Cliff could not decide what to say. A nearly identical situation had happened to him and Jill. She’d been eating a turkey sandwich and he’d flicked a wasp from her wrist. She’d had tears in her eyes—she said she always got teary when she saw wasps—and then told him he’d saved her life. He’d brushed it off as mere dramatics, but from that moment on they were inseparable. She would come visit him at the bar, where he’d give her cups of maraschino cherries, whose stems she claimed to knot with her tongue, but which she really tied under the bar when nobody was looking. Occasionally, he’d pocket one of the knots so he could find it later and make himself smile. He’d found one just the other day, at the bottom of his laundry basket.

“Is it a good story?” Heidi was asking. “Some people think it’s silly. They don’t see the point. It’s not that I was in any real danger. Most likely the bee would have flow away. The point is that when two people are meant for one another, these little things—the bees— they become fate. The universe plants them around us, and it’s our responsibility to notice them.”

Cliff was suddenly uneasy. She had just articulated the thing he’d been trying to resolve in his mind since meeting Jill—the very magic that had kept him from moving on from her, from moving away from Kansas. He felt there was something larger than him or Jill or their relationship at stake. The universe had willed them together—what were the chances of a boy from Connecticut meeting a girl from Kansas in Yellowstone?—and their breakup was an act of defiance against it. If the world handed you an oyster, weren’t you at least obligated to search for the pearl? There were other, more peripheral superstitions: that his lucky number was seven and Jill was the seventh girl he’d ever slept with; that all of the best people in his life—his grandmother, Lynn; his father, Carl; his best friends, Jay, Saul, and June—all had one-syllable names; that he and Jill had both, at different times, owned a cat named Bubbles.

“I think it’s my bedtime,” Heidi said, and placed her book face-down on the coffee table. She looked at Cliff with a carefulness that made his heart ache. It was as if she understood what had happened between him and Jill and was apologizing for it. “I’m so happy the room worked out,” she said. “It’s a relief to have a man in the house again.” She immediately said, “Oh, I didn’t mean it like that. Not like you’re replacing anyone—”

“It’s fine,” Cliff said.

“But I want you to know,” she went on, “if you ever need anything—” She shrugged. “I don’t lock my door at night. That’s all I wanted to tell you. I don’t lock my door.”

“Heidi,” he said, suddenly embarrassed for the both of them. “I don’t think—”

“I forgot to tell you I’m a little drunk. I should have said that from the beginning—I’ve had some wine. Don’t listen to me. Okay? I’m just drunk.” She smiled at Cliff, but he could see she was humiliated. She turned and headed toward her room, where he knew she would cry, having made a fool of herself. She had once mentioned to him that she did not drink; her mother had been an alcoholic.