I let my hand curl around his arm as we crossed the street. “What is it, three more days until the concert?”

“Three more days.” He said it like it was a death sentence. “And I’m on dangerous ground now, you know? I have to keep it sunny, easy, charming. It’s the price of admission here. Not angry. Not stressed. Just—”

“Where is here? Amberl—”

“Anywhere! It’s a fucking tight rope.”

I didn’t know what to say, except, “I understand.”

“No!” He broke away. “You don’t understand, Ruby. You can’t.”

I watched him. A woman’s bag hit me as she passed. “I . . .”

Dammit, I was going to say it again. I understand. Like I understood any of this.

He straightened. Reached for my hand. I let him take it and held on tight.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“No.” I shook my head. “Don’t. It’s . . .”

“I’ll be better now,” he said, not confident but trying. “You’re back. It’ll all be fine.”

Why? Why should anything hinge on me when you won’t let me in, when I don’t understand, when you didn’t even tell me in the first place?

But I was his girlfriend—it should be my job to make him feel better, however I could. I squeezed him closer as he kissed my temple, ease returning with every block. Two people walking through the city. A happy couple. Normal.

Then we got to his apartment.

The walls were a museum installation, a complete symphony, beginning to end in gently waving rows. The rest was an abomination. Every horizontal surface was awash in a sea of discarded composition pages, refuse swimming in its depths. Oscar walked ahead of me, stepping over an empty takeout carton, a greasy paper plate, a trailing pile of dirty laundry, a half-full glass of orange juice, crumpled, matted napkins . . .

“You can’t live like this,” I said, frozen in the door. “I can’t live like this.”

Oscar turned back with a sheepish smile. “I’ll clean it, I promise, let’s just get some dinner first.”

But I’d already started—I had to—frantic, first with the obvious garbage, not bothering to sort things out for recycling, as much as my arms could carry.

“Do you have trash bags?”

“Ruby, stop,” Oscar said. “We’ll go someplace else.”

“It’s no wonder you feel the way you do, you can’t . . .” I dug for a bag in his kitchen drawer, tried to shake it open, dropped the whole pile. “This is . . .”

I had a sudden memory from a decade ago, Mom in the upstairs hallway, holding composition paper, recoiling as Dad screamed from the study, “Put them down exactly where you found them.”

“How did you let it get like this?” I leaned over to pick up the rest, tears dropping from my eyes onto the floor, circles of gray on white paper, everywhere paper.