Henry did not like that he liked this, that he was swooning. The Pall Mall hadn’t stabilized him one bit. The sight of Michelle, the scent and sound of her, had gotten him swervy, woozy, drunk.

And the beer. Definitely the beer had, too.

“Right,” he said, looking away from Michelle, the pitcher, and instead fixing his sights down to the tabletop’s black iron grating. The diamond-shaped apertures started folding in on themselves like a monochrome kaleidoscope. He closed one eye, concentrated. The patterns shifted one last time, and behind their blur, right below them, Michelle’s knee came into focus.

He grabbed it. Pulled it tight against his own knee, then bent himself as close to her as his spine allowed. He looked her in the eyes. He had so much to tell her but nowhere to start. He inhaled, and then it hit him.

He told her he wanted to write her a symphony.

“And I,” she said, “want you to eat some chicken wings.”

$43.00

The wings steadied his stomach, the cocaine his sights.

It was a night of firsts. First date, first strip club, and now, first time driving drunk. Even though the clutch had been too spongy under the dumbbell of his left foot and he’d killed the engine twice in the strip club parking lot, he was driving smoothly and for the most part straight, now that they were cruising in fourth gear. While Michelle had been navigating the way off the service road and onto an empty ribbon of asphalt slicing deeper and deeper into the plains, he concentrated on feeding the lane stripes into the bottom left corner of the windshield to keep from swerving.

He hadn’t asked where Michelle was leading them since he didn’t really care. Didn’t even notice they’d pulled in to a drive-in theater until she yipped that he’d blown straight past the ticket booth. After the beer and wings and lines and movie tickets, he’d burned through half his budget and couldn’t give half a goddamn.

The theater was a fenced-in field. Rows were marked by mellow tire ruts pressed into dead grass. He steered them up front to the spot farthest from the attendants and concession booth, windshield facing the screen. As Michelle went to dial the radio to the drive-in’s AM wavelength, she suggested spinning around so they could watch from the truck bed. He cranked the gear stick into reverse.

Before backing up, he threw his elbow up to look over his shoulder and accidentally knocked the center console into its upright position.

“Ha,” she said. “Lookie here.”

The bouquet was smooshed flat, more paint splatter than floral arrangement.

“Who these for?” she said. “Hhhmmm?”