I wanted to run after her, though, because I loved her the way she was and I knew that nobody was perfect, especially not me, but I also knew that when a person found out how bad somebody else wanted them it automatically turned them off and they would begin to put distance between you, since the hunger one person has for another is seldom shared equally between them. It was sad, and it was messed up, but I had to figure a way out, because she was walking back the way we’d come, all the way back to Oxford, looked like, if she had to, and I needed two tubeless tires mounted and inflated pretty fast, or at least patched, and I needed a jack, and a four-way lug wrench, none of which I had. We’d gone out without those amenities, just for a short run to the beer store, and then picked up some Budweiser and things deteriorated from there. Went riding. Said fuck it. Decided to wait until later that evening to cut the grass. The smallest laid plans of mice and men.

An argument arose, one that had been brewing, about me talking to some chick a few nights past in a bar, somebody who’d seen some of my work. I’d warned her about that, about how I couldn’t avoid that, and for a while she’d seemed to understand. She even suffered their phone calls for a while, various ladies calling at all hours of the day and night.

But then she got to saying, “Another call for you,” handing me the phone with a tight-lipped smile, pulling up a stool to watch me while I hunkered down over the phone and spoke a soft and inquisitive hello into the mouthpiece, and listening to every word. She wanted the number changed. I didn’t. She wanted it unlisted. I protested. People needed to get ahold of me for consultations, estimates, I told her. They need to get ahold of you for other stuff, too, looks like, she said. It got pretty bitter. We started fighting. We’d have to make up before we could make love, and that’s always a killer. It got to killing the sensitivity between us, and once you get that eating at you, you’re a prime candidate to end up chasing somebody down a road, like I wound up doing that evening.

She kept walking and I started walking after her. I was trying to get close enough to call out to her. I knew it would sound awful, and you know it would if you think about it, but I knew too that she’d probably just ignore it, keep on walking, do me like that.