“I’m way too old for her anyway,” Aldi said. “But there’s someone out there she’d be happy with.”

“Helen hates that kind of shit,” Rudy said. “Trust me.” It was true. This kind of thing generally made me want to puke, but somehow I kept listening. I wasn’t sure what I wanted, but somehow, I wasn’t sure I wanted Aldi to stop.

I daisy-chained the loose end and came back to the fire. “Don’t worry,” I told Aldi. I put my hand on his shoulder, a gesture that was as awkward as I’d imagined it would be, so I took my hand away. “We won’t take the tree down without giving you a chance to say goodbye.”

Rudy looked from one to the other of us and frowned.

On the ride home, he said, “Aldi doesn’t like women, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“He likes me,” I said.

“He’s my friend,” he said.

“I know,” I said.

“Me and him go way back,” he said.

“I’ve been wondering how it is between you two,” I said.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I’ve never heard you talk to anyone the way you talk to Aldi Birch. No gratuitous swearing. Minimal bragging. You treat him with such care. You treat him like your own dad.”

“My dad can eat shit and die,” Rudy said. “My dad isn’t worth licking the shit off of Aldi Birch’s boots. In fact, probably my dad and Aldi’s dad are together somewhere eating the devil’s shit.”

“So much shit,” I said.

“I don’t treat Aldi Birch like my dad,” he said. “I treat Aldi Birch like Aldi Birch, an old man in pain like someday I will be an old man in pain. If you haven’t noticed, I don’t have too many friends, and so when I get a good one I try to keep it.”

“Self-awareness!” I said.

“Fuck you,” he said.

“You know what he asked me when you were up in the tree?” I said. “He asked if I was a man or a woman.”

“Don’t let it get to you,” Rudy said. “You’re obviously a woman.”

But Rudy didn’t get it. I liked that mismatch. I liked that Aldi Birch liked that mismatch, too.

I came in the door peeling off layers. Lily was knitting a brick-red tam-o’-shanter, around and around. She set aside her needles to hand me a large square envelope. “Something addressed to you not to me for once,” she said. It was the kind of envelope I had recently learned to flinch at. This one had been sent all the way from Texas. Lily watched me open it.