I went behind the squat restaurant in the strip mall opposite the river and she came out the back door with a cigarette dangling from her mouth, untying her apron. Behind her, there was a clamor of dishes, industrial sinks, and people shouting to each other. She closed the door and the sound faded.

“How was work?”

“Shitty,” she said matter-of-factly. “You have any job interviews lined up yet?”

“Working on it,” I lied.

“Cool. I wish I was unemployed. I don’t, but, you know, I do. Wanna go to Frog Island Park?”

I nodded.

We walked through the small downtown area, near the old train crossing. Main Street is just behind the tracks over there. I think every town has a Main Street. Parking lots next to old, old three-story buildings with arched windows, storefronts on the first floor. Some bars and restaurants with stray figures eating in the big windows. If this area went on and on instead of terminating at the river bridge, it could be a city. A strange kind of antique city, a city of emptiness where people somehow still lived.

As we walked, Lauren listed a bunch of places I could work. The anarchist bookstore, some of the coffee shops. The university a long bus route away, which always needed recent graduates to fill out paperwork. She said she knows someone who studied English and works in a greenhouse now, and offered to give me their phone number.

“You’re quiet,” she said as we descended the long, wide concrete path to the park, which was covered in tall, weedy grasses and the frail, dead stalks of dandelions and ragweed, burdocks and mulleins here and there, curious and warped sentinels.

“I guess,” I said.

We alighted on a picnic bench near the bend in the river, next to a big cottonwood tree that had already shed all its leaves.

“Is something going on?” she said. “You seem sort of distant.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Mostly it’s just the same old stuff.”

“Sure thing,” she said.

From her bag Lauren produced a Ziploc of weed and a grinder, a water bottle, and her little purple sketchbook. She rolled a joint on the sketchbook and handed it to me. While I lit it, she opened the sketchbook and looked over at me, moving her pen over the page.

“Can I draw you?” she said.

“Sure,” I said, handing the joint back. She balanced the notebook on her knee so she could keep drawing while inhaling.

“I’m thinking of calling things off with Erin,” I said.

“Oh, yay,” she said, not looking up. “Aren’t we seeing her tonight?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Sounds like you don’t want to,” she said.

“I don’t know,” I repeated.

“What changed?” she said. “Like, I’m curious what led to that decision.”

“I have limited time on Earth,” I said.