It was the Pharmacist who got me into the club, claiming we’d play chess, but as a bachelor I had to place my body at the disposal of all the cast-off women and their expectations. Then I had a sock they needed to see to, then there was something about my collar, then their feet started hurting and they wanted to be driven home. And among the desperate, Lilly stood out. First she tried to latch on to the Pharmacist, but the other women were on him like hyenas around a cadaver. It was his fine beard, she said, and no doubt you can say some good things about Lilly, but those fancy blouses can’t cover up what can’t be changed. All that frippery, yes, the budgie too, it only drags her down, and then we were sitting there, it was Saturday and the tea lights were lit. She had placed them along the edge of the bookcase, with tinfoil wrapped around the bases so they wouldn’t burn down into the laminate. It 27had happened to her before, that the tea lights had burned into the laminate, and she’d also had them explode. The liquid wax could be as flammable as gasoline, so she felt safer with tapers. The dignified sort. So long as you didn’t set them up against the curtains, you could count on them. “They’re a bit like you,” she giggled, “so orderly and erect,” she said, scooting her way off the couch and out into the kitchen, where I could hear her rummaging around. “But if we can just stay awake, the little ones should be fine!” she shouted, and I’ve often thought that Lilly’s someone who could easily fall asleep with a cigarette in her hand. I could see her doing that on the couch, beneath the sun-faded pictures of her relatives. There’s one of Lilly hanging there too, from sometime in the ’70s. She’s got her hair crimped with an iron, the way my students crimped theirs back then. There they would sit, trying to make themselves attractive while I struggled with their sloppy logarithm assignments. That is if they weren’t tottering around on those espadrilles that were much too high, as if they’d attached hay bales beneath their feet, good Lord, and their shampoo stank in the classroom. Prostitutes struck me as less manipulative, and more economical, and the last day before Christmas break was the worst. The deep-fried æbleskiver and mulled wine, and we were supposed to talk about the year that had passed. As if the year could do anything else. As if that’s not precisely the way time works, and Lilly’s also hung up school pictures of her aging offspring. There’s something about their faces, something dumplingish and soft. They’ve had far too much candy, those kids, and now they’re living on another side street in the same neighborhood with kids of their own, kids who are also too fat, but that’s not something you can tell 28Lilly. She doesn’t feel anything, most of the time, but it takes nothing at all to make her feel everything, and then she was sidling through the door with a tray. “We’re having Baileys with coffee,” she said. Baileys and some peppermints she had left over from Christmas. “We’re going to have it a little nice,” she said, and then she squeezed herself in next to me on the couch, her fingers with the defunct wedding bands, and the jingle of amethyst and other costume jewels dangling from her earlobes. I guess she’s harmless enough, it’s all just heat, I know that and the Pharmacist says the same, but Baileys tastes of German rest stops and the corner of some party where nothing’s happening. Besides, Lilly should be able to tell that I’m more one for whiskey. Or a dry cognac with a cigar. I want to play chess! I’m nobody’s pet, and don’t think I don’t know what she, Clara, has under the sink or out by the electric meter. I know all about the liquor from the corner store. It’s starting to pickle her face, to lay her tongue in brine. She can’t hide anything from me. I’ve known her for a dog’s age, and I can’t be led around by the nose anymore. But it was as we were sitting on the couch, me with her free hand on my trouser knee and her with her eye on the Baileys, that she said, “We’re good friends, aren’t we? I know I’m stupid,” she said, “and it can’t be easy for you with all your brains to go around with someone like me,” she said. “So can’t we just be cozy?” And so we were. We sat there and were cozy, and I can’t account for how we got from when she took the last bite of cake to when she was lying there down on the floor, halfway under the coffee table, eyes gawping, mouth too, but even then, when it all was over and done, it looked as if she was forcing me, and I didn’t like it.