“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.”

Leslie fell into the padded swivel chair and opened her email. It seemed important to write this on a computer instead of her phone. In two blurry minutes—the pot helped, if that was really the right verb—she typed out a truncated version of the gracious, medium-true email to Marcus she’d been drafting in her head for days. She hoped all was well, was glad he was coming to town, hoped they could interact without issue. She signed it “With love, Les,” deleted that, retyped it, deleted it again, retyped it again, and hit send. Then she hurriedly logged out of her email, closed the Internet browser, and shut down the computer.

“Whoosh!” she yelled, and held her arms outstretched.

“Um,” Kim said. “Does that mean you’re ready to help me move the tables?”

They were unfolding the last of the chairs when Cal arrived with the beer, thirty-six jumbo cans from the brewery down the street, purchased at a bulk discount because they’d been badly dented during the production process.

“That guy out front’s in rough shape,” Cal said. “I tried to talk to him but he wasn’t having it.”

“You could call the police,” Kim said.

“That’s fucked up,” Cal said.

“Right, well, that’s as far as we got, too.”

“Nervous?” Leslie said.

“What, me worry?” Cal said. “I have faith in my material.”

Kim rolled her eyes behind his back.

Over the next fifteen minutes, the usual suspects wandered into the store, stepping around the drunken man. Max, the owner, was one of the last to arrive.