I made myself fuck Louise. I didn’t want to—and she was the very picture of unconscious—but I had to. I’m a man. Any man would do the same. The next morning over coffee and cereal, I asked her how she knew this guy, what was his name, where did he work. Now what? Was I all of a sudden gay? I went to sleep one night and woke up a homo?

Put yourself in my place. I had to clear my head. I had to forget. The next weekend I went away on business, and the one after that Louise and I and two other couples borrowed a friend’s cabin for a quick getaway. We drank the liquor, made a pizza with psycho mushrooms, Vicky and Tom’s dog got run over and killed, the waterbed Louise and I slept on somehow got punctured, and the night of the bathing-suit contest Tom left the Jacuzzi on and burned out the motor. The cabin was a short drive from the city, though. Sixty-five or seventy miles north on the interstate.

A few days later we were having drinks at Sid’s Rat, short for Rathskeller, and the guy—his name was John Drake—came in. He was a housepainter. He ran his own company, and he also played in a band a lot. Louise knew him because her old roommate had some connection to the band.

“There’s your friend,” she said, and we both laughed. Louise waved hello and offered him a seat. I shook John’s hand. We talked about the usual bullshit. Louise mentioned his band, and he said something about it going O.K. He seemed like a pretty cool guy, very normal-acting, with pale, light-blue eyes. Maybe he was half South American or something—his skin was a light-caramel color. His face was what you’d call angular, and when he smiled his face changed, since his teeth were perfect and very white. His hair was thick and straight and shiny black. I realized then that I’d seen John around before: he plays hoop at the rec center where I play hockey. Our leagues meet Tuesdays and Thursdays in the rink downstairs. I’ve seen him outside the gym.

John had to leave. We met some people from an ad agency I’d never heard of. They taught us a game called Upchuck, which uses dice and shots of Cuervo. Just as I started to get the hang of it, my leg became tangled in a bar stool and I fell down and chipped my tooth.