She looked up at me and smiled. When she smiled, even with the makeup on, I noticed the laugh lines running back from the corners of her eyes up to her temples. She was thirty-three, but she looked both older and younger.

“That you do,” she said.

♒

Tomorrow, Erin texted, much later. Just the one word. That meant her mind was in a knot that couldn’t get undone until some bars of music had revealed themselves in their forbidding, dissonant perfection.

You got it, I texted back. I fell asleep like I always did, quickly and into a nothingness without dreams.

♒

In the morning, Lauren was gone, but she had left the sketch she made of me at the park on the coffee table. It was my face, round and cratered, with the big eyebrows, my hair tied back. In the picture I didn’t look vexed or troubled at all. I looked happy.

♒

The next day, Saturday, I met Erin over at the same park. The sun was bright. She was sitting at the same picnic bench I had sat at with Lauren the day before, fiddling with an old digital camcorder.

“Hi,” I said.

She looked up and waved. “Hi. One sec, do you mind if I shoot some video? I’m behind on a piece.”

“You make video now?”

“No. I’ll explain later. Here,” she said, standing up. “Don’t mind me.”

She got off the bench and walked over to the river and waded into the shallow, silty part near the bend. She aimed the camera at the water.

“How’s the new place?” she said.

“It’s good,” I said.

“Mm,” she said. She aimed the camcorder up at the trees. “How’s living with Lauren?”

“It’s good. We both wake up really early.”

“Good,” she said, putting the camcorder down and facing me. “I’ve been trying to get up earlier. I don’t know how you do it. Here, that’s all I needed. C’mon, let’s go back to mine.”

“Sure.”

We walked back up to Main Street. She didn’t look in the store-front windows. Eventually, we got to the alley that cut between two tall green buildings. Behind the unpainted brick backside of the Main Street row, with its boxy protrusions and wooden fire escapes, there were long rows of one-story garages and shacks, painted white. One of them had a hole in the roof. She led me to the biggest garage, tucked behind a crooked tree, and unlocked a door next to it. This building belonged to her composition teacher, who was renting it to her for cheaper than it was worth.