“Chapel Hill Newspaper. I read an ad that said they need people to do pasteup.”

Ben was smirking, spooning sugar into his coffee. “You might as well go ahead and tell me what that means. I know you want to.”

“That’s when you put a newspaper page together. The articles come out printed on this photographic paper and you put hot wax on the back and paste them onto a big sheet. You make the whole newspaper page up like that and then they take a picture of that and print it.”

“You know how to do that?”

“I did pasteup when I was night editor for The Tar Heel and I bet I can get a job doing that at the other place.”

“When would you have to work?”

“I don’t know. Depends on what they need. Days, I hope.”

Ben was watching other people come into the restaurant, emerging out of the dark. The streets looked lonely now that the tow truck had pulled away, and the restaurant was quiet in an early morning way; there was a sense that this was a hidden world, maybe because of the hour. The waitress had holes in her jeans, freckles, big frizzy hair, too tired to say much, just writing down the order and bringing the food and the check.

By the time they finished eating, the sky was alight and birds were making the tops of the trees echo and ring. They took a drive along one of the farm roads, as far as Harland Creek. A low bird went swooping dark-winged along the creek as the car passed. Ben turned off the radio and they listened to the car and the rush of wind through the open windows.

On the ride back to town the talk went on; now they were open to it the words flowed back and forth. If we were driving somewhere right now. On a trip. Where would we be headed? New Orleans. Oh, that would be wild. But farther, maybe. Heading west. Grand Canyon. I’d kidnap you. You’d be all, like, I got to get a job, I got exams, I got to read a fucking book, and shit. No, I would not. We could drive to Las Vegas. Oh, sure, and I could go to my mom’s wedding. And that story. And other stories about her; Ben laughing, shaking his head. You’re the one who’s the wild child, he said. Not me. My family is more, like, normal than that.

What do you want to do after all this? When you’re not playing football anymore. Coach? I can’t see that, not really. Me? I want to work on a newspaper, I guess. Or write stuff for a company. What I really want to do is read books for the rest of my life. Fuck that shit. If you’re around me you’re not sitting with a goddamn book in your lap the whole day. I’ll get a motorcycle. We’ll go places on it. Costs next to nothing. We’ll just get stupid little jobs and bum around. Go up to Alaska. I think I’d like it up there? I don’t know why, just like it’s in my head.