“Oh. I see. Well, I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

I get back in the car and sit still for a while, trying to remind myself that not everyone is dying. And thinking that, some time, I ought to try hanging up my cape.

* * *

On the way to Fitz’s, I get stuck in heavy traffic. One of the bad things about doing the work I do. But I can’t imagine doing anything else.

I turn on the radio, tune it to the classical station. Did they dream the music they wrote, those composers? Did they rise up in the morning full of something that made them feel tight at the center, then write out the notes and feel the slow release? And when they played it for the people they loved, did those people really hear it? I wonder sometimes about the nature of relationships, if anything that was once perfect in them is ever sustained. Every time I go to a restaurant alone, I feel a little sorry for myself until I see so many couples staring past each other, seemingly so without. Why enter into anything, when you end up scraping the bottom so soon? And yet the alternative makes for such sad echoes off the canyon walls of self, I know that.

I think of my parents, esctatic looking in their wedding pictures. Years later, neither of them wore their rings; they were tossed in a dresser drawer. Once, when I was around twelve years old, my mother found me sitting on her bed and playing with those wide gold bands. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Nothing,” I said. She held out her hand, I put the rings in them, and she put them back in the dresser, saying, “Leave them there.” Why? I remember thinking.

I wish I hadn’t agreed to go to the restaurant tonight. Enchiladas suisas for the fifth wheel, please. What an odd trio we will be. What will the waiter think? Pretty good looking guy, if he’d lose the kerchief. Beautiful woman. And … must be a friend.

• • •

“I got something to tell you,” Fitz says.

I look up from my bag, where I’ve been digging around for my stethoscope. “What’s that?”

He’s been cheating on his diet, I suppose. He’s neglected to take his medication.

“I’m getting married.”

I sit back on my heels. “Really!”

“Sure enough.”

“Who’s the woman?”

“Well, she called Misty Dream, down at the club. But her real name Miss Angela Brooks.”

“Well, Fitz. Congratulations!”

He nods, smiling widely. “Yes, indeed. Thank you.”

“Will you be doing this soon?”

“Tonight.”

“Tonight!”

“Yeah, after the last show. We found a minister stays up late.”

“And … will she be living here with you?”