“I’d totally get with her if she was into that,” Karen said. “I wouldn’t even feel bad about it.”

The next week Jim and Chloe got me into the back of their Subaru and took me to the hospital for a checkup on my progress. I felt every bump in the road but I tried not to make too much noise.

“I remember when I broke my ankle on a climb,” Jim said. “Getting back to camp was a bitch and a half. But I had to do it, you know? I put a stick in my mouth to bite down on when the pain got bad.”

“Maybe you were a dog in another life,” Chloe said.

The news at the hospital wasn’t good. The bone hadn’t been healing properly and they were going to have to do surgery. I’d have to rest the leg for another three months and do serious PT.

“Look on the bright side,” Chloe said. “If you were a horse they’d have put you down a long time ago.”

We went back to my house and Chloe and Jim decided the only thing to do in the face of my bad news was to throw a party. I would hold court on the couch and everyone would celebrate around me. Calls were made; beer was brought. My summer colleagues straggled by, along with grad students I’d never seen before. Some of them even talked to me.

“Do you like it better here or in Tennessee?” said a chubby guy in black-frame glasses. I had a tolerable assistant professor gig at a small college there, where I taught “intro to craft” courses and the occasional Harry Callahan elective.

“Usually here,” I said. “But stuck on a couch in the mountains is worse than stuck on a couch in the South. Out here I’d usually be outside taking pictures of roadkill and shit. Back home I’d be on the couch anyway trying to stay cool. I don’t even have neighbors to stare at.”

“You could have been Rear Window,” the guy said.

“I’m more into front-door action myself,” I said.

“Are you on drugs or something?”

I drank a little more on top of my pain meds and things got funky. There were these people all over my house for no reason. They were out back sitting on the rusty pickup and crowded in the living room dancing a little. It felt like hours since I’d seen Chloe, whose fault all this was. Then she was at the foot of the couch, up at the edge of the cushion to avoid my swollen leg. She didn’t seem drunk but I got the sense that she was lit up somehow, different. Something was activated in her.

“Have you always lived in Montana?” I said.

“I grew up in Helena,” she said. “And made it all the way to Missoula.”