“Sorry,” I mumbled.

He pursed his lips, made a show of just how much he needed to jostle to edge around me. I didn’t move. He didn’t own this staircase. I waited until I heard the door close and lock behind him; but as soon as he was gone, the staircase held no more appeal. I took one final moment of gathering, then pushed myself back up to make my way home.

I saw you—again these words echoed through my mind. I tried to remember the tone in which he’d said them, but the words had taken on a celestial, disembodied air. He could have said them with great judgment or with great remove, I couldn’t now recall. Did it even matter? Well, it mattered.

I walked slowly, dreading home. I fiddled with the napkin in my pocket. Hi, it might say, I think I’m in love with you. It was definitively cold out now, and I crossed my bare arms tightly against it. I wanted to be held; I held myself. It is true, the note might say, I am Freud.

Had I wanted to be seen?

Finally I reached back into my pocket for the napkin and squinted at his script.

Come back.

Chapter 3

I walked for a long time, to the park and through it, mind burbling, so long that by the time I got home, Jojo was getting ready for her friend Celeste’s party. She invited me again to come. I still hadn’t made up my mind about my parents’ dinner, I felt a sickening anxiety every time I considered it, so again I put off the decision. My mother’s email lay in my inbox, needling at me. I tried to put it out of my mind. I wouldn’t reply yet, I would go with Jojo, and I would leave open the possibility of stopping by dinner later.

We walked to the F in thick jackets and bare legs. I’d changed into a long gray cotton shirt with a deep neck and loose sleeves that went to my elbows; I was wearing it as a dress, though it barely covered me. At the last minute, I’d transferred the bartender’s napkin to my jacket pocket; it was my talisman, and now I folded my fingers around it, pressed it into my palm. Celeste’s party was early; she had somehow gotten it into her head, Jojo had told me, that early-evening parties were more “refined.” As we waited on a corner for the light to change, a dog dropped into shitting position in front of us. His owner tugged his leash a little, to no effect, then looked at her nails, embarrassed. The dog was small, with wiry white fur and a pert black nose that glistened in the cold. I watched him shit, the brown curling and steaming on the sidewalk underneath his quivering butt, his face pulled into a wounded expression at the forced indignity of his position. I couldn’t look away, my sadness on his behalf filled me with familiar warmth, I uniquely understood his vulnerability and held it for him.