I kept a tight grip on the metal pole the entire way back. The train resurfaced and I checked my messages. Nothing. When I returned, Gene was in the yard again, rake in hand, looking up at the building.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Trying to figure out what I’m going to have done,” he said. “What’s up with you?”

I told him about the fight and how I’d left Carolyn sitting at the restaurant table.

Gene shook his head. “Who gives a shit about her past? We all have one.”

“I don’t care,” I said.

He guffawed. “Okay, well, here’s what we’ll do then. You go down there and break up with Carolyn, and when you get back, we’ll walk down to the middle school and scope out all the twelve-year-olds. We’ll find you a nice young one with no past at all.”

I looked at him, then dropped my head and stared at the ground.

“Piss off,” I said.

Gene snorted. “Let me give you a little advice, Stratton. Something I’m sure you already know but for some reason have yet to accept. The woman you want, the perfect one you seem to be looking for, she doesn’t exist. She doesn’t exist and she never has. So I suggest you stop looking and love what’s standing right in front of you, which is a girl who happens to love you, and you’re damn lucky to have her, too,” Gene said, and then he bent his head and went right back to raking. “Or don’t,” he added. “But you’ll regret it when she’s gone.”

I walked upstairs and took a Xanax and then paced the apartment waiting for Carolyn to come home. I knew she would. That’s the beauty of living with someone, knowing they always had to return. I just didn’t know how long it would take her, but I received that answer twenty minutes later, and by then, the pill had kicked in and all the fight had left me. I wanted to still be angry, but I knew my earlier argument was an untenable one and there was no anger to be found.

Carolyn’s eyes were red and I felt bad for what I had done, but I wasn’t in the mood to tell her so, or to apologize. If need be, then I’d just shut down and retreat into myself, certain that she’d concede if I held out long enough. But I wasn’t sure I had the endurance for even that. Mostly I just wanted to ignore it, pretend that nothing had happened and take a mulligan on the whole day.

“What the hell, Stratton?”

I looked at her, then shrugged.

“You left me sitting alone at a restaurant table. Do you know how stupid I felt?”