Kitty had wanted to get him to a hospital. She’d pay for the Uber herself, she said, but Luke refused. He claimed to have a phobia of medical facilities and white coats in general. A lie, of course, and the frown on Kitty’s face said she knew it. What he really had a phobia of was paying thousands of dollars to be hooked up to a ventilator when he could get oxygen for free—albeit a smoggy, less concentrated form of oxygen—in his own front yard.

So Kitty stayed with him while he inhaled deep lungfuls of air, gradually restoring the toxins in his blood to a manageable level. He coughed copiously to begin with, but this eased as the time ticked along. The fog in his head cleared, too, and the smoky taste in his mouth faded. Luke tried standing after twenty minutes or so, but his legs weren’t there and he sat down again hard. Kitty perched on a cooler at the edge of his driveway and said calming things to him. “It’s all good, man, just breathe . . . in and out . . . you’ve got this.” And having her there—having someone there—felt novel and lovely and possibly more than he deserved.

She went into his house—a shithole; he hadn’t cleaned in three weeks—and returned with a cold, wet cloth that she drooped across his forehead. It was invigorating and he brightened immediately.

“Thank you,” he croaked.

His gratitude was sincere, not simply for the cold cloth, or the care, but for her having dragged him from the fumy precipice of death. Jesus, what had he been thinking? He couldn’t die yet, with so much left unresolved. And suicide was a damn good way of making himself look guilty. Or more guilty.

Kitty swept up the glass from the broken window, backed his car out of the garage, and started to clear the items from his lawn. Luke—upright but still woozy—helped with some of the lighter things. She told him to rest but he assured her that he was feeling better, which was true; he only wobbled a little when he walked, and the nausea had mostly passed. If he’d been in that garage any longer, though . . .

When only a few bits and pieces remained, including his ruined Ventura Knights one-sheet, Kitty picked up her skateboard and shuffled up the driveway. She turned back to him, hooking a thumb toward the block of apartments across the street.

“I didn’t get much sleep last night,” she said. “So, I’m—”

“Yeah. You go. I’m . . . yeah . . . it’s all good.”

“You’re not going to try that shit again?”