I get this feeling looking at the picture of Annie—a warm, sour sensation under my sternum. I know what that feeling is: that I did something wrong, and the reminder of guilt is deep and uncomfortable, but it’s more than that. Because when I look at her eyes, staring off the page and looking at me but not seeing, I almost want her back. It’s not a joke. I’d do anything to get her back. If she called me on the phone right now, I’d drop to my knees and I’d cry.

“Sam,” she’d say, “would you be my boy?”

She’s just starting to smile in the picture—that amazing wide mouth of hers sliding open, her eyes pointed down like she has a secret. I need her to want me again. Then, once she says I can come over, and later looks up from down there with those big brown eyes that drink you in, I’ll want to get out. And I won’t want to see her or talk to her or listen to her voice on the phone.

What is that, Sam I am? I ask you: Is it love? Because if it is love, the world needs a little bit less of it.

You know what? I fucked her. She’s done, she’s dead now, so fly away. I did Ann and her sister and their fat friend. Ann went to Germany on an important assignment. She wrote me postcards from the Hofbräuhaus. I called her friend up on the telephone, we ate moo-shu pork and drank and had sex with my pants pulled down on the lawn beside my car.