Nat stood and lit another cigarette on the stovetop and then opened the slider and exited into the low sunlight heralding the end of the day. The patio was a simple railed platform that looked down on the farther reaches of the parking lot with its bare trees and dead strips of grass and the colorless stucco expanse of the building itself where rows of matching patios floated in the faintly humming air. He stood and smoked, leaning down over the parked cars. Through the slider came a few snatches of Rick’s telephone conversation until he turned and slid the door closed and the sound was gone.
He had smoked his cigarette down to the nub when the sliding glass door opened behind him and Rick stepped out onto the patio, his own cigarette held between thumb and index finger as was his habit.
How is she? Nat said.
Fucked up. His voice was quiet and when Nat looked over at him he realized that Rick had been crying, his eyes dry now but red and ringed with dark circles.
She’ll be all right, Nat said.
I don’t know, man. She sounds tired out.
You wanna take a trip out there?
Yeah, I think so.
We could go this weekend, maybe.
I’d have to talk to my parole officer about it first.
Really?
Yeah. And I need a job. Like right now.
We can swing by the dealership. The guy who hires is in until five or six.
That would be good.
You should wear a tie.
Rick was silent for a moment and then he said, Maybe we should go tomorrow then.
That’s all the parole guy needs you to do?
Yeah, and to make sure I’m not doing shit they don’t want me to do.
Like what?
Like pretty much everything we did last night.
Can they tell?
How could they tell?
I don’t know.
Fuck no, they can’t tell. He puffed the cigarette. Like piss in a cup or something?
How would I know?
Shit, Rick said. I didn’t think about that. Shit. Maybe they can test for it. That would be just my luck, wouldn’t it? Out for one fucking day.
I don’t think they’ll do that.
Maybe I should drink like ten gallons of water to flush my system out.
Probably wouldn’t hurt.
Shit, Rick said again. Shit shit shit.
Nothing you can worry about now, Nat said.
But I am anyway, Rick said. I sure as shit am. Goddamn this day just keeps getting better and better.
A few rooms away, an old woman in a pink bathrobe stood smoking and waved her cigarette at them. Rick nodded to her. New girlfriend? he said.
Something like that.
They stood in silence for a time, puffing smoke into the late afternoon. Below them a young couple exited a car, laughing, and then disappeared into one of the first-floor apartments. Rick stood leaning out over the rail, his hair shorter than Nat had ever seen it but all else the same. He kept circling that thought. That everything was the same. That everything would be the same once again.
Why are you staring at me, man? You’re freaking me out.
Sorry, he said, looking away across the parking lot. I’m glad you’re back.
Not as glad as I am, Rick said.
What was it like in there?
Just about like you’d imagine.
I’m not sure how I’d imagine it.
I tell you what, he said. You could take everyplace you ever go—Grady’s and the Zephyr and your work and the apartment and even Battle Mountain—and maybe those are the only places you ever will go, I mean in your whole life. But if someone put a fence around them all and made them the only places you could go, then the whole thing flips on you. He took a drag on the cigarette. It’s the possibilities, man, he said, exhaling smoke. They take away your choices. That’s what it comes down to. You just got no choices at all.
Nat nodded. He could think of nothing to say, in part because what Rick had said did not sound so different from how his own life had felt since Rick was gone, and perhaps since long before that.
So who moved into the old apartment? Rick said.
Don’t know.
You want to try to get another double?
I got three months’ lease on this one yet.
Three months?
Three months.
Shit. What’s this one cost?
Two hundred.
Well, that’s better at least. So I gotta come up with a hundred in, what, like three weeks?
You don’t have to do that. I mean, not in three weeks.
Rick said nothing in response, his eyes casting out across the parking lot, the apartment building, the parking lot again. More cars trundled through as day-shift workers returned to their dingy apartments, others pulling out of the lot and onto Fourth Street to start their workday or to continue it or to clock in at a second job. Day shift at a restaurant. Night shift at a casino or hotel. Perhaps the other way around. Nat had held down his job at the dealership shop for more than a year now. It seemed hard to believe. He had thought of trying to get a second job when Rick went to prison if only to fill all the hours that remained but he never had and now that Rick was back he knew those hours would fill themselves.
You ready for eats?
Starving, Rick said. He flicked his cigarette out into the parking lot beyond and Nat did the same. The woman in the pink robe waved to them again.
That really is your girlfriend, isn’t it?
Maybe, Nat said. You know how I love the toothless ones.
Rick giggled and they returned to the living room, Nat closing the slider behind them and locking it. The apartment had darkened, the sun’s disappearance behind the mountains plunging the rooms into shadow. Their coats were both draped over the chair near the door where they had landed when the three of them stumbled back into the apartment from the bars. He could remember Grady’s and the 715 Club and Bishop’s. At some point he must have driven them back to the apartment in the Datsun but most of the night’s events had fallen into a dull haze of static and the return itself was utterly blank.
It was exactly when they turned out of the apartment that Nat saw the man coming up the stairs from the parking lot. He was backlit by the low sun, his body a dark, heavy-shouldered mass, but Nat knew it was Mike, his leather loafers thumping up the stairs as the sun played on the flat surface of his buzz cut.
And there he is, Mike said, his voice upbeat, almost jubilant.
Hey, Nat said. I was just gonna call you.
Yeah? Mike said. Now you don’t have to. He smiled, eyes squinting. Who’s your friend?
He was just … uh … going out, Nat said.
What? Rick said. He looked from Nat to Mike and back again and then said, Who are you?
Name’s Mike. Let’s go back inside.
We’re headed to get some grub, Rick said.