She washes her hands again, and then starts putting on light makeup because she has decided that she is going to go out. She’s just going to go and see what this Loudermilk is up to. She’s going to make herself do it. When she’s in college in a couple years or in Switzerland or wherever next year she’ll probably tell someone a hysterically funny story about how she threw herself at this much older guy who barely gave her the time of day, in spite of his rampant sex addiction, and all the unconsummated hard-ons she inspired in him, who was this stupid jock poet who at the time seemed intensely talented, and it will be a pretty good story.

Lizzie is done with her makeup and is rolling herself a j. She makes it strong and smokes half of it out her window. Then she goes downstairs and yells for whoever’s listening’s benefit that she’ll be back later on.

On the sidewalk she smokes the other half.

Lizzie thinks, In thirty seconds I shall be super fucked up!

She reminds herself that what she needs to do is navigate toward the Common Lot, then position herself so as to be able to intercept her Billy Zane.

Lizzie is delighted by the beauty of frozen nature around her. The world is so cold. She has no idea how long she spends on the sidewalk, staring up at an early star.

Later she is downtown, and even later she and Loudermilk are standing together in the alley behind the Common Lot, and Loudermilk is saying, “I can’t fucking do this,” and he’s holding the back of her head and crushing it to his breastplate, to the center of his chest.

Lizzie might mainly be thinking about how incredibly high she is or even how many times a nearly identical scene has played out before, but that doesn’t mean—even when Loudermilk departs abruptly with some shitty excuse about needing to go back inside so it doesn’t look like there’s anything between them—that it totally takes away from this epic moment.

IV: Your Best Reader

IV

YOUR BEST READER

Aboulomania

They were brilliant, and they were fools, with

Their relentless on-message responses and

Pan-gender upper-middle-class perfectionism,

Playing the role of rationalists in the extreme.

However bright the scenarios of birdsong and

Bells, forest-green winter wheat, silver-green

Ornaments, spasms of doubt and blame, they

Kept to the agreed-upon ops tempo with

Admirable sangfroid. Creating mass affluence

With windfalls for the fortunate few, they went

On “research binges,” only pausing to regroup

When a small, hassled woman appeared with

Afternoon treats of scotch and RingDings.

Reporters pounced, even as soldiers quietly

Applauded, in sudden graceful fits. They were

Very big in personal hygiene after devouring

A small alp of food. Their recommendations

Were quirky—ask any yeoman worth his fat.

Taped to the receiver was a sign in neat calligraphy