She looked at me, at one eye and then the other eye. Back to the right eye, back to the left. “I bet you’re lying.” Her voice was muddy in her throat. She looked one last time, her hands on her knees, ducking down to the open window. “God,” she said, “you lie so bad,” not knowing if the way I looked was a joke or not, or where it might be leading.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“We haven’t seen each other in two weeks,” she said.

“Louise, take a pill,” I said.

Louise coughed and pulled a tissue out of her pocket. “What am I doing?” she said, and she stood up. I was left sitting in the driver’s seat, staring at her fly. Her hips turned toward the house and then toward her car. Then she was gone.

I went back inside and took the clothes off. I put them in a paper grocery bag and got back in the car in jeans and a sweatshirt and headed over to the rec center. That hoop league John played in met on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the same as my hockey league, and I wanted to be there when he came out.

A fountain stands by the entrance, and cars drive up to drop people off and pick them up. There are streetlights that make everything bright, and I stood off to the far side of the building, where it was darker, out of people’s way. I paced back and forth, checking each time the door opened to see if it was John coming out. I still had on that lip stuff and everything. I looked strange, I bet. A tan, pretty Coach Gaspari. I must have seen two hundred kids with hockey equipment, chopping their sticks against the sidewalk while they waited for their moms to come get them. Finally the basketball players came out. At the same time a few guys from my hockey team came out the other set of doors, all sweaty, carrying bags of equipment. I’d forgotten about this possibility. They came down the sidewalk toward the parking lot behind me. I tried to figure out how I could intercept John without my teammates seeing me, but there was no way, so I took off at a run, not stopping or listening to hear if they saw me, and got out my keys and bolted.

•      •      •

DURING THE FINAL phone call it kept going silent, with me not saying anything. John didn’t know what I was thinking. How could he know? I thought I might be getting a peptic ulcer. My father got a peptic ulcer at age thirty-two. I said, “Your band is great.”

“Thanks,” he said. “So your office got the demo.”

“Yeah, the way you sang on it was terrific,” I said. “You could sell anything with that voice.”

“Appreciate it,” he said.