For something to do, I opened the glove compartment, and by its little light practiced writing quatrains. I made a kyrielle that became a pantoum because lines 2 and 4 of each stanza worked well as lines I and 3 of the next: A-B-A-B, B-C-B-C, C-D-C-D, and so on.

Raf materialized on the dark sidewalk, the handkerchief pocket of his black suit stuffed with papers, a printed pamphlet, a prescription sheet.

Back beside me in the car he said, “Did you go to high school, Paige?”

“Of course I did. You have to, don’t you? It’s a law.”

“Never heard you talk about it.”

“Well, I went,” I said. “In Maryland and then we moved to Massachusetts. Why?”

“Close your eyes,” he said, and his voice was soft, so I did.

“O.K., they’re closed.”

“I mean really tight. Squeeze them shut.”

“There,” I said, “done.”

“Now, pretend you’re back in high school.”

“All right, I’m pretending. What happens next?”

“You lift your skirt and take down your panties.”

“Oh no, Raf, uh unh. It can’t be done. This is a compact car!”

“You’re not pretending good, Paige.”

“High school . . .” I said. “You’re right. Yes it can.”

“Nine and a half medium on these,” Raf told a salesperson, and held up a pair of silver-trimmed running shoes. Collected on Raf’s lap were some scanty shorts, socks, and a couple singlets.

We were in a sports clothes store—one in a line of shops in Rice Village.

“I’m not complaining about how expensive all this is,” I said.

“Has to be,” Raf said.

I said, “I hope you’re not sobering up just to show me. I hope it’s for yourself, or for, I don’t know, not for nothing.”

“Nothing’s something,” Raf said.

Raymond visited the motel that weekend and guessed in an instant that Raf had started drink withdrawal.

“ ‘Anguish in my soul,’ ” Raymond said. “ ‘How long, O Lord, how long?’ That’s Psalm six. Or it’s thirteen, maybe. . . .”

Raf wore his running shorts. He was bent over, hands on knees, sweating still. He looked as though he’d been bucketed with water.

“Five motherfuckin’ miles,” he said.

“You ran five miles? Out there in that hell?”

“Limped through four of them. Swam laps here first, though.”

“I guess you went crazy total,” said Raymond. “It’s sad to see.”

“It’s tragedy,” Raf said. “You’re watchin’ it blithely.”

He straightened up, tipped the motel’s filled ice bucket to his face, and munched a mouthful of cubes. “I’m not here,” he said, “just not here.”

Raymond said, “You’ll come back gradually. A part at a time, as I recall.”

“I wish the part of me that sleeps’d come back. I bought a prescription from that quack Googie,” Raf said. He showed Raymond a clear vial of white capsules.