Soon the woman, I’d rather not say her name just to be safe, came into the bedroom.

“Rise and shine,” she said in a harmonious voice. “I’ve made some breakfast for you!” I smiled at her and sat up in bed. She went back out to the dining room, where I joined her after splashing some water on my face in the bathroom. We ate a nice breakfast and drank some coffee. I smoked a pipe and we talked a bit more. Soon it would be ten in the morning, and I wanted to get on the road before it started to get too hot outside.

“Meeting you has been interesting,” I told her as we walked to the front door together. “I’m really glad that we didn’t do anything stupid.”

“Me too,” she smiled. “I think that I liked sleeping with you more than anyone else I’ve ever slept with!” We laughed for a moment, but soon fell silent, smiling as we looked into each other’s eyes. She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. “Drive safely,” she said, letting the screen door close in between us. I stood and looked at her for a minute before turning to walk out to my bike. I climbed on and started it, looking back up at the door one last time. The main door was closed; she was nowhere to be seen. I rode off, eager to make it back to my beautiful wife.

I excelled at the meditation and developed a close relationship with the group leader, Master Song. He and I sometimes met during the week to talk over tea. At his suggestion, we began to meditate together in the evenings at his studio. In the process of meditation, I began to reach increasingly higher planes of consciousness, reaching levels of awareness that transcended the known Universe. I try to explain to people that this awareness is not a conscious thing, that I don’t “know” everything about the Universe; I simply have an intuitive connection to levels of existence that are greater than the universe in which we live. Master Song understood this, as he was able to reach similar levels of awareness.

After a year of intensive meditation with him, I found that I was consistently becoming a bird in my meditation. Almost immediately upon sitting in the lotus and beginning my mantra, the whole of the Universe would become my body, and I would soar across a sky of astral energy. The far reaches of the cosmos were my great white wings and our own galaxy was the heart that sustained my life energy. I decided that I should tell Master Song of my visions.

“I’ve never told you about the prophecy of the White Heron,” he said. “I had my suspicions when I first met you, and in our time together I’ve come to believe it more every day. This vision you’ve had proves it once and for all.”

He explained to me that just as the mother of the enlightened one had envisioned a white elephant descending into her womb, recent Lamas had begun to envision a white heron that would swoop low and take humanity, which would become an olive branch, into its mouth, carrying it into the peace of timelessness. This fit incredibly well with my insatiable taste for olives ever since I was a child.

“What must I do, Master,” I asked. It was then that he told me about the Golden Cucumber.

“When humanity was banished to life and suffering, it was decided that the banishment should be temporary. Birth and Death were necessary for the Great Spirit to know Joy and Suffering, and because the Universe has existed, Joy and Suffering now are a part of the Great Spirit. In the beginning, a Golden Cucumber was given to existence as the key to end Birth and Death. Only when the heights and depths of life and existence have been reached will an incarnation of peace be able to reach this Golden Cucumber. It is believed that the White Heron might be this incarnation. You must go to Tibet and make the journey to the mountain where the Golden Cucumber is believed to be hidden.”

I agreed to the task and set out a week later for a monastery in Tibet where I was expected. Everyone treated me very well, but no one told me what to do. I spent a week in the monastery meditating with Master Tanz. After a grueling thirty-six hours meditating together in the beautiful main temple, Master Tanz addressed me.

“Now is the time,” he said. “Your spirit has absorbed all that it can here, and now you must make your journey. No one may accompany you, as the Golden Cucumber will obliterate all of those who are not worthy to be in its presence.” Convenient that Master Song left that out before. “The path on the east side of the village will take you as far as anyone has been. Beyond that, you must meditate for guidance.”

The following morning, I set out on my journey. I took nothing with me. I followed the path for three days until I reached a dead-end. I was famished and thirsty, so I made for myself a meal of snow and various roots that I could pull from the hard ground. I fasted for twelve hours before beginning my meditation.

In meditation, I saw clearly the path that I would take to a great gate in the side of the mountain. The gate would open into a vault where I’d find the Golden Cucumber. Upon returning to consciousness, the path remained visible where there’d only been forest and brush before. I continued my journey.

After another five days’ hiking, I reached the spot I’d seen in my vision. At the end of the path, there was a small clearing by a large rocky wall on the side of the mountain. In my vision, this wall was where the gates had been. Again I broke my fast with roots and snow, wondering how I should proceed. I began my meditation twelve hours later. In my meditation, I saw the rock wall change shape until it became the gates of my previous vision. They were much larger than I’d expected, at least a half-mile high and a quarter-mile across. How do you open doors like that? I meditated on the intricately ornate shapes and figures on the doors. After three days of meditation, the symbols began to light in a seemingly random sequence. When all of the symbols had been illuminated, the great gates began to rumble. They slowly opened into the mountain, revealing a vast cave. I returned to consciousness to find that the mountain now resembled the open gates of my vision.

Within the cave, I found hordes of great treasure and riches. What use would the creators of the Universe have for all of this junk? I made my way through the cave until I was at least two miles below the Earth’s surface, deep within the mountain. There, propped against the wall of the cave in between two great golden tomatoes, was the Golden Cucumber. I sat to meditate and find the guidance that I needed in order to fulfill my purpose. Now that I’d arrived, what was I supposed to do with the cucumber? And what would happen when I did that? The Universe would cease to exist, all matter and energy returning to its true form—spirit? I hadn’t given my task a great deal of thought up to this point, as I had believed that I should simply follow the path set out before me, but now that I had nearly reached the end of that path, I wondered about the truth of the prophesy. It obviously hadn’t been completely false; the cucumber did, in fact, exist, and it didn’t seem like anyone had made it this far before. But I was troubled by the fact that I hardly felt as though I had completed my spiritual progress in this life; surely the countless other spirits in the Universe had further progress to make, as well. I let these questions float through my consciousness as I fell away from it, hoping that I might gain some clarity in this communion with the Spirit.

Once again, my body fell away from me as I began to transcend my own life. Something was different this time. Typically, through meditation, my sense of a distinct individual consciousness gives way to the universal consciousness, and I lose touch with the illusion of Self. Of course, it hadn’t always been like that—letting go of Self comes only after much practice and experience with heightened awareness. I wondered if the doubt that I experienced as I began to meditate had affected my willingness to let go, but unlike my early experiences with meditation, I was aware both of Self and of Universe; I was conscious both of my existence in space and time and of the timeless formless truth of spirit beyond the material Universe. I had never imagined that it was possible to experience Spirit and Self simultaneously. I recognized what I had seen before, the Universe from the perspective of Spirit, but had never been able to understand with human consciousness. No matter how I’d transcended space and time before, my knowledge of truth had always been limited to a sort of spiritual knowing that I could never comprehend mentally. N
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I could see clearly, and mentally grasp, the truth of the Golden Cucumber and my role in this lifetime. I slipped out of the Spirit and returned to space and time, and I eagerly began my return trip to the monastery, cucumber in hand.

Many were surprised to learn of my reappearance, especially because I had the cucumber in my possession. If I was not the White Heron, why hadn’t the cucumber destroyed me? And if the prophesy was false, then what had become of all of the others who went in search of the cucumber? Or why would the cucumber exist at all, if the prophesy had been a lie? Many renounced me as a fraud, insisting that the cucumber I brought back was a fake and that the real one either never existed or I wasn’t the White Heron and therefore couldn’t find it. I gently explained that my role as White Heron is not as the one who will liberate spirit from time and space, but as the messenger to all conscious beings that the Universe must follow its proper course according to the laws that created it. Matter and energy arose from spirit long before it gave birth to consciousness, and long after conscious beings have ceased to exist, matter and energy will return to Spirit. I now travel the world and carry this message to all who will listen, that consciousness is the gift by which we experience joy and suffering, and the spiritual journey of each individual consciousness, along with the material journey of every particle, is necessary for the Universe to reconcile itself with Spirit. Move forward, I preach, live and enjoy life. Receive the message of hope that the Golden Cucumber represents: we are all Spirit, and when our individual consciousness comes to an end, we will return to pure being, where we will be free to fully appreciate all of the joy and suffering of the Universe, from beginning to end.

I don’t know if I ever told you, but the first job I got out of college was because of the fraternity I’d been in. That’s been about thirty years ago. I studied econ and finance with the goal of becoming a bank manager. I put together a resume after graduation and submitted to various banks around my hometown and in the town where I went to college. The first call that I got was from a bank in my college town, and I interviewed with them before I even got calls from anyone else. As luck would have it, the man who was doing the interviewing for the open position had been a member of my fraternity when he went through school. The interview had gone really well, already, but when he realized that I had been in his frat, he got really chummy with me. He told me a few anecdotes about his days in the house twenty years prior and I told him a couple of stories about my frat brothers. He warned me when we were done talking not to think that I was hired because of my fraternity affiliation if they hired me. He said he’d interviewed three other people for the job, and none seemed as intelligent or capable as I had. He told me that he would be giving one more interview on the following day and that I should expect to hear from him within two or three days. I received calls from two more banks the next day, one in my hometown and another in my college town, and I scheduled interviews with both. I left town immediately after the local interview to visit my hometown for the interview there.

When I returned the following day, after staying the night with my parents, I found a message on my answering machine from the man who’d been in my frat. He wanted me to come in to discuss the details of my employment. I picked up the phone immediately and dialed the bank’s number.

The secretary who answered was really quiet when I asked to speak to him. After a moment, she said, “I’m sorry; you won’t be able to speak to him. Last night he had a heart attack; he’s…he didn’t make it.” I was stunned and couldn’t think of anything to say. “Can I ask what your call is regarding?”

“Uh. . . I was calling about the business account management position. I interviewed with him the other day. . .”

She asked my name, and when I told her, she explained to me that he’d already made it clear to the board in a meeting yesterday that I was the only one suitable for the position. She told me that she would call me in a few days to let me know who I would need to meet with.

“I’m Sarah, by the way,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll be meeting you soon,” she said with a saddened smile in her voice before hanging up the phone. She sounded pretty.

And she was. I met her the following week, when I went into the bank to begin my training. She looked up at me and smiled as I approached the desk.

“I’m here to begin my training,” I stuttered, barely able to look at her beautiful face. She giggled, holding out her right hand over the desk.

“I talked to you on the phone last week. It’s nice to meet you in person,” she said.

“Absolutely,” I replied, casually glancing at the bare ring finger on her left hand.

She directed me to the office of my direct superior and I went along and got to work. I spent the next few weeks getting familiar with the bank’s specific procedures. It wasn’t too difficult to pick up, and most of the people I worked with seemed like really nice folks. I worked up the nerve to ask Sarah if she’d join me for lunch at the end of the week, and she blushed as she answered, “of course!”

Over the next year, I cruised through the work at the bank and dated Sarah frequently. We moved in together after six months, because her lease was ending and her roommate was leaving town. I had grown tired of my small apartment and was interested in settling down in a house of my own. We looked at houses together and I bought one that I liked a lot, and she liked it, too. We agreed that it would be best if she continued to pay something as rent, trying to be clear with each other that, if the relationship didn’t last, the house was not something that we’d done together, it was something I had done for myself, and she had been around for it. None of that really mattered anyway, because in three months time I was ready to propose marriage. I woke up early one spring morning and was overjoyed at how comfortable I was in bed next to her, with cool fresh air carrying the songs of birds into the house from our wonderful yard. I went downstairs and made breakfast. After we’d eaten, I told her that I was perfectly happy with my life and couldn’t imagine not sharing the rest of it with her. She smiled and I got down on one knee, asking, “Sarah, would you marry me?”

We called off work that day and made love on into the afternoon before having lunch with all of our parents. Her parents lived in town, and by a stroke of luck, my parents had come down to this part of the state to do some shopping, so they weren’t more than a half-hour away when I called to tell them the news. Rather than tell them over the phone, I begged and pleaded that they drive to town and meet us for lunch. We sat down and had a beautiful lunch and talked, joked, and laughed with each other. When everyone was silent for a moment, I took Sarah’s hand and said to the group: “listen, everyone, Sarah and I have something that we wanted to tell you.” Our mothers simultaneously took our fathers’ hands and held their breath. “We’re going to get married.” They began crying and laughing, and our fathers beamed with pride. We married and took an extravagant honeymoon in the Caribbean. After a year, we decided to have children.

Meanwhile, things were going very well at work. I was the manager of my specific department and had taken on a position much like the one the man who’d hired me held at his time of death. I routinely had to fill employment gaps by perusing resumes and conducting interviews, and I was surprised one day to meet a man who said he’d been in the same fraternity as me. I remembered the man who’d hired me, all of a sudden. I had hardly thought about him since those first few weeks of work. I recounted the story to the man I was interviewing, and he responded by asking: “So you think you’re gonna hire me, then?” I told him that I would get back to him.

I had some difficulty making a decision about who I would hire for probably the first time since I’d ever been in a position to hire anyone. Fraternity issue aside, I probably wouldn’t have considered the young man. His resume wasn’t that much less impressive than the other person I was considering, but I wasn’t terribly impressed with his personality in the interview. The other man had been a little more charming and graceful, but not so much so that he was a shoo-in. After deliberating for an entire week, I decided that I could not hesitate any longer, and I hired the frat-boy. I decided that perhaps his demeanor in the interview might’ve been a fluke, and hiring him would be a nice way to thank the man who hired me.

When I went to call the frat-boy, I couldn’t find his number, or any of his other paperwork. I searched my office, going through all of my papers two or three times, and finally I asked my secretary if she had any of the information. She gave me a confused look when I told her the name of the man. I tried to jog her memory by describing him, and I was growing a bit frustrated. Finally, I asked her if she had any contact information for the other man I’d interviewed. She didn’t seem to recognize his name, either.

“The two men who came in last Thursday for interviews. You don’t remember them?” I asked, nearly irate.

“You haven’t interviewed anyone in a month, sir, I’m sure of it!”

I stormed back into my office and sat down at my desk. What could be going on? I got an idea: I called the frat house. Surely they would have records of his membership. When I dialed the number that I’d dialed so many times in college, I was met with a message from the phone company, saying that the number I was trying to reach was no longer in service. I dialed the University switchboard and asked them to direct me.

“That fraternity has never been on this campus, sir,” the operator calmly told me. “I have records of the Greek-system phone numbers going back to the University’s foundation. Not only have none of the frat house’s phone numbers ever changed, but the frat you’re asking about has never had a number.” Flustered, I got on the internet to look for the number myself.

No search engine provided any results for my searches. I couldn’t find evidence of any chapters of the fraternity, let alone the local chapter. I decided to look up my old frat brothers instead. I started with my closest friends, and finding no information, I began going by each room of the frat house, trying to remember the names of all the guys I’d lived with. No one. Nothing. I stormed out of work early and drove to the university campus.

I arrived at the spot where our house sat, a ray of hope shining down as I saw that it still stood in place. I’d thought I’d been going crazy! As I pulled closer on the street, though, looking for a parking place, I realized that it wasn’t exactly as I had remembered it. Where our Greek letters had once proudly been displayed on the lawn, a different sign announced to the world: “xxxx Hall: University Housing.” A fucking dorm!

I drove home and climbed into bed, looking for some relief. When Sarah came home and came into the bedroom, she quietly called out my name.

“Are you okay?”

I told her I wasn’t feeling so well. I asked her if she remembered my frat.

“Right. . . your frat,” she said, rolling her eyes impatiently. It was clear. I tried to remember the face of a single one of my frat brothers who’d come to the wedding and couldn’t. I apologized to my wife and told her my stomach had been bothering me.

To this day, I’ve never spoken of my fraternity to anyone else. It’s been thirty years since I’ve breathed a word of it, though I can remember all of my college years vividly, except of course, for those occasional drunken blackouts. I’ve never been able to find any evidence to support these memories. Whenever I start to think about it now, I instead ask myself what couples in New York fight about. It just gives me an opportunity to let my imagination go, you know?

Have I told you about when I had the world’s most valuable coin collection? I only had it for a few months, but it was nice to have.

It all started when I got my first half-dollar from my barber. It was the first time that I was old enough to go to get my hair cut by myself. Mom gave me seven dollars, but haircuts at Blake’s Barber Shop only cost six fifty at the time. Blake kept plenty of half dollar coins on hand to make change without having to deal with a bunch of quarters. He finished cutting my hair—it was the first time that I was able to choose my own haircut, as well, so I got a spike—and I dug into my pocket for the seven wadded bills Mom had given me. Blake unfolded them slowly and counted them out loud as I watched patiently. He smiled.

“You’re not trying to rip me off,” he said. “I never know if I can trust a kid with spiked hair, you know.” I grinned as he pulled out a stack of folded bills from his pocket and put the seven ones in with it. He reached into his other pocket and produced the half dollar. He held it in front of me between the tip of his index finger and thumb, and I marveled at its beauty. I extended my arm and watched as he carefully placed it in my open palm. I pulled my hand back in close to my face and inspected the intricacies of the rare and valuable treasure. I turned and began to walk out.

“Hey,” Blake yelled. I turned and looked, worried that he might try to change his mind about trusting me with the piece of metal that I still clutched tightly in my sweaty palm. “You almost forgot your gum,” he said, lobbing the Dubble Bubble in a great arc across the room. I snatched it with my free hand and yelled thanks as I walked out the door. I made my way quickly and eagerly down the street to the post office. Hewerdine’s Coin and Jewelry was upstairs at the post office, right next to Geerken’s Card Shop. I’d come to the card shop with my older brother once, and while he examined baseball and basketball cards, I wandered through Hewerdine’s, inspecting the pocket watches and rare coins through thick glass of the display cases. Mr. Hewerdine recognized me from Sunday Mass and humored me as I asked questions until my brother had finished his business in the card shop. I couldn’t think of a better person to show my new treasure than Mr. Hewerdine.

“Well that’s a half-dollar,” he said, inspecting the coin I’d handed him after waiting patiently for him to finish talking with some man about a watchband. “I’d say it’s worth about fifty cents.” My heart dropped. That’s all? I felt cheated. He hadn’t even consulted any of big coin books. How could he be so sure? I thanked him and walked home slowly, imagining ways that I could expand my coin collection. Can you call it a collection if you only have one?

A couple of years passed and I managed to build a small collection of my own. Mom and Dad were supportive of my new hobby and bought me books and coins for birthdays, Christmas, and whenever I could convince them that it’d been too long since the last gift. After those three years, my collection was probably worth a little over fifty dollars, if that; and the books I had on coin collecting were probably worth over forty.

In the course of those years, I’d begun hanging out with my next-door neighbor, Matt. We were in the same grade and recognized each other during recess one day, so I began going to his house to play Nintendo. Sometimes we’d look through his brother’s dirty magazines, each of us saying “Ewwww” and “Gross!” as we slowly turned the pages. Matt told me one day that his brother snuck out of the house at night sometimes.

“We should try it sometime!” he said. “We could see what it’s like when everyone’s sleeping.” I had to admit, it did sound intriguing. I remained resistant for a few weeks before finally caving in and agreeing to meet him at a certain time of the night.

I waited in bed and watched the numbers change slowly on the digital alarm clock. One o’clock finally came and I crept out of bed. Just as Matt had suggested, I dressed in black sweatpants and a black sweatshirt before sneaking down the back stairs. Matt was already waiting for me when I walked out the gate in the chain-link fence in the back yard.

“Follow me,” he said, as though he had some plan of where we should be going. We wandered down the alley, staying in the far edges of people’s yards, occasionally hiding behind trees or fences if we thought we heard something. I would’ve believed that he knew where we were going, but we actually circled one or two blocks a couple of times. Navigating a small Illinois town can be difficult at one in the morning, particularly when you’re ten years old and traveling only through back yards. We passed by the mansion. Paxton had one mansion, but it was split into two levels. The retired priest, Father Mahoney, lived upstairs and the Baier family lived downstairs. They weren’t Catholic, which didn’t seem right to me at the time. I assumed that they were renting from Father Mahoney. They didn’t need to rent; they owned the funeral home and the ambulance service and a furniture store. As we passed their back yard, I noticed that the gate was open. I said something to Matt, but he shushed me and continued down the alley to some unknown destination. As I followed ten or twelve paces behind him, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Baier house. Just about any time that I’d gone and visited Mr. Hewerdine, he would drop a reference to some rare coin or other that Mr. Baier had. He must have a huge collection, I thought. And here I could get into his yard if I wanted to. Matt eventually led us back home. I watched as he walked through his yard and slowly opened his back door. As soon as he was in, I waved good-night and watched him close the door. I turned around and bolted back toward the Baier home.

I entered their back yard through the open gate and walked up to the house. I peeked through the basement windows and tried to see what sort of setup they had. It was too dark inside, so I wandered up onto their deck. The pool was covered and I looked at the wine cooler bottles that sat by lawn chairs. They must’ve had people over to visit that night. I went to peek through the sliding glass door. The living room was huge! They ran a furniture store, so of course they only had the nicest couches and chairs. They didn’t sell home entertainment at the furniture store, but they still had a huge TV and speakers everywhere. What a place. What if…I put my hand on the handle of the sliding glass door and pulled ever so gently. It opened! I couldn’t believe it; my heart was racing. I walked in slowly, leaving the door open in case I had to make a quick escape, and made my way up and down the hallways. I peaked around the corner of any room with an open door, carefully checking to see if anyone was sleeping. I didn’t dare open any doors. I just wanted to see the coin collection, if I could, but I had no idea where someone would keep something like that, and all I found were bookshelves, paintings, and expensive-looking dishes. I found some stairs into the basement and decided to check that out. There was another big-screen TV down there and three or four couches in a semicircle around it. Surely no one was sleeping down here, so I could check behind the closed doors. The first that I ventured to open was a closet door in the corner of the room. It was a large closet, and I walked in to find boxes lining the walls. Built-in shelves lined one of the walls, and on the bottom shelf I saw a box labeled “coins.” Would someone really do this? I lifted the lid from the box and peeked inside. I couldn’t believe it. It was the collection I’d heard so much about. I closed the lid and slid the box slowly off the shelf. It was heavy, but I could lift it. I didn’t stop to think; I began walking, awkwardly lugging this big box out of the closet and up the stairs. I walked out the still-open sliding glass door and made my way down the alleys. I’m sure it would’ve been a sight to see, a four-foot tall boy carrying a box three-feet wide down the alley. I set the box down on the ground behind a tree in each yard and sat down to rest for a moment, looking around to make sure the coast was clear before moving on. When I reached my gate, I set the box down again, opened the gate, and picked up the box before walking into the yard. I walked the box over to our little tin shed and set it on the ground again. The door to the shed squeaked as I opened it. I found a spot behind a couple of other boxes and hid my new collection there. I snuck back into my bedroom exhausted and glanced at the alarm clock—4:10 am—before finally going to sleep.

In the following weeks, I kept an eye on the newspaper. There was a blurb a few days later about the Baier’s dog, a purebred sheltie that had gone missing on the night I took the coins, but no mention of the coin collection missing. I hadn’t even seen a dog when I was in their house. I moved the collection into my bedroom closet one afternoon and took it out often to look through all of the coins. There were a lot of really old ones. A bunch of them were gold. I knew it was a good collection, but now that I had it, I couldn’t really do anything with it. And the Baiers didn’t even seem to notice that it was missing. Until a few months later.

An article in the paper mentioned a break-in at the Baier home. The problem was, they didn’t know when it happened. The insurance company had problems with the whole thing because there were no signs of an actual break-in and the only thing missing was the collection. The Baiers would have a difficult time proving that it was actually missing. The newspaper said that the collection was among the most valuable in the world. I couldn’t believe it. And I couldn’t do anything with it. Until a few months later. An ad ran in the paper.

“Have coins? Send us a letter.” A California address was listed. I imagined that it might be a solicitation for this collection. What could it hurt to send a letter? So I wrote a letter, saying that I had a few coins that I might be interested in selling. I received a response a week later. The letter said specifically that he strongly suspected that I might have taken the collection, because I was the only one to respond to the ad. Don’t be worried, it said. That was all. I sent another letter, asking how much he might be willing to pay for my “few” coins. A week later, another letter. Five thousand dollars. What would I do with all of that money? I looked through the coin collection and took out a handful of my favorites. I wrote another letter. How will we exchange? A week later, meet me at the 102, August 21, 4pm. Whoever this was, he’d done his homework. The 102 was a restaurant downtown. I was there that day, with the box. A man walked in, looking around suspiciously. He sat down at a table by himself, placing a manila envelope on the table. It was him. He glanced at me briefly, but mostly was watching the door. I picked up my box and walked over to his table. I placed the box on the table, picked up the envelope, and walked out.

“Hey, Mary, come over here…you gotta meet this guy,” Thom called across the crowded den. Mary had come to this house with Thom and his girlfriend Aileen weeks ago, and every night seemed to be a party. She met the couple on her way from a little farm town a few hours south of Chicago to San Francisco. She was at a truck stop in Omaha asking for rides and found out that they were on their way to California, too. She held up a finger to Thom and politely excused herself from the people she’d been sitting with and then walked over to meet the guy he stood with.

“This is Greg,” Thom said when Mary walked up. He and Aileen had taken Mary in as a traveling companion. She had been infatuated with Thom when they first met, but he was really stuck on Aileen. Mary couldn’t be jealous because she liked Aileen too much, too. Thom introduced Mary to every guy he liked, but she usually thought they were dirtbags. She didn’t imagine this guy would be any different. “Greg is out here from some small town in Indiana,” Thom said. “You guys probably have a lot in common!”

“What’s happenin, Mary? Nice to meet you,” Greg said. He sounded like he might be trying too hard to sound cool, but maybe he was high. He was tall with an athletic build and shoulder-length dark-brown hair and a thick moustache. Mary liked his hypnotic green eyes and the way his high cheek bones made his eyes seem to smile. He was more attractive than most of the guys Thom introduced. It was early, so if Greg turned out to be an asshole, Mary could ditch him and still have a nice night.

“Hey Greg,” she said. “What’s goin on?” Thom had already wandered off to talk with someone else. “Do you have any grass?” Having the Midwest in common wasn’t really much to start with. She needed some kind of icebreaker. If the conversation was lame, at least the grass would make it tolerable.

“Yeah, I got this little number here,” Greg answered. He reached underneath his hair and pulled a joint out from behind his ear. “I was gonna save it for later, but now’s fine, too. Wanna sit down somewhere?”

“Sure,” she answered. Something in the tone of his voice put her at ease. He sounded a little different from other guys, but she couldn’t quite place what it was. She followed him through the house to the crowded front room. People sat in all the available seats and everyone else stood or sat on the floor. Greg pointed to the front door and gave a questioning shrug. Mary nodded. Fresh air would be nice. They were met on the porch by the cool breeze from the bay. Only one person was on the porch, probably because it was a cold night by Northern California standards. For a couple Midwesterners, it was nothing. Mary recognized the other guy on the porch from other parties or shows she’d been to. He sat on the railing at the far end of the porch and played his guitar softly. It sounded like something classical. Mary enjoyed it. She waited for the guy to look so she could nod in approval, but he kept his eyes closed and kept playing. She stopped waiting and took a seat next to Greg at the top of the steps.

“You’re not nervous about cops, are you?” Greg asked. He didn’t seem to be nervous, and it didn’t bother Mary much. She’d smoked joints at concerts and rallies with cops less than twenty feet away. Smoking on the porch steps didn’t bother her at all. She shook her head and Greg lit the joint. She watched as he lit the joint. He was even more attractive than she’d first given him credit for, which was a strike against him. Most of the good-looking guys she’d known were complete assholes. She dated plenty of them through high school and in her year at the community college before she left home. After the last asshole, she and a friend shared an epiphany—a vast majority of the assholes in the world must’ve been good-looking. The only ugly guys who could afford to be assholes were the ones who were pissed about being ugly. If she was patient, Greg was sure to demonstrate that he was an asshole sooner or later.

“No, the cops don’t bother me at all,” Mary said absent-mindedly as he passed the joint. She took a couple of gentle puffs. She didn’t want to seem greedy. It was pretty good weed. It had a rich, velvety sort of taste and tickled Mary’s throat as she exhaled. She focused on not coughing as she passed it back to Greg. She exhaled slowly and watched him take long, slow drags from the joint. His mannerisms, the way he carried himself—he didn’t seem like an asshole. He stared out into the street with a thoughtful, almost pensive look as he sat waiting for her to smoke. When the joint changed hands, he was careful, attentive. He seemed confident without being arrogant. Apparently he wasn’t going to force conversation. Mary’s curiosity one out and she asked a question. “So, what are you into?”

“Peace love and respect, man…isn’t that what everyone’s into?” he answered with an ironic grin. He passed the joint back, his smirk remaining. Mary smiled reservedly, not sure what he meant. If he was trying to be funny, she didn’t get it.

“Well,” she started. She considered trying to rephrase her question, but opted to hit the joint again first.

“Sorry,” he said. “I guess I’ve just been hanging out with these crowds a little too long. Everybody just wants to hang out and get high and listen to music, talking all the time about peace and love and never doing anything.” He looked into her eyes. “You know, wearing the same types of clothes as everybody like some new kind of uniform, and going around with everyone else’s ideas like they’re yours. I mean, not yours, but you know. It’s exactly the kind of thing we should be trying to get away from,” he said. He reached out and took the joint from her outstretched hand.

“Yeah, I see what you’re saying,” she said, feeling vaguely self-conscious. Did he mean to include her in the indictment? She looked at his clothes, which were rather conservative, but still fashionable. He could probably get hired for a straight job wearing what he had on. She didn’t want to get defensive. “I guess I could say that sometimes my ideas are a lot like the ideas other people have, but I feel like I’m working towards something with it, you know? Talking to people, raising awareness and stuff…”

“Yeah, yeah, all of that’s pretty important,” he said. His tone suggested he was talking with her, not at her. “I’ve been hangin these kids in the bay area for a couple of years now, though. I feel like we spend a lot of time trying to understand the problems, and trying to come up with solutions, and trying to raise awareness, and that’s all good. But sometimes it all just seems like a big excuse to party and do nothing but talk,” he said, staring blankly out at the street. He passed the joint back to Mary. “Hell, maybe it’s just me that I’m talking about. Maybe I just feel like I’m the one who’s not doing anything.”

He remained silent while Mary hit the joint and passed it back. It was now barely long enough for him to squeeze between the tips of his fingers as he tried to take another puff. He couldn’t close his lips around the narrowed edges of the paper. The smoke he inhaled came around the outside of the joint instead of through the opening at the end, and the paper burned right up to the skin of his fingertips. They must’ve been calloused already, because he didn’t flinch. He exhaled the little bit of smoke he got and passed the joint to his other hand. He wetted the burnt fingertips underneath his tongue and pressed them to the cherry, which hissed as it went out. He wiped his fingertips on his pant leg and dropped what was left of the joint into his front shirt pocket. He rested his arms on his knees and gazed out into the street for a minute or two. Mary forgot about him as she closed her eyes to enjoy buzz as it sank in. Then Greg looked over at her and smiled.

“I paint, by the way. I’m into art…that’s what you originally asked about, right?”

“Oh, cool! Do you have stuff?” Mary asked. “I mean, could I check out some of your work sometime?” She was warming up to him. He seemed more sincere than any other guy she’d ever met. “I had a groovy art history class when I was in college.”

“Well, yeah. I could let you see some of my paintings, but I don’t feel like I’ve made a whole lot that means anything to me. The stuff I have here is all important to me, but now I feel like I’ve reached this level of social and political awareness and my work should do something to serve that, you know? If it doesn’t serve some bigger purpose, it’s just masturbation.”

“Yeah, totally…I see what you’re saying,” Mary responded, also staring vacantly into the street.

“Hey, so what do you do?” Greg asked, looking over at her. Their eyes met and she hesitated.

“I think I might want to write someday,” she started. She hated the idea of sounding like every other wannabe artist. “I mean, I feel like I’ve got lots of stories to tell, but I’ve just never been able to get myself to sit down and get them out. But I always feel like if I could get these ideas out on paper, it would really help people to see how messed up things are, you know? And maybe inspire people to do something.”

“For sure, for sure. You should do that,” he said, looking her in the eyes. “You seem like you’ve got a good head on your shoulders. You’re an honest person.” She smiled at him and then looked away. A minute or two passed in silence, but she moved down to the step he was sitting on and slid a little closer to him.

“So where do you keep your stuff? Do you have a place?” she asked.

“No, I’ve been crashing with this guy at his folks’ house for the last month or two. They’ve been staying in their other house, in San Diego, so he let me stay with him for a while. His parents will be back in any day now, so I’ll need to be moving on. I keep my paintings in a shed there.” He didn’t say anything for a moment, and then turned to look at Mary. “Where do you stay?”

“Here,” she answered. “That guy Thom, the one who introduced us, he went to high school with the guy who owns this place. I feel like I’ve been crashing here too long, ‘cause sometimes things get sorta tense around here. There are like seven of us staying here regularly, and others come and go, so tempers get kinda hot sometimes.”

“Yeah, I know how that goes. Sometime people seem cool at first, but when you get to know ‘em, you realize they’ve got a bad vibe.” They sat in silence for a few minutes. They each gradually leaned in closer to each other until they were resting against one another. Mary felt more comfortable than she’d felt in a long time, probably since she the last night she’d slept at home in Illinois, where she shared a bed with her sister. She missed her brothers and sisters, and her parents. She wondered for a moment if her brother—the oldest brother, a year younger than she was—had been sent to Vietnam. She left home when her father insisted that he join the Navy, and now she didn’t know where he was. Sitting there with Greg, she missed her family a little bit less than usual. Then he stood up and turned to look at her.

“So you feel like crashin’ with me until my friend’s parents come back?” His voice trembled slightly. It was the only suggestion he’d given at any point that he had anything less than perfect self-confidence. Mary let the meaning of the question sink in as she studied his face to be sure he was serious. Before her mind could completely wrap around the idea, something deep inside her said it was the right move. Greg looked determined but nervous, as if he felt the same way—that this was irrational and hasty, but there was something that felt profoundly right about it anyway.

“Sure,” Mary blurted out. “Let me just grab my things.” Portability was one of the benefits of Mary’s lifestyle. All of her belongings fit into a duffel bag and a backpack. The living arrangements changed around from day to day, which meant picking up her bags and moving from one room to another when it was necessary. Some nights she had a room to herself, but other nights she had to share a room with people passing through. If she felt uncomfortable with the strangers, Thom and Aileen would offer to let her stay in their room for a night. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was getting into with Greg, but the good feeling she had about him was clear and persistent. She went into the house and grabbed her bags, and she gave Thom a hug and Aileen a kiss on the cheek on her way back out to the porch. She said she’d see them around. They smiled and wished her well.

Greg greeted her warmly when she came out the front door, and they walked together arm-in-arm to the place where he was staying. It must’ve taken them an hour and a half to walk, but it felt like it went quickly. They talked about art, politics, and how life should be. When they reached the house where he stayed, Greg led Mary to his room. He motioned to her to take a seat on the bed while he reached underneath and fumbled around for something. He found what he was looking for and showed it to Mary—a pipe. He what was left of the joint out of his pocket and broke it up into the pipe. They each took a hit and it was done.

They lay down on top of the blankets in their clothes and continued their conversation. Mary lay on her side in his bed, mostly staring starry-eyed at him as he explained his views. He was articulate and passionate, and everything he said seemed right on. When she didn’t understand what he was saying or didn’t agree with him, they talked it over until they reached a mutual understanding. When they began to talk about family, Mary explained that her dad had been in the Navy at the tail end of World War II. He insisted that Mary’s oldest brother join when he finished high school the year after she did. She fought with her father and her brother about it until she got so fed up that she decided to drop out of the community college and hitchhike west, because she didn’t know of anything else to do. Greg’s smiling green eyes exuded compassion as he listened intently to her story. He didn’t treat the story like it was nothing more than a supporting argument to be against the war. He seemed to care about what it all meant to her personally. After consoling her, Greg told Mary that he’d tried to sign up to be a Marine like his father. They hadn’t taken him because of his asthma. The asthma had been especially bad at the time, maybe because of the stress of finishing high school and wanting to make his dad proud. The California air seemed to be good for him; his asthma hadn’t bothered him much since he moved west, even with all the grass he smoked. His father never uttered a word of disappointment, but Greg couldn’t stand the guilt anyway.

When they were too tired to keep talking, Mary rolled over and put her back to Greg. He moved closer and put his arm around her. She leaned back and pressed her body to his. She trembled with anticipation as she waited for Greg to make a move. She fell asleep before anything happened, and woke up in the morning in the same position.

They spent most of the morning looking at Greg’s paintings in a small shed behind the house. They talked about art and what Greg hoped to accomplish with it. They wandered down to the wharf in the late morning or early afternoon and ate lunch. Mary told Greg about a story she wanted to write, using a group of kids in a neighborhood as a metaphor for international affairs. He told her to sit down and write sometime, to make it happen. He told her it was a very promising idea, and he meant it. When they returned to the house, Mary met Greg’s friends. They decided to cook a bunch of food and have people over for dinner. It turned into a nice, mellow early evening party. Mary was surprised at how many people at the party she already knew. She and Greg had so many mutual friends, how was it that they hadn’t met sooner? The house was calm and quiet later in the evening, after most of the people migrated to the real parties. Mary and Greg sat together on a loveseat by the fireplace and listened as Greg’s friends talked about music and politics. Mary didn’t say much. For all the facts and ideas people tossed back and forth, it really didn’t seem to change anything for her. If it didn’t reaffirm that the war was bogus, it reaffirmed that music and community were the solutions. She held Greg close, her head on his chest as she watched flames dance back and forth in the fireplace. Greg paid attention to the conversation, offering bits of seasoned wisdom on occasion, morsels for the rest of the group to chew on. Mary started to drift into a peaceful sleep, and Greg gently woke her and suggested that they go to bed.

They said their good nights and walked to his bedroom, Greg’s arm around Mary as she shuffled her feet across the hardwood floor. When they reached the bedroom, Greg began to undress. It was a little awkward. They hadn’t been anything less than fully-clothed with one another yet. Mary bashfully stripped down to her underwear and climbed under the heavy blankets. Greg joined her wearing nothing but boxer shorts.

“Mary, I want to talk about something,” he said, as he situated himself under the blankets. “I feel really good about you,” he said. “That’s why I asked you to come crash with me. But there’s something I should tell you before we get too involved.”

Mary felt like her kite had just lost all its wind, and it was falling fast. What could it be? He’s not looking for something serious? He doesn’t want to get serious with me? He’s queer? No, that can’t be it.

“I gotta go back to Indiana,” he said. “All day long I kept thinking about two things. The first was how glad I am that I found you. The second is the fact that I’m in a rut out here, and I don’t think I’ll get out of it until I move on. If I really want to change things, I have to go back and reach the people who need to hear new ideas. I know…”

“I’m kinda falling for you, Greg,” Mary interrupted. The wind picked up strong, and the kite soared so high that she nearly lost hold of the string. “If you have to go back,” she said, “I wanna come with you.” She stared at him silently for a moment, and then her smile began to fade when he didn’t respond to her. “I mean, only if you want me to, that is…”

“I would love that,” he said with enthusiasm. “I just didn’t think it’d be right to ask you to, you know? You haven’t been out here for very long at all, what if this place has more to offer you? I didn’t want to keep you from any of that.”

“I think you’re right about this scene,” she said. “It’s like a big party. I don’t see myself doing much of anything if I stay, except enjoying the party. That’s not what I want. I want to help you. I want to learn from you. We can go back, and you can paint and I’ll start writing. It doesn’t even have to be good. I’ll never write if I stay here, so anything at all is better than nothing. I already got the best of what I’m gonna get out here, if I got you,” she said. Greg smiled.

“You got me,” he said. He leaned in and kissed her, their first kiss.

***

They spent the next couple of weeks getting to know each other better. They tried to round all the paintings that Greg had left in people’s houses and garages. He managed to get a little cash for a few of them, and they tried to save up as much money as possible for the trip home. Mary waited tables for a week and Greg put in a few days of carpentry for his friend’s uncle. About a week before they had to get out of the house they were staying in, they met a man who was about to drive to Nebraska. He said they could ride if they had cash or weed, and Greg had a bit of both. It took a couple different rides to finish the trip from Omaha across Iowa and into Central Illinois, and catching those rides took a little extra time walking down the road, thumbs extended.

Once they arrived in Mary’s hometown, Mary sent Greg into the one of the many downtown bars while she called home from a pay phone outside. Her mother was shocked to hear her voice. She insisted that Mary come home for dinner with her family, and Mary explained that she was traveling with Greg, and that they were moving to Indiana together. Her mother suggested that Greg join them for dinner, but she didn’t do a very good job disguising the uncertainty in her voice. “Sure, I’ll bring him,” Mary said.

The two arrived at shortly before dinnertime. Mary’s father was a hard-working laborer and a devout Catholic. Greg was an artist and an outspoken atheist. Mary had warned Greg about her father, but her father knew nothing about Greg. He was able to make a few good guesses about Greg, based on the way he looked. He said very little to Greg after they’d been introduced and remained silent through dinner.

Mary’s younger brothers and sisters asked eagerly about California and painting and music. Mary’s father choked down his honey-glazed ham and green-bean casserole with a scowl. During the silences between questions from the siblings, Greg glanced around the house at the quaint furniture that looked like it could’ve been handmade, and the old paintings hanging against the faded floral paper on the wall. He was from the Midwest, too, but not a rural farm town like this. Mary couldn’t help but notice how old-fashioned her family must seem to Greg, with her hospitable mother and eager brothers and sisters. Even her father’s tension hardly seemed to faze Greg. His smile seemed to indicate that he found it all very quaint. Mary had been glad to learn that her brother was on a boat in the Mediterranean, not Vietnam, but she wished he was here to meet Greg.

Greg slept on the couch and Mary slept with her sisters in their bedroom. The next morning, Mary woke when her father tapped her shoulder and told her to come to the kitchen. She walked in just as he closed the lid of his lunch box. He glanced at Mary before he began to pour his coffee into a thermos. Mary waited. He screwed the lid tightly onto the thermos and then set it by his lunch box. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked over the rim of his glasses at her.

“Are you planning to live with him?” He asked.

“Well…” she said, not wanting to answer. Her father would never understand. He continued to stare, waiting for her to complete the thought. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I guess that’s what we were thinking about…”

“When things go wrong,” he interrupted, “you’ll regret it. Your mother and I didn’t raise you to live that way. I want you to keep that in mind when you decide whether or not you’ll leave today.” He grabbed his lunchbox and thermos and walked out the back door without another word. No matter how deep her resolve ran, her father was always able to introduce doubt. She sat in the kitchen until her mother came in to make more coffee and start breakfast for the kids. Mary helped with breakfast and getting her sisters ready for school. When the last of the kids were out the door, she sat and drank coffee with her mother, who didn’t say anything about the situation. Greg eventually wandered into the kitchen, and Mary’s mother said she’d get him coffee and breakfast. He tried to decline, but she paid no attention. Mary watched Greg sip his coffee sleepily and watched him smile at her mother as she set a plate of fried eggs and toast in front of him. Mary knew she had to go with him.

***

When they made it to Gary, they stayed with Greg’s uncle Bruce for three weeks before finding an apartment of their own, above a bar. Gary was full of rough neighborhoods, and theirs was no exception. The apartment was nice, for what they were paying. Mary found a job waiting tables in a diner a few blocks away. Greg painted houses with a union during the day and canvasses in a studio at night.

Mary worked second-shift, and usually finished up around nine or ten o’clock each night. Greg rarely made it home before ten-thirty or eleven. He generally finished work between five and six and stopped off at the diner for a quick snack before going to his studio, the back room of a run-down storefront his uncle owned. There were a few nights that he stayed out really late, painting until midnight or one.

“Do you have to keep at it this late?” She asked one night, when he didn’t make it home until one-thirty. She’d waited without eating all night so they could cook dinner together. “I wish you’d at least let me know if you think you might stay late some nights,” she said.

“I’m sorry, Mary. I just feel like I’m really close on this one piece, but it’s not going where I want it to. I can’t seem to get it right. It’s easy to forget about time and hunger and everything.”

“That’s easy for you to say, after you ate in the diner this evening.” She hadn’t written a thing since they’d been in Indiana, while he spent hours each night working on his paintings. “Well, I’m just going to make a bologna sandwich for myself, because it’s too late to eat much. If you want something, you can make it yourself,” she said. He didn’t respond, and the hurt look on his face nearly made her feel bad for being mad at him. But it wouldn’t make any sense not to stay mad for the rest of the night, so she kept it up. Greg didn’t say anything in his defense, but worked alongside her making himself a bologna and mustard sandwich, too. They sat at the table and ate in silence. Mary felt a bit nauseous as she ate. It was probably because she hadn’t eaten since lunchtime.

When she woke in the morning, Greg was already gone to work. She still felt a bit sick, but drank a couple glasses of water before making herself some coffee. She sat at the kitchen table sipping her coffee and decided to write. All morning she’d been picturing the look on Greg’s face when she’d told him to make is own sandwich, how his genuine concern for her shined through in his remorse at having come home late. It was a sad face, but she couldn’t help but be overjoyed by it. She spent the morning scribbling in a notebook, trying to put together a poem about the look. By the time she had to go to work, she still hadn’t come up with anything that she liked.

She felt irritable on the way to work, upset that she finally began writing and now she had to stop and go to work. She expected a frustrating shift at work, but the first few hours went well. Business wasn’t slow, but she had enough of a routine or a groove set at work that she was able to handle things without wearing herself out. She felt upbeat and cheerful, so when Greg walked into the diner, she leaned over the counter and wrapped her arms around him. He hugged back, and then she playfully kissed his neck in a spot that always seemed to tickle him. He laughed as he pulled himself away from her.

“Somebody isn’t mad anymore,” he said. “Having a good day?”

“Yes, an excellent day,” she answered. “I even did some writing this morning!”

“That’s great,” Greg said. “Maybe I should piss you off more often, huh?”

“Don’t you dare,” she said, swinging her towel like she was going to hit him. He pretended to cower.

“Is there anyone else I could fight for my dinner? I don’t think I can beat you,” he laughed.

“Damn right!” she said. She swung the towel a couple more times, then turned and went to get him a soda. “You want the usual, babe?”

“Yeah, that’d be good,” he said. He flipped open a newspaper and scanned the headlines while Mary got a house salad and a cup of soup for him, the only food items the employees could take without paying. She wasn’t supposed to give it to Greg, but her supervisor never said anything about it.

Mary gave Greg his food and continued waiting on her tables in her happy-go-lucky manner. Just before he left, she began to feel nauseous again.

“Baby, I’ve been feeling sick today. That bologna wasn’t old, was it?”

“No,” Greg answered. “I think it was fine, we just got it last week. Why, what’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing too bad. Just a little funny in my stomach,” she said. “I’ll have a bit of soup, too. I’ll be fine. Have fun with your painting tonight, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, standing up off his stool. “Hey,” he said, looking into Mary’s eyes. “I’m sorry again about last night. All I could think when you got mad was just how much I love you,” he said. He reached up and put his hand on her cheek. “I’m so happy that you came with me, hardly knowing me at all.” He leaned in and kissed her.

“Well, I knew you were the warmest, most caring guy I’d met,” she said. “That was good enough for me. Even if you do completely screw up once in a while.” She kissed him again and he smiled. He turned and left.

When she finished work, Mary walked home on her normal path. When she turned the corner to their block, she saw people milling around in front of the bar downstairs from their apartment. Apparently they were having some sort of special party in the bar that night, and it was so packed that people overflowed onto the sidewalk. She felt a bit uneasy as she unlocked her door, but she slipped in quickly and shut the door behind her, and then made her way up the steps to her hallway. The noise coming from the party below was still a bit much, but she went back to her notebook and started trying to figure the poem out again, tuning out the yells and music below.

Mary lost track of time until she began to feel hungry. She heard a siren outside and looked at the clock. Eleven-thirty. Greg should be home anytime, so she decided to go ahead and start dinner without him. She didn’t want to have to wait any longer than necessary. She whipped up a nice big batch of spaghetti and made some garlic toast, and brought it all out to the table. Fifteen after midnight. She could wait a little bit, she thought. She ate her garlic toast and played around with her poem a little more. When it was past twelve-thirty, she decided she wasn’t going to wait any longer. He had a lot of nerve to come late two nights in a row. She finished her spaghetti, put his in the refrigerator, and went to bed.

When she woke the next morning, Greg was gone again. Already out to work, she hadn’t even felt him get in bed the night before. She was nauseous again. It probably hadn’t been a good idea to eat a bunch of spaghetti right before bed. She went to the bathroom, and by the time she made it there she felt like she needed to throw up. She got it out of her system, and then brushed her teeth. She went into the kitchen for a glass of juice, hoping that Greg might’ve left an apology note for her somewhere. She opened the refrigerator and saw the plate of spaghetti. He hadn’t even eaten his dinner. She drank her juice and rinsed the glass, and then heard a knock at the door. She went to the door and found Greg’s uncle, who looked distraught.

“Bruce, what’s going on,” she asked. “Are you okay?”

“I’m sorry,” he said as his eyes filled with tears.

“What is it?” she demanded. Something didn’t feel right all of a sudden.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’m sorry…there was a situation at the bar downstairs last night,” he stuttered.

“So what happened?” She asked, not sure what he was getting at.

“Greg was killed when he was coming home,” he said, reaching out to hug Mary.

She pushed him away.

“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “He’s at work…why would anyone kill Greg?” She was beginning to feel faint.

“I’m sorry, Mary. I just came from the morgue. No one knew who he was, and when they figured it out they called me. He was killed downstairs last night. They said he came home right around the time a bar-fight worked its way out into the street. Someone pulled a gun. I don’t know anything more about it.”

Mary’s face felt wet, but she didn’t know why she was crying. She didn’t believe it. It didn’t make any sense. Bruce continued to try to hug her, and she pushed him again, weakly. She gave up and he got his arms around her, and she rested her face on his shoulder. She cried freely as she began to realize that she wouldn’t go to work that afternoon, and he wouldn’t come in for a house salad and cup of soup. But why not? She should be able to just go to work and then he would show up. She pushed Bruce away again.

“I’ve got to get ready for work,” she sobbed. She wiped her eyes and began to walk quickly to her room.

“He’s dead,” Bruce called after her. “I’m sorry!” Mary stopped at the edge of the hallway, leaned against the wall, and began to whimper softly as reality set in.

***

Mary went through the funeral and visitation with Greg’s family and hardly stopped crying from the moment she learned Greg died until the funeral was over and done with, four days later. She stayed in Bruce’s house with other members of the family who’d traveled for the funeral, including Greg’s mother and sister. Meeting those two was the most painful moment for Mary. When Greg had been alive, she had been terrified that the women in his family wouldn’t accept her. But as soon as she laid eyes on them, she saw that they were as warm and caring as Greg had been. Their eyes were red and puffy, but they smiled wide, hugged Mary and held her tight. They didn’t say much to her or to each other; the three just cried together.

After the funeral, Mary called home to tell her mother what happened. She asked to speak to her father, and after a long silence, her mother came back and said that he couldn’t talk. Bruce let Mary stay in his house for another week. He insisted that she could stay as long as she wanted, but she knew she needed to move on soon. In the rare moments she thought about anything other than Greg, she tried to figure out what she would do with herself. After a couple days of mourning, she decided to go back to work. On her first day back to work, Mary was sick again within an hour of starting her shift. She’d been sick a few times that week. When she came out of the bathroom, she complained about it to the woman she worked with.

“Have you ever hurt so much that you just keep getting sick?”

“I don’t know…I don’t really think so. Why, you keep getting sick?”

“Yeah, especially when I wake up in the morning. I just feel…a little out of whack. I thought it would go away after the funeral. I stopped crying so much and started to eat again. But I just have to puke from time to time, no matter what I eat.”

“Oh my God, Mary! What if you’re pregnant?” She asked. Mary took a step backward. That was absurd. But as soon as that heavy word worked its way from her head to her heart, and then settled deep in her gut, Mary shuddered. As much as she wanted her friend to be wrong, a feeling inside told her it was true. Now that she felt it, she wondered how she hadn’t known sooner.

A visit to the doctor the next morning confirmed it, and Mary stayed in bed and cried for the rest of the day. She knew she had to call home. Late in the day, when she finally called, her father answered.

“Dad?” she said, her voice as soft as she could manage.

“What is it?” He asked coldly, sternly.

“Dad, I’m pregnant,” she stuttered. He was so silent that she wondered if he was still on the line, but her sisters’ voices echoed in the background.

“You need to come home,” he finally said. “But not with the baby.”

“Dad?” She was horrified. What was he suggesting?

“Go to my brother’s in Chicago. I will call him and tell him you’re coming.”

***

On the ride back to Central Illinois from Chicago, Mary silently stared out the window at the passing cornfields. The plants, each a foot or two high, blended together in as they passed until they were nothing more than a light green blur going the opposite direction. The blur was like the eight months she’d spent with her uncle, each day a cornstalk indistinguishable from the others, up until the mid-June day in the hospital. The pain of losing Greg and shock of pregnancy were quickly muted by awe and anxiety about what took place inside of her. During the day, she read her uncle’s books, cleaned his house, and looked for ways to stay busy. Late each afternoon, she bought groceries at the nearby market and made dinner. Her uncle came home in the early evening, and they ate together in front of the television. The closest they came to mentioning the pregnancy was to talk about appointments at the doctor’s office or with Catholic Social Services.

Mary looked away from the green blur of the cornfields to the off-white blur of the pavement just outside the car. She was going home, and she could start a new life for herself. She stared at the bare road and prayed the first of many prayers that her daughter would be okay, would be happy and loved, wherever she ended up.

How could she give me that look except to say I Dare You? She always gives me that look, but who’s that guy? Is he her boyfriend? How can she stare at me like that? What does she want? Maybe she’s just staring back. I should stop looking at her.

***

He’ll be perfect. He’s definitely caught up with me. He’s not ready yet, though. I’ll give him some time—smile at him whenever I see him and get him worked up.

***

Hey…she’s friends with that girl. I’ve gotta say something; I’ve gotta figure out what’s going on with that girl.

“Hey…how are you? Studying alone today? Where’s your friend?”

I hope she doesn’t think I’m hitting on her.

“Oh, that’s my sister-in-law. She’s just hanging out at home; she didn’t have any studying to do tonight. I knew I wouldn’t get any work done at home.”

“Sister-in-law, huh? You’re married to her brother?”

“No, she’s married to mine…”

***

Ooh, there he is again. Maria said he asked about me last time. Turn on the sweetheart voice…

“Hi, how you doin’ today?”

He dropped his books! Try not to laugh.

“Alright, I guess…how about you?”

He doesn’t sound too flustered for having just dropped his books. Sounds like he’s been waiting to talk to me. Keep waiting, sucker.

“I’m doing okay.”

Head toward the usual seats. I bet he won’t get the courage to come talk to me until just before Maria and Raul get here, and then he won’t be able to.

***

I can’t believe I dropped the goddamned books. What a fool. God, she’ll think I’m an idiot. I can’t believe she finally talked to me. Is she just trying to be friendly? She’s married to that guy she comes in with. She’s looking again. Look away. Look away. You’re going to creep her out, look away dammit. Okay. Walk to the reference desk. Avoid her.

***

He’s ready for this. He’ll come, I’m sure of it. Hotel keycard, check. Note with room number, check. Here we go…

***

Why is she walking towards me? Try to look like you don’t see her coming.

That’s it? She’s leaving now? She didn’t say anything. What’s this? Holiday Inn?! Is this what I think? It can’t be. There’s a post-it on the other side: “Room 212—9PM.” This is some kind of fucked-up joke.

***

Okay…all set. What time is it? 8:45. Fifteen minutes to relax…lie naked on this bed. It’s almost too cold in here, but not quite…it’s perfect. This is exciting.

Here it is. 212. Jesus. Just do it. Swipe the card. Open the door. Do it.

Right on time…and he’s looking good. Nervous, but good. “Don’t say a word.”

***

“Will I get to see you again?”

“I asked you to do one goddamned thing. ‘Don’t say a word,’ I said. You men are so goddamned thick-headed. The room’s paid for. Sleep well, asshole.”

It made me sick of myself that I felt so sad leaving such a disgusting country. I couldn’t keep myself from looking out the window of the plane, hoping that Michael would come at the last minute and stop me from leaving. He won’t try to stop me, I thought, but I couldn’t stop thinking of him—seeing the Americans on the plane reminded me of him. If I could’ve watched them long enough, I might have remembered how arrogant and ignorant they are, but I couldn’t watch them that long before I would have to look out the window, again, to see if he was coming. He doesn’t seem like the rest of them; I don’t see him as being arrogant or ignorant or self-involved and narcissistic. Am I wrong about him? If he had tried to stop me, would that be proof that he’s a fool like the others, or would that mean that he was actually different? Was it a sign of his foolishness that he let me go without another word? Perhaps the qualities I so admired about him were the same that kept him from trying to stop me. I wonder if he’s even thinking of me, watching the sky for the airplane that will return me to Germany, the place he once called “your wretched mother country.”

I met Michael when I arrived here in August. I’d been selected for a one-semester research position at the University of California in Berkeley, where I’d be able to work on my thesis. I could’ve finished at home, but they are starting this exchange program for master’s students and told me they’d let me finish in one semester if I came to America. My fiancé, Tivian, said that it would be good for me to have some time away from home before we start planning the wedding. He said that I hadn’t been myself for some time, and I think that it was because I was getting so frustrated with school. I just wanted to finish my Master’s degree and find some work. I’ve been in school all my life. I’m ready for it to be over. The research position would give me a little change of scenery and get me out of school sooner. I didn’t like the idea of finishing my studies in America, but I’ll still have a ceremony at home when the year is up.

It took me some time to get comfortable with the lab and my co-workers. There are a couple of Asian guys, a self-absorbed American girl, and one Australian guy working with me in the lab. It seemed like the guys all knew each other already, because they were always talking and hanging out. They still seem nice. All of the people from the lab would walk down the street to the coffee shop for their breaks. I usually just took a soda from the machine and would stand outside and smoke. The breeze on my face with the faint scent of the ocean, along with the sound of the leaves gently brushing against one another in the trees, made it nearly profane to consider spending time with a bunch of people who love to hear the sounds of their own voices.

On the first Thursday that I was there, I thought that I would like to take a cup of tea back to my room to relax for the evening, so I went to their coffee shop after work. I’d been pretty annoyed with the other people in the lab that day. The constant chatter was unbearable. I’d been in the country for five days, and I had no friends. I nearly cussed the American girl by 10 and couldn’t figure out for the rest of the day why I’d come here. My friend Christoph from Hamburg had suggested the night before in an email that perhaps Tivian had been so supportive of this trip because he wanted to enjoy some freedom before we were married. He’s never met Tivian, and doesn’t know what a wonderful man he is. I thought I’d disregarded Christoph’s comments entirely, but after nearly cussing the American girl, I realized that something must have been bothering me; perhaps I was a little worried about whether or not it was true that Tivian could be cheating on me. It infuriated me that I could be so lonely and miserable in this ugly country just long enough for him to give attention to some other woman at home. It was a stupid idea, but I was upset. So I went to the coffee shop after work.

The café was in a small building set in between two larger buildings, and it was further off the street as it had a courtyard in front of it. Perhaps it should be called a patio, I don’t know. It was paved with concrete and had a wrought-iron fence around it that was just over waist-height. There was a walkway down the middle leading to the café entrance, and on either side were scattered tables and chairs, some of the tables with big umbrellas in the middle. The front of the building is all windows and you can see the seating and counter inside. The counter was on the right side of the café and on the left there were a handful of tables and a few couches. There were some people sitting and talking at a few of the tables and a person sitting and reading on one of the couches. The counter reached all the way to a wall at the back end of the room, and on the left side of the room there was an opening to what seemed to be another room for sitting. I couldn’t see clearly from outside, and I looked at the hours posted on the door as I approached. “Chez Café – 6 AM to 10 PM.” What an American name, I thought.

Michael seemed to have been waiting just for me. His warm smile was the first thing I saw as I walked through the door. He was leaning against the counter by the register and said hi before I could even find their menu. I tried to look for it, but couldn’t stop looking at him. He was attractive, thin but muscular, and he had a soft face and deep green eyes. He was shorter than Tivian, but still taller than I am. Tivian is somewhat tall; Michael is probably an average height for a male. He was looking right at me, and he didn’t seem to blink at all. He was still smiling.

“How are you doing?” he asked, sounding very sincere. Should I respond? I couldn’t think of anything. I’d spotted the menu and picked the first tea I saw. I smiled back at him and approached the counter. I ordered my tea.

“Are you an international student?” he asked. Five years of English and still such a recognizable accent. I nodded at him. He was still smiling. I couldn’t stand to look into those green eyes. He wasn’t making my tea. I held out my money. “Okay…it’s a dollar eighty-four.” He gave me my change and then put what looked like a business card on the counter. “This is our stamp card,” he explained. “Get a punch every time you buy a tea. When you get ten punches, you’ll get a free tea. You can’t beat that!” He gave a small laugh and I couldn’t help but smile. He began preparing my tea. He set it on the counter in front of me and wished me a good evening. He told me to keep smiling. I nodded again and went straight for the door. I knew that I didn’t have any honey in my room, but I wouldn’t have been able to stand being there any longer. I couldn’t remember finding a man so attractive since before I’d even met Tivian, and it only made things worse that he was so friendly.

As I walked back to my apartment, I kept smiling and felt much lighter than I had in a long time. The coffee shop was not too far out of the way between my apartment and the lab, so it didn’t take me too long to get back. At least I was able to get a nice place to stay while I was here; I had expected an uncomfortable dorm situation, but they had arranged for the international students to have apartments of their own. And I didn’t have to pay much, as they’re eager for this program to work well. I drank my tea and read for a while before calling home.

“Allo?” Tivian answered.

“Allo…it’s me.”

“My lover in America! How is that fabulous country?!”

“Agh. It’s here. I want you to be, too,” I said, hearing my own voice with such sullenness in it. “How is my baby?”

“He misses you. He won’t even eat when I’m in the room. He sulks all day wondering where his mother is.” Mieza is my six-year old grey housecat. Tivian and I got him from a friend when she realized that she was allergic to cats. That had been three years ago, and Mieza still didn’t like Tivian much at all. If Tivian came to bed late, Mieza would lay with me until Tivian finally came to bed, and then Mieza would run off to sleep the rest of the night on the chair in the office. “I miss you to, Laura.” My heart fluttered to hear him pronounce my name. These Americans insisted on calling me Lohr-ah. It’s Lhow-ra! Please!

“I met a pleasant boy today,” I told him. I needed him to know that I might survive this trip, after all. “He was very nice to me, and I forgot for a moment how horrible it is to be away from home.” And he was very attractive, I thought.

“I told you that it would not be so bad for you to get away. You’ll be comfortable there in no time. And before you know it, you’ll be flying home. Mieza will be waiting anxiously for you. He might receive no affection at all until you return. And, of course, I’ll be pretty anxious for some, myself!”

“I love you, Tivian. Wish me good dreams, please?”

“Dream of me!”

“I will. Good night,” I hated to hang up the phone. I was in my room by myself again. And no one to stroke my poor Mieza so that he could purr himself to sleep.

I went to sleep soon. It was still early, and I dreamed that I was working in a coffee shop. I was preparing tea and lattes for the American students. I couldn’t make anything the right way, and the boss was yelling at me in English I couldn’t understand. She yelled and yelled and I could say nothing, I couldn’t look at her.

It was still dark when I woke up. I took a long, hot shower. I stood under the hot stream of water for nearly twenty minutes before I even began to shampoo my hair. I dressed and went to the lab hoping both that the day would pass quickly and that it wouldn’t end. After leaving the lab, I would have to find some way to spend sixty hours over the weekend without going mad. Even if I slept twelve hours each night, I’d still have twenty-four hours to deal with. What would I do with myself?!

Work was tolerable. I was able to work without having to talk to people most of the day. I nearly decided to go with them when they left for the coffee shop, but I decided that it would be better not to be associated with that group of people. I smoked my cigarette but couldn’t finish my soda. I longed for a cup of tea.

When they returned from the café, the other people in the lab talked about what they would do for the weekend. They talked of different bars and parties and bands. I knew I could go with them. Even the American girl would’ve let me come along with her. I would be happier sleeping, I thought. She even asked me, just before we left work, what I would do over the weekend.

“I just need to relax. I’ll stay at home this weekend. It’s been a long week,” I explained.

“Well, you can go out with me next weekend, then. You’re not gonna get the real feel for the night life here if you hang out with those guys,” she said, nodding towards the others. “I did my undergrad here, so I know where the cool places are. Okay?”

“Thanks, Amanda. I will keep that in mind.” I thought for sure that she’d known that I didn’t like her. I couldn’t understand why she was being so nice. I told her to have a nice weekend before I left.

I walked down the street towards the coffee shop. It was not the most direct path back to my apartment. I could see Michael through the window as I walked past. I didn’t slow down, and I walked instead into the deli just past the coffee shop. Perhaps the person working here would be as nice to me as Michael had been. I could start liking Americans by buying stuff from them, even if I didn’t really want any as friends. Maybe I could spend my weekend buying things anywhere in walking distance. Maybe I could learn to take the bus to these shopping malls and business districts and be happy and broke by the time I make it back to Germany.

The guy working in the deli was moderately attractive, a little taller than Michael and with broader shoulders. He was talking to another guy who was off to the side, a shorter, chubby guy with glasses. I stood at the counter and waited as they finished talking. After a few minutes, he finally looked over at me. He didn’t say anything, and I wasn’t sure if I should order yet.

“Well?” He held his hands out to the side and cocked his head.

“Um…could I have a turkey sandwich, please?” My voice was shaking. Please just get my sandwich.

“What kind of bread do you want?” He sounded a little gentler now.

“Rye,” I answered, becoming more comfortable.

“Lettuce, tomato, sprouts, onions, mayo, mustard?”

It took a minute to think about this one. “I’ll just have lettuce, tomato, and mustard, please.” This wasn’t so bad at all. He pushed some buttons on the register and then looked back up at me while the chubby guy put together my sandwich. I could see the total on the front of the register and found four dollars in my billfold. He gave me my change and, after a moment, the sandwich. They had already returned to their conversation, so I uttered quiet thanks and walked out.

How miserable was I that simple interactions with retail clerks affected me so significantly? I was cracking up. I walked down the street imagining, once again, that Tivian was at home, romancing girls and entertaining them in our bed. I imagined being found in my foul American apartment in two weeks, peeling the wallpaper from the walls and eating it. It didn’t even have wallpaper! I would try again the next day; I would find more nice places to go with this spare time. I arrived at home and ate a few bites of the sandwich. I wrapped it up again in the thick wax paper and threw it away. I took a nice, warm bath and even fell asleep in the bathtub for a while. I woke and drained the water before heading straight to bed, where I slept in my towel.

That night I dreamed of being home with Tivian. He cooked dinner for me and we ate by the light of a candle. He fed me bites of my meal slowly, patiently, and urged me to drink plenty of wine. He carried me into the bedroom after dinner and I nearly slept in his arms. He put me in a chair in the corner and I watched as countless beautiful nude women walked into the room. There were so many of them, and they were in bed with him! He was pleasing them all at once, and I was cold in my chair. I looked down to see that I was naked, too, but I wanted to hide. I woke up crying with no blankets. They’d all fallen to the floor at some point, and I had only my towel, which wasn’t covering me anymore. I lay there and cried for a while before falling back to sleep, this time with my blankets and a body pillow to cuddle with.

I woke again in the late morning with the beginnings of a very bad headache. I lay in bed for a while longer, trying to find the energy to get up and find a pain reliever. I had a few old aspirin in a bottle in a bag of medicine I hadn’t unpacked yet. I found them and took some orange juice from my little refrigerator and sat in the chair near my bed, suddenly remembering my dream. I needed to leave the apartment. I took a quick shower and got dressed before heading down to the street. I took the first bus that came by and was on my way to somewhere else.

I grabbed a bus schedule before sitting down, and I took a seat near the doors in the back. There were fewer people on the bus than I would’ve expected—a handful of college-aged students towards the front and more than a handful of young black kids towards the back. I was right in between. I thought that it might be a good idea to get off the bus where the kids did, as I would expect them to best be able to find pleasant places to be. We rolled from light to light and through a number of neighborhoods. I marveled at the old, dirty houses in the run-down neighborhoods and the incredibly busy four-lane streets in the business districts.

When I’d been in America as an exchange student in high school, I stayed with an upper middle-class family in Elgin, Illinois. My host family had a daughter named Sarah, and it seemed as though most of her friends would rather come to her house than go anywhere else, so I didn’t get to see much of that town other than Larkin High School and, once, the Fox Valley Mall (it was a bit of a drive for casual shopping, so we’d made a special day-long trip of it). We had nice times, I suppose, but that was so many years ago. I didn’t really leave feeling like I knew much at all about America aside from how much a problem the high school students seemed to have with alcohol. And most of them had been so superficial. I wasn’t unhappy leaving then, just as I didn’t expect to be unhappy this time around.

The kids pulled the cord to request a stop, so I got ready to get off the bus. I waited long enough to let them go ahead of me and then stepped off onto the corner near a strip mall. The kids ran across the street towards other businesses and even more strip malls as I surveyed this strip mall for promising places of business. I saw a pizza restaurant, a video arcade, a sandwich shop, and yes, a coffee shop. This was a Starbucks, and I was familiar with them, unlike Michael’s place. I assumed that his was the only one of its kind, but I didn’t know for sure. I had been to other Starbucks before, but I wanted to see this one now, to see how they could compete with Michael.

I walked through the front door to see the café in all its one-room glory. There were six or eight tables in the front part of the room with two chairs to each. There were also three big, soft chairs immediately to the left of the entrance in the corner with end tables separating them. The lamps on the end tables were identical desk lamps with light pink lampshades. There were three people in the store: one older gentleman sitting at one of the tables scribbling something in a notebook, a younger guy sitting in one of those comfortable seats to my left reading a book, and another younger girl standing behind the counter talking on a cell phone. She had medium length platinum blonde and purple hair and had a ring in her nose like a bull or a pig. She made eye contact with me briefly but continued talking as I surveyed their list of teas. When I walked up to the counter, she nodded at me, though she still held the phone to her ear. She wore thick-rimmed black glasses that slid down her nose a bit when she nodded, and I hesitated to order. She nodded again, this time holding both the phone and her glasses. I ordered my tea and she rang it up. I held out two dollars, and she walked away. I stood and listened to part of her conversation in which I thought I heard her say something about her roommate being mad about the sounds she made with her girlfriend at night. It seemed pretty funny that she would be so indiscrete, and she handed me my tea as I stood there and smiled. She took my money and gave me change, which I put into a tip jar by the register. She nodded again, and I saw her adjust her glasses again as I walked away. Though I was mildly amused by overhearing her conversation, I wasn’t impressed with the service. I sat and drank my tea, watching her go through the same exchange with the two or three other people who came in. I finished my tea and left, eager to find another place.

I wandered about, finding plenty of strip malls and shopping malls with interesting little shops. I drank four cups of tea, ate half a sandwich, bought a cookie, found postcards to send home, and found a novel by some French author that might help to keep me occupied for a week or so. Nowhere did I find anyone as friendly as Michael. I made it home by eight or nine that night and read my new book until I was sleepy. I fell asleep and didn’t dream, thankfully. Late in the following afternoon, I walked back to Michael’s coffee shop, hoping that he might be working again.

I saw him through the window again as I approached the door. He stood behind the counter with that same charming smile, and my heart was beating heavily in my chest. I took a deep breath as I opened the door. I could feel the sweat on my palms against the cold metal of the door handle.

“You’re back!” he exclaimed when he saw me at the counter. I smiled and ordered the same tea I’d had before. “You got it!” He began preparing the tea and then brought it to me. He rang me up and I handed him my two dollars again. “Did you bring your punch card?!” I remembered the little card he’d given me and dug it out of my wallet quickly as he got my change from the register. He stamped the card twice and smiled at me. I thanked him and found a seat near the window and started reading my book. I was comfortable there. I would look up to the counter occasionally, and he’d smile at me if he looked, even if he was helping someone else or cleaning something. After an hour or two, I got up and left, and he said, “Have a good night!” I could hear the sincerity in his voice. I smiled and walked out.

On the walk back to the apartment, I felt a wave of shame sweep across me so strongly that it nearly brought a tear to my eye. I was going to be married to Tivian in less than a year! How could I let myself be so enchanted by some boy in an American coffee shop?! I quickened my pace and walked so swiftly that my legs nearly hurt by the time I walked through the door of my apartment. I called Tivian immediately. I knew he’d be asleep by then, but I didn’t care; I needed to talk to him.

“Please tell me about a girl you’re attracted to, Tivian,” I begged. “I am so intrigued by this boy at the coffee shop, and I won’t feel okay until I know that you are attracted to some girl at work or a waitress, or someone!”

“Calm down, Laura, it’s okay…really. I know that you love me. No one will come between us,” he slurred, half asleep. It was so reassuring to hear his voice again.

“I’m sorry…I’m sorry. I’m just so lonely here. I just want a friend. And he was so nice to me. Please just tell me someone you’ve had a crush on, so I can know that we’ll be okay.”

“I don’t know, sweetie. I just can’t think right now. I do work with some attractive girls, but I work with them. It’s so hard to look at them like that,” he spoke slowly, as if trying to give himself time to remember one of these little crushes.

“You can’t tell me just one? Just so I can sleep tonight?”

“Oh…I just don’t know,” he said. He was silent for what seemed like forever. He would answer when he realized that I was still waiting. Had he fallen asleep again? “Okay, I got it. Three weeks ago. Carl and I had lunch at the little place a few blocks from his apartment. The waitress was hitting on me, and it crossed my mind that her eyes reminded me of yours. I was flattered that she hit on me, and I flirted back. Carl was mad because he’d have liked to have gone out with her. That’s it.”

“You see. It wasn’t that hard. Did you think about her since then, except to answer my question?”

“Well…yes. We ate there again the day before you left, and I wondered if she might be working again. She wasn’t, and the food was horrible that day, too. I don’t think we’ll go back there, anyway. Would it make you happier if we did?” I could hear some irritation in his voice.

“You eat where you want to, dear. Thank you. I don’t feel so bad. I love you. Get your sleep. Pet my kitty, if he lets you?”

“Of course. Good night. Sweet dreams.”

“I’ll dream of you,” I said, hanging up the phone. I went to sleep happy. We would be together again soon. Until then, Michael would keep me company with his smiles and Good-Nights.

Work in the lab wasn’t so bad after that. I began going to the coffee shop with everyone during our breaks, and I got along well with Amanda. I still thought that she was pretty shallow, but she was usually nice, so I was friendly with her. I even went out to the bars with her a few times.

Michael would sometimes be coming to work just as we got to the coffee shop, and he was always pleasant. He reminded me of my punch card and congratulated me when it was full. He’d ask me how I was, and I’d say “fine.” He always told me to have a nice day, unless I was there after work, when he’d tell me to have a good night. I began to know which days he would be there and which he wouldn’t. He would smile at me when I looked up from one of the many novels I’d read throughout the semester. We never talked beyond that. Once or twice I almost started a conversation, but I couldn’t think of what to say, and I didn’t want to make it impossible to return to the place that I had to go to keep from being alone.

Two short weeks ago, things changed. I had gotten over the idea of talking to him, and I was happy just to have someone who would always be friendly to me. And then that Friday, after work, he approached me as I was reading my book.

“Any exciting plans this weekend?” he asked. I hadn’t seen him coming. I held my book in my lap and my knees were locked together. “Big parties? Bar-hopping? Some new movie?”

“Not much. No. I don’t know.” How difficult was this question, really? I’ll sit in this coffee shop and watch you work. I’ll take two warm baths and sleep ten hours each night. I’ll talk to my fiancé on Sunday. “How about you?” I knew he’d be at work on Sunday afternoon, but not tomorrow.

“I’ll probably just hang out with friends, watch movies or play cards or something.” He sat down across the table from me, crossed his legs under his apron and put his hands together in his lap, one holding a towel.

“That sounds nice,” I responded, not knowing what else to say. What were his friends like? I wondered.

“Well, I do have a paper to write this weekend, now that I think about it…I’ll probably finish it tomorrow afternoon. Hang out with the guys when I’m done. You’ll be in here on Sunday, I imagine?” He smiled.

“Of course. There’s nowhere better,” I replied. And I’ve checked.

“Well, enjoy your book. I should finish my work,” he said. I looked at my watch and saw that it was already almost nine o’clock. I didn’t usually stay so late. My tea was empty. “My name is Michael, by the way,” he extended his hand. I reached out and embraced it.

“I am Laura,” I said, blushing. I’d known his name for a while, after having heard one of his co-workers address him at some point. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Laura,” he said. He pronounced my name correctly! Amanda still called me Lohr-ah after all this time, and he said Lhow-ra the first time! He picked up some glasses that had been left on tables and arranged the chairs the way he always did, and after a few minutes, I went back to my book. I was in no hurry to get home, and talking to him had been somewhat nerve-wracking, so I wanted to give myself time to calm down. Soon enough, it was ten o’clock, and Michael dimmed the lights. I looked around to see that there was no one else left.

“Good night, Michael,” his co-worker said, walking out the front door. I collected my things and stood up as he walked out from behind the counter.

“This is the first time you’ve closed this place down,” he laughed.

“I’m sorry?” I asked, not quite understanding him.

“I mean, you’ve never stayed so late. It’s just a pleasant surprise to still have you here.”

“I’m sorry…I just lost track of the time. I hope I haven’t kept you late,” I explained.

“Oh, no, it’s okay. We managed to get everything done pretty quickly tonight. I relax in here for a little bit after work sometimes, anyway. It’s the only time you can smoke inside, when no one’s here.” He placed an ashtray at my table and sat down again. “Care to smoke with me before you go?”

“I don’t suppose that would hurt anything,” I responded. I sat back down and got my cigarettes from my purse. He held out his lighter to offer me a light when I’d gotten a cigarette out, and I looked into his eyes as he lit it. “So how do you study if you work so much?” I asked, perhaps too eagerly. I knew that he worked four times a week, usually, and it just seemed like a lot.

“Well, I guess that I’m just the type of person who has to stay really busy in order to keep going. I’m only taking four classes, so it’s really not too much with the twenty-five or thirty hours of work a week. Usually not over twenty-five, unless I cover for someone. How about you? How do you manage to do anything at school when you read so many books? I’ve seen you with at least five this month!” He laughed, and I couldn’t help but laugh with him. I explained to him that I was a research student, and aside from long hours in the lab, we really didn’t ever need to take our work home with us. We talked about what we study and he asked me questions about Germany. In what seemed like no time, we had smoked three or four cigarettes, and I looked at my watch to see that it was already half past eleven. He saw me look at my watch. “Yeah, it’s getting awfully late. We really ought to get going, huh?”

“Yes, I suppose we should,” I answered. It had been so nice talking to him. He was funny. He was charming. He was nice and made me feel special. He was sitting right across the table, smiling and laughing with me. “So I’ll get to see you again on Sunday?” I asked, anxious for Saturday to pass us by.

“I’ll be looking forward to it all weekend,” he smiled. I should have told him about Tivian. What will he think of me? He held the door as I walked out and stood holding it as I turned to him. Our faces were barely half a meter from each other. “Good night, Laura,” he said. I stood looking into his eyes until it made me uncomfortable. I realized that it was might turn to speak.

“Good night,” I drawled. I watched as he locked the door from the inside and waved at me. I turned and walked slowly home. I was not worried about Tivian. He knew that I needed someone to talk to. But what if Michael wants more than someone to talk to? I went straight to bed, but just lay there, seemingly forever, thinking about our conversation. He was such a wonderful person. Why hadn’t I talked to him sooner? At least we had talked, I realized, drifting into my dream-world. I dreamed that Tivian delivered me to a beach, and I walked down the beach with Michael. The beach stretched endlessly in either direction, and when I looked back, Tivian was gone, along with the rode I’d arrived on. The strip of beach seemed to be all that existed anymore, with water stretching forever to our right, and sand to our left. Michael put his arm around me, and we walked and laughed and cried. I woke up in the mid-afternoon, once again with the beginnings of a headache.

I’d purchased some ibuprofen not long after that first weekend, but only now was I opening the bottle. I swallowed the pills with some orange juice and took my bath. I soaked in the warm water and thought more about our conversation, and felt almost ecstatic about being able to tell Tivian tomorrow that I’d finally talked to Michael. It had become my American saga, and Tivian watched from afar. He’d actually encouraged me to talk to Michael long ago, but those couple of times that I nearly did, I backed down. Finally, a change in the story! And how would I tell Michael that I’m engaged? It wasn’t likely that this ring gave it away; it’s so prudent compared to the extravagant rings that I’ve seen the Americans wear. It’s a simple white-gold band with Tivian inscribed inside the ring. Would he have known because of the ring? This wretched Saturday, day of waiting and wondering. I’d nearly forgotten how horrible it could be, I’d gone out with Amanda in the last two weekends. Perhaps I could break routine and go to the coffee shop on one of Michael’s off-days, for once. That would pass the time.

I walked into the coffee shop just after five or six in the evening and approached the counter to order my tea. Suddenly I heard my name from behind me…it was Michael! I rushed over to the table where he was sitting with a couple of books and a notebook.

“You’re not working today!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

“A guy can’t always study in the library, you know,” he answered.

“Will you be here long? Can I sit with you?”

“Of course you can. I’m finishing up my work, but perhaps I could distract you from your reading for a while,” he said, closing his notebook.

“That would be lovely,” I responded. “Let me just get my tea…”

“Your usual? Let me get it for you.” He went up to the counter and got the tea, and they didn’t charge him for it. “And here you are,” he said, setting it on the table in front of me.

“You didn’t have to do that. How will they make any money if I get free tea?” I asked.

“I’ll drink one less of my free teas to make up for it,” he said with a smile. “Did you sleep well last night?”

“Well, I realized after I left last night that I’d not told you something important,” I began, knowing that I should get this out of the way as quickly as possible. “There’s a man waiting for me in Germany.”

“Oh…okay…well, that’s good, right,” he said, half questioningly. He didn’t seem too upset, and I wondered if maybe I’d been too presumptuous. “I mean, you told me you’d be going back soon, anyway. I guess I wasn’t really hoping to talk you into staying in America,” he said. “You were pretty clear about your distaste for this country when we talked last night.” I’d told him all about my distaste for their political leaders and popular culture and how I didn’t enjoy much about being here aside from relaxing in the coffee shop. Apparently he was okay with the fact that I wasn’t romantically available, which was nice. “Besides,” he added, “I have pretty much come to expect that about all the nice girls that I meet, anyway.” He attempted to laugh, but it didn’t seem sincere and he looked away, as if he saw someone he knew. I briefly caught sight of a sad side to him that I hadn’t seen before. I told him that it was because he was so nice that I kept coming to the coffee shop to see him. I told him that I had worried so much about being attracted to him that I’d forced my fiancé to name a secret crush, just so he would be vindicated. We talked for a while about relationships and some of the problems he’d encountered and that sort of thing, and I told him about how Tivian and I had been friends for a long time before we became romantically involved. I tried to explain to him that I think that is what is so difficult for this “dating” that they have here.

“At home,” I said, “the guys almost have to get hit on their head before they realize that it’s become romantic. From the way it sounds, guys here assume it’s romantic until they’re hit on the head and realize it isn’t.” Was I being too blunt?

“I suppose that’s true,” he conceded. He really is such a wonderful guy; couldn’t he just find a girl who could appreciate that? “Romantic involvements seem to be about the only way I can relate to women, though. It’s not a very nice way to be, really; I am discriminating against women. I don’t see them as people I can be friends with, I see them either as romantic interests or I just don’t pay attention to them at all. To be really honest,” he continued, “I knew that you were going to be leaving, but I think that the hope was still there in the back of my mind. I’ve had a little crush on you ever since that first day you came in here, and it was only this week that I finally managed to talk to you,” he grinned. “And to think, maybe if I’d talked to you sooner I could’ve at least spent some time with you learning how to be a good friend with a girl before you left.” He looked away as he said this. He sat leaned slightly back in his chair with his left hand on his knee and his right arm resting on the back of the chair beside him. I was leaning forward and looked down at my hands, the right hand lying on the left on the table in front of me. He didn’t say anything for a bit, and when I looked up at him, he smiled.

“You are still a good friend,” I said, “even if you won’t get a whole lot of practice at it, with me.”

“Thank you, Laura. I appreciate your saying so.” He smiled. “It’s not very often that I’m able to get to know women, anyway,” he went on. “Usually the ones who approach me are just too crazy to even consider. And the ones I like just seem like they’re probably too sane to fall for a guy like me.”

“Oh, Michael, you can’t be serious,” I jeered, astounded that he would say such a thing. “You are smart and funny and very, very sweet. Not to mention very attractive!” I said, blushing though I didn’t care.

“Oh, come on. You don’t have to say all that. Look, I know I have some self-esteem issues, but I know I’ll meet someone great sometime. I’m really not too worried about it. Things have gone well with you, and so I’ll have the courage to approach someone else later on.” He was quiet for a bit. “I suppose we should probably get going soon,” he said, beginning to stand.

“I don’t want you to leave me,” I blurted. Michael stopped halfway up and slowly sat back in his chair. I gazed into his eyes briefly before looking down at the table. What was he thinking of me?

“I can stay for a while longer,” he said slowly. “If you want me to…”

“Let’s talk about something,” I said, and blurted out the first thing that came to mind about music or history or politics. He laughed at me before sighing deeply. He responded to what I’d said, and we talked about safe topics until the coffee shop closed.

“We could go somewhere for food,” he suggested as we walked out the door. I was enjoying our conversations too much to cut it short, so I agreed. We walked around the back of the building and found his car, a small, light blue Ford sedan. It was a two-door but was fairly roomy inside. I didn’t find it surprising that he drove car with a stick-shift. We pulled out of the parking lot and headed down the street.

We soon found a restaurant that was open twenty-four hours and I ordered a milkshake that I barely drank. He had an omelet and I instructed him on the proper German dining etiquette, which seemed slightly difficult for him. We had an old waitress named Doris who seemed to have been working there as long as the place had been open. I’d never been to a place like this back home. We talked a whole lot more about the differences between American and German culture and about our experiences with family and growing up and, of course, more politics. I told him a little about the research project we had been working on and how close we were to wrapping it up. “At least, we had better be close to finishing it, because I’m leaving in ten days. Hey, maybe you could take me to the airport? You don’t work in the mornings, usually?”

“No, not really, and I don’t have class because we’re getting ready for finals.” I told him about my flight and when I had to be at the airport. We exchanged phone numbers and then we talked for a while about the hassles with airport security since 9-11.

At two in the morning, the inside of his left thigh brushed slowly against the inside of my left thigh under the table. My heart raced and I wished that our thighs would remain resting against each other. With that slight brush of our legs, I could nearly feel his whole body next to mine as though we were lying in bed together and he was holding me as I fell asleep. Almost as soon as they’d touched, though, they were apart again. Had he even noticed that they’d touched? Had he felt me next to him? I don’t know if I had been talking or if it was he, but we were silent after that.

“I should get you home,” he said. “It’s late…and my roommate will probably be wondering about me by now, we usually hang out on Saturdays.”

“I hope I haven’t made you break your plans,” I said, beginning to feel bad about enjoying so much the time we’d spent with each other. How would I tell Tivian about staying out so late with some American guy? He knew I needed someone to talk to. Would this have been what he had in mind?

“No, it’s no biggie. Some of our other friends usually end up coming over on the weekends, anyway. They’ll probably just think that I was in a car accident and died or something. No one will mind.”

“Stop it, Michael. It’s not funny to joke like that,” I scolded with a smile. We paid our bill and he drove me home. When he stopped the car in front of my building, I looked over at him, still not wanting our night to end. His elbow rested against the window as he used his left hand to pull and twist a lock of hair on his head. He smiled at me and continued to pull and twist that bit of hair. “Would it be okay if I hugged you,” I asked.

“Of course,” he said, opening his arms to me as I wasted no time in pulling him close. We embraced briefly and I whispered to him that I’d had a great night. He couldn’t have known what I said, though, as I said it in German, so I added that I didn’t want to let him go.

“Sweet dreams,” he said as I opened the car door.

I’ll dream of you. I didn’t look back as I headed up the sidewalk. I returned to my room and got myself ready for bed. I had a hard time falling asleep, and the last time that I remember looking at the alarm clock, it said 6:32. I dreamed of a life with Michael, not in Germany, not in America. We were happy together. And then I saw Tivian in Germany, and I went to him. I left Michael in that nether-State alone. I woke up crying again. It was a quarter after three in the afternoon. I was supposed to have called Tivian at one o’clock.

I had no idea what to say to Tivian, and I felt like such a horrible person. I called Christoph in Hamburg, instead. I told him all about what had been going on, and he reassured me that I had nothing to feel badly about, as Tivian was surely back at home sleeping with everyone in East Berlin. I had to laugh at that.

“But seriously,” he said, “you found yourself in a dangerous situation, and you found your way out. You’ll be fine if you don’t go back to that situation.”

“Does that mean I cannot talk to him?” I asked.

“Will you be at risk of dishonoring your commitment to Tivian?” he asked.

“I don’t know. No? I shouldn’t be, right? If we just talk…just there at the coffee shop? I can’t just write him off. I don’t think there’s any harm in just being his friend for another week or so. Nothing would happen in such a short time.”

I became comfortable with things, aside from how I would tell Tivian why I’d not called him. It was nearly five o’clock by then, and he’d probably already be in bed. I shouldn’t wake him. I sent him an email, and I tried to write mostly about other things. I briefly mentioned that I was out late with the guy from the coffee shop, just talking. “It was a nice conversation,” I wrote. I went on to remind him when my flight would arrive and discussed other issues about returning home.

I took a nice, hot shower and a couple of ibuprofen before deciding how I would spend my evening. I knew that Michael would be at the coffee shop. Would we talk forever if I went there? I would be sure to keep things brief, and that way I would know that there was no problem with being his friend. So I went.

He was, of course, his usual cheerful self. He had my tea ready by the time I made it to the counter and asked me if I’d gotten any sleep. I told him I’d slept much too long, and I was worried I might not get to sleep at a reasonable hour that night. He laughed and said that he slept for five or six hours, as usual. I thanked him for the tea after he refused to let me pay for it, and I found a table and sat to read. He sat down with me to talk briefly, but we didn’t have a whole lot to say. We just smiled at each other, and I held my book open on the table. He went back to work, and I left after another half hour or forty-five minutes. He told me to have a good night, and I told him to get some sleep. That hadn’t been so bad.

I had no idea how I might sleep when I got home. Nothing works like ritual, I thought, so I poured a nice, hot bath and soaked for an hour or so. I went to bed with my book and read myself to sleep, which really didn’t take long, considering all of the sleep I’d had the night before. I dreamt of Michael, and we were in the coffee shop. He showed me into a room in the back with nothing but a couch in it. He lay me down on the couch and slowly undressed me. He stood above me and undressed himself. He lay on the couch next to me, and he pulled me close to him. I looked around, and we were in my bed together. I woke abruptly with at least two hours before I’d need to go to work. I took my time getting ready and began to imagine that perhaps I could blow off the final days of this research project and spend my remaining days in America making love to Michael. I wondered if I shouldn’t see him anymore.

Work was intolerable, once again. Everyone got ready at break time to head to the coffee shop, and I knew they were waiting on me. They knew nothing of what had been going on between Michael and me. After making them wait, I finally decided to go along. It should be safe to go with all of these people, I thought. I didn’t know if I could trust myself seeing him by myself. The group of us walked into the coffee shop together and everyone ordered their drinks as I looked around for Michael. I didn’t see him anywhere, so I ordered my tea. They gave it to me and wouldn’t let me pay. The person working the register had been working Saturday night when Michael got my tea for me. I tried to force my money, but he simply wouldn’t take it. Whatever, I thought before walking out with everyone. They hadn’t noticed the little scene, thankfully. Just as we walked out, I saw Michael approaching from the sidewalk.

“Good afternoon!” he said. “How are you?”

“I’m good. I’ll catch up with you guys, okay?” I said to the crew. “I’ll just be a minute.”

“Skippin’ out on work, huh?” Michael asked with a smile. “I gotta get a job like that.”

“We need to talk, Michael. I don’t know if I should spend time with you anymore.”

“Wow. Uh…what’s up? Is everything okay?”

“This morning I fantasized about spending the rest of my time in America having sex with you. I’m engaged. That’s not okay,” I blurted. I could feel the tears welling up, and I turned away from him. Would he put his arm around me? Would he make me believe that I could live in the nether-State with him? I felt a tear roll down my cheek.

“Well…” he said, “I guess that’s how it has to be. That…uh…really sucks. It sucks that it has to be this way.” He stood still and I could feel the distance between us.

“This is such a big mess, and I’m more confused than I’ve ever been. The things that happen in such a short time should not be able to make me question four years of my life! Or my whole life! I have to go,” I sobbed as I started walking. I wanted to hear his footsteps behind me, wanted him to call out my name in that way that no other American could. I had no idea who I was anymore, but I knew that, somehow or another, I was ready to fall in love with him. But I was already in love! I had to walk away from feelings, no matter which way I went. We’d spent nearly no time at all with each other compared to all of the time that I’d been with Tivian, how could I possibly think that I might fall in love? And what had our brief time together meant to him? Maybe he was just sacrificing his time because he knew he’d be rid of me soon…maybe he wanted me to cheat on Tivian and still leave. As I walked all the way to the lab crying, I wondered about all of these things. Once back in the building, I went directly to the bathroom. I sat down in a stall for a few minutes and composed myself, and then I washed my face in the sink. Amanda walked into the bathroom as I wiped my face with a paper towel.

“Is everything okay, Laura?” she asked in her American way, sounding genuinely concerned. She put her arm around me, and I rested my forehead on her shoulder.

“I’m just homesick,” I managed to squeak out. She held me as if her shoulder was stopping a leak until I thought I could pull my head away without opening the leak again. We walked back into the lab together and I put everything I had into our project. I didn’t return to the coffee shop all week. I waited in the evenings for my phone to ring, hoping that Michael would talk me into learning to live in America. Tivian had emailed me and hardly seemed concerned about my state of mind at all. Why would he be? I’d told him nothing. Michael never called.

On my last Friday night in the states, I couldn’t resist the urge to visit the coffee shop again. I thought that it could be my last visit to the coffee shop, that I could tell Michael good-bye before never seeing him again. I’d had the whole week to cool off, and I figured that I would be able to see him without crying or doing something stupid. I waited until after nine o’clock to head to the coffee shop so I wouldn’t be able to spend too much time there. As I approached the door, I felt as nervous as I had on that second visit to the coffee shop, but worse. My hands were not only sweaty, but shaking a bit when I reached for the handle to open the door.

Michael was standing at his usual spot by the cash register talking to a customer as I found a place to sit. Our eyes met as he was saying something to the customer and he stopped talking for a moment. He looked back at the customer and went back to what he was saying. I sat down and took a deep breath before opening the novel I’d brought. It was the same novel I’d read when I first started coming to the coffee shop. Of course I’d already read it, but I needed to bring something with me. I opened to a random chapter and tried to pay attention to what I read as I avoided looking at him. I’d nearly read a whole chapter, though I wouldn’t have been able to say anything about what I’d read, before Michael finally came to talk to me.

“Good evening, Laura,” his voice melted my heart as I made a labored effort to slowly, calmly look up from my book. I saw that he’d placed a cup of tea on the table. He stood on the other side of the table, leaning forward slightly with his hands on the back of the chair directly across from me. “I didn’t think I’d see you again. Is it okay to talk with you?”

“I had to come one more time before leaving,” I spoke slowly, hardly able to find words. “I knew you’d be working, and I do want to talk,” I said, glancing up at his eyes and then looking down at the table. I completed my thought as though I had more to say, but now I just stared at an empty spot on the table. I could feel his eyes on the top of my head, and I hoped all at once that he would put his arms around me and that he would yell at me, telling me to go away and leave him alone. I wanted to forget that I’d met him just as much as I wanted to forget my life in Germany and spend all of my time talking and laughing with him. He put me at ease from all of the confusion in my life and made my life infinitely more confusing at the same time. And his silence was heartwarming and terrifying. I looked back up at him, and his somewhat-dumbfounded expression hadn’t changed a bit. I searched his eyes for some clue as to what he was thinking of me at that moment. He remained silent until I looked back at the table, feeling a tear rolling down my cheek.

“I should help get this place closed up,” he said softly. “Can we talk more when I’m done?”

“Yes,” I said, “I can wait.” I tried to wipe the tear inconspicuously as I raised my head again. “Please try to be quick,” I begged. He nodded slowly, looking into my eyes before he turned to walk back behind the counter. I listened to the sound of dishes being washed in some unseen sink as I tried to figure out what I’d say to him. I watched his co-worker wheel a trash-can out the front door and make his way around the side of the building, and it occurred to me that I’d soon be alone with Michael. Had this been a bad idea? My stomach began to ache and my brow was moist. What has happened to me? I wondered. Who am I?

Michael said good-night to his co-worker before locking the front door. He walked to the table and sat at the chair across from me, placing an ashtray between us. I stared at the ashtray, hoping he’d have something to say. He asked if I needed a cigarette and I shook my head “no” without looking up. After a moment I reached into my bag on the chair next to me and pulled out my cigarettes. I held them in my hand, not opening the box.

“Can we go somewhere else?” I asked as I looked up at him, thinking it would be better if we weren’t in a building by ourselves. He looked confused but nodded his head.

“Of course,” he said, standing up. He inhaled a drag of his cigarette and exhaled the smoke. “Whatever you want,” he added. We walked out of the back door together after he’d set an alarm and made our way to his car. “It’s a bit messy,” he said as I got in, taking some papers from the passenger seat and putting them in the backseat. There were a couple of empty water bottles on the floor in front of me and a few books and papers on the backseat, but I didn’t think the car was that messy. I didn’t say anything, though.

“Where should we go?” he asked as we pulled onto the street. I thought for a moment and couldn’t come up with an answer.

“Just drive,” I responded a few blocks later. Neither of us said anything after that, and I enjoyed the cool breeze on my face from the open window. It was nice to ride in his car with him; I didn’t have to think about anything. I watched the buildings and the people pass by as we went up and down the city streets. I smoked a cigarette down to the filter and burned my lips as I took the last puff. We were sitting at a red light and I went to put the cigarette in the ashtray just as the light went green. When I’d dropped the cigarette in the ashtray, Michael was putting his car into the third gear, and my hand brushed his. I didn’t pull away, and in a moment’s time I was holding his hand to the gear-shifter as my heart pounded in my chest. I looked at his face for the first time since we’d begun driving, and he stared straight ahead. Perhaps his hand was trembling, or it was mine, or maybe the gear-shifter vibrated under both, and I said, “Stop the car.” He looked over at me. “Pull over somewhere,” I demanded gently. He looked back at the road and soon we approached a vacant church parking lot. He pulled in and stopped the car, both our hands still resting on the gear-shifter. With his left hand, he turned his headlights off and reached over and pulled the brake up. I lifted his right hand from the gear-shifter and held it up in front of me. I began to run the tips of my fingers around his hand, feeling the wrinkles on his knuckles, the smoothness of his palms, and the coarse fingertips. I squeezed the tip of his ring finger between my thumb and index finger. I let the tips of my fingers run down his palm, my thumb sliding slightly along the back of his hand, until I felt him shiver as I passed his wrist. I let go of his arm and looked at his face as his arm trembled in front of me. He stared at me, his mouth half-opened, and I leaned towards him. He quickly closed his mouth and seemed prepared to kiss me, but I pressed my right cheek against his left and he put the arm, which was now his to use again, around me. He was breathing heavily, as I imagine I was, too, and we held each other until I no longer knew whether I was awake or dreaming.

Just as though waking up from a dream to remember what the waking life is like, I recalled my engagement and my fiancé and my flight back to Germany. I let go of Michael very slowly, very reluctantly, and turned to look outside the passenger window again.

“Take me home,” I said, so quietly that I was surprised when he began to drive. Why was he so quiet? He didn’t seem to want to say what he wanted, what he thought about things. Maybe he didn’t even know. We arrived in front of my building, once again. I turned towards him but looked down at my hands, using the fingers of one to pull at the fingernails of the other. I glanced up quickly without raising my head to see that he was slightly turned towards me, and was also watching my hands. With a sudden jolt of self-consciousness, I folded my hands together in my lap and raised my head to look him in the face. He looked up at me slowly and when our eyes met, he began to speak.

“I’m sorry, Laura,” he said, looking back at my hands again. “That shouldn’t have happened. I should leave you alone; I shouldn’t make this anymore difficult than it is.” He looked in my eyes. “But I just really don’t know how…or think that I can.” He turned his head to the left and looked out towards the street through the windshield. I wanted to touch him again, to hold him more to ease the pain of this situation.

“It’s not your fault,” I began. “I came to you. I’m the one making things difficult and confusing for you. And now we’re both in a bad spot.” I sighed aloud and turned to look forward, just as he had. I crossed my arms on my chest and wondered what I could do about all of this.

“I should have respected the relationship you have with your fiancé. When I’m with you, though, it’s like nothing else matters. Especially some guy I’ve never met,” he shook his head and looked down at the steering wheel. “I guess I’m not quite the man of principle that I thought I was.” He continued to stare blankly at the steering wheel, and after a bit of silence I began staring blankly at the dashboard. “To be quite honest,” he finally began again, “I’m not even the nice guy that you say I am.” He turned and looked at me. “I only act sweet because I think it can get me somewhere…and when it finally has gotten me somewhere, I’m not sure that I like it. I feel like an asshole for tricking you into having feelings for me,” he said, his eyes watering up slightly. I reached out and put my hand on his cheek, which felt very warm. In the same natural motion, I leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth. We kissed passionately and my forehead began to tingle; I was getting dizzy. He put his hand on the side of my face and I leaned into it, falling out of the kiss. I looked in his eyes and sat up straight.

“It’s time for me to go,” I said. I opened the door and got out of the car, but looked back in at him before closing the door. He sat looking at me, and I leaned in and quickly kissed him once more before closing the door. I walked up to my building as if nothing had happened. As I watched the front door of my building close, I saw him drive slowly away. I woke up the next morning not quite remembering going to bed.

Saturday afternoon was horrible. The phone rang four or five different times, and I thought that it must be Michael or Tivian, or both, calling. Whoever was calling didn’t leave any messages. I sat on my bed smoking cigarettes through the afternoon even though we weren’t supposed to smoke in our rooms. I held the slip of paper with Michael’s phone number on it. What would I say if I called? What would I say to Tivian when I finally spoke with him again? I felt ill from smoking so many cigarettes, and I hadn’t eaten anything all day. The phone began to ring again, and I took my chances and answered it.

“Laura? It’s Michael. I’ve been calling all afternoon…I didn’t know if it was even your number for sure.” My answering machine simply told the caller in a robotic voice to leave a message after the beep.

“Yes, it’s me,” I responded. Silence followed.

“How are you doing?” he asked. “You know…with everything?”

“I don’t know. I’m trying not to think about anything. And I’m not eating.”

“You should probably try to eat something, you know,” he said. He sounded worried. “Maybe I shouldn’t ask this…but would it help if you had someone to eat with you?”

“When can you pick me up?” I asked without hesitating.

“Well, I could probably be there in fifteen minutes or so,” he responded.

“Ten minutes,” I said. I placed the phone on the hook and began to get dressed. I stood in front of my building for a few moments and got into his car without a word when he pulled up. He began driving.

“Where would you like to go?” he asked after a few blocks.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, watching the road intensely. I kept my hands folded in my lap. After ten minutes or so, we pulled into the parking lot of a restaurant where Amanda and I had eaten one night with a couple of her friends before going out. I’d liked the veggie quesadillas I had there.

“Is this okay?” Michael asked, seeming to notice my recognition of the place.

“It’s perfect,” I answered, and we went in.

I refused to think about all of this mess that we’d gotten ourselves into, so I forced Michael to tell me a story from his childhood. He told me about a time when his father had taken him with one of his cousins to a lake where they boated and fished. I made him tell me the story in great detail, beginning with his leaving the house in the morning all the way to when they returned home. I asked a lot of questions, and when he said that he didn’t remember something, I told him that I didn’t care. “Make it up,” I told him. I made him taste my quesadilla, and I don’t think he liked it very much. By the time we’d finished eating and drinking and he finished telling me his story, it was nearly eight o’clock.

“So what do you want to do now?” Michael asked when we’d paid for our dinner. I didn’t care what we did; I only wanted to spend time with him. “We could see a movie or something,” he suggested. He named a few of the popular films that were new in the theaters, and I shook my head at everything he named.

“There’s a movie I want you to see, but we’ll have to rent it,” I said, thinking of a Spanish movie I’d seen a couple of years before. The movie dealt with some of the same issues that we’d talked about in some of our conversations. And Michael should certainly be watching something with a little more culture than popular American films.

“Okay…” he answered cautiously. “Should we watch it at my place?”

“I think we would have to,” I answered, “unless we watched it on my notebook, and I don’t think that would be any good.” His place wouldn’t be as safe as the cinema, but I didn’t care.

We left the restaurant and picked up our movie before going to his place. There were a few guys sitting in the front room when we walked in, and they looked up at us as Mike closed the door. I stood close to him and stared at the floor, holding my hands together behind my back.

“How’s it going, guys,” Mike greeted them as he tossed his keys on the coffee table in front of them. “This is Laura.”

A couple of them said hello or “nice to meet you” and I looked up and quickly smiled before looking back down at the floor.

“We were just getting ready to go catch a movie,” one of the boys said, “do you guys wanna come along?” Michael looked at me and then back at the guys.

“No, we actually rented something, we’re gonna go ahead and watch it here. Thanks, though,” Michael said as they got up and started getting read to leave. They didn’t say much, if anything else, before they said good-bye. “Have fun, guys,” Michael said as they walked out the front door. He turned and looked at me, still standing where I was when we’d first walked in. “You can have a seat on the couch,” he told me. “Do you need anything before we start this? Water, a beer? We might have soda in there, but no tea…” he smiled.

“I’m fine,” I said, taking a seat in the middle of the couch. Michael walked into the kitchen and returned with a glass of ice water. He put the movie into the DVD player and then came and sat next to me. “Turn the lights down,” I said, looking over at him. He looked back without saying anything before getting up to walk over to the halogen lamp in the corner of the room. He watched my face as he turned it down, and I nodded when it was dim enough. When he sat down, I leaned into him and put my head on his shoulder. He turned a bit to the side and put his arm around me, so I lay my head on his chest just as the movie was beginning. In no time at all, I was sleeping. I woke to feel Michael’s hand gently caressing my cheek.

“The movie’s over,” he said. “You slept through all of it, I think. I should probably take you home, eh?” He ran his hand through my hair and smiled warmly at me. When I’d realized what he was saying, I began to sit up.

“No. I’m staying here,” I said. “I’m going to sleep in your bed with you. But you’ll have to wear your jeans to bed.” Michael stared at me and held his mouth as though he was trying to formulate a question, but I got up and stood in front of him. “Where is your bedroom?” I held out my hand until he reached out and took it, and I pulled him up off the couch. He led me to his bedroom by the hand.

Once in the bedroom, I told Michael to show me where the bathroom was. I went into the bathroom and washed my face, taking a good look at myself in the mirror before going back to his bedroom. I stood by his bed and he said that he would be right back. While he was out, I took off my shoes and socks and lay down on one side of the bed. I chose the side that would’ve been Tivian’s, if I’d been sleeping with him. I lay with my back towards the other side of the bed in anticipation of Michael’s arrival. He came into the bedroom after a few minutes and sat on the open side of the bed, removing his shoes and socks. He lay down beside me on his back, and I heard him whisper good-night. I rolled over and grabbed his far hand, pulling his arm around me as I rolled back onto my side. He rolled onto his side, as well, pulling my body close to his. I slept very well that night, not worried about the rest of the world until I woke the next morning.

I woke lying on my back as Michael gently caressed my face and ran his fingers through my hair.

“Good morning,” he said. Waking up next to him, I had to wonder briefly whether or not we’d made love. Even though we hadn’t, I still began to feel really badly for having slept in his bed with him. Would I ever be able to tell Tivian about this? If I told him how I’d been feeling, how would he be able to stay with me? And if I didn’t, how would I be able to stay with him? Michael was waiting for my response, but I looked away. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Do you need to be somewhere?”

“I need to go home,” I responded, still looking away. Where the hell is that? I wondered. “I need to walk. I need the time to think.” I looked at him, and his expression was one of warm concern.

“You’re sure?” he asked. “I could drive you, it would be no problem. We could have breakfast and talk, if you wanted.” I thought for a moment about this, not eager for my time visiting with Michael to be over. What was I to him, though? Maybe he was just hoping to make love to me before I left the country forever. Maybe he would want me to stay in America with him. But who could want that after knowing someone so briefly? Was I ready to make that decision? What was I thinking to make a decision to jeopardize my relationship with Tivian when I wasn’t ready to make a decision to choose something else?

“I need to be alone,” I repeated, sitting up to put my shoes and socks on.

Michael walked me to the door and I kissed him passionately good-bye. I didn’t know whether or not I intended to see him again, but I didn’t tell him that. I managed to find my way home, but I did find myself a bit confused a couple of times. Mostly I just tried to clear my mind, and the walk took three-quarters of an hour or so, and by the time I’d made it back, I’d nearly forgotten my worries. Walking into my apartment, it all came flooding back. I knew that I couldn’t check my email or my answering machine for fear of hearing from Tivian. I quickly showered and dressed and left the apartment to find somewhere else to be. I went to a bookstore and bought a few French novels that had been translated into English. I went to a park and read all afternoon, immersing myself in other peoples’ lives so that I might forget my own. I bought a quick dinner and went home. I unplugged my phone because the only one who’d call would be Michael, and I still refused to check my email. I read for the remainder of the evening, until I was tired enough to fall asleep.

I had only three days and three nights left to remain in the country. With limited time to finish our project, I was able to put a lot of time into working, leaving me with little free time to worry about. My phone remained unplugged, and I sent Tivian only one short email while making an effort not to notice whether or not he’d tried to contact me. In the email I only said when he should pick me up at the airport. I did not return to the coffee shop.

Thursday morning came at last. I plugged my phone back in and waited until the last possible moment to see if Michael would call. He had, after all, agreed to take me to the airport. What had he been through in the last three days? Did he give up easily and decide that he didn’t care, or had he been hurt? Did he miss me? I couldn’t help but regret not having spent as much time as possible with him since our night together, but I was also really glad that I hadn’t seen him. If I had seen him, it would’ve made things worse, and at least this way our project had gone well, and I should have no trouble polishing and defending my thesis. I dreaded seeing Tivian, but hoped that perhaps being home and seeing him would make this entire trip seem to have been a dream. Just before I finally called a taxi, the phone rang.

“You answered,” he said quietly, incredulously. “I didn’t think I’d ever hear your voice again.”

“My flight leaves in two hours,” I managed, not knowing what else to say. “If I’m going to make it to the airport, I must leave very soon.”

“Would you still want me to drive you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

I carried my bags down to the street and packed them into Michael’s car when he arrived. We rode in silence to the airport. I couldn’t think of anything to say to him. I’m sure that if he’d asked me not to get on the plane, I would’ve complied. He said nothing, though. He kept his eyes on the road until we arrived at the airport.

When we’d found the proper place for me to unload my luggage, Michael stopped the car. Neither of us moved to get out of the car, but we still did not speak. He looked over at me, finally, and reached out and touched my cheek. I put my hand on his and held it to my face, not wanting him to let go. I leaned forward and put my arm around him, and pulled him close to me, hugging him good-bye. I held on for as long as I could, but I knew that I was running out of time. I finally released him and sat back in my seat, still looking at him. He smiled meekly with a closed mouth and then turned, opening his door. We unloaded my luggage and hugged once more just outside the doors, where people were standing and smoking.

“I’ll miss you,” he said. He turned and walked slowly back to his car, and when he’d pulled away, I entered the airport.

I made my way through security and bag checks and all of the hassles and waited at the boarding gate until the last call for boarding. I looked down the terminal hallways and scanned the anonymous faces. I slept through the entire flight, waking after the plane had already landed. Inside the airport at home, I walked out to the place where I’d left Tivian so many months ago and found him standing in just that same spot, as though he hadn’t moved. I let go of my bags and ran to him. He gave me a confused look as I made my way to him, but held his arms out to catch me. I realized that I was sobbing, and he pulled my head to his chest, and I put my arms around his midsection and held on as tightly as I could.

Tommy strolled down the street nonchalantly on his 18-inch Huffy bicycle considering the best possible stories to explain his tardiness to his mother when he returned home. His mother bought him a watch two days ago because he so often simply said that he was late because he didn’t know what time it was. He couldn’t use that excuse now, so he was once again forced to rely on his creativity to avoid being grounded. It had been a very long time since he was last grounded in spite of the fact that he was almost always doing things of which his mother would never approve. He was almost always able to come up with some sort of story to get out of the trouble into which he’d gotten himself, but his stories weren’t quite as convincing as he would’ve liked to have thought. The truth of the matter was that his mother just really didn’t enjoy having him around, so as long as he came up with even the most far-fetched excuses, she wouldn’t punish him. For a while she’d sent him to the library rather than punishing him, but it wasn’t long before the librarians decided that Tommy needed a year to think about the value of books, and then he could try to be a patron again. In fact, that had probably been the last time Tommy was grounded.

Today Tommy was actually late because he and his friends decided that they wanted to ride their bikes out to the junkyard about three miles south of town. They spent a grand total of just under four hours rifling through the vehicles, grabbing anything and everything of any value (though most of it was only valuable to twelve and thirteen year-old boys). They probably would’ve been there much longer had the owner not seen one of the boys digging through a car situated rather close to the main office and chased them away. On their way back into town, they stopped at the park to compare their collections of car keys and cigarette lighters. After they finished fighting over the trades they had made, they left half of their hard-earned loot sitting on the ground underneath a park bench to chase after three girls who rode by on their bikes. They followed them for three or four blocks, just enough to give them a good scare, before changing their course to head over to the gas station for refreshments.

The clerk at the gas station was always sure to keep a close eye on these boys, because they came in at least once every day and lingered for ten and fifteen minutes at a time. In the end, one or two boys would come to the register and purchase a can of pop and a candy bar while the other boys left the store. Though he’d never actually seen any of them taking anything, he was sure that they either were trying to, or actually were, shoplifting in mass quantities from the candy aisle. He had made a resolve to one day catch them in the act and call the police to give these boys a good scare, but each time they seemed less suspicious than the time before. Either he was growing more at ease with these boys’ presence or they were becoming quite skilled young burglars.

When the boys first arrived today, the clerk was a bit apprehensive because the store was somewhat busy and he had a hard time keeping an eye on them. The rush died quickly and he as able to devote ample attention to our young criminals-in-training. As usual, the boys walked directly to the coolers in the back when they entered the store. They stood there for an inordinate amount of time. They have to know that I’m watching them; they surely wouldn’t try to fit a can of pop into their pockets… After they had stood and argued for a few minutes, one of the boys reached for a Dr. Pepper, hesitated, then picked it up. They walked around the back of the store to enter the candy aisle, and the clerk was growing evermore watchful. The clerk locked eyes with one of the boys and they held a glance that was just slightly longer than comfortable for both of them. The boy promptly looked down at the floor and then up at the candy rack. He and his friends sauntered up and down the aisle for a time, occasionally picking up a candy bar or pack of gum and then setting it back on the rack. The boys kept looking back up at the clerk and then at each other, and the clerk had become so vigilant that he forgot what he was doing. There were three cars in the lot waiting for the clerk to authorize their gas pumps, but he ignored the beeping and continued watching the boys. He knew that they kept looking at him because they were afraid he knew, so he was bound and determined to catch them this time, not tomorrow, not next week, but today.

The clerk just about jumped out of his skin when the bell on the door jangled to sound the arrival of an irate driver. “What is going on in here?? I’ve been trying to pump gas for that last ten god-damned minutes! Don’t they pay you worthless bastards enough to hit the damn button when a car pulls up??” The guy was fuming, and the clerk tried to watch the boys while calming the man down.

“I’m sorry sir, I’ll get that started right away,” he said, never taking his eyes off the boys, even as he punched the authorization buttons, which would later amaze him. Some days he had a hard enough time hitting the right buttons even if he was looking at the machine, but today he got all three cars authorized without losing sight of the rogues in the back of the store. The irate customer grumbled as he walked back out to pump his gas and the boys were still looking up at the counter in very brief intervals. Tommy finally began to approach the counter as the other boys walked toward the door. The clerk was sure that he saw a bulge in the first boy’s jacket pocket. I’ve got ‘em this time, he thought, a grin forming across his contented face.

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