The phone rang. Dave answered it. Denise got up then, and walked into the house in her bikini. Jesus. She was ridiculous. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll hold.” He put his hand over the receiver.

I said, “My whole life is fucked up?”

“I don’t want your advice,” he said, and unbent the sunglasses and put them back on.

LATER, I DECIDED to go for a run behind their house. Dave told me where to find trails along a defunct canal. The woods matched his description, but the trail would open up and then take a sharp turn and end. I’d hike over some bushes and find it again, or maybe it was a different trail.

Everything was wet—the ground, the leaves. Dank and slushy. No wonder they’d built a canal back there. It seemed like the whole area was below sea level. It smelled like rank mud. It was spooky. It reminded me of how, as a kid, I was always scared. At school I was scared of other kids beating me up. At home I was scared of my dad. At night I was scared of falling off my bunk bed onto the record player. I was a coward. I took a sharp turn and slipped and fell. My hip hit a tree root, and it hurt. I got mud on my leg—the mud was black. I remembered how much running sucks. I lost the trail completely and didn’t have the common sense to believe I’d find it again a few yards up. I limped around, dirty, looking for the trail. My heart was racing.

THAT NIGHT DAVE and I dined alone.

It was more of the same, excellent food—fruit salad, homemade bread, bouillabaisse—but I had no cheerful set-up date this time, and Denise skipped it completely and went to bed. We sat there in silence. Dave was in a sour mood. I was thinking about other things. His problems were not my problems, and he had a whole lot of problems. That call earlier had been from his employers. When he hung up, he looked as if he was about to cry. Well, guess what. Tough shit, asshole—it’s your life. You picked it. Nobody forced him to work for a bunch of gorillas.

Dinner was kind of grubby, the two of us reading the newspaper at the table, not talking, cutting farts. I picked my teeth and flicked the stuff on the floor. It was depressing. Goddamned morbid. Then, after dinner, Dave did more work. I read my magazine. It just depressed me more. I wanted to help somehow.