She covered her eyes and let out a deep whine. I didn’t know what to say. How could I explain to her that Jonathan Wheeler was simply one of the biggest assholes alive? I touched her face and she pulled me down. She put her arms around me. The clothing on her slipped away. She felt bony and her skin cold and prickly. I warmed her back by rubbing my hands across it. Then I warmed her sides and her tits. She pulled me tighter and put her mouth to mine and when I touched her thigh she opened her legs. I rubbed her crotch; the wetness stung my middle finger at the nail. I knew I should stop but I couldn’t and when I buried my face in her neck she reached for my belt buckle and I felt as lonely as I did every time I beat off. Her neck smelled sweaty and the woods were dark, the shadows blending in, and I was far from home and hungry and dirty and a little sick and I thought of Jackie and the old man and my mother and Jane, and finally I said, “No, S.D.”

I gathered her clothes and helped her dress.

“I wet my pants,” she said.

She pulled my hand to her wet pant leg.

We passed Stevens and Crawford and two other guys on the way to the infirmary. They looked scared and ran when they saw she was sobbing.

There was only one nurse on. I told her that S.D. needed clean pants and possibly first aid. The nurse took her into a room and came back telling me not to worry, S.D. would be taken care of and what was my name.

That’s when I ran, too.

PART Five

On my first night home for Christmas vacation I grabbed a bus up to Suicide and drank at the Hilltop Cafe with DeCenz, Drugs Delaney, and Tommy the Wire. It was the first time we’d been out together since Mousy’s funeral, and we were all feeling shitty. To make things worse, the Wire had just returned from his cousin’s cornball wedding. He’d never been accused of being a hopeless romantic and the ceremony had been planned by his cousin’s fruitcake fiancée, an ex-heroin addict, born-again Christian who’d left her brains in San Francisco.

“Tell you one thing,” the Wire said, “if I ever get hitched, it ain’t gonna be one of these make-up-your-own-poems-do-it-yourself jobs. That kind of crap’s for Delaney.”

I looked for Drugs’s reaction, but he was on drugs and just smiled into space.

“Drugs can climb a mountain at sunrise and stick petunias up everyone’s ass,” the Wire said. “When I get married, it’s gonna be ‘I do, she dooz, let’s party.’ And if my wife has to leave her guru at home, well, that’s just gonna be too bad.”