We went back and forth for a while. Kurt said he had dreamed about me, which came out like an apology for something, and I caught him up on some of the goings-on around town. Mary had left Ben, Ben had found Naomi. The record store on Burnside had gone out of business and the last albums on the shelves were all by friends of ours.

Just as we were preparing to hang up, making plans to make plans at some unspecified point in the future, almost as an afterthought, Kurt came out with one final question. He asked me if I felt like going to some hot springs near the mountain with him that afternoon. He was leaving in a few hours.

“It’s a great spot,” he said. “Come on. We can camp. We’ll be back by tomorrow night.” The way his voice sounded, buoyant and boyish, seemed only distantly related to my own presence on the phone, and I wondered briefly how many other people he’d asked before me.

“Yeah,” I said, surprising myself. Beyond the dark mouth of the front porch I could see the mailman slipping an envelope into the neighbor’s slot. “Why not? I could use some time in the woods.”

“You want to go?” he said. He sounded surprised, too.

“Yeah,” I said. “Absolutely.” I was already becoming attached to the idea. My friendship with Kurt was a point of some pride in my mind, after so many people had written him off over the years.

“Well, all right!” he said. “Let’s go. I just got gas.”

We hung up and I went back to the meditation pillow, pressing the fat mushroom between my knees. I tapped the bell and listened to its clean sound crumbling in the air, as my breath flowed in and out of my chest like the tides. I had trouble concentrating though. My mind had become full of loose, unfocused energy.

I arrived at Kurt’s place around noon. He was living on the ground floor of an eight-plex in Southeast, where humid exhaust from the laundry room hung in the air. After some sounds of obscure pounding around inside, the door rattled open, and I stepped back to let the screen door swing toward me.

“Hey!” I said.

“Hey!” Kurt said, smiling. We hugged and then backed up to take each other in.