Before I even begin, let me just explain something, or else none of the rest of this is going to make any sense. I live alone, okay? No dog, no kids, no wife, no roommate, no girlfriend. Not even so much as a TV. Nobody, but nobody crashes at my pad except me. But tonight when I got home and stumbled across the threshhold, sloppily singing a half-hearted Irish song, there was a set of female buttocks protruding from behind my refrigerator door. The light from the fridge cast a cool corona around the plump curve of it. Then the rest of the woman stood up. She had auburn hair, a frank expression, a denim shirt and jeans. She was munching on ham salad and Ritz crackers. She had a half gallon of 1% milk on one hand. “You smell like smoke,” she said, wrinkling her nose, as I hung in the kitchen doorway. “Who the hell are you?” I asked. She rolled her eyes. “Please don’t play all surprised,” she said. “My name is Jan. As if you didn’t know.” She wiped crumbs off her lip. “Come on in,” she said. “We have to talk.” Before I could protest, she had whipped my bar-smoked shirt off me and draped a fresh, filmy one around my shoulders. I had to admit, it felt much better. I was beginning to have a headache, and my mouth tasted funny. She got a glass out of the cabinet. “Would you like some chocolate milk?” she asked, already mixing in Carnation. She ushered me back into the front room, handing me a tall mug of malted milk. We sat on my ugly plaid couch. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “Well, any number of things,” she said. “Tonight, for instance, I looked after your kids—you know, Roy, Will, and little Max. You asked me to, remember? Don’t worry. We had a swell time. They’re all fast asleep now. Except maybe Roy. He sneaks out after midnight sometimes. But then I guess you wouldn’t be worried about that; you did it yourself not so long ago. Anyway, he’s a good kid. Just like you were.” I didn’t know what to say to this. “You look tired,” she said. “Bags under your eyes.” I still didn’t know what to say. “Poor thing,” she added. Still I was quiet. She leaned over and kissed my mouth. She tasted like ham salad. It was a nice, warm kiss. Then she looked at me levelly, and slapped me hard across the face. It stung like a sudden sunburn. “Now tell me why you were out so late!” she demanded. “What the—” “Don’t play fucking games with me, kiddo. Just spill it. The whole story.” So I told her. All about the bar, the beer—first a cheap one because I bought it myself, then a stout one because an acquaintance bought it for me, then Irish whiskey straight up because I had just enough money left. All about the smoke burning into my eyes, my clothes. All about the reluctance I went in there with, the desperate need to be part of a circle. All about the circle I wasn’t quite a part of. The singing and music and footstomping that seemed to go on whether I was there or not. The songs I didn’t know the words to, the friendships I could almost reach out and touch. And this one woman—she had black hair. “Really?” Raven black. “You don’t say?” As black as looked blue. And her cheekbones: high, like the prow of a ship over inky calm waters at midnight. Her eyes were faerie lighthouses. Her mouth, generous laughter. She sveltely flowed from table to table. I couldn’t help staring at her after we’d been introduced, though I was sure she had already forgotten my name. It was her birthday and she was getting a lot of rough, grinning attention. “So what happened?” Well, nothing. “Nothing? You didn’t even talk to her?” Of course not. Every time she saw me staring, I looked away but never quite in time not to see her not smiling, not moved, not concerned in the slightest. She drank her drinks, I drank mine. She danced with her girlfriends and they laughed and sang the words with the boisterous men. I sat and hummed some of the choruses. Finally, at about one o’clock, I decided if nobody buys me a drink in the next ten minutes, I’m leaving. I waited about twenty minutes; they were all weaving another song back and forth among them like a web, I, a miserably thin fly, struggled free virtually unnoticed, and wavered home. “And here I am,” she said. “Loneliness is lovely, isn’t it?” I walked the dog and went to bed. The covers felt good around me like a forest.