I giggled. She handed me the bill and moved aside. The coke made me twitch. It tasted like dirty dishwater. After I did the line, Audrey licked the flat of her palm, wiped it over the slide, and tongued the coke residue off her hand.

“Gross,” I said. “Little kids’ butts touch that.”

“You’re such a girl,” she said.

“Want to take a walk?” I said. The playground mulch hurt my feet, and I had begun to feel trapped inside the park. We put on our shoes and walked along the path until it met the street. Cockroaches flew around the lamps. The road curved along, tidy, lined with identical houses.

“These kinds of neighborhoods always weird me out,” I said.

“I think they’re great. Not dirty yet, or broken. I always wished I could live in a place like this. Perfectly clean and new.”

At this hour, under the soft streetlights, we strolled along the center of the smooth blacktop. The garish façades and silly gardens stayed in shadow, the whole street tucked in, safe. I could see what Audrey meant. We circled around the neighborhood and arrived again at the little park. My head hurt from the coke and whiskey. I wanted to go home.

In the car Audrey turned the way we came and entered the freeway.

“Where do you live?” she asked me.

“You should take me to my car. I left it at the funeral.”

“Jesus, the funeral. Was that today?”

“Well, yesterday. Technically.”

The sky softened into dawn around the buildings, and more cars filled the freeway. I felt tired of being so awake. We got on 59 and exited at Shepherd, making our way to the church. She parked next to my car in the overflow lot, empty now.

“Thanks,” I said. “We should do this again.”

“Yeah, definitely,” she said.

We exchanged phone numbers and I hugged her. I felt good, almost, for the first time since all this started. I realized I hadn’t thought about Michael once. I drove home and fell asleep in the morning sun.

CHAPTER NINE

I didn’t wake up until late afternoon. I sat at the window overlooking the street. A dog who lived by the roadside gnawed on some garbage, and the neighbor girl sat on her stoop talking with her girlfriends, occasionally calling to her kid inside watching TV. I opened a beer. I felt peaceful, dampened by alcohol and drugs, and less alone after the night with Audrey.

I slept again and woke early the next morning, energy surging through me. I went for a long run, sweating as soon as I stepped outside. A night rain had washed the city and it gleamed in May’s sun and sharp shadows. The mornings were a few degrees cooler, but the dew hadn’t burned off yet, leaving the air dense and wet. Mallards with their iridescent necks dotted the pond. I couldn’t see any of the little dark ducks, the ones I liked. I guessed they were still tucked in their nests. I kept going.