I people-watched until I was warm. I finished the coffee, washed my face and hands and changed clothes in the downstairs bathroom, then left. Outside, the sky was covered with low, gray clouds. There were few trees, seemed to be far more leaves swirling than there were trees to shed them. The wind had kicked up and howled with steady sibilance. The city quickly passing into winter.

2

Jeff ’s place was near the lake, a five-minute walk off the Armitage stop, in Lincoln Park, just north of downtown. The neighborhood was nice, the air imbued with a crispness I found somewhat welcoming, cars parked along each side of the tree-lined street. He owned the second floor of a well-kept three-story brownstone. I had spent all morning bumming around downtown and it was four o’clock when I got there. He said he’d arrive at six. Instead of waiting I propped my bag against his door and found a nearby deli. I spent six dollars on a sandwich and ate it as I watched the shadows lengthen. The longer I sat the more nervous I grew, and my heart was pounding by the time I walked back. I found Jeff on the porch, bent over my bag with his back to me.

“Hey asshole, why don’t you rummage through your own shit?” I said.

He turned around and grinned. The overhead light cast down a pillar of yellow that illuminated only his face, and the second I saw it, something shifted inside of me. His eyes took me in. What did I see in them? Was it pity at my obvious indigence based on the clothes I wore and the bag I carried, or was it because of my past, the look of conceit that comes with being privy to secrets unknown to others? I guessed the latter, for it was the same look I endured from others my last two years in Ohio that had made me flee the first chance I got. I felt self-conscious, the years weighing heavily in the empty space between us.

There was no doubting just how successful Jeff had become. He had maintained the same good looks he’d had in high school, the same dark, bushy brows, except now they looked trimmed, maybe waxed. He wore a full suit beneath a black wool coat that fell to his calves—the kind almost exclusively worn by businessmen and attorneys—while exuding hints of academic dignity from the red plaid scarf around his neck. Leather gloves covered his hands and he slowly rubbed them together as though in contemplation. Clean-shaven, hair slicked back with pomade. I remembered now just how much I’d always hated him.

“Stratton Brown, you bastard. How the hell are you?”

“Still livin’. That’s something, right?”

“Sure, sure.”