Lars had been talking on the phone with his mother. She’d called frequently since the crash, and always, for his benefit, tried to sound cheerful, but it was clear that she was a little bit lonely and had been for some time. Lars’s father died when he was five, and since then, though she usually seemed to be happy when Lars was at home, his mother hadn’t had any lasting partner that he knew of. Stoughton, Wisconsin, was not a big town, and she was a homebody; she poured a lot of the energy she would have expended in a relationship into spontaneous and marginally useful household projects: graceless wooden furniture assembled with nails and glue, frequent rewallpapering. Lars saw these things whenever he went home to visit, and always felt a little sorry for her. Now he was wondering if maybe he ought to start a project himself.
His father’s name was Ivar Cowgill. He had taught fourth-grade science at a public school in Madison. Lars could remember sitting at the kitchen table with him in the evening while he made marks in his grade book. The list of unfamiliar names upset him: who were all these other, older kids his dad knew and spent time with, who got to see a side of him that he, Lars, never could? Soon after, when his father was in the hospital with his cancer, Lars was consumed with jealousy at the neat rows of construction-paper get-well cards his students had made for him. He asked his mother, “Can’t we move them?” He claimed the cards obstructed his father’s view out the window. When his father told him that it was fine, that he should leave the cards there where he could see them, Lars went out into the hall and cried.
His death a few weeks later was a complete shock. Nobody had told Lars to expect this, and later he would learn that nobody had expected it. But at the time, he blamed the fourth grade. He vowed never to speak to a fourth grader and to skip the grade altogether when he got to it, though by the time he did he was twice as old and had only vague memories of his father.
Though his mother’s eccentricities made a little more sense now, he was not comforted by the fact that, fifteen years later, she still had them. Their conversations, like the ones he had with Christine, were full of long silences that quickly stopped seeming odd; Lars often listened to his mother breathing in perfectly measured rhythms, like a weightlifter, while they thought of something to say. Usually they ended up talking about politics: Wisconsin’s Republican governor, surrounded in the capitol building by the most liberal neighborhoods in the state; Montana’s local militiamen and water rights and Canadian grain protests along the Hi-line. This last time, though, Lars’s mother mentioned that she’d gone out. “I went bowling, by myself,” she said. “In Madison. I wore tight jeans and drank a couple of whiskey sours.”
“Jesus, Mom.”
“And I got picked up!” she whispered.
“What!”
“Well, almost,” she corrected. “I could have been, if I’d wanted. The opportunity was there.” She spoke with a dreamy wistfulness, as if, in her imagination, the evening had turned out quite differently. It was unlike her, and it seemed to Lars that she was beginning, finally, to snap out of it. He wondered if she was doing it for his benefit, if he was expected to follow suit. He hoped not.
* * *
He had come to Safeway to get orange juice and noticed someone he recognized standing in front of him in line. It took a minute to place him: Paul, the detective. He looked bad, staring at his sandwich rolling down the conveyor as if it were the only life preserver on a sinking ship. Lars almost reached out and touched him, but changed his mind, afraid to frighten him.
The juice was for Christine, who was waiting for him in the trailer. They’d gotten to be fairly close, if touchy, friends in the past weeks, spending a lot of time on the phone and occasionally, when she felt up to it, hanging around together. Her mother didn’t like her to go far; if a kidney suddenly became available for her, Christine would need to get to the hospital fast. So if they spent any time together it was usually in the trailer.
Megan’s loss was changing him. Things reminded him of her frequently, approximately once every ten minutes—some music, somebody’s sunglasses, a kind of food or a place in town—and at these times he felt himself going blank, his mind caught in a logic loop that he wouldn’t come out of for several seconds. The result was a general spaciness he hadn’t suffered before, and he was concerned that it might be permanent. It was akin to suddenly losing a sense: you switch on the stereo and remember that you can no longer hear. You have to learn how to live around the problem. And compounding this was the nagging feeling that it all might have been preventable.
The good thing about Christine was that she was used to this herself. She’d been through it—not being able to eat certain things, do certain things; not being able to leave the general vicinity of the hospital. She told him he’d get over it. He wasn’t so sure.
Just now it was the juice he was holding. The cool condensation that had gathered on the carton, the gentle swell of its sides—this reminded him of running to the store in the mornings sometimes for juice or milk while Megan stayed behind in bed. It reminded him of breakfast together by the window, of weekends alone with her. His brain went haywire making the connections; synapses fired indiscriminately. He heard, dimly, the checker asking him to put down the juice, but it didn’t occur to him to do so.
“Hey! Hey!” It was the guy who had been so brusque with him before, the chubby one. Claude. His glasses, thick lenses fitted into wire frames, looked a little like goggles.
“Sorry.”
“Oh, just I gotta keep you moving.”
Lars turned but saw nobody behind him except a woman at a nearby cigarette display, choosing a pack. Claude rang him up and Lars paid. When he stepped out onto the sidewalk, there was Paul, his mouth full of half a turkey sub, shredded iceberg lettuce sprinkled around him on the cement.
“Paul?”
Paul frowned. His eyes were red and deeply sunken, like the hidden wells of flowers. They glinted warily in their sockets. His hands were covered with clean white bandages.
“It’s Lars. You spied on me, remember?”
“Mmm!” He nodded with what looked like false enthusiasm and swallowed his bite of sandwich. “Howyadoin?”
“A little better. You?”
“Eh,” he said, wiggling a free hand. “Actually bad. Actually my wife is sleeping with somebody.”
“Geez, sorry, man.”
“I’ve been driving around, you know? In the car?” He blinked several times, rapidly. “It’s like I just stepped into somebody else’s life. Hello? Does this belong to you?”
“I wish it did.”
Paul frowned, then turned a little red. “Oh, right. Oh, God, I’m really sorry.”
“That’s okay.”
“No, really.”
“Look,” Lars said. “Why don’t you come along to my friend’s? That’s where I’m going.”
“I don’t know.” Paul said, but Lars could see his eyes starring to creep out from their pits.
“Come on.” He started walking, and after a second, Paul followed, clutching his half-sandwich. They stopped at the trailer door.
“Your friend lives here?”
“Yeah.” He knocked and opened. “Christine?”
“Juice!” She sprung into the doorway and her eyes narrowed. “Who’s that?”
“Christine, Paul. Paul, Christine.” The two shook hands gingerly, eyeing one another with suspicion. There was something creepily competitive about misery. People could sense it on each other, as if it were a smell or a way of walking. Since it had roosted on him Lars had seen it everywhere: in his apartment building, in line at the bank, on the sidewalk. If, for some reason, he had to talk to one of these people, their voices sounded different. They had an echo, as if the words had to travel a longer distance to reach their destination, and generally they did—the personal space expanded with misery. Misery buzzed around people like a repellent force-field. Paul and Christine crackled.
“How do you do?” she said, sarcastically.
“Oh, great.”
And that kicked off their evening. The three stared at each other for a few seconds, then they all went inside to drink the orange juice.
* * *
Lars’s relationship with Christine was, for all its downtrodden chumminess, a little uncomfortable. Part of the problem was that since Megan died women had taken on a tragic, painful cast to him. This was through no fault of theirs, he understood, but other women reminded him of her, and there was nothing he could do about it. He also knew this was a lousy reason to feel uncomfortable around somebody, so he pretended not to feel it. It was like trying to hide a pregnancy. They both knew, and there was little avoiding the mildly resentful silences that hung over them at times.
And Christine was a physical wreck a good portion of the time. Before her dialysis in particular, she complained of weakness and insomnia, dry skin, bleeding gums. She had problems digesting food and ran to the bathroom frequently. She gave off a foul odor: her breath was rotten, her body medicinal and rank. She became disoriented and irritable and took it out on him.
But they were respectful and open with one another. Her problems didn’t embarrass her or disgust him, and he could speak his mind about Megan without irritating her. This understanding made them close, even as their indulgences kept them at arm’s length, and they rotated around one another like a double star, throwing heat back and forth with little effect.
Toth, on the other hand, didn’t get it. He’d heard Lars’s side of several of their conversations and thought they sounded like an old married couple. He was convinced Lars was falling in love with her, a sick kind of love based on wallowing in unhappiness. A few days before, Toth had been complaining about this over pizza they’d ordered. They were in Toth’s house, the rock band exerting themselves beneath them. “It just isn’t right,” he said, “you carrying on like this with her.”
“I’m not ‘carrying on.’ We’re just friends.”
“You talk to her every night, man.”
“So?”
“So you never talked to me every night,” he said, staring at his hands, and Lars suddenly understood how jealous he was and had been. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Toth…
“Or maybe we’re not. Maybe we just aren’t the friends I thought we were.” And with this he lowered his head to his hands and stayed hunched like that over his plate of pizza crusts. Lars was certain he was crying, but when he lifted his head his eyes were dry.
“You’re my best friend,” Lars said, almost meaning it. Without Megan he had no best friend.
“Ditto, man,” Toth said, and it was obvious from his grimace that he felt the same way.
* * *
Now, though, he was beginning to wonder if Toth might be right: not that he was in love, but that he had become a little obsessed. The plasticky, close odor of the trailer triggered a rush of adrenaline that made his palms sweaty, and he was glad to have Paul here, even if he heightened the gloom. The trailer looked bigger on the inside than out, with bunk beds at the far end, and a television at the other, next to a stack of cardboard boxes whose contents weren’t clear. The three of them sat in the middle, on swivel chairs bolted to the floor before a square table that folded down out of the wall. It was the dining area of a small kitchenette.
“So,” Lars said. “How are you feeling?”
“Like dancing,” she said.
“Really?”
“Hell, no!” She shifted in her seat. “I feel a little better than usual, though. I slept all afternoon.”
Paul looked at one of them, then the other. “You’re sick?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“She’s got bad kidneys,” Lars told him. “She’s waiting for a transplant. That’s why she’s near the hospital.”
Paul’s eyes widened. “Jesus. That must suck.” At hearing himself say this, he reddened. “Sorry.”
“No need,” Christine said. “It sucks, for sure.” She stared at the back of her hand. “So what’s your beef, Paul? You look victimized. Been feeding the lions?”
Paul told her. She shrugged. “Sorry, buddy.”
“Oh, you know, it’s nothing…” he said, and his face began to melt.
“We should go out,” Lars said quickly.
Christine raised her eyebrows. ‘“Out?”’
“Yeah, like out somewhere. I don’t know. A movie?”
“Oooh. Exciting.” She rolled her eyes.
Lars thought of his mother, bent over her scorecard, the ice melting into her whiskey sour. “Bowling,” he said. “Let’s go bowling.”
Paul said, almost to himself, “I haven’t bowled in years. I’ve never bowled in Montana.”
“There you go.”
Christine frowned. “Gimme a break, Cowgill. My mom would have my hide.”
“She’ll never know. She won’t be back for a while, right?”
“She’s at a quilting class, for Chrissake. Besides,” she said, rolling up her sleeve, “how can I bowl with this?” A couple of tubes stuck out of her forearm, held fast to the skin with surgical tape. The flesh around where the tubes went in was bright red and crusted with something yellow. Lars had only seen this in passing, but now she held it out before them like a freakish creature she’d found. Paul started.
Lars said, “Uh…can you bowl with the other hand?”
She pulled the sleeve down, stood up, and swung her left arm in the air. She opened and closed the fingers. “Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. I’ve never bowled. My brothers bowled, not me.”
“You have brothers?” Lars asked her.
She looked at him as if this was not something she needed to tell anyone, as if people should just know. “I have four brothers.”
“Oh.”
“And their kidneys.” Paul said suddenly, as if nobody had thought of this yet.
“No,” she said, looking out the small window at the street. “There’s my dad, though, if anyone wants to try and find him.” They were all quiet for a moment.
“So are we going?” Paul said. His fingers wiggled at the ends of his bandages.
She turned to him. “I guess we are.”
* * *
The house lights at the bowling alley were off and the walls glowed with sparkling, outer-space decor: a bolt of lightning, a ringed planet, a UFO foreshortened to indicate speed. A spinning mirror ball glimmered above the twelfth lane, casting dots of light over the bowlers, and the alley’s PA system blared an unintelligible rock song. Occasionally the sound of falling pins cut through the noise, and a scoring computer flashed a yellow X. People cheered almost unceasingly. Paul said something, but Lars couldn’t hear what it was.
“What?”
“I said, is it always like this?” He seemed less impressed than dismayed.
“I’ve never seen it like this,” Lars shouted. “Usually it’s kind of less hip!”
Christine leaned into him, and he could smell her tired, stale odor before he could hear. “This crap is vibrating my guts! I feel like running to the can!”
They rented shoes from a short, curly-haired man with a handlebar mustache who seemed inexplicably irritated that they wanted to play. “You’re gonna wait for a lane!” the man screamed ominously.
“What about that one?” Lars said. There was one empty lane near the far end of the alley.
The man stood on his toes, squinting. In the shifting fluorescence, his shirt glowed red. “Yeah, okay, twenty-three,” he said, and punched a few keys on a computer. Then he turned and stalked off.
They picked house balls from the rows of racks. Lars found one for himself and a couple for Christine, who hefted them tentatively, as if they were porcelain vases. “We can use these? They don’t belong to anybody?”
“They’re the bowling alley’s.”
“This one’s got a name on it.” She brought the ball a few inches closer to her face. “It says ‘Lanza.’”
“People sell them. They trade in their old ones at the pro shop. It’s okay.”
She stuck her fingers into the ball and frowned. “Gross. There’s gunk in there.” She took her fingers out and rubbed them together. “It’s like using somebody else’s toothbrush.”
Lars was thinking: She’s got tubes sticking out of her arm, and they run her blood through a machine, and she thinks a bowling ball is gross. He grinned and patted her shoulder.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing.” She smiled back eventually, and they stood there with the light dragging across them, momentarily happy.
Lars was entering their initials into the scoring computer when Paul showed up at their lane with a gigantic pitcher of frothing beer. “I got three glasses,” he said.
“I can’t drink!” Christine yelled.
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Pour me a glass,” Lars said, picking up his ball. “I’m gonna start bowling.”
He stepped up to the markers, fitting his feet to the third and fourth, as he always did. He remembered starting this habit, completely arbitrarily, in high school. It made him look like he knew what he was doing, and when, after every awful game he played, he told his friends he was having an off night, they believed him. Now doing it felt wonderful, like returning home after a long and not particularly satisfying vacation. The pins appeared and disappeared in the shifting light, and he hefted the ball in his hands.
He focused on the sweet spot between the first and third pins, where, if he curved the ball right, it would smack open the space and domino the other eight pins into each other, sending them crackling into the darkness at the back of the lane. The pins blinked in and out of view. He approached, raising his arm behind him like a catapult, then let it swing down, gathering momentum. He released the ball and it sped across the boards, then struck home with a hollow crash. The pins jumped. A strike. From behind him came cheering, and he turned to find Paul and Christine there, slumped in their chairs, Christine clapping and Paul stamping his feet. Not Megan.
* * *
Paul got drunk. Lars had maybe a glass and a half of beer, but the pitcher was drained before the second game was half over. He touched Paul on the arm when he got up to get another.
“Hey, I don’t know if I want any more.”
He gave an expansive wave of the hand. “Oh, sure you do.”
“Well.”
Paul waited, breathing with a noticeable and labored rhythm, like a dog watching a passing car. Finally he said, “Ah, don’t worry about it,” and jogged off to the bar.
Christine was doing poorly but didn’t seem to mind. Lars tried to coach her on her form. “You have to shake hands with the ball.”
“Shake hands?”
“Like this,” he said. He leaned forward, his right leg rising into the air behind him, and swept out his hand toward the lane. “Hello, ball!”
She mimicked his motions, switching the left for the right. “Hello ball,” she said.
She was amazed at the ball return. “It comes back to you?” she said. “Automatically?” Lars was shocked that she’d never seen this, not even on television. She also didn’t know about the pinsetter or the scoring computer or, she confessed when she had gotten more comfortable with her surroundings, the bar. She was surprised you were allowed to drink while you bowled. “Doesn’t it seem dangerous?” she asked Lars. “With all these heavy objects?”
Lars shrugged. “I’m from Wisconsin,” he told her. “Drinking and bowling are in my blood.”
It had been Paul’s turn for a long time, and still he hadn’t returned. Lars turned and peered back at the bar. There was no line, and he didn’t see Paul either.
“This is the most fun I’ve had since I came to Marshall,” she said.
Lars was sitting next to her. “Oh, no problem.” And without thinking, he set his hand on her knee.
He saw her, out of the corner of his eye, turn her head toward him, but he didn’t look up. He was looking at his hand, resting there on her jeans. Slowly he picked it up and put it on his lap. A few seconds passed, and she lifted her leg and crossed it over the other.
“Lars?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks for taking me here. I would never have bothered to go anywhere.”
He still could not look up. What had he been thinking? He slumped farther into his seat. “Sure.”
They sat in silence a few minutes more, the sounds of the bowling alley swelling around them. Christine cracked her knuckles. “Where’s Paul?”
“I should go look for him.”
“Why don’t you?” she said, and he got up and walked to the bar.
Paul was at the back of the room, next to the keno machines, at a pay telephone. He had the pitcher in one hand and the receiver in the other, and was blubbering desperately into the latter. When he looked up and saw Lars, he tried to wipe his face with the pitcher arm. Beer sloshed onto the carpet. “I gotta go,” he said into the receiver. “Donworry. I gotta go. I gotta go.” He hung up, then wiped his face a second time, again with the pitcher arm.
“Why don’t you let me take that?” Lars said. “It’s your turn.”
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay.” He handed over the pitcher. “I gotta.” he said. “I have to…I can’t go—” And he burst into fresh tears. “You got a place I can stay tonight?”
“Oh, sure. No problem.”
“You’re a real pal.”
“Come on. Let’s go finish this game.”
They finished off the game in palpably lower spirits. Lars didn’t hit any of his spares and Christine threw a lot of gutterballs. Paul stood before the lane, reeling slightly, his ball dangling from his fingertips. He took a very long time to release it. Once or twice he simply replaced the ball and sat down without having thrown it. They didn’t bother with a third game, and Paul insisted on paying for everyone. He leaned up against the counter and dropped his wallet. “Come on, hurry up,” the attendant told him.
They had taken Paul’s car. Lars took the keys from him and drove, while Paul slept in the backseat.
“I’m sorry, Lars,” Christine said quietly, as they drove down Cedar Avenue. The river shimmered in the street light to the south, low and sluggish and unrippled.
“It’s not your fault,” he said. “I’m just so used to…”
“I don’t care. It’s…I like the idea that somebody would touch me like that. Just friendly.”
“I’m sorry.”
She was silent for a while. “I guess I am a little sad.” She slumped against the window. “I’m a sad sack, Cowgill.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m so tired,” she said. “I want to wake up one morning and not be tired, you know what I mean?”
“I guess I do.”
She sighed, and picked up his right hand with hers and put it on her knee. He left it there.
When they reached the Safeway, they could see Christine’s mother moving behind the window. He pulled up in the car and she opened the door. “Thanks, Cowgill,” she said. “That was the most fun I’ve had in ages.”
“Me too,” he said.
She looked out the windshield. “She’s going to kill me.”
Lars shrugged. “She’ll get over it,” he said.
She smiled at him. If this were different, he’d kiss her goodnight. But it wasn’t. “Okay,” she said suddenly, and stepped out of the car. The trailer door opened before she reached it, and her mother, a tiny, frizzy-haired woman, stood silhouetted by the kitchenette light. He could see the worry in her posture; her dress hung off her as if tossed onto a hook. Christine turned and waved one last time, and the door closed behind her.
* * *
Lars pulled onto Cedar and headed for home. He could smell Paul’s breath even in the front seat, and he rolled down the window to let some fresh air in. Paul moaned. “Too bumpy,” he said, referring, Lars supposed, to the road, but there was nothing to be done about that.
He slowed to drive over the tracks, and followed them with his eyes over the old train bridge. Trains no longer ran over it—the tracks dead-ended north of here at the wall of the dairy—but teenagers still dared each other to cross it, and at his apartment on the other side of the river, Lars could often hear them calling to each other in the dark. He remembered looking through a book of old photos in the library, and finding a picture of the old rail station, now a hunting club, that stood on the far side of the bridge. Trains angled in from Butte or Coeur d’Alene, clouds of coal smoke gushing out above them, and rail passengers idled in the haze over the platforms, their bags at their feet. He could make out the station’s outline from here, and the red glow of the Coke machine in its bell tower. He could imagine the sounds of the passengers drifting across the river, broken up by the current. If the sounds were real, he thought, he’d leave tonight. He’d take the train to Whitefish, then east, over the mountains toward home. He would sleep as North Dakota and Minnesota flooded past.
He had only had his eyes off the road for a second. But when he turned back, there was a woman, a gray figure waving her arms in the glare of his headlights. He hit the brakes. The tires squealed and his seat belt locked across his chest. He felt something heavy strike his seat from behind.
“Paul! Are you okay?”
“Ohhh.” Paul was saying. “I’m going to puke…”
The woman had jumped off the road and was opening the passenger-side door. To Lars’s surprise she got in. “Hoo-hoo!” she said. “Sorry if I gave you a fright.” Her face was round and open and gently wrinkled; her lips were thin and long and she carried a bulging white handbag. She smiled.
“Uh…I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”
“No harm done!” she said, buckling her seat belt.
“Ohhhhh,” Paul said.
Lars leaned back between the seats. “Are you going to be okay? Do you need to get out?”
“Uh…uh…” He had dragged himself back onto the seat, and now he blinked. “No.”
“Good.”
“Are you all right?” the woman asked Paul. She sounded vaguely disapproving. “You look awful.”
Paul raised his head, squinting, then moaned and fell back to the seat.
“Excuse me,” Lars said suddenly. They had not yet begun to move. “Do you want a ride somewhere?”
“Oh, yes!” the woman said, laughing. She looked to be in her early sixties, as far as Lars could figure. “I certainly do!”
“Where to?”
She shrugged. “Oh, anywhere.”
“I can take you wherever,” he said. He restarted the car and put it in gear. “It’s no problem.”
“No matter.”
Lars thought about that for a second. “Okay, then,” he said, and turned onto Front Street. “How about Fourth?”
“Wonderful!”
Nobody said anything for a little while. Paul shifted in the back and sighed heavily. Lars turned onto the Cherry Street bridge. A grizzled-looking man carrying a bedroll was walking over in the opposite direction, and the old lady waved to him. He grinned suddenly and waved back.
“You know that guy?”
“Oh, yes.” Out of the corner of his eye, Lars saw her stating at him. “You drive very well,” she said. “I can barely feel you switching gears.”
“Well, I’m not right now. I’m just in third.”
“I have a driver’s test next week,” she said. “Wish me luck!”
“Good luck.”
Suddenly she stuck out her hand. Lars took a glance at it, then shook it perfunctorily. “I’m Amelia Potter,” she said.
“Lars Cowgill,” he said to her, and she frowned. “What?”
“Have you been drinking? I don’t accept rides with drunks.”
“I had a couple beers.” What was he feeling guilty for? “You probably smell my friend there.”
Amelia’s frown deepened, but she didn’t ask to be let out. They went several blocks without speaking. Lars steered carefully, staying under the speed limit.
At his apartment, he pulled over and turned off the car. For a second he cupped Paul’s keys in the palm of his hand, enjoying their heft, and wondered what the house was like that they would admit him to. “Well,” he said. “I live here. Are you sure you don’t want to go anywhere else?”
“Oh, yes. This is fine. Tell me,” she said.
“What?”
“Can you make a left on red? That is, when it’s onto a one-way street?” Her face was suddenly very serious.
“I think you can. Don’t quote me on that.”
She nodded. “Well, thank you. I’ve learned so much.” She opened her handbag and pulled out what at first appeared to be a large candy bar. When she brought it into the light, he saw that it was in fact a box of number 2 pencils. He noticed that her white bag was filled with identical boxes. “Here you go. Use these well. Write down your innermost thoughts.”
“Gosh,” Lars told her. “Thanks.”
And then she leaned across the space between them and touched Lars on the arm. Lars looked at her, his eyes wide. He could smell her, something like dead leaves drying in the sun. Then she pulled away and got out, leaning back in only to say, “I’ll be comin’ round the mountain, then.”
“Goodnight.” And she slammed shut the door and was gone.
“Anita?” Paul said.
* * *
Inside, Lars pulled some blankets from the closet and spread them on the floor. It was not much of a mattress, but Paul didn’t seem to mind. In the same closet he found an extra pillow, Megan’s, which he’d stuffed there weeks before. He held his breath as he pulled it out, and exhaled only after he had pushed it under Paul’s head.
Hodge meowed and Lars fed him. Then he undressed and got into bed. He looked at Paul and noticed a shaft of street light falling over his eyes. They were wide open.
“What’s the matter?”
“Spins,” Paul said, his head absolutely still.
“You drank a lot. If you’re going to do that, it shouldn’t be beer. You’ll get sick.”
Paul seemed not to hear. “Excuse me,” he said. He got up. Lars heard him vomiting behind the bathroom door. When he came back he looked better. “It’s not so bad,” he said to Lars. He lay back down and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. You probably think I’m a loser.”
“No.”
“My wife, you know…and we have a houseguest. From Italy. It’s all too confusing.” He coughed.
“They’re two different guys?”
“Huh?”
“The Italy guy and…you know…”
“Oh,” Paul said. “Yeah.” Then he was silent a long time. Lars thought he was asleep. Hodge slunk over to Paul and sniffed his nose, and Paul’s face scrunched up. The cat seemed to decide he was all right and curled into a little ball on his ankles.
“I gotta tell you,” Paul said. He shifted his ankles a little and the cat yawned.
“What?”
“This is weird, I know.”
“Go on.”
He sighed. “Well, that plane crash.”
Lars stiffened. “What about it?”
“I saw it. It happened right by my house. I saw it go down.” He paused. “It was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Lars considered his reply for a long time. “I don’t think I want to hear any more.”
“Okay.”
“Can you understand that?”
“Uh-huh. But if you ever do,” he said, “you can ask me.”
“Maybe I will,” Lars said. He turned over in bed to face the window, and looked out over the neighborhood houses, shrouded by trees. Backlit by the moon, they were blank, save for a dim light here and there in the windows. On the upturned milk crate next to his bed, he saw the box of pencils, and he snaked a hand out from under the sheet to pick them up. Potter, Potter Pencils. He wondered if there was a connection there. The plastic wrap came off with difficulty, and he took one out—the same kind he’d used in school, when he was a kid. Whatever happened to pencils? Why didn’t adults use them? He thought to write this down, and even found a piece of paper to do it on, but the pencil wasn’t sharpened. He was considering getting up to sharpen it when sleep took hold with uncommon strength, and he let it pull him away.