Stupid question. Abe’s eyes have a drawn, tired, defiant look, and Jim understands: he’s here for the company. For help. Jim can hardly believe it. Abe’s never come to Jim’s place before, except once or twice to pick him up. Given their homes it makes sense to go up Saddleback and hang out there, on the roof of OC, if hanging out is what they’re going to do.

“I’m here to get wasted,” Abe says harshly, and laughs.

“What, Sandy’s not home?”

“That’s right.” Again the abrupt laugh. But then Abe’s direct gaze catches Jim’s eye, admitting that there’s more to it than that. Abe steps in, looks around. Jim sees it through Abe’s eyes.

“Let’s go outside,” he says, “and sit on the curb. I’m sick of this place.”

Seated on the curb, next to the fire hydrant at the corner, feet crossed in the gutter, they can look up at the freeway overhead and see the roofs of the cars in the fast lane, see the fans of light from the headlights, sweeping by. Two men sitting on a curb.

Abe pulls out one of Sandy’s monster spliffs and lights it. They pass it back and forth, expelling great clouds of smoke into the empty street. A passing car tracks through the cloud and scatters it. “Quit passing so quickly,” Abe says at one point. “Take two hits, then pass it. Don’t you even know how to smoke a joint?”

“No.”

They sit silently. Nothing to say? Not exactly. Jim supposes that his value in times like these is his willingness to start conversations, to talk about things that matter.

“So,” he says, coughing on a deep hit. “You were the paramedics called to Lillian’s crash, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“You and Xavier?”

“Yeah.”

Long pause.

“How’s he doing?”

A shrug. “I don’t know. Same as ever. Falling apart, hanging on. I guess it’s a permanent condition for X.”

“Sounds tough.”

Abe purses his mouth. “Impossible. I can’t do it, anyway.”

He starts fidgeting in typical Abe fashion, finally getting up to squat on his hams, balancing over his feet with armpits on knees, in the aboriginal crouch that is a favorite with him, because then even sitting takes nervous energy. “Have I changed much this last year, that you can tell?”

“Everyone changes.”

Abe gives him a sidelong glance, laughs sharply. “Even you?”

“Maybe,” Jim says, thinking of the last month. “Maybe, at last.”

Abe accepts that. “Yeah. Well, I’m wondering. I mean, I’ve been getting like X, all this last year. I’m wondering if I can keep going. You know…”