“Sounds like a catch.”

“My god, I feel like I’ve discovered sliced bread or something.” She started laughing, a girlish, hysterical laugh that made a few people in the coffee shop turn to look. “I’m sorry,” she said, holding a hand over her mouth. “I just keep looking at everyone and thinking: Did they have sex like this last night?”

“I’m happy for you,” I said, trying very hard not to say something mean.

“What about your guy?” Maxine asked. “Tell me everything.”

“He took me home. That’s all.”

“That’s all? He just dropped you off?”

I tried to smile. “We just met them yesterday. What did you expect? A proposal?”

Maxine frowned. “I just hoped you would hit it off like Walt and I did. That maybe we could double-date. I don’t know. I’m sorry. I know it’s silly—we did just meet them. It’s crazy.”

“It is. It’s very crazy.”

“Do you want me to have Walt ask Jackson about you? To have him push things along?”

“God, no. I mean, no. It’s okay. Thanks, though. I appreciate it.”

“Okay.” She looked into her coffee, as if Walt’s face were in there. She smiled a dopey smile that made me want to cry. Why’d yours work and not mine? I wanted to ask. Instead, I asked, “Have you heard anything about there being bears in Kansas?”

“Like real bears?”

“Yeah. Black bears.”

She laughed. “Someone’s pulling your leg.”

I heard the news on TV about a month later, while waiting for an oil change. I hadn’t had a date since Jackson and found myself filling my spare time with unnecessary chores and errands: steam-cleaning my curtains, ironing clothes that didn’t fit me anymore. One day I drove all the way to a hardware store in Topeka just to buy a new shower-head—I’d gotten it into my mind that the old one was contaminated with poison. When there was nothing left to do, I vacuumed my carpet, imaging whole cities of fleas spiraling up into the tube.

It was the six o’clock news and the anchors donned droopy-eyed expressions to prove their sadness. An eleven-year-old girl had been mauled in her grandmother’s backyard, just a few miles outside of Vinland. The little girl, who had lost a leg and an eye, had been out feeding her grandmother’s mastiffs. Upon finding the bear, and her mangled granddaughter, the grandmother grabbed a rifle and fired seven bullets. Two of them entered the black bear’s brain.

The grandmother was now on the news, discussing the incident with a pretty, wide-eyed news anchor. The grandmother had a mane of white hair and a small, puckered mouth. “Terrible monsters, bears,” she said, scowling into the anchor’s microphone. “What they did to my poor baby. They should be ashamed of themselves. The whole species. Wish there were more of them out here. I’d shoot a whole family of ’em if I could. Have myself a good ole Berenstain Bear massacre. Hang their big fat heads in a row above my oven.” She pursed her lips into a tight smile, savoring the thought of it.