The “stuff” to be packed, in my case, was an old copy of Astragal, a gift from my clerk—forgiveness bribe disguised as gift (she’d never shown up to the bar)—left behind the counter with the other clerk, my name printed in blocky red on the brown paper sleeve. Astragal was belated, a book I should have found earlier; as soon as I opened it, I resented not having discovered it on my own. And, as soon as I opened it, I knew I would read it, enough of it, and then would send it along to S.

S loved early deaths, and Albertine Sarrazin had one. It wasn’t morbid, this attraction, it was—

I’ve flown away, my dears!

—a tattooed sentence shoves itself into the present, on a slender freckled arm. The student (or grad student, or neither) wants to tell me something; I can’t tell what.

“It’s from the book you’re reading.” A finger from the other hand pointing out the sentence, tapping on it. Courier. Courier New, maybe. American Typewriter.

If I were to tell you that within five seconds, this person with the Sarrazin tattoo had fallen into my lap, that my coffee thermos had been thrown onto their lap, which was also my lap, and begun to dribble, and that the conductor, so coolly authoritarian just minutes before, was on the floor crying “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” would you imagine you knew what just happened?

I love it when you try to guess. Sometimes it’s exactly what I need.

GASLIGHTS

It was Leslie’s idea—the host, and the grower—to screen both versions of the film and to screen them in reverse chronological order, and it was Dawn’s idea to make it a potluck, which she organized, making sure that there would be plenty salt, plenty sweet, plenty fat, and plenty crunch. Marc came late, characteristically, but (also characteristically) brought the best booze: a large bottle of hand-labeled medicinal gin. Everybody took off their wet boots, their wet coats, at the door.

You haven’t heard these names before, but you know the named: Marc the sweaty hugger from the fair, Leslie the suggester of the composting-toilet syllabus. There was Kim, trailing sawdust from his overalls, and Stella, who’d come straight from the farm. It wasn’t clear if the others would show, and we started the film (1944) while circulating a bowl of Gas & Guns.

I sank into the sofa next to Kim, and hesitated when the pipe reached me. I was inexplicably nervous: I could feel my heart pumping, I could hear it in my jaw. I couldn’t say what I was anticipating, only that I was anticipating something—and (I can’t say how I knew this) that the something had to do with S.