“It’s pretty damn good,” I replied, though I felt I was somehow compromising myself by admitting it.

“I’m meeting a few friends at a bar down the street at eight. You want to come?”

I hesitated, knowing that a night of drinking was the last thing I needed or could afford.

Jeff, picking up on my hesitation, said, “Come on, first night in Chicago. My treat.”

I shrugged then, and said sure, why not, though I didn’t really feel like going out at all, nor did I trust myself not to have a similar meltdown as I’d had two nights before. I was still tired and groggy from the trip and knew a full night’s sleep was the thing needed to restore my sanity to a manageable level, and perhaps assuage a bit of the anxiety derived from living within society’s frayed edges, the result of barely getting by for the past six months. But it was Jeff’s apartment, and there was something about staying there alone when he had offered to pay that didn’t sit right.

I finished unpacking while Jeff watched the day’s financial news at an absurd volume in the living room. We had two glasses of Scotch each. When I poured myself the second he stared through narrow eyes as I filled it to the top. I carried the glass into the shower. When I came out the bottle of Johnnie Walker had been replaced with a plastic jug full of bad whiskey. I poured myself some and gave it the obligatory swirl. The color was slightly darker, seemed thicker. It smelled like turpentine and tasted like piss. Jeff went to the bathroom and I switched his glass with mine. He came back, took a drink, and cringed.

“Damn,” he said and looked at me.

“What?”

He shook his head but said nothing, politely drinking my glass while I finished his. It was, I later realized, one of the few victories I’d earn while staying there.

3

The bar was ten minutes away. As we walked, the tail of Jeff ’s long coat fluttered in the wind behind him like some kind of superhero’s cape; his hair didn’t move at all. Lights lined the street and painted the mist that escaped with each taken breath. A cold night, quiet in the same Midwestern way I remembered from Ohio.

“So what did you do with all your stuff?” he asked.

I glanced over without the slightest idea of what he was asking.

“Didn’t you have furniture?”

“Nope, only what I brought with me. Mostly just clothes, a few books, notepads. Stuff like that.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“You’re a brave man.”

I snorted. “I’m something. Don’t know if I’d call it brave.”

Jeff continually glanced over at me.