He asked me if he would ever meet anyone normal he could love. I knew that the key word was “normal.” I didn’t say anything, just made myself a cup of tea and sat down on the bottom step. The girl he’d been talking to online apparently for months now was finally ready to meet him in person. They had arranged to go to The Priory Dance Hall not far from Wisconsin Dells, a fabulous place that had been a convent but was now a restaurant, bar and dance floor on three levels. Stefan brought Will along for moral support; the girl said she had a girlfriend who was single and would like to meet Will. The girl had sent Stefan a photo, although not a very good one, and said that she and her girlfriend would be wearing bright yellow UW–Milwaukee jerseys and waiting for them near the reservation desk at the restaurant.

They waited for two hours.

At first, they thought, did we get the time wrong? And then they thought, did we get the meeting place wrong? Had the girls gotten in some kind of accident? Stefan tried to call the girl, who’d just the day before given him her number, but after the sixth time he’d heard the greeting Nothing new, just do what you do! he got fed up. A half hour later, the girl texted him with a profuse and qualified apology. She couldn’t leave her friend. Her friend wouldn’t agree to meet Stefan and Will.

What? Why? he asked.

Her friend was afraid of Stefan.

So Will and Stefan got hammered, which for Will was not uncommon and for Stefan was only the second time in his life. He confided that even being a passenger driving home along some of those serpentine roads, he was terrified. He felt like he was seeing some kind of contracting and colliding nightmare world where lights stretched and shivered and roads signs leaped out of the darkness like rabbits. When Will dropped him off, he got into his truck and slept for a few minutes, then woke up terrified by a guttural howling nearby he was sure at the time (not so much now) was human in origin.

“Party party party,” I said.

“So yeah. Alcoholism is definitely not in my future.”

“If this is what it took, as long as you didn’t kill yourself or Will or anybody else then I guess...” My words snapped in the air between us. “That’s a figure of speech. It’s just a figure of speech that people are going to use all your life and it doesn’t mean that. It does, but it...”

“Mom, okay, okay. Don’t worry about it.”

“I didn’t mean it.”