I.
This was the night I lost my job, and you didn’t have a job, and there was a fractious vibe at The Starlight, like someone was about to get killed over something trivial, so I said, Let’s get out of town, and you said, Fuck it, let’s go to Myrtle Beach, and that’s exactly what we did–we fucked it, and we drove four hours to the coast, and we did not die over something trivial at The Starlight. We were halfway there when you noticed the news on my dashboard like a sneering constellation. In angry orange: Low Fuel. In bruised yellow: Check Battery. And in the deep red of a blood moon: Service Engine Soon. This was the night you tore a strip of cardboard from the box that held our beer and flattened it over the dash until it covered everything, even the speedometer. There, you said, smiling in the cab’s new dark. All better.
II.
Behind The Starlight was a church that used to be a bar, and behind that a pawn shop that used to be a daycare. There was a liquor store that only sold fireworks, and a gas station where you could buy a single cigarette for a quarter. There was a takeout place called Golden Dragon No. 3, but when we asked about Golden Dragon No. 1 and Golden Dragon No. 2, the old woman with the silver tooth and the Superman visor slapped her ringed fingers on the counter and said, Just this! Just this! It was a good strange world while it lasted, but it is no longer lasting, not even The Starlight. Now it’s only luxury apartments and restaurants with real signs. Now there is a chiropractor’s office on the corner where I kissed the knuckle of your thumb and said, I want to be your friend for seven hundred years, or until you get tired of my having to be me all of the time, whichever comes first.
III.
There’s a fight in the parking lot, you said. Want to watch it with me? I joined you at the window just in time to see a man with no shirt say to a woman on crutches. Don’t fucking tell me what I’m feeling! You’re not in my heart! The woman on crutches, who clearly loved her opponent, smiled and replied, And yet, neither are you. We both liked this line and awarded her one point. Sensing the deficit, the man with no shirt looked at the window of a nearby car and seemed to contemplate smashing it with his tattooed fist. Instead, he moved toward his partner and, resting his battered hands on her bony shoulders, said, I’m not trying to be in my heart. I’m trying to be in yours. For a moment, we were both afraid the fight would end on account of this tenderness, which was worth anywhere from three to five points. But when she drove the nubbed end of her crutch into his ribs and said, Is that what you told Tara from the bar?, we knew the history between them was too luminous to leave the night unbloodied. They fought til just after one. 32-17, Crutches.
IV.
I requested you never tell me about your childhood because if you did, and if it was tragic, I would walk around with revenge dreams towards all the assholes in your past who chose cruelty when kindness was right there in front of them as an option. Which is why I asked that you agree to having grown up in Nebraska, a state I will never visit, a state that achieves a kind of innocence in the Carolinian’s mind by being so perfectly alone in the cold flat gut of America. I gave you the best foot massage I have ever given any foot, and I asked you to just be from a perfect town filled with perfect families who love all their perfect children with a kind of perfect love. Nebraska is exactly as you described it, you said. But just for the record–can we add the ocean and call it Portugal?
V.
When you were hungover, I would be your nurse and bring you one large egg-and-cheese burrito from the Seven Eleven on Rivers and one bottle of purple Pedialyte served over a styrofoam cup of crushed ice. When I was hungover, you would be my nurse and bring me four Ibuprofen, two Dramamine, and cup after blistering cup of the blackest coffee in the universe. Yes, there were mornings at The Starlight when the gray blanket of futility covered everything, and we knew it was true what they said about two alcoholics trying to live together. No one can stop those mornings. But there were other mornings too–ones where the voice that whispered in your ear, What else do you need? arrived through the very smile of Christ.
VI.
It’s the little things that get me. Shit breath kisses in the pale light of morning. A birthmark shaped like a three-legged dog. Apple shampoo. That thing you did with your hands–I used to call it “jellyfish in fugue”–when you were trying to explain a feeling, and you could find a good word but not the right word. But I come back to the big things too. Such as your need to pray. You would do it before every meal, and also before going to sleep. Prayer, you once told me, is like a song that’s been stuck in your head since you heard it as a kid. And when, out of curiosity, I asked what you would do if no one was listening, you said, Sing anyway.
VII.
The first time I saw you we were in the quiet wing of the downtown library, which some people refer to as “the bad library,” and you were sitting at a table by yourself, and you were reading a book called Prince Entropy: Accepting The Universe As An Unfair Fight. I was at the library to meet my sponsor, who worked in special collections, and who wanted to treat me to lunch to celebrate one year of sobriety. Because it would have been inappropriate to say, I never thought I’d see someone like you in the quiet wing of the bad library, I just pointed at your book and asked if you were interested in entropy. I don’t know a damn thing about it, you said, smiling like the future was a punchline. I’m just here to kill time.