Lauren let herself fall to the sofa and said, "I’ve had it. I can’t console her any more." She started to light a cigarette, but I asked her what happened and she began to tell me before the lighter flame caught, so when she waved her hand in front of her face to brush the smoke away, it moved nothing but air. "You know. Same old thing." "I haven’t heard it. I mean I haven’t been over there to see her." "You can’t get really get anything out of her. How she feels or anything. She’s broken up, that’s clear. She’s shaken. It’s in her body. Her posture. Hand gestures. But I can’t stand that she won’t talk to me about it." I got up and went to the kitchen. "Maybe that’s okay," I said, peering into the refrigerator. "She needs some space." I found a covered dish of leftover potato salad, and I took it out and used a fork to put some into a bowl. There was just a little left in there so I ended up moving it all from one bowl to another and leaving the empty one on the counter. I took the potato salad back with me into the living room where Lauren had her cigarette lit now and was sucking in. She held the smoke inside her then blew it out in a long stream. She looked old to me right then, and I felt as old as she looked. The lines on her face were drawn out and smudged behind the smoke. Her hair seemed papery and ancient. "I should have known there was nothing I could do," said Lauren. She tapped an ash into a black ashtray on the coffee table. "Maybe you should go over there." The potato salad was cold and bland. "I don’t know," I said. "I’m so mad I could start hitting her. Like over and over again, until she begged me to stop. I want her to feel something, to say something, even if it’s just, ‘stop hitting me, that hurts.’" "Are you serious? Do you want me to go over there?" "Hey, I don’t know. Maybe you could tell her that Nick was a shit. She completely shuts me out." "Okay," I said. "I’ll go." I finished my potato salad. Then I got up and put my bowl in the kitchen sink and came back and tried to think of what I was going to say, and if I was actually going over there or if I was just going to get in the car and drive around like I had the last three or four times I’d meant to visit. "You know," I said, "Maybe she doesn’t want to hear that Nick was a shit." I stood there awhile and watched Lauren finish her cigarette. She shook her head slowly, but it didn’t seem she had heard what I said. I tried to imagine what I could do for Melissa that my wife couldn’t. The role didn’t seem to fit me. But it would be good to see her again, so I’d try to make myself go over there. I imagined myself stammering, searching for words, but I put it out of my mind, and I thought of Melissa’s smile, and the hug she might give me at the door and how that might calm my nerves or it might put me on edge. I put that out of my mind too. I was going to give Lauren a kiss before I left, but then I didn’t want to. I said, "I guess I’ll be back after awhile." "Yeah. See if she doesn’t shut you out too." I put on a jacket and went out. It was cold outside. I could see my breath and feel it freezing on my lips. I got in the car and turned it over until it kicked and started, and I sat awhile so it could warm up, holding my hands over the defroster and running the windshield wipers until they cleared the ice. Then I pulled slowly out of the driveway, thinking there might also be ice on the road. She lived just a few blocks away. Seven or eight blocks, I guess. There wasn’t much of a drive for me to think about what I was going to say first, or how I would proceed. I circled her block once to see if I could come up with something, and I ran through a few conversations in my head to try them out. As I circled I thought I might as well just go somewhere else, that Melissa didn’t want to see me, but then I thought that I couldn’t know that until she told me she didn’t want to see me, so I might just as well find out. None of the things I thought I would say seemed quite right, so I figured it would be best for me to just go up to her house and say hello and go inside. I parked the car in front and walked up through the frozen lawn and knocked on the door. When Melissa opened the door she said, "You knocked. Why did you knock?" "So you’d come let me in." Melissa had on what looked like a night shirt, long and flannel and plaid, but she was also wearing jeans. Her feet were bare, and there were little silver rings on her toes, three or four of them, one to a toe. I couldn’t remember ever having noticed her feet before, or ever having seen rings there. "But there’s a doorbell," She said. "You’ll crush your knuckles in this cold. You should use the doorbell." "I’m sorry," I said. "No," she said. "Come in." I went inside. It was warm in her house. Almost too warm. I hadn’t been here in a few months, and now the place looked pretty much the same as it had last time. Except the TV was missing. There used to be a TV at the end of the living room opposite the sofa. "So what brings you over?" said Melissa. She sat on the sofa and I sat there too, at the far end from her. "I don’t know," I said. "I haven’t seen you." "Nothing to see, really. I haven’t changed." "Yeah," I said. "But you," she said, "You look great." "Thanks." "I mean, you look like you lost some weight or something." "Sure, probably a little." "Do you want a drink? I have some whiskey. God knows I’ll never drink it. Nick had it. I don’t know what it is, really, just whiskey." Melissa got up and went into the kitchen to look at the whiskey. I watched her feet as she walked. Her heels brushed the carpet. "I guess I’ll have some," I said. I heard her pour a glass of whiskey and drop two ice cubes into it. She brought the glass back and handed it to me. I sniffed the drink and took a sip. I normally didn’t drink hard liquor, but Melissa probably needed to get this bottle out of her house. I told myself I could use it, anyway, because she would be easier to talk to if I was a little drunk. I hadn’t tasted whiskey since Nick was alive. It reminded me of Nick. The smell of Nick, anyway. Sometimes his clothes, and even his body, his sweat, would smell like an empty glass of whiskey, sitting out for a few days, a hard caramel stain at the bottom where the whiskey used to be. I sipped some more. I remembered it from fishing with Nick, I guess, from us sitting out in that stupid aluminum boat on Curlew for hours and not catching a damn thing. After we’d finished all the beer all that was left was Nick’s whiskey. Sitting beside a campfire later and drinking and smoking generic cigarettes and talking about what hell it was at work or at home or in some woman’s bed where Nick found himself too many afternoons, he’d get the whiskey out of the truck and tell me to take a pull off of it. Nick used to take off afternoons from work all the time, and sometimes I would cover him, but sometimes not. He had a way with the supervisor so that it just didn’t seem to matter what he was up to in the afternoon, and he’d come back with a glow of either whiskey or sex or both. And out here he’d tell me about most of his afternoons, about how it was getting old but he didn’t know how to stop himself. Sometimes, though, we would sit silent by that campfire, letting it burn us a little. Then later the two of us would be in Nick’s old ten-man tent, him snoring loud like a whole room full of sleeping men, and me laying there listening to it, admiring how easily he slept out here even though there was all the world around us and no walls and no windows and no plumbing. But I’d be mad too because I couldn’t sleep so why should he? And even if I could ignore the fact that I wasn’t at home in a bed with an electric blanket, how would I ever sleep with all that racket? "You know," said Melissa, "Lauren keeps coming over here." "Yeah?" "She’s starting to piss me off, really." "I didn’t know." "All she talks about is Nick. About how he used to sleep around and stuff. About how he spent all this money on booze and women. Like any of that’s news to me. Hey, Nick was no angel. But you still don’t like to hear it like that, you know? I mean, he was my husband, right?" I sipped the whiskey. As the ice melted it tasted smoother and healthier. I drank it easily. It was wonderful. I said, "She probably thinks she’s helping you. She thinks you won’t miss him so much." "That’s fine, but she keeps harping on it. Today she says there was this woman she knew who was with him for awhile, and she used to tell Lauren all about Nick. Lauren goes on and on about this woman. And all the time she’s telling me this she won’t say who the woman is, and I don’t ask, but I have a feeling I know who it is. All I wish is that she would shut up." Melissa paused while I sipped my drink and sucked on an ice cube. "You want some more?" she said. "I’ll get you more." Melissa got up and went into the kitchen and brought out the bottle of whiskey. It was a tall clear bottle with a white label. The bottle was half-full with liquid. She poured more into my glass and I smiled as she did it. She sat down again and smiled back at me as if to mimic my face. "I don’t know why," said Melissa, "but when she comes over here I just want to sit and look at her and not say a damn word. I get this black feeling in my stomach and I know if I say anything it’s going to be bitter and ugly and sound like I’m grasping at something that isn’t there." My hand slipped on the glass, but I didn’t drop it. "Why does she keep coming over here and yammering on about this woman?" "She’s your friend," I said. "Bullshit. You were Nick’s friend, but I was never friends with Lauren. Why would you pretend that? Why would she pretend that? She comes over here because she wants to know something. Or she wants to tell me something, but she’s too chickenshit to say it." "I don’t understand." "Don’t act stupid, Ken. It isn’t worth it any more. They haven’t been good to us." My drink was empty again and she poured more into my glass. The ice was gone now. Melissa sat in the middle of the sofa, close enough to me that I could easily touch her. So I did touch her, on the forearm, just to see what her arm felt like, and to get her to stop talking for a second. I tried to remember the last time I’d touched her. I hadn’t touched her when I came in. It must have been months ago, an embrace of some kind, upon arriving or leaving, coming over to play hearts or going home after pizza. Or no, it was the evening I’d seen her at the grocery store, just a few weeks ago. We were in the aisle that had coffees and teas and candies. I saw her at the far end of the aisle, turned away from me, and something about the way she stood there told me that it was her. She wasn’t going anywhere and it didn’t seem as if she was looking at anything in the aisle, so I walked up and put my hand on her shoulder and said, "Melissa." She turned, quickly, and there was a flash of tears in her eyes and a look that told me she hadn’t really been there, that I’d caught her in a moment of departure, and she turned back and wheeled her cart away from me, around to the next aisle. My heart quickened. I stood there beside the coffee filters and gave her time to escape. Now she looked at me. She took my hand and held it, then looked away from me, out through the front window. "We miss Nick too," I said. "They say," said Melissa, "that men are better at suicide than women." I squeezed her hand. It seemed like a thing someone should do. But it was automatic too, and it seemed small, like a miniature, postage-stamp act, with no impact on either Melissa or me. Just something to pass the time. I said, "Men use better weapons, I guess." "Maybe," she said, "But I think men just have a real taste for death. They think it’s going to be like this whiskey or something. Like they’ll just keep drinking until it’s gone. Then when it’s gone, hell they’ll just buy another bottle." I tried to imagine drinking all the whiskey. I didn’t think I could do it. The bottle hadn’t even been full, but my head was spinning a little, though it seemed like a good spin right now. Had I drunk another glass already? The bottle seemed more empty than I remembered. "Not all men," I said. She looked at me and she squeezed my hand back now, and her face seemed to squeeze too, into almost a smile. When she did it though her face was turned just away from me. As if she wasn’t thinking of me or what I’d said. "I guess not," she said. She let my hand slide out of hers, and I finished my drink again. It was very easy now to finish it, and dammit if the liquid inside the bottle wasn’t disappearing. Yes, I’d been drinking it, pouring it into my glass and pulling the glass up to my mouth and drinking it down. I’d seen Nick do it a million times. But I’d never seen him lose as much control over his mind as I seemed to be losing. I picked the bottle up and poured the last of it into my glass. "I should go home," I said. "No. You have to stay. I’ll call Lauren and tell her that you had a few. More than a few. I’ll tell her you’ll be here sleeping it off." Melissa got up and went into the kitchen. She dialed the phone and I heard her talking to Lauren. But I wasn’t listening to what she said. She was very abrupt and businesslike with Lauren, and I admired this skill. I’d never been able to talk to any woman the way that Melissa was talking to my wife. I got up and tried to walk toward the bathroom. Inside the bathroom I leaned over the sink. I looked at the chrome in the drain. My face was turned upside-down in the tiny round plug of chrome. I got down on my knees and leaned over the toilet. It felt as if something tethered inside me was trying to come out, and in my convulsions I nearly asked to die, but stopped myself, recognizing that the pain was almost over, and it was my fault. I deserved it. I flushed the toilet and got up slowly from the bathroom floor. I washed in the sink and tried to make my face look sober. The reflection was too blurred to tell what I looked like, so I went back to the living room where Melissa was sitting again in the middle of the sofa. "Okay," she said. "You’re here until you sober up. Might as well get comfortable." "I have to get home," I said. I sat down beside Melissa on the sofa. "No way," said Melissa. "Not after I had to talk to Lauren and explain why you’re drunk." "I’ll walk home. It’s only six blocks." "Listen to me. It’s almost ten. If you need to be with Lauren she can walk her ass over here. Try to walk anywhere in your state you’ll get lost and freeze to death." "It’s not a bad state," I said. "It’s a little like Idaho." "You aren’t funny," she said. "I’m pretty funny." "We’ll get you to bed," she said. "And in the morning we can talk some more over breakfast." "Okay," I said. "You’re calling the shots now." She got up from the sofa and took my hand, pulling and helping me up. I followed her into the guest bedroom, and she drew back the covers on the bed. "I’m up early," she said. "Don’t be surprised by my knock on the door." "Okay," I said. She left me there. It was cool in the bedroom. All the cold in the house must have been in this one room. There was only one window in the room, and when I looked out, I was surprised to see that it was dark. I stripped to my underwear and got into bed. The sheets were cold and soft and felt like the sheets I remembered at my grandmother’s house in her spare bedroom. Always cold and soft in the tiny cold room. I reached up behind me and turned out the light, and while I tried to keep the room from spinning, I fell asleep. ~ When I got up the next morning, Melissa was still asleep. I pulled on my pants but couldn’t find what happened to my shirt. I looked inside the closet. There were three blue button-downs there--Nick’s old work shirts--which would do for now, so I put one on. I went into the bathroom and tried to find something for a headache. I took some aspirin, then went to the kitchen. In the refrigerator were some eggs and a half block of molding cheese and some salsa. There were a few other things, but mostly they were fast-food leftovers, carelessly wrapped in their paper bags and tossed into the fridge. I took out the eggs and set them on the counter. I also took out the cheese and found a knife to cut off the hard, orange crust around its edges. I looked at the clock over the stove. It said eight thirty-seven. I thought Melissa would be up by now. I went back down the hallway to her bedroom door and knocked. There was no answer at first, so I knocked again. "Who is it?" came Melissa’s voice, sounding covered with sleep. "It’s me," I said. "I was going to fix breakfast. Is that okay?" "Whatever you want," she said. "Okay. You want me to bring you some?" There was silence for a moment, then, "Okay. Yes." I went back to the kitchen. I scrambled the eggs and covered them with cheese and a little salsa. I was glad there was salsa because I didn’t think I would taste the breakfast otherwise. I ate some there at the stove and put the rest on a plate for Melissa. I took the plate back to Melissa’s bedroom and knocked again. "I’m coming in," I said. I gave her a few moments, then opened the door. Inside her room Melissa was sitting up in bed in a light-blue t-shirt. She smiled at me when I came in, but her eyes were half-closed and dark. I took her breakfast to her and set it down on the bed. I sat on the floor. She pushed the eggs around with her fork and ate a couple of bites. "Thank you," she said. "It looks beautiful." She ate a little more, but then she said she was finished, though she had only eaten half of her eggs. I put her plate on the floor and sat on the bed and said, "Okay, I thought you were an early riser. So what happened?" She touched the shirt I was wearing. "That’s Nick’s," she said. "Jesus, you look drugged. What happened?" My hand rested flat on the bed and she touched it with her fingertips, then moved her hand under the covers. "Okay," she said. She pushed herself up so she wasn’t so slouched in the bed. Then she said, "I came in to your room last night." She paused, probably waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t. I didn’t remember her coming in, but she could have easily done it without my noticing. Normally I was a light sleeper, but last night the bed could have opened up and chewed and swallowed me and I don’t suppose I would have noticed. She said, "All I wanted to do was check on you. But there you were, sleeping so soundly and so real. I picked up your shirt and folded it. I put it in an empty dresser drawer and looked at it in the drawer all by itself. I can’t explain this--I took off my nightgown. I folded it up and put it in the drawer next to your shirt. It was so cold. I didn’t realize it was so cold in there, and I was suddenly sorry I’d put you in the spare room without opening the vents, so I did open the vents then got into bed beside you, to warm you up. Thank god you didn’t wake up or I don’t know what I would have done. I guess I wasn’t thinking at all. Your body was warm, like a fireplace brick in the middle of the bed." "I don’t remember," I said. She smiled and touched my hand again. She said, "I put my arm over you. You were breathing very heavily, and I wondered for awhile if you would be all right. So I stayed there and listened to you breathing. You smelled and felt and sounded familiar, but not like Nick. But I couldn’t help myself really. I imagined for a minute that you were Nick. Just for a minute. I wanted to feel like I could touch him again. I didn’t mean to, but I fell asleep." Her eyes closed, and for a moment I thought she was finished. "It’s okay," I said. She opened her eyes again, then, "When I woke up, it must have been about two in the morning. I still had my arm over you. Neither one of us had moved. But I was in one of those half-dream places, and when I looked at you I thought you were dead. I must have been dreaming about that. It was very real. I nearly jumped out of the bed, and I fell on my hands and knees on the floor. I got up from the floor and ran out of there." "I’m sorry," I said. "Then I couldn’t sleep in this room," she said. She looked at the ceiling. "I have these pills though. They help." Melissa grabbed two bottles of pills from her nightstand and held them out for me to see. I took the bottles from her and examined them. The label said to take one before bed with food or milk. For Sleep. I gave them back to her and she returned them to the nightstand. "The doctor gave them to me after Nick died. I took some last night, and they didn’t help at first, so I took some more. Then I did sleep. I took too many, I guess." "Are you okay? Are they wearing off?" "It’ll be awhile. I’ll be fine." "You should have tried to wake me up," I said. "I couldn’t," she said. I reached under her covers and took her hand, and when I did it my hand brushed against her hip. "I’m alive," I said. I still had a headache, and my fingers were throbbing. I needed a glass of water, but I stayed right there with Melissa. I could hear the slight sound of her breathing, her eyes blinking. It seemed like I stayed there for a long time, listening. I tried to imagine myself with Lauren, if I could ever just hold her hand and listen to her breathe, and that’s what I was thinking when Melissa said, "What are you thinking?" "Nothing," I said. "I was thinking about going home in awhile." "I’m surprised Lauren hasn’t called yet," she said. "I’m not so surprised," I said. "I would have called by now," she said. "Maybe you should call her and tell her you’ll be home in awhile." "I will. In awhile." I touched Melissa’s hair. It was dark and heavy and needed to be washed and combed. Her hair smelled like yesterday’s perfume and the oils and sweat from her body. She turned her head and looked foggily at my face. "Thank you for staying," she said. I let go of her hand, and she pushed herself up again, leaning back against the white bedroom wall. "I’ll go now," I said. "Come back when you can." "I’ll come back," I said. I picked up her plate and carried it into the kitchen. I swiped Melissa’s eggs into the trash and washed the dishes. I found my socks and shoes and jacket. I went back into Melissa’s room and leaned over her and pressed my lips onto the top of her head. "I’ll come back," I said again. She smiled at me and waved as I closed her bedroom door. ~ When I got home, Lauren was right where I’d left her, smoking a cigarette. She had the TV on, watching a knife demonstration. "You should see this thing," she said. "This guy just cut through a Coke can, then he cut a tomato. Why don’t our knives do that?" "Do we need to cut a Coke can?" "No," she said. "A tomato. I can never get our knives to cut a tomato. I have to poke a hole in it first, then saw like it’s a piece of wood or something. The juice gets all over the place. This guy, he just cuts right through like it’s a banana." "I’m sorry I didn’t come home. I got to thinking about Nick, and Melissa had some of his whiskey there." "It’s okay," she said. "I ordered pizza." I sat down in the recliner and kicked the footrest up. "Is that your shirt?" said Lauren. "I don’t remember you having that shirt." "I borrowed it." "Wow. It’s like I’m being flooded here with that shirt, sort of like I feel when I see a swingset. You know, butterflies. It’s getting stronger now. Like I’m actually swinging. That’s really weird. You look different in that shirt, and you smell different. I can practically smell you from here." "I smell like a bottle of whiskey," I said. "Oh." "Hey," I said. "Come to think of it, I never did have anything to eat last night. No wonder I didn’t feel so good." "You had that potato salad," said Lauren. "That was the last of it too," I said. I leaned the recliner back and closed my eyes. The man on the TV said something about a lifetime money back guarantee. "I wish I had one of those," I said. "Really?" said Lauren. "I guess we could order one. Do you really want one?" "No," I said. "No, I was thinking of something else." "Do you want a sandwich or something?" said Lauren. "No. I had an egg." "You look like Nick," she said, and though I knew this was what she was getting at, I didn’t think she would actually get around to saying it. "You remind me of Nick in that shirt. I never realized how much you really look like him. Now that it’s harder to picture him, I guess that makes a big difference. You just put on a shirt and there’s Nick." She shrugged and watched the television. She said, "Do you want to tell me what Melissa said?" "Not right now. I’m tired. Hung over, I think. Maybe in a little while. I’ll feel better then. I’ll just rest. If I fall asleep, wake me in an hour. There’s a football game." "Okay," she said. "We’ll talk later?" ~ The phone woke me up. I didn’t answer it, not sure yet where I was and if it was even my phone. By the time I was sure, it had already stopped ringing. The time that had passed while I slept was evident in the room. I’d watched TV with Lauren for awhile. I remembered that. She’d flipped channels once the demonstration was over, but she never did find anything to watch all the way through. And then I guess I’d fallen asleep. The light seemed softer now, and perhaps it was softer only because the television was off. But it felt like time had passed, was still passing, and I didn’t know how much I had missed. I got up from the chair and checked the kitchen clock. It had been more than five hours since I’d come home. I looked around the house for Lauren, but couldn’t find her. I called out her name, but there was no answer. I stood at the front window for awhile, looking out. It looked colder now. Things that had thawed during the day were frozen now. The car was gone. The neighbor across the street was hanging a paper turkey in his window. He didn’t see me because he was concentrating on the turkey. There were tiny ice-cycles hanging from his roof. They looked like a row of tiny alligator teeth across the top of his house, as if the house had been alive at one time, but was now frozen and white and had a paper turkey hanging in the middle of its mouth. The phone started ringing again and I took my time to answer it. "Hello?" "Ken? Are you awake, sweetie?" "Wide awake," I said, yawning. "I’m sorry I didn’t wake you in an hour. I thought you would need it. I couldn’t bring myself to wake you." "It’s okay." "Ken, honey, did you want to talk? Do you want to ask me something?" "Where are you?" "Not that. I meant--of course. Well, I went over to Melissa’s for awhile. Then I had to go shopping. I’m outside the grocery store. At a phone booth. We needed stuffing. And cranberry sauce. I invited Melissa, but I don’t think she’ll come. Do you want to meet me somewhere? To talk?" "Where?" "B & A Tavern?" "No. You have the car." "I could come get you. We could talk about what you and Melissa said. Did you talk about Nick? Did she say anything?" "What are you fishing for?" "Kenny, honey, I just thought you could tell me something about it. She doesn’t say anything to me. I think she hates me. I went over there, but she didn’t want me inside the house. I stood at her door, talking for like fifteen minutes or something, and she didn’t even ask me to come inside. I think she wishes I was dead instead of Nicholas. I’m scared, Kenny." "Melissa isn’t going to hurt you," I said. "She might," said Lauren. "You don’t know her like I do. She has a temper. She’s very vindictive and cross. She has fits sometimes. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She could be dangerous." "I thought she didn’t talk to you. How do you know all this?" "I just--oh--I think Nicholas must have told me some time. But she’s dangerous. I worry. That’s my point." "That’s bullshit," I said. "What?" "I can’t believe you would listen to Nick. He was a liar. He lied about everything. He was with a lot of women, Lauren. Not just a few. He was with Cheryl once, and Tina Jerrons. For four weeks he was with a girl he met downtown and never found out her name. And then there was Lucy. Do you remember Lucy? She used to work with us. She answered the phones at the office. Nick told me all about their affair. He said she was super in bed. Exquisite." "Stop it, Kenny." "And Maria. Of course, Maria. He told me once that he would love Maria if she let him. He said she sobbed after they made love. She wasn’t sad, but she just would tear up and couldn’t stop for five or ten minutes. He told me that he was with her on and off the whole time, even before he married Melissa. Maria was his true love that got away, he said. Like a fish. The week before he killed himself, he told me that he was going to ask Maria to marry him." I was lying by now. I couldn’t stop myself. He had told me about Maria, but never this much. Never what she looked like. Never what they talked about in bed. Never her real name. Just that he thought he loved her and wanted to be with her, but that he could never have her, and that he would never ask. Sometimes it seemed as if he was fishing for information. What did I know? What did I want to know? I didn’t know anything. But I knew everything. "He was going to ask her to marry him," I said, "then leave Melissa if she said yes. But Maria was taken by some real damn lucky guy. He must have been some amazing man because Nick thought Maria was one amazing woman. He knew it was no use with her, but he kept trying. Until he finally gave up. I guess he thought he loved her. Personally, I can’t imagine he knew how to love anyone." Lauren was sobbing, trying to say something. I hung up on her. I went back to the front window and looked out. The neighbor had his turkey up by now, and four letters hovered on the window glass above the turkey--H-A-P-P. The phone was ringing again. I put on my jacket and my shoes. I went into the bedroom. I had some gloves somewhere. They were old gloves. I remembered them now. They were in the top drawer. No, the bottom. Lauren gave them to me soon after we were married. They were leather and soft. I found them beneath a sweater, stored in the bottom drawer for winter. The phone stopped ringing. I went out of the house and locked the door, then put on my gloves and started walking. When I thought of Nick, I thought of him fondly. But not fondly like you think of a friend. Fondly like you think of a swingset. Lauren was right. Her instincts were always right on. She knew things by touch and smell and physical memory. She could walk into a new room and say, "Lemons!," and immediately you knew she was right, the room was precisely lemons, and how could you have missed it. When I’d walked all the way to Melissa’s, then around the block once, and I was standing in front of her house again, I saw Melissa inside, looking out her front window. It was getting dark, and I couldn’t tell if she was looking at me, or if she could see me there at all. I walked toward the window, and her eyes followed me. What her window needed was a paper turkey. A holiday greeting of some sort. I was about to wave and smile, but something about her expression told me not to. Her face was blank, slightly pulled down at her cheeks and at the corners of her eyes and mouth. I stopped and looked closer. Her cheeks were red. Her eyes were bright and distant. Her mouth moved. I couldn’t tell what she said. I went to the door and knocked. Melissa opened the door, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. She smiled broadly. "I missed you," she said. "Melissa? Are you okay?" "I didn’t think you were ever coming back." "Why? I said I would come back." "Please come in," she said. "Please come in now. I can’t stand to see you out there in the cold. You’ll freeze to death." I went inside. She came to me and hugged me. Her body was small and her clothes smelled like detergent. "Don’t stop me," she whispered. "I’m not crazy." She took off my jacket, and my gloves, then put her hands on my chest. Her hands were cold, but they warmed up quickly. "I love this shirt," she said. "I love when you wear it." "Melissa," I said. "No. Don’t ruin it. Just let me pretend for a minute or two." She looked up and leaned in to kiss me, and I let her. Her mouth was warm with tears. Her tongue was soft and salty. I touched her face, then brushed the hair away from her cheek. She didn’t look at my eyes. She looked at my face, my lips, my shoulders. "What are you doing?" I said. "Play along with me now. Just imagine I’m somebody you love." "Okay," I said. I put my arms around her and she was warm. So warm. Then I heard the car. I looked out the window and there was Lauren driving up. She got out and came toward the house, so I told Melissa I would take care of it and I went outside. Lauren came right up to me and looked me in the face as if that was going to stop me. I hit her and she fell to the ground. I didn’t think I’d hit her that hard, but maybe I did. Melissa came out of the house and stood next to me. We watched Lauren there, trying to get up. "Why do you hate me?" she sobbed. I couldn’t find the words to say it, so Melissa said it. "I don’t hate you," she said. Lauren looked up at us. "You blame me," she said. "I don’t blame you." Melissa reached out to Lauren, but Lauren didn’t move, at first. Then slowly she came forward and took Melissa’s hand. "We’ll get you some coffee," said Melissa. Lauren looked at me. Her face was red and wet and there were bits of frozen grass stuck to it. "Go inside," I said. "It’s cold." They went in, but I stayed out and kicked around for awhile. It was dark now, but I couldn’t go in right away. The street lamp came on at the end of the block. It seemed a little late for it now. When I did go inside I didn’t see them. The lights were off except for in the kitchen, where a half pot of coffee simmered on the burner. I found a cup and poured myself some, then I went over and sat at the kitchen table. There wasn’t anything on the table but my cup. I could sense the two women somewhere in the house, but I wasn’t going to go looking for them. I sat and I drank the coffee. Sooner or later one of them would come looking for me. Back to Top