She gave me a hard kiss on the mouth—it hurt like a motherfucker—and went out the front door. I ran my finger over the jagged edge of my tooth. At least it had taken my mind off the leg.

I slept through my dentist appointment. Maybe if I left it broken it would make me look tough. The students came at two and circled around me in my new chair like I was Socrates, with a glass of whiskey instead of hemlock. We’d just started going over their socially significant photographs—a smiling homeless man by the river, a row of safety helmets on a fence in front of a closed-down mill—when Chloe came in the door and slammed it behind her. She went straight upstairs. I’d been looking forward to talking about the assignment but I couldn’t concentrate on what the kids were saying. I let them go early without giving them anything for next week. When they were gone Chloe came down.

“Jim’s freaking out,” she said. “He wants to leave me.”

“Do you think he will?” I said.

“Well, we were having problems before you came along,” she said. “I don’t know. Meeting you might have clarified some things for me. Like maybe I need to be with somebody more interesting, you know? Like you were saying.”

I didn’t like where this was going.

“All relationships have their rough patches,” I said. “You might feel differently in a little while.”

“Can I stay with you for a couple of days?” she said.

“I mean…” She was standing over me. The skin around her eyes crinkled like she was going to cry. I stared at the ceiling, my leg throbbing. “Of course you should stay. Obviously. For as long as you need to.”

“Jesus, for a second I thought you were going to say no,” she said. “I’m gonnna bring some stuff in from the car.”

She went out, leaving the front door open. I watched her pull a suitcase and a duffel bag out of the backseat and set them down in the driveway. She leaned back into the car and emerged with a waffle iron piled high with paperbacks. She carried it into the kitchen without looking at me.

“I wish I could help,” I said.

Short Swoop, Long Line

Kate’s two sons, engulfed in their hoodies, were waiting in line at the pizza counter behind Alex. It was startling to see them in person. Alex had never met them, only glanced at pictures of them around Kate’s house when he slept over on nights when the kids were with their dad. In the pictures, they were smiling, their arms around their mother, sporting polo shirts and respectable haircuts. Dad was not in the pictures.