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“I thought I knew where it
was, but—” I spot my mug on the counter behind him. I reach around
his waist and he doesn’t move. His shirt smells like soap or
aftershave or something fresh and light. He watches with little
interest while I drink what’s left. “Don’t worry, though.” Coffee
clings to my upper lip, so I wipe it off with the back of my hand.
“I’ll keep looking, and when I find it, I’ll call Denise or run it
over myself.”

He rubs his forehead, like
feeling a bruise. “You don’t think—maybe I could help you look for
it?”

“If I don’t know where it
is, how could you?”

“Right. You’re right, of
course.”

I tell him while I mix a
drink that he should visit her anyway, if he needs to say goodbye,
but he says he can’t show up without the lighter.

“It’s not your fault you
don’t have it. You should go, anyway. For closure, or…”

He sighs. “That’s not what I
want.”

“What do you
want?”

“Her.”

“After all that’s
happened?”

He tucks his hands in his
pockets and fiddles with whatever is in there.

“Her husband is dead,” I
say.

“I know. And—truly—it’s
awful. You don’t want to question how I feel about that,” he says,
and the way he says it, I don’t.

More knocking on my door.
When I open it, my red-headed next door neighbor looks inside,
around me. “Have you seen my papers?”

“Your what?”

“My newspapers. I go out of
town for a few days, and when I come back, there’s
nothing.”

“I don’t know.” I haven’t
had a chance to taste my drink, yet, so I taste it, and it’s good
enough. “No,” I say. “I haven’t seen your papers.”

“Are you sure? Because they
leave them right outside my door, right there on the mat.” She
points at her mat.

“I haven’t seen your
papers,” I say. “But if I do, I’ll let you know.”

“I was looking forward to
them,” she says. “I do the crosswords every day.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know
what to tell you.”

“It’s only ten dollars to
subscribe, you know,” she says before I close the door.

Brian says, “Did
you?”

“What?”

“Did you steal her
papers?”

“I don’t even know what
she’s talking about.” And then I say, and I don’t know why, “Brian,
she never loved you.” To hurt him, maybe. To keep him from going to
her.

“Yes, she did. She still
does.” He takes his keys from his pocket and hooks a finger through
the ring. “I know, because she’s hurting.”

“It couldn’t be because her
husband is dead.”

“It’s different. Trust me.
But, I don’t expect you to see it. Denise has said you’re a very
black and white sort of person, so you’ll see what you see. And you
won’t see what you can’t see. And I think there’s a
very…obvious…reason for your inability to understand what’s
happening between Denise and myself.”

“Denise and me,” I
say.

“Pardon?”

“Why wouldn’t I
understand?”

“I believe—I believe you
have to have been truly in love to recognize it in someone
else.”

“I’ve been in love. I am, I
mean.”

“I might be wrong.” He
shrugs. “A few weeks ago—or was it a month? I don’t remember—Denise
mentioned that William had emailed her to find out why your
boyfriend wasn’t getting mail from you. He’d hoped she would have
some information, something to boost his morale. Denise said there
wasn’t an explanation she could give him. And I…well, I think
there’s something to that.”

Before I ask him to leave,
his answer to, “You mean they have email?” is, “Of
course.”

________

Kudzu’s wide leaves canopy
bushes and hang from high tree branches like dark Spanish moss.
“Don’t be too impressed,” Jake said once. “Most of what’s under it
dies. It’s not a gutted zebra on the animal channel, but it’s
close. Just on a smaller scale.” I don’t watch the channel, don’t
enjoy the bloody throat-tearing, but I am drawn to kudzu’s
deceptive strength and determination to consume. It flows alongside
the guardrail, rising and falling in smooth waves and mounds and
spilling over into a corner parking lot, spreading thin on the
concrete, its vine-tips reaching out to nothing.

Right turn on
Riverside.

The single drink I had while
Brian nursed his coffee has made me tired. I need
another.

Bourbon, maybe.

The light turns green and I
follow a Subaru, rear hatch piled high with shapes wrapped in
canvas, until I see the sign for the Midtown Motel and pull up in
front of room eight, close to the door. The lot is pocked and
potholed under my sandals and pavement cracks sprout weeds. At the
sound of my knocking on Donny’s door, curtains open in neighboring
windows.

“Mind your own goddamn
business!” I scream, and all but one curtain closes. From behind
the exposed window a woman stares out, mouth tight, her small eyes
dead.

I knock again.

“Yeah!” he says. “Who is
it?”

“It’s Mia.”

“Mia!” Something jostles.
“Hold on just a second, girl.”

I look back at the woman’s
window, but she is gone, the curtain closed.

Donny opens his door wearing
jeans and a pressed, short-sleeved shirt. His hair is wavy, and wet
at the base of his neck from sweat or a shower. “You got my
message,” he says. “I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again. What’s
it been?”

“Not too long,” I say. “You
look nice.” But he doesn’t. He looks older, thinner, and more
frail, but at the same time, he’s hardened.

“What d’you
mean?”

“You just—you just do. I
don’t know.”

“What the hell’re you—what
do I usually look like? What, I look different from any other day?”
He touches his buttons.

“No, I—Jesus, Donny, I was
just saying something nice.”

“Well, c’mon in,” he
says.

I follow him into the living
room. “Do you want your door closed?”

“Naw. Leave it
open.”

The room is bright, clean
minus the full ashtray on the table, and hot. I take one of the
chairs by the window and vinyl cools the backs of my knees. A
temperature control unit sits silent under the window with its
panel door propped open, most of the knobs plucked off dull metal
pegs too small to turn with fingers. The switch is flipped to
‘on.’

“Broken?”

“Naw. I just like the heat.”
Donny grabs a half-empty bourbon bottle from the nightstand mounted
to the bedside wall. “Course it’s broken.” He sits down and wipes
sweat from under his glasses and fills an expensive-looking
tumbler.

“Want some?” he
says.

“Sure. Okay.”

“Ask, then. Don’t sit there
starin’ at it.”

“I wasn’t
staring.”

“You’re starin’
now.”

He leans back in his chair,
stretching his legs out in front of him, and crosses his ankles and
watches the lot through the open door. A gust blows in, swirling
ashes over the ashtray and cooling my hair and flattening Donny’s
shirt against his stomach and chest. It stays there, bonded by
sweat. He closes his eyes and holds up his drink. “Thank
you
.”

I say, “May I have a
glass?”

“What’s the magic
word?”

“Please.”

“That ain’t it. Guess
again.”

I look around the room.
“Light switch.”

“What? What the—light
switch?”

“I don’t know, Donny. Maybe
you picked some arbitrary—just—may I?”

He looks at me. “‘May I—?’
Girl, who d’you think—ask me for a goddamn glass.”

“I did.”

“Naw. What, we ain’t
friends? Don’t talk to me like I’m a—what, I’m a stranger,
now?”

“Never mind.”

“What d’you mean, ‘never
mind’?”

“Forget it.”

“Just ask me for a goddamn
glass, goddamn it. What the—I’ll give it to you, but you got
to—”

“Okay. All right? Can I have
a glass? Goddamn it?”

“There! Magic word! Now,
yes, you
may
. See?
What’re you bein’ all polite, for? It’s Donny! Here. Go get one of
the ones by the sink, there.” He points to the back of the room
where a shrink-wrapped plastic cup sits on the counter. “This one,”
he swirls his glass, “I brought from the house. She can’t have my
glass. Got almost everything else, but she ain’t getting’ this.
This is mine. Mine. Bought it m’self.”

When I sit back down with
the unwrapped cup, he fills it. “No ice,” he says. “And no Coke,
either.” He smiles. “No Coke. Straight up.”

We sit quiet, then, and
stare out at the empty lot and sip our drinks. Sweat builds behind
my knees, runs down my calves. “Thanks,” I say.

“For what?”

“For letting me come over.
For the drink.”

“Naw, Mia. Don’t thank me!
You can always come over, you know. My angel! ‘Sides, what the hell
else have I got to do? Can’t work, ‘cause I need to be here for
when Archie comes by. Says he’s comin’ at night, but—Archie, he
says one thing, but never sticks to it. He comes by, I got to be
here. Has my stuff in his car, in the trunk. Hell, I’m glad you’re
here. No one else comes. No one visits Donny.”

I pull a pack of cigarettes
from my pocket and slide it toward him on the table. “I owe
you.”

He lights two and hands me
one and we smoke.

Tenants pass by and nod.
Donny nods back and says some of their names once they’re gone.
“Don’t you call ‘em by those names, though,” he says. “They won’t
answer. I made ‘em up. Clark is for Crackhead Clark, see. Dick for
Dope Fiend Dick. Lost. Lost causes, most of ‘em.” He flips his hand
at the door. “Half ain’t worth it. But the others…one or two,
maybe, they’ll do it. They live here. Get that? Not just stayin’,
like me.”

He makes less sense than
usual and I wonder what time this morning he started drinking. “For
how long?”

“A week, maybe,” he slurs.
“I’m goin’ to give it another day, maybe two, to get ‘em used to
me, know my name. A couple already know. And then, the Doctor is
in. They don’t do it right. Moderation. See? A cookie a day—just
one, one cookie—won’t get you fat.” He spreads his arms out in
front of him, as if circling them around an inordinately large
belly, and laughs. “And you even get the good from the chocolate.
Chocolate’s got antioxidants. Know that?” As abruptly as it
started, his laughter stops and he watches the door. “It’s got to
be the dark, though.”

“I didn’t know.”

“So, you eat a bit, just a
little, every day, or every week, and it’s okay. It’s all right.
Understan’?”

“Yeah.”

“Naw, you don’t. One cookie,
that’s—some people eat a bag, but you eat one, and that’s
moderation. Get it?”

“I’m not stupid, Donny. I
know what moderation means.”

He wipes again at the sweat
under his glasses. “Oh, yeah? You know? Do you know what it means
to someone who’s self-medicatin’?”

“Well, isn’t moderation
modera—”

“Don’t know shit.” He glares
at me and shakes his head, turns again to look outside. “They need
me. Need the doctor. Doctor Donaldson.”

“Do you want me to
leave?”

“What? Hell, no, girl. Why
would you say that? You just can’t talk about what you don’t know
nothin’ ‘bout, is all. That’s all. Naw, I don’t want you to leave.
You stay as long as you want.” He puts out his cigarette in the
dense flower of packed, crumpled butts and gray smoke rises from
somewhere underneath. Burning filter. “Aw, hell,” he says and
covers his nose. He uses a butt to mash it out, then empties the
ashtray in a trash can by the dresser. “More?” he says and looks at
my glass.

“Okay.”

“So. How’s that
hus—boyfriend of yours?”

“Fine, I guess.”

“Fine, you guess. You don’t
know?”

“We don’t get to talk
much.”

“Alive, though.”

“As far as I
know.”

“Good. That’s good. That’s
what matters. What’s his name? Jack?”

“Jake.”

“To Jake!” He drinks.
“Fightin’ the good fight.” He drinks again. “I saw on the news the
other day some people—in shape, maybe, in form, or…but not in
here,” he touches his chest, “holdin’ signs against the soldiers.
What the
fuck’s
the
matter with people?”

“I don’t know.” I put out my
cigarette and smooth my hair away from my face. Too long, for this
heat. My face feels swollen.

“Get a goddamn sniper rifle
and shoot ‘em all down, one by one. Get far enough away and no
one’d know, you know that?
Bam!
from behind a tree across the street. Run run run,
duck back behind a Dumpster, an’
bam!
Right in the neck.
Motherfuckers.”