I jumped fell backward, ran downstairs, losing pages everywhere, molting. As I went, I somehow threw up those cherries, out and all over myself.

I do believe some howling was involved. On the street, me racing barefoot, stragglers sure got out of my way darn quick. One employee ducked clear of the pizza place (“Slice”), said “What the … ?” and bobbed back in. I heard my name said. Ossorio’s was closed or closing, no one saw me do this dash. The shrieking was unmanly, childlike, girlish really.

When I rushed into my fourth-floor rear, me filthy, stinking, and groaning like some ox, my phone was ringing but of course I didn’t answer. I could picture them nude at the kitchen table now, postcoital, having finished the act off anyway, sharing one cigarette and talking strategy. I was now their problem child, the loser.

I yanked my receiver off the hook and stuffed it in a pillowcase and trailed the cord into the closet, slammed the door hard. I lay down on my bed and made those sounds you’re glad nobody else will ever have to hear. But sounds you must hear, as someone grownup and nearby and concerned would; and it only makes you sadder for yourself. I laughed because at that moment what I most wanted was a little dog, a terrier, a loyal clean little terrier to welcome its master. Marse Hartley Airedale is Home! And it’d be frisky, and it didn’t even have to be all that clean even. Messy could be good. I knew I would be, for a long time.

Hearing me made me worry in all the ways you wish those others would. There, there. There, terrier, there.

I told myself in a Carolina twang, “It could have been you with him.” And then a New York voice snapped, “Yeah, right. Fat chance, you no-talent scar-sided nonentity. The only way you’ll ever get into the Times is with your next self-paid ‘Needs Work’ ad.”

I kept remembering our vacationing together, once in a hurry on hearing we could get a rental car for nearly nothing, we just blazed right out to P-town, where we took lots of pictures I still own, and those two stars sat, automatic, in the front seat and I wedged—just as immediately—in back, between them, my head almost in line with theirs. Were they doing it even then? After I tomcatted out to stalk the bars, and after Robert seemed to leave with some French Canadian guy beautiful as a new red Swiss Army jack knife featuring all attachments, was R really stealing back up to her pink gingham guesthouse room? I did know I had been happy as their Airedale, if that is what I was. I was learning. I was their darling, I was potential. I was still perpetually ajunior, theirs. They, maybe the Stronger. I, though, surely kinder.