I think of Mommy’s narrowed mouth and her disgust. I think of the bug man, who wants to write a book about how messed up I am. “Right now,” I say, “what you can do is go.”

I reach the car, limping, as he puts on his seatbelt.

“I didn’t mean it,” I say. “Sorry. It’s been a bad month. Year. Life, even.”

He raises his eyebrows.

“Please, come back. Have another beer,” I say. “Let’s talk about you, now.”

“You just got out of hospital. Probably need to rest.”

“Don’t make me chase your car down the street,” I say. “I just got out of hospital.”

He thinks and then he turns off the engine. “OK,” he says. “I got some weird stories, too.”

His name is Rob and he has a twin brother. Growing up, they did all the usual twin stuff. They confused their mother and pretended to be one another, even went to each other’s classes in high school sometimes. Rob was better at sciences and Eddie was better at artsy stuff, English Lit and so forth. So they both got good grades. They stopped swapping around on their parents, though, when they got older, and they never did it to girlfriends. It was a mean trick, they agreed, not to be practiced on those you love. Then Rob stopped having girlfriends. He didn’t tell Eddie, even when he met a man who worked in a restaurant in town who made his heartbeat fast. They started seeing one another.

One evening the man from the restaurant saw Rob across the street. He was filled with love so he crossed the street and took Rob in his arms. As soon as he touched him, he knew it wasn’t Rob. But it was too late. Eddie beat him until he couldn’t see out of either eye.

The man from the restaurant moved away. His brother won’t speak to him, and Rob says he wouldn’t want him to, anyway. “Even so,” he says, “it’s like a missing leg. I had to learn how to walk again without him. I stopped seeing people for a time. Only wanted my dog and the woods. I like early mornings best, when no one is around.”

I think about the story for a time.

I say, “If all that hadn’t happened to you, I would be dead.”

“Well,” he says, surprised. “I guess that’s right.” We look at each other briefly. Then we sit in silence.

He goes home as evening is sneaking in. The sun falls low, purple shadow wraps around things, readying for night. As I pick up the beer cans I catch a flash of yellow overhead, in my beech tree. Goldfinch song fills the dusk. The birds are coming back.

NIGHT OLIVIA