They went out to the alley behind the store, Kim carrying a box full of unsold literary magazines with the front covers ripped off for recycling. Leslie stood in the spot closer to the street as a lookout while Kim leaned against the wall and loaded the one-hitter painted to look like a cigarette. Their furtiveness was mostly for fun—they were aware of exactly no one who’d had any trouble getting stoned in Missoula. Still, Leslie found it hard to strike the surreptitious East Coast habits she’d developed as a teen during the late, feeble years of the war on drugs, even as, she’d been told, you could now smoke a joint on the street in Manhattan without fear of anything more than a ticket, at least if you were white.

“Yo, hit this,” Kim said, and Leslie did.

“We sold, like, three books today,” Kim said. “And they were, like, the gluten-free cookbook. All of them.”

Leslie passed the piece back.

“Is Max, what, selling organs on the side?” Leslie said.

“I wish he’d cut me in if he was,” said Kim, exhaling smoke. “I think he might just be rich somehow.”

Leslie took another hit.

“How’s the book coming?” she said.

“What are you, my agent?” Kim said.

“Sorry for being curious about your stupid life ambitions,” Leslie said.

“It’s going slow, man.” She looked down the barrel of the one-hitter and then tapped the ash out against the wall. “You think, like, Oh, it’s my life, I can write that, I went to graduate school. But you have to not hate what you write, you know? Which is hard if you hate yourself to begin with.”

“Maybe you should try not writing about yourself,” Leslie said.

“Who’d want to read that?” Kim said.

They went back into the bookstore, which was dim following the late-afternoon glare. Leslie was surprised by the sharp vertigo of despair—stoned in the company of her favorite friend, surrounded by good books. She had to admit that she was dreading Cal’s arrival and subsequent reading. She knew this was unkind, but lying to herself wasn’t going very well. Her attempt at self-deception involved rehearsing dramatic internal monologues of uncertainty. Well, I don’t know I’m unhappy. Thinking that Cal depresses me doesn’t mean he actually depresses me. But she knew, underneath these contortions, that if one had these thoughts for long enough, self-obfuscated or otherwise, one would eventually need to act on them.

“You okay?” Kim said.

Leslie looked up and realized she’d been standing at the poetry table unconsciously holding a waifish new Anne Carson hardcover.

“Can I use the computer for a minute?” she said.

“Let me just close out for the day,” Kim said. “Unless you’re buying that.”

“Right, like I’m going to just buy a book,” Leslie said. “Oh, look at me, I’m contributing to the local economy by purchasing important literature.”

“It does sound pretty dumb when you say it in that voice. Computer’s yours.”