“People in cities. The old, fake America. I should move back to New York and be a brand consultant or whatever.”

“Yeah, follow your dreams,” Jake said.

“Well, what are you doing?”

“I don’t know, man. Working on some poetry. Figuring out how to dedicate my energy toward something moderately positive. Picking up some paychecks when I can.”

“Could be worse,” she said.

“Probably ends badly, though,” he said. “Gonna be a lotta slow singing, and flower bringing, et cetera.” The man knew his Biggie—a sign? He put out his cigarette and dropped it in the Mason jar full of butts by the back door.

“But hey, look,” he said. He put his hand on her shoulder. “Fuck it. I’m going to this very low-key wedding tomorrow in Wyoming and need to leave at, like, the crack of dawn. Long shot, but: Do you want to come, by any chance?”

“Sorry, what is it?” Leslie said.

“My friends are getting married at this hot springs. It’s kind of a camping thing? The kind of thing that can be crashed without fear of reprisal, I mean? It’s going be real fun, but it is like seven hours away. And I realize you probably have shit to do, and that this might be way too weird. You just seem cool is all.”

Leslie didn’t totally appreciate being put on the spot, but the fact was, no, it wasn’t too weird—she was in Missoula. And this maybe fell into the category of decisions that were romantic and worth doing but not completely awful and full of shit, if that category existed.

“That sounds kind of great, actually,” she said. “You’d need to pick me up … when?”

“A little before five a.m.?” he said. “That’s pretty soon.”

“Not soon enough,” Leslie said. She raised her chin to see if he’d kiss her, but he didn’t.

She woke to her alarm at 4:30. She dumped out the books and dirty clothes that had been in her duffel bag since her last trip home six months earlier and hurriedly filled it with different dirty clothes, a musty bathing suit, and books she hoped she might someday want to read. The Man Without Qualities? Check. Probably wouldn’t need volume two, though. She put on a mostly unrumpled flowery sundress that it was too cold out to wear now, and would be again by nightfall, but she threw her parka over it and called it a day. She saw headlights at the curb. All of her dishes were in the sink and her clothes and books were now strewn across the apartment. She locked the door behind her for the first time in weeks.

Jake was wearing a baseball cap and a bulky checked flannel coat. With his truck and his beard, out there in the dark, Leslie would not normally have been happy to see him. Another mountain creep waiting through the night for someone to come out, or, worse, working up the dubious courage to go in. She hopped up into the smoke-smelling cab. A chubby little blue heeler occupied the space between them.