“Yes,” I said. Avoiding Dice, I dropped the pig flashlight into my work boot and tipped it forward so it slid to the toe, hidden. I put on a pair of clogs, grabbed an electric lantern. But I was halfway to the barn before I realized Dice might have been asking me to do something for him.

* * *

“Yoohoo!” I shouted from the cows’ stable, so Isaac would know to expect me. The electric lantern cast enormous, snaggletoothed patterns on the slats. I found him huddled up under the dirty-as-bark comforter, only his face out in the air. He said he was scared to death in the barn, which resounded with animal breaths and the occasional sleepy bellow. He thought he could hear bats or flapping around the hayloft.

I got under the blanket with him and thought briefly, agonizingly, of Queen. Dice must have sent her out on a nighttime mission like this. They must have lain on this same mattress.

I set the lantern behind our heads, and I could see Isaac’s cheek, his cowlick-spread hair. I lay as far from him as I could. I felt him shivering in the mattress springs. He’d traveled out here, squatted and searched for Bay, just for me. I had to remind myself that I didn’t want him anymore.

Isaac broke the spell. “Can I see your tattoos?”

I remembered how faithful Isaac had been, to get the claw on his temple, last spring when we still thought we’d always be together. I thought about pulling my musty shirt up and turning my back to him so that he could get close and scrutinize my shoulders in the lantern light. “Of course not,” I said.

“I want to make sure it’s really you,” he said.

I wanted to cry. I said nothing.

He said, “Aren’t you going to ask me what I think of all this?”

“I don’t really care what you think,” I said.

“I live on my own now,” he said. “It’s better, really, than the squat. And I can afford to. I’ve been doing event photography.”

I’d told him while we were dating that I wished he would sell his photos. I wanted him to support himself with his art. And Isaac had scolded me for the suggestion—he didn’t want to sell out and subject his work to the marketplace. “Wow,” I said. “Event photography. I’m sure all your friends are so proud.” I was remembering how he’d burned me, choosing college as though he could change the system from the inside. He’d abandoned me in my search for a more essential life.

He gave a short laugh. “Be happy for me, Berie.”

With each Berie, he knocked me down another inch.