Not so comfortable a place, a different vibe here. No Johnny Cash—no old-fashioned jukebox. TV could be tuned to sports or to Fox News. Raucous, rowdy. Clientele younger guys, truckers. And a bare plank floor, blank ceiling that failed to soften and blur voices.

Red neon in the window at the Black Rooster. The small trip of the heart that is hope.

If, when she wished to be unfaithful to Ned Spires. Unfaithful to Wild Goose. Drinking at the Black Rooster for the night.

Stricken with guilt over his young children, Ned Spires stayed away from the Wild Goose for five, six days. Juliana had nearly given up hope, but then he’d unexpectedly returned. A drinker will always return, you have only to wait. And that night in Juliana’s studio apartment, in Juliana’s thrift-shop brass bed that winced beneath their weight. Juliana’s hair spilling around the man’s face, onto his shoulders. Lifting herself above him, he’d gripped her hips. Big-knuckled hands, surprisingly strong.

Could he lift his youngest child in one hand?—Juliana marveled.

Once, her father had lifted her in one hand. She could swear. She could recall. Lifted toward the ceiling, like an offering to the gods.

Above Ned Spires, lowering herself onto him, gently. Their lovemaking was tender, even contemplative. Juliana did not want to think that their lovemaking was like poetry, a rueful past tense.

The skin of her face was drawn tight to bursting. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets, blind. Her brain was struck blind, she could not bear it—such sensation, and the fleetingness of such sensation. All her bones turned to water. A convulsion in her loins that went on and on and on, leaving her faint, exhausted.

… love you. Love love love you don’t leave me …

There were no words that were genuine, the poet had said. Because all words have become worn, as pebbles worn smooth by the tide.

As worn as stone steps. So many have trod upon.

She’d protested, these words were genuine. For her. It was the first time she’d loved anyone. Truly loved a man.

Pleading with this man with the sad-skeptical eyes, to believe her.

Reciprocated desire is the risk. Juliana had grown to desire men at a distance. To experience herself as the object of desire: a figure in a mirror, unattainable.

You see, hear yourself through a scrim of alcohol. Otherwise life is too raw. Touch blundering and too raw.

She’d confided in Ned Spires that she’d once been engaged. In the spring of her senior year of college. Like a dream it had been, she’d been a fiancée and had had a fiancé. Like a dream, it faded from memory as soon as she’d wakened.

And you didn’t love him? The fiancé?—with gentle irony Ned Spires spoke, like one teasing out inaccuracies in a child.

No. I didn’t know what love was.

And now—you know what love is?

Are you laughing at me? That isn’t nice.