This was probably around mid-April. I remember a glint of green had already started showing on the willows by the river. Not long after, the leaves on the sidewalk trees burst out—a wallop of bright green everywhere you looked—and I went to the credit union after work one day to see how much money I’d saved. Afterward, I went to the hardware store to buy a screw for the doorknob Ann had been complaining about for months. While I was fixing that, since I was already on my knees in the bathroom, I decided to repair the leaky bathtub faucet. I pinched a crimped nest of hair from the drain with two fingers and put a new roll of toilet paper in the dispenser and gathered up all the towels to wash at the Laundromat. I left the towels in the dryer until they were so hot they burned my arms when I hugged them out. Then I folded them into warm, leaning towers and carried them home with my chin resting on top.
On my last day in town I went to Rom’s apartment at dawn.
Wind was battering the loose shingles on the old Victorian turrets. I used his key to get in, left my stuff by the door in a heap, and crept into his bed with my shoes and jacket on. He didn’t wake up as he pulled me to him, as he sunk his face in my hair. “Good-bye,” I said. I wanted him to wake up. I wanted to walk around on my hands and knees one more time, collared. But he barely stirred. He nestled his cock between my legs and fell into a deeper sleep.
The clock on his shelf shone its red numbers at me. Morning came in a single gray bar through a slat in the shades. I started to get hot in his arms in my jacket, sweaty. After a while I looked at the clock again and realized if I didn’t hurry I was going to miss my bus. I was going to miss my transfer to the Greyhound station across town and my ride up to Whitewood, where my mother would be waiting with Ms. Lundgren at the Burger King near the bus terminal. She hadn’t sounded especially happy to hear from me when I’d finally called. It had been two years since I’d spoken to her last, since my dad died, and all she said after a few stiff hellos, was, “It’s looking like it’s about time to sell some of the land.” As the sun came through the high window in Rom’s basement apartment, I wiggled my way out of his sleeping arms. I pulled out from under his grasp and that’s when he woke up at last—when he felt me leaving.
“What’re you doing here?”
“I’m not here.”
“Who’s this in my bed, then, Girl Scout?”
“Some fantasy of yours.”
“Fuck you.” I could feel his mouth smiling into my scalp.
“Okay,” I whispered, pulling away. “Try.”
As I was sliding out of his arms he pulled me back. He squeezed me tighter. I could feel my own ribs in his arms, even through my canvas jacket—the bones pushing back against his weight. I liked that. I liked how the more I fought, the more tightly he held on. I squirmed free of his grasp, half sitting up. I twisted around but before I could swing my legs to the floor, he grabbed me around the waist and pulled me back down. I wanted more. I wanted more. He started to pull open the buttons on my coat, and on impulse, I bent my leg and kneed him in the chest, hard, so he started coughing. Sitting back on his haunches in his boxers, he looked confused. I felt the chill of that moment hit my skin like a splash of water. Morning light caught the pores on his face, so it looked rough as sandpaper.
“What’s going on?” he asked, now fully awake. His thin white shoulders looked rectangular against the wall. He’d taken the stud from his tongue so his words had no click to them. They sounded softer than usual, simpler, wetter.
“Nothing.”
That’s when he saw my big backpack at the door.
“What is this? Where’re you going?”
“I came to say good-bye.”
“Good-bye?” He blinked at me. “You’re going back to Ass-crack Nowheresville. Right now.”
I pushed off the bed, straightened my jacket. I went to the door where my backpack was waiting, and as I hoisted it to my shoulder, I turned back to look at him, huddled in bed across the room. He had one hand on his left eye, pirate-style.
“You’re going to a place where the wolves eat the fucking dogs?”
I shook my head. “That was Alaska. An anecdote.”
“It’s been what, like, almost two years?”
“I talked to my mom. It’s planned.”
“We’ve been happy, right? What is it you think you did that you can’t be happy?”
“Happy, happy, happy,” I said.
“Happy,” he flipped the word over, made it innocent again.
“Don’t be a baby,” I sneered.
He must have seen something ugly in my expression because he found his shirt and plunged his head inside it. For an instant, his face was a white cotton mask, blank indentations for mouth and eyes. Then his head was free and he was zipping up his pants. He was getting his cell phone from the dresser, and I found I could speak to him as myself again, more deliberately. “Don’t be childish about it. I came to say good-bye, okay? I came to say thank you and good-bye.”
“I’m being childish? Listen, listen.” He took a few steps forward, his T-shirt catching on the hill of his belly. “Do you remember when you told me about that little kid?”
“That little kid?” The thought of Paul went like a breeze right through me. I put up a hand to stop him from going on. “I didn’t tell you about any kid.”
“I mean you, Girl Scout. The easiest prey in the world. House of old hippies, girl left behind.”
“That’s not what I said. That’s not what it was like.”
“The Fool.”
“No.”
“Walking off a cliff every time you take a step. Poor little girl, with, like, no shoes and an empty belly. Who was taking care of you?”
“That’s not how it was. I was fine. I was fine.”
“What kid did you mean?”
I sucked in a breath. “Nobody. He died.”