Afterward I gave her the juice and the sandwich, like she was a schoolgirl. “You shouldn’t be doing this,” I said. “It’s just not right.”

She tightened her dressing gown to cover her stomach. “I know you mean well,” she said quietly. “But I’m the one it’s gonna love.”

I told her I was sorry. I understood. We both knew what she said was true.

*   *   *

These days I’m trying not to drink until it’s dark. Which means that once sunset comes even later, in summer, I’ll probably make a new rule or else get rid of rules for good. The empties stay under my coats, in the closet, with red-coated men on their labels. In the dim light, it looks like a whole line of them marching.

It wasn’t quite dark when Winnie left for work, driving her Dat-sun—now dented—down the road, but I poured a finger anyway and drank it on the porch. I sat on one of those plastic cars that kids move around with their feet. The wheels are broken on this one, so they hold it up like a skirt while they walk around. There’s an inflatable kiddie pool covered in turtles. It’s got a hole that someone tried to patch with a piece of plastic tablecloth. The gin tastes good and makes the air feel like a cool leather jacket.

I like getting all warmed up with memories but some nights I get stuck with the wrong ones: Stella watching me puke or Abe’s little fingers clutched tight around his dragon. You never know which ones will be the hardest, good or bad. The bad ones hurt for a moment, but the good ones get stuck behind my eyes and won’t go away all night.

Abe sent me a box of things I’d left at Harrison Street: my old electric toothbrush, a gift from him, and a little soap-dish duck that I made with Stella. There’s the pair of sneakers she gave me. Now I’m using the mailing box for empties. I keep the whole thing covered with garbage bags so they don’t stink up my suits. I don’t know why I brought those suits but I do know I don’t want them smelling like my own drunk mouth.

I think about all those mornings spent dressing for work and now look at me here, spilling clear liquor all over a dirty rug, and I imagine April laughing, laughing like she laughed that night—and the whole time I’d been the only one, the only one, who hadn’t seen myself playing the fool.

Abe packed the little drawing that Toledo gave me, the old man with his charcoal face. Abe was careful to tuck it inside a book, one of his alien soap operas, so it wouldn’t get ripped. For all I knew, Toledo was dead by now. Maybe she finally took a trip to where her father died, or the impossible heaven he went to afterward. I just don’t know. You do a good turn for somebody—buy her lunch, fix her up a little, try to make her feel like the whole world doesn’t hate her—and it does a little good or else it doesn’t, but either way it disappears. It’s like it never happened in the first place. Abe sent a note along with my things: You could still come back.