“He’s a grown-up,” she says, “we’re all grown-ups,” although it does not seem this is so. There is a wildness, is one way to put it, prominent right this second but usually kept fenced in. It growls beneath friendships and romances, loyalties and networks, underneath every society pretending it’s working itself out. It is at odds with all careful talk and considerate action, thrumming and rustling always in favor of thrashing it out. It’s impossible, inapplicable to say you can’t fight it. It’s like saying you can’t grab the whole wide sky, like you can’t clamber over the ocean or everyone who has died. There’s nothing to fight; you can’t fight it because you don’t. It has set upon Martin like a devil or a ghost, and Stanford is gone out the door and the door is gone too, latched and locked so it’s just another wall, and they fuck on the floor of the bar like animals, although Padgett cannot think of an animal who has ever made her come so hard. She screams with it, leaving Stanford faintly astonished on the sidewalk near the street. His hands are winey and he looks at the curb for a dropped napkin or some piece of trash clean enough to clean his hands. When he finds nothing, he strides across the street, the wires for the streetcars stretched over him like the trails of shooting stars.

Around the Blend is open, quite full. Paper napkins are in a basket with sugar and other sundries. Stanford wipes down and tosses them away. His hands are still sticky but oh well. He makes a vow, again but no less fervently and annoyed, that Padgett is not his problem, and tries diligently to believe this while he waits in line. He will order a coffee he does not need. Do not make enemies on the block where you do business, do not steal napkins and vanish into the evening dim. Martin will be a wreck anyway, with Padgett leaping upon them—Padgett who is not his problem—so Stanford should have energy for the work tonight while Martin sulks, broken.

He pulls out his phone and moves through correspondence as distraction. A party, a friend. A noble cause. People behind him in line, and ahead of him, are all rolling suitcases with their handles pulled straight up like lifeguard chairs. What culture am I in? Stanford wonders, now and often, about this adopted city that is raising him. He is getting older, less likely to be successful or even noticed, even if he keeps up with the weights. He sleeps around less, or at least less often, his twenties as gone as that cabernet, notes of berries and nonsense, that sliced him a little between his finger and opposable thumb.

“Large coffee,” he says, when it’s his turn.

“To go?”

“No, I’ll drink it and leave.”