Walker has several square feet of excess skin that she needs removed, but she can’t afford the surgery. At the Starbucks where we met near her old office—a now shuttered real estate firm in Midtown—she sipped on a grande drip coffee of the day.

“Two years ago at this time, I could barely finish a short 8-ouncer,” she said with a hint of nostalgia and disappointment.

Two and a half years ago, Walker underwent gastric bypass surgery. She had been morbidly obese at 347 pounds and just 5-foot, 3-inches tall. She had trouble breathing and moving quickly. It had gotten so bad she stopped traveling on the subway during rush hour because she needed enough room to sit. “People don’t look at obesity as a disability. So they wouldn’t offer me a seat, even though I was medically disabled,” she said. Walker would go to work at 6 am, leave around 3, and go to bed before prime-time shows were over at 9:30. Her general practitioner suggested the surgery.

“I had already tried every diet. The South Beach Diet, Atkins, The Cookie Diet, I tried it all and didn’t lose an ounce. I tried walking one subway stop further away in the mornings, get myself a little exercise, but it took just too long. I have battled with my weight since puberty, and it really felt like it was out of my control.”

She took out some pictures from her wallet. The edges of the photos were pulpy, the plastic sheaths ripped. It looked as though she’d been carrying them around for a very long time.

“Here I am when I was 9, skinny as a twig.”

In the picture she wore a sunshine yellow T-shirt, a pink tutu and white tights. She was standing on one foot as though ready to do a pirouette. In the lower left hand corner was a close-up, blurry pair of clapping hands.

“And here I am when was 13.” She put the photo on the table.

It looked like a wholly different little girl. In this shot, she was sitting on a piano bench smiling. But her cheeks protruded so far it made her forehead appear too short. Her breasts looked as though they had grown straight into a D cup. A roll of fat spilled out between her T-shirt and her pants.

Surgery was her last resort, but an essential move if she wanted to live a full life, her doctor said. Statistics show it’s an increasingly popular decision. The Imaginary Medical Association of New York reported that ten years ago only 1,300 gastric bypass surgeries were performed in the state. In 2009, this figure was up to 35,000.

When her doctor suggested the surgery, Walker bristled in agreement.

Noah Wailen was looking at her. Her? “Me?” she thought. “Out of everybody in the chic, dark basement bar, including skinny girls with big boobs and thousand-dollar handbags, he’s looking at me?”

Noah dipped his chin in a slight nod. The move was as subtle as a cat that only twitches an ear to react to a sound. He was coolly, coyly acknowledging her.

“Me!” she cheered in her mind. “Meeeeee! Eeeee! OMG I have to tell Vicky.”

Vicky was smiling, showing off her straight, bleached teeth to no one in particular, as she listened to the chatter at the table. She was always smiling but to those who didn’t know her well, it usually seemed sincere. Acquaintances often reacted by smiling back receptively, expectantly, as though Vicky was a ray of sunshine they wanted to get warmed by.

Audrey knew that Vicky really wasn’t that happy. They had shared many late nights drinking alone together venting about their insecurities and sharing the horror stories of their high school years. Vicky, a size 4, worried her thighs had too much giggle, that the German structure of her face made her appear manly, and that people thought she was vapid. Vicky’s deepest scar from high school came after she lost her virginity to a basketball player. After their break-up, he had Sharpied her cell-phone number “for a good time” in the boys’ locker room. Vicky was not a happy camper even though she appeared that way to most people. To Audrey, this made her utterly alluring, like someone who could get beat up and yet keep on fighting. She imagined that was what Hollywood actresses were like: human and miserable but blessed like by a fairy godmother that made their pain fade behind a royal glow of beauty and happiness. It was like Vicky’s make-up, Audrey thought. Vicky would wear thick, syrupy lip gloss all day, everyday, and Audrey had never seen her long hair get stuck in it. Vicky wore colorful eye shadow, and she never looked like a clown or like she was trying too hard.

Vicky would know what to do. Audrey yelled in a whisper at her ear. “Oh my god. You won’t believe this. Look over my shoulder to like 11 o’clock. Wait, don’t be obvious.”

“Ok, ok, I’m going slow.”

“Dude, he’s looking at me. Do you know who I’m talking about?”

“Oh my god. Noah Wailen?” Vicky gushed.

Audrey squeaked.

“How do you know?” Vicky said. Audrey felt spanked by Vicky’s doubt, but tried to ignore it.

“Cause I’ve just been sitting here, chilling out and looking around and we caught eyes. I looked away but each time

I glance back, he’s staring at me. And then, he gave me a nod. Like a slight, hot-as-hell nod.”

“Oh my god! I’m so happy for you. So cool.”

“So, what do I do?”

“This is something between you and him. You should do what’s in your heart.”

“Vicky, what does that mean? Ugh, do I go over there? Should I wait for him to come here? Should I smile at him?” C’mon, help me, she thought.

“You haven’t smiled at him?!” Vicky gasped in disapproval.

“No. Oh my god, I hope I have ruined this. I’ve just been so stunned.”

“Well smile at him, give him an unconfusable sign. Guys are dense, even Noah Wailen, I’m sure.”

“Ok, ok.”

It had been three weeks. There was no way to know for sure if Nate’s schedule was the same. It was just an assumption, an educated guess, a plausible hypothesis. She had no reason to believe that his routine had changed. As often as she had quizzed their mutual friends, no one said anything about him switching jobs. Either they were all in cahoots and lying, unlikely, or it was true that he still had the same routine as always. “It has to be true,” Molly murmured as she resumed a more calm but still somewhat sad coziness.

A few minutes later, she forced herself up from the bed—a feat more difficult in this bed than any other she’d ever slept in. A large groove in the center consumed her 5-foot 2-inch, 120-pound frame. Someone much bigger than her had made the indentation, or rather, the canyon. To get up, she literally had to claw at the bottom sheet. At least that was hers. Nate let her take the soft, jersey bottom sheet with her even though it was part of a set his mother had bought him.

Once seated at the edge of the bed, her comfy, nearly worn-out, yellow-striped pajama pants hung widely down around her feet. Another remnant from Nate’s mother. She had bought them for her 4 years ago for Christmas. The hems were now grayed and frayed. The butt pilled. The elastic waistband stretched. But it didn’t matter. There was no one to impress. She finally lived alone.

Over the last 8 months of their relationship, she and Nate had fought a lot. In the momentum of these late-in-the-game fights, she would accuse him of cheating her out of the freedom of living alone, of her independence. More and more often this was the first bullet in her arsenal of his wrongs. “I never had the freedom most women have before settling down. And don’t play it off like it’s nothing. It’s why women cheat. It’s why 40-year-old women dress like 16-year-olds. Not that I would do any of those things, but I’m just saying. You took my youth,” she would cry.

“You aren’t making any sense! I never asked you to give me anything. And, by the way, I never sowed my wild oats, either. I gave you my wild oats!” he would rebut.

“Yes, and that scares the living shit out of me!” she would say. A pang of guilt and guttural sincerity punctured her fight. Gone were the sensational dysphemisms. This was how she really felt. And so she would then pucker and hiccup with tears. And then he would hug her. And then it would be ok.

Until one day when he ruined it all.

“You are so paranoid, so annoying. You have pushed me to the point that I don’t love you anymore. It’s over, you fucking psycho,” he said crying from his side of the bed. He also called her obsessive, possessive, vain and tyrannical. He said she acted like Saddam Hussein, like King Jong-Il, that she was a crazy, paranoid dictator. Whether it was meaningless hate spouted from a geyser of his anger or full of meaning from a deluge of his real feelings, it didn’t matter. That was it. His gush of horrible words sunk into her system and pumped through her over and over again like cancerous blood. “I don’t love you.” “It’s over.” She deserved someone who she could trust to love her unconditionally and at all times. She decided she had to leave him.

Within three days of those utterances, she took a break from an unusually laborious freelance web development project and actually, finally, relievingly, scarily searched craigslist for affordable studio apartments in her neighborhood.

http://newyork.craigslist.org/

http://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/

apts / housing
all apartments (includes by-owner + no-fee broker + fee broker)
“Park Slope” Rent min: $0 Rent max: $800 0+ BR
Search

Forty-seven results were found. But each one was a sliver of false advertising. The location misrepresented. The number of bedrooms wrong. The rent inaccurate. Not one real result for an apartment in her price range in her neighborhood.

“Hey Riley, man let’s roll a big, fat-ass joint,” suggests Danny.

“Yeah man, we can roll it in the park.”

The park. If I had known we were going to the park, I would have tried to look a little cooler. It’s the park they used to film the fight scene in the movie Kids, the movie. Patches of grass peak out between concrete slopes and benches. The homeless kids hang out by the arch and in the dry, broken fountain. Poets—without a high school degree or a home—stand in the center and shout angry rhymes. Men with dreads sell incense on the sides. A guy is making chalk portraits on the ground. We just barely miss stepping on one of his drawings and park ourselves against a fence. Riley slips his arms around my back. The pressure almost pushes me down face first. But I try to hold my ground. I know he just wants to be close to me.

Roddie looks like he wants to say something or maybe he’s chewing on something. Danny directs, “Roll the mother fucker.”

Riley cups his free hand into his pocket and slips Danny the bud. Danny crouches low to the ground trying to look inconspicuous. As if! He messes up three times and on the fourth, we have a loose but smoke-able jay. Then Riley lights it.

I know what we look like. We look obvious. We’re so going to get busted. For all of Riley’s self-righteous, honor, truth and dignity bullshit, he’s doesn’t see the obvious. I see thousands of possible outcomes from every single decision. He just sees everything as good or bad—and by default everything is good unless proven otherwise. The consequences of smoking pot out in the open? Good, cause he’s never gotten busted yet. But the first time is all it takes. If I get in trouble my mom will never let me see him again.

I feel like a bug is crawling under my skin. This isn’t rebellion or freedom. This is just stupid. We had to buy the weed on the street. But we don’t have to smoke it here. I try to keep my eyes peeled for cops. No blue suits. There are sirens, but there are always sirens. What if the cop is undercover, incognito? Then what do I do? How do I know who’s watching us? “Riley, this is crazy. We don’t know who’s watching us. We could so get busted.”

“Come here.” He puts his arms around me and tells me to take a deep breath as he passes me the joint. “Everything’s going to be ok,” he tells me. I never believe him until the fourth or fifth time he tells me. He’s only said it twice so far. Or maybe I thought it once and he said it once. I don’t know. Whatever. Roddie passes me the jay again and I take a hit as quickly as I can. I pass it on fast. Riley doesn’t notice it’s his turn.

“Take it!” I jab him in the shoulder.

“Relax, Harmony. Everything’s going to be ok.”

That was two. Or three.

“Everyone is chill but me.”

“So chill out Harmony. It’s not that hard to do. Take a deep breath.

“Ok. I’m ok.” I go through this almost every time we smoke pot nowadays. I am little Miss Paranoia, but I can never convince myself that it is only paranoia. What if it’s like women’s intuition and something’s really is wrong? I am stoned, and therefore I am paranoid. I try to remind myself of this. But then I think, what if I’m more than stoned? What if it was laced with angel dust or strychnine or crack or formaldehyde and this really is the end of me? What if I never get to talk coherently to my mom again? Oh my god. I’m freaking out. Breathe, I remind myself. Regardless of the danger I am in, I must breathe.

“SHIT!!!!”

“Dude, Harmony. You’re ok. I’m ok. Everything’s ok.”

“Don’t talk to me like that, Riley. There really is a problem.”

“What’s that?” Danny asks as he’s jumping around pretending to do skateboard moves without a skateboard.

“The car. We aren’t in a real spot!”

And we’re off running down the street to the car. We’re going too fast for me to concentrate on the steps. I watch my legs and they tickle because I know all of the muscle fibers are working and that tickles. Danny is yelling like some coach whether we should stop or go at intersections. Roddie passes him up and yells for Riley to give him the keys. “I’ll get there first!” he hollers. He chucks the keys to Roddie across 3rd Avenue.

Roddie misses the keys and they skim against the street and land against the curb. Danny grabs them and sprints the last block to the car. I can’t run anymore. Breathe, breathe. I can’t go any further. What if I can’t run because I’m dying? I’m almost there. Almost there. Keep it going. No one ever died from pot. There! I slam myself up against the car. I rest my head against the sun-warmed hood.

“Hey, the car is ok! Thank you, God. What if it had been towed? What if we had been stranded here? That would have been terrible.” I have to be home by 9 or else I’ll get grounded. I don’t say that last part out loud.

“Riley, slow down!” I grip the seatbelt’s shoulder strap. It locks tight. My mom told me they don’t pull dead bodies out of seatbelts. I hold on. “You don’t have to drive like a crazy person!”

“Do not critique my driving, Harmony. You should be kissing my ass for saving you from the lame-o’s on the bus. I’m doing this for you. Do you want to be late to first period? You should have been ready on time.”

“Oh come on,” I argue back. “I don’t have to act a certain way just cause you drive me to school. I don’t have to be indebted to you forever. It’s not that big of a deal. You have to go to work anyways. School’s on your way.”

“Yeah, well I look like a loser showing up there every morning. I should have something better to do. I graduated. I should be moving on.”

“Then why are you going out with a girl who’s not even an upperclassman yet? Huh? Maybe we should break-up for your image.”

“You always throw that break-up shit at me.”

“Yeah, well, slow down. It’s a red light.” He revs his engine twice before slowing down. School is about a block away. I brush my fingers through my Manic Panic Purple Haze hair and check my face in the visor mirror.

“You look beautiful, baby. Except wait.” The light turns green. But he doesn’t go. He holds up traffic at the stoplight to wipe a barely-there mascara smudge off my lower eyelid. The car behind us honks; he flips it off and squeals his tires as he flies into the school lot.

In the lot, he grabs me by the back of the neck and pulls me in for a passionate goodbye kiss. The parent behind us is dropping off a freshman. I’m watching her through the side mirror as Riley smudges my lipstick with his face. The mother gives her dorky son a peck on the cheek. I wonder if she sees us. Riley lets me go. I grab my half-empty book bag, wipe off the red smudges, and hop out.

“Hey, Harm. Do you have to be here all day?”

“I don’t know. It’s only school. It’s optional right?” I smirk.

“Well, I was gonna make a run into the city for some kind bud, but I have to meet the guy before you’ll be out of class. Can I pick you up sixth period? Roddie and Danny are gonna come with.”

“Alright, meet me at the end of the street so I don’t get busted.”

“Cool baby, see you later.” I slam the door and feel people watching me as I walk inside. I’m special. I’ve got a man.

***

Riley drives the FDR as though he owns it. He wildly plunges around cars; speeding up then slowing down inches from their bumpers. It’s as if he’s got nothing to lose. Luckily most people have the sense to get out of his way pretty quickly. But if they don’t, he’ll stick to them like freakin’ crazy glue until they give in. I roll down the window to get some air on my face. A semi thunders past and almost clips off my nose. Riley grabs me back and says in his most robotic voice, “Please keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times.” I thank him for the original insight.

Danny, the one who usually makes the dumb jokes, laughs heartily in the back. He is always so loud. It’s like he woke up one day and decided that he was the funniest man alive. He probably thinks it’s a pleasure listening to him, like he’s doing us a favor. It’s like he’ll say something that he thinks is funny and wait for the laughs. I never give in. It’s so dumb. But Riley does. He laughs whenever Danny cues him. It reminds me of the line my mom used to say about the neighbor’s twins. “Two peas in a pod,” she said. Right now, Danny’s in the phase of saying the pledge of allegiance to anything that he likes, like a keg of beer. “I pledge allegiance to this keg,” etc. It bores me. I think it bores Roddie too, but he always seems bored. He’s like Danny’s alter-ego. Roddie is silent unless he has something of value to share—quality not quantity. Right now he’s gazing out the window at the East River. He’s so smart.

I rest my head on my arms and close my eyes over the open window. This morning was such a drama. No matter how fast Riley drives, I never seem to make it to class before first-period attendance. Today I got there about three seconds after Ms. Lurie put her pencil down, the one she uses to point at each person who says, “Here.” Mrs. Lurie hates me and so even though I showed up to class, she never marked me present. Then on my way out, after the bell, I tripped on some freshman’s monstrous backpack. Mrs. Lurie, of course, blamed me for not watching where I was going.

I tilt my head back and relax as the cab takes me and my boyfriend down Houston Street to a dinner party at the home of old friends. I look up at the sheet metal sky. Night is just getting started. I’m so lucky, I muse. Some kid in Tokyo with East Village dreams yearns to live just once in my neighborhood. At ground level, the squiggles of graffiti on the sides of muted grey and tan buildings look like small, dark red, green and black explosions and feel beautiful. This is the rapid place and time I call home.

But as much as I love New York, New York refuses to be loved. Whenever I’m all warm, fuzzy and ready to give the city a carefree, trusting bear hug, it repels me with some crazy, only-in-New-York type of crap to deal with—like our cab, suddenly speeding up and swerving from lane to lane as though we’re being chased. And I think we are.

Jesus. I wake from my Southern back-porch moment only to see a thick, rugby-faced guy in a dark blue Subaru shaking his fist at our cab driver. Blonde hair is smeared down his forehead. He spits a New Jersey blessing out his window. Our driver speeds up. The blonde guy swerves to get behind us. He’s really close. We turn onto Allen Street. The Subaru turns following us. Our driver slams on the breaks. The Subaru slams to a stop. The maniac barely misses rear-ending us.

Now we’re stopped bumper to bumper like a blood clot in the middle of Allen Street. Other drivers are pulling around us continuing on their way. I try to catch their attention with my eyes. “Help us,” I want the other drivers to hear. “Help. We have no idea what is going on.” My boyfriend, God bless him with his honorable French genes, is genetically obligated to accept any duel. He is quietly but not calmly watching the situation play out. I feel him taking short, quick breaths.

Then our driver gets out. He leaves the door hanging open like an awkwardly unfinished thought. He’s wearing wide white pants, shirt, a long, beige vest and white skull-cap. All of it accentuates his long black beard. We watch him calmly walk up to the Subaru’s driver-side window. The blonde maniac is rabidly cursing. Our driver pauses and then plainly, simply shakes his fist. Then he turns and walks back to his cab the same way most people carry files around an office, like it’s a casual, common chore. Cars, new to the scene, honk as they drive by.

The blonde maniac gets out of his car. Our driver closes himself and us in the cab. The blonde moves stiffly, deliberately, like a hulk, and spits a loogie on the yellow trunk. The taillights glow red against his enraged face.

And then I do it. I flip him off. Me, the California girl brought up on anti-war protests and hugs. I flip off the burly, angry hulk with only a thin sheet of glass between us.

I catch eyes with the driver through the rearview mirror. He saw me do it. I sink down in my seat. I’m a little bit embarrassed, a little bit shocked at myself and more than a little bit scared of what is going to happen next. I look up at my boyfriend for camaraderie and compassion. He protectively grabs my hand.

Our driver’s fight had just turned into mine. Having lived here for some time, often in the far stretches of Brooklyn and Queens that you need a cab to reach late at night, I have a special place in my heart for cab drivers. I’ve gotten to know them, have taken them out to dinner, learned about their homes in Ghana, Turkey, Pakistan, San Francisco as they took me down the BQE. I spoke my broken French when they spoke French; I practiced the few bits of Turkish I knew. I often tipped well as my own good-luck charm and to help ensure their sanity. I imagined myself the self-appointed patron saint of cab drivers in a city that makes them go postal.

The driver doesn’t wait for the hulk’s reaction. He steps on the gas. But within a few measly feet a red light stops us. And without fail, the Subaru pulls up to our side. I notice for the first time there’s a woman in the back seat. The hulk is screaming at us again.

Our driver ignores him. But I watch him closely, incredulously and do think I notice him lightly flinching, doing the behind the scenes work that goes into ignoring someone.

Enough! This is my fight.

The remnants of the Californian in me rise up to call forth spiritual unity and neutralize potential violence. And with the unhinged vigor of a New Yorker, I stick my head out the window and yell, “Peace! Peace! Yoga! You need to do yoga! Breathe!”

Greg, just arriving home late from work, lit up. Something was wrong. Fireworks of adrenaline and testosterone exploded underneath his skin. He grimaced. His toes curled in his shoes. His fingers shook as they struggled to fit the key in the front door just right so it would turn—“Fucking thing, turn!” he yelled. And the door opened up. His feet were numb. He barreled up to the third floor two steps at a time. His quads burned. His lips pursed.

The climb gave him just enough time to think. When he got to the door he would rush in to the apartment. He would be prepared for anything. Prepared for, prepared for, prepared for what? He didn’t know what. Why would his stuff be on the curb? Was she breaking up with him? But some of the stuff wasn’t just his. It was theirs. Was she moving? Is a robber in there? But wouldn’t a robber immediately put the stuff in a car or in a bag or away somewhere?

Once on the landing in front of the door, he turned the knob and threw himself in the room with such force it was as though he had just broken the door down with his shoulder. He stood in the main room and refueled with a deep inhale as he surveyed the situation—the room, which accounted for most of the apartment, seemed half empty.

The couch, coffee table and TV, Wii, Xbox 360, and Blu-Ray player were still there. The TV was on. They hadn’t been robbed. The tchotchkes and New Yorker magazines from the coffee table were gone. About half of the books on the bookshelf were missing. But this simply made it look like an orderly bookshelf. The closet, tall, narrow and the only one in the apartment, in which they kept their work clothes, coats, personal finance files and sheets, was open. Like the bookshelf, it was orderly, clean and half-empty. The throw over the couch was gone. All of their DVDs were gone. Greg noticed Marshmallow, their Shih-Tzu, yelping at his feet just like normal. “Julie?”

In between barks he heard their shower curtain pull open. He put his keys down on the end table, where their sunglasses used to be, and took the three steps to the bathroom.

“Hon?” The door was partly open. His adrenaline ebbed and flowed unsure of what he might find. He peaked around it slowly.

And then he saw her. Julie, his wife to-be, was sitting on the edge of the tub holding a half-used bottle of 2-in-1 shampoo plus conditioner. Hair was falling out of her ponytail and around her face. The soft skin around her eyes was swollen. She roughly wiped her nose on a bath towel.

“Is it worth keeping this? I used to bring this with me to the gym. But I don’t go there so much anymore now that it’s nice outside. So I don’t really use it. But I don’t want to waste it. I think I’m emotionally attached to it. I don’t know what to do.” And then she erupted into tears ready to share the burden she had been facing all by herself. “Thank god you’re here.”

She was safe. Marshmallow was unconcerned. A shampoo bottle?

“Woah. Woah, woah, woah, woah. What the fuck is going on here?” The scene outside on the curb seemed so extreme, so dire, so acute. A shampoo bottle?

“Greg, I’m nipping it in the bud.” she said cryptically.

Unsure what she meant or how she would interpret anything he said, Greg decided to get more data. “Nipping what in the bud?”

“I’m nipping it in the bud, Greg. Nipping it in the bud.” She answered.

The college kid hired to help with the party paused, suspended by a mix of consternation and belligerence. He didn’t know what kind of red it was. He just knew it wasn’t white. Qualifications for work-study financial aid positions didn’t include being a wine aficionado—duh. It, in fact, required quite just the opposite. He drank his wine from a box.

Hugh noticed the delay and read it as incompetence. Marjorie, the chair of the English department, always had these untrained kids assisting her all-department events.

“Nevermind, the red is fine. Two, please.”

Hugh took the wine and walked back to the front door where his wife, Emily, still stood. She was smoothing out windblown strands of hair and her grey sweater set in the mirror by the door. He handed her a glass. She took a gulp of it with a shaky hand. He faced out toward the guests surveying how to best insert themselves into the party.

“Oh, there’s Larry, and he’s with his wife. What’s her name? Do you remember? You did enjoy talking with her that one time, right?”

“I think her name was Shirley. Or Cheryl. Or Shelly? I don’t know. I don’t want to be here. I’m still feeling a bit shaken up.”

“Oh you’re alright. Nothing actually happened.” And then he continued. “But something could happen if we don’t stick around here for a bit making nice with everyone. If we left now, my colleagues will think I’m anti-social, or worse, they won’t think of me at all. And then what happens? I don’t get tenure.”

“It’s all about you,” Emily said.

“Well, we’re here for me. So yes, this is about me.”

“We’re here. Do you recognize that pronoun as plural? That means you realize there are two of us here.”

“Fine. But you’re acting as though you think I want to be here. You think I wouldn’t prefer to be lounging around at home than clinking glasses with Marjorie and her cronies?”

“Ok, ok. You say that, but I think you like these things. You shine when you’re schmoozing. You really do. Lubricated with a glass or two of wine, your small talk trumps them all.”

“Well, you think you know me so well, don’t you?”

Jackhammers would have been better—loud noises, he could sleep through. For several mornings now, jackhammers had assaulted his eardrums beginning at six a.m., and he was almost used to them. But the persistent buzz of his cell phone at eleven thirty p.m. on a Friday night successfully penetrated his haze of near sleep. The vibration of plastic against night stand was not loud enough to ignore.

He wasn’t sure the call was from Janine, but he knew it probably was. He reasoned as clearly as he could, his mind clouded by the five milligrams of Vicodin he’d swallowed an hour ago. Five milligrams wasn’t much, not by any addict’s standards, but then, he wasn’t an addict. Just a man who was done feeling for the day and whose friend had undergone dental surgery and didn’t like painkillers. At most he took one pill a week on Friday nights when he was alone, or wanted to be.

Last Friday night Janine had come over unexpectedly. Not exactly uninvited, but the idea hadn’t been his either. So he hadn’t felt too bad about surreptitiously ingesting a pill while she’d been in the bathroom. She’d stayed over that night too, which had been okay. He liked a warm body next to him in bed; it could even be soothing if it was the right person keeping him company. Janine probably wasn’t right, but she wasn’t necessarily wrong, and so it had been okay for her to sleep over.