I found a playground and sat on the swing waiting for him to leave, feeling the cold burn the tips of my ears and fingers while wondering how I could survive the next two or three weeks. I couldn’t make it any longer than that. I’d have to keep a low profile, make myself invisible, do my best to be out of the apartment when he was there. I doubted it’d be enough. Jeff was precisely as I remembered: uptight, patronizing, someone who’d cut and run at the first hint of trouble, someone who couldn’t care less about those less fortunate than he. We were a group of five back then, and I don’t think any of us were ever great friends with Jeff, though at times we might have parodied a great friendship. His father was the president of the bank. Our parents sweated at the forge or worked construction. Though it wasn’t fair, I think we all hated him for that, the way everything was simply handed to him while the rest of us wore hand-me-downs and ate microwavable dinners. He was confident and in his eyes there was always that glint of intelligence we hoped was in our own. He was a person we secretly tried to mirror, a novelty, one who’d move on to great things and forget the rest of us in the process. There was never any doubt about that. And we all hated him, even while desperately seeking his approval. Now, this many years later, I can’t figure out why in the hell we wanted it in the first place.

four

1

ON MONDAY MORNING, AFTER I’d spent much of Saturday and all of Sunday applying for more jobs, my phone rang requesting an interview in Evanston later that day. My eyes shot open. I gripped the phone tightly, so excited at the prospect of a job that I had only a foggy notion of what the position actually was—something editorial—but had I understood completely I wouldn’t have cared. I’d shovel shit if it paid (and had even applied to do so).

I unrolled my only suit. It was wrinkled, imbued with stale cigarette smoke that I could smell even before it was out of its vinyl bag; I had last worn it eleven months earlier to a New Year’s Eve party. I walked through Jeff’s bedroom, entered his bathroom, and sifted through the ten or so bottles of cologne I’d noticed when he gave me the tour. I found one I liked. I plugged in his iron and set up the board. I laid out the pants first, which smelled considerably worse since I’d taken off the jacket early in the night. I used five sprays of the cologne, ironed the slacks, sprayed them five more times, ironed them again. The smoke was reasonably masked, but there was no denying it was still there.