May I Walk You Home, Sarah Morgan?: A Love Story (Sort Of)

Chapter One

FLIGHT CALL

THE SHAFT OF SUNLIGHT through the curtains crept up his face, but Jonathan Burns just dozed away, that is, until from inside his head he heard a young woman cry out his name.

The shockwave raised goose bumps from head to toe, freezing him rigid, unable to open his eyes. Images flashed before him in a fluorescent fog—grotesque faces peering at him, checking him out, grinning and scowling, floating among ancient artifacts glistening with unknown powers.

The menagerie scattered like leaves in the wind, and he found himself within shifting realms, cities, a succession of otherworldly skylines melting into one another, then into lush natural environs in neon colors fit for high fantasy. Each of these radiated its singular qualities until displaced by one more refined, angelic, subtle.

Some of it seemed familiar, but the extravaganza flickered away too coy for recognition of anything, so he declined to open his eyes or even roll over, and soon he drifted back to sleep.

Sarah Morgan snapped her wrist hard, flinging the blended, grim red at the margins of the blank canvas. The too thin spatter just stared back at her as if trying not to laugh at her first attempt, so she loaded a wider brush to dripping and flung dollops until the paint was drooling down the margins.

Wipe your mouth, little man, she said. At least act like you’ve seen one before.

On the card table at her right posed her model, a foot-tall statuette of an archangel in full stride, threatening to march right through the swirls of color on the broken mirror piece serving as tonight’s palette. The little fellow apparently did not notice her scolding, nor did it seem to mind the oversized wax hand she had molded onto it.

The original broke off when Bobby threw the piece into his studio trash bin in disgust with some unnamed patron. She never saw Bobby mad before, so the guy must’ve been a real pain.

The replacement hand looked silly on the gray figurine. So did the swizzle stick in its grip standing in for a scimitar supposedly raised in eternal homicide.

That’s what happens when you play with yourself too hard, she said. And Bobby oughta know.

She dressed the bloodstains into swirls with an oiled rag.

By the way, she added, daubing away, if you use your left hand, it feels more like someone else is doing it.

Bet Bobby knows that too.

She frowned at her effort, needing even more paint to pull off a raging vortex of clouds in all its various shades. That meant more blending, thicker applications, hours teasing it into shape inch by inch. Another all-nighter loomed before her.

She felt it coming but could not prevent it—a rush of anxiety stabbed her in the gut, buckling her knees. She grasped the lampstand, but it fell back with her against the wall and flashed a quiet nova. As she slid down the wall, a howl erupted from her depth, surprising even her, though she only managed to emit a hoarse, wordless pleading.

She sat on the floor in another of her panic attacks, her trouble. There would be no help—not now, not ever.

Grunting hard and angry, she got up, replaced the bulb and went back to work.

Jon stirred at the insistent knocking on his door.

Burns, you awake?

If you don’t move, it won’t kill you and eat you.

More knocking.

It’s important, Jon.

And if it does, hopefully, it’ll be in that order.

Young Polly had a cool head, so something needed attention.

At the door, his bare feet stepped on paper and cellophane, the mail. A wave of relief swept away the morning grogs—the welfare check for Vera, food stamps to boot. He would eat today, something other than noodles, and then get out of town.

He opened the door and winced at the brisk ocean breeze on his bare torso.

Come on in, he said.

She shook her head. You shou—

I don’t bite.

Hey, I don’t even know why I’m doing this, except for Vera maybe. And your room still stinks.

Time to shut it.

Some guy in the manager’s office, she said. From social services. I heard your name. It’s an inspection, he said. Routine.

He waited.

Anyways, she said, he’s been here for like a half hour, and the sheriff just pulled in, and I’m like hey, that’s routine?

Jon shielded his eyes from the sunlight glaring off the pink adobe huts to see the Santa Cruz Sheriff’s prowler idling across the square in front of the manager’s hut. His heart rate doubled. The manager knew Vera and the baby were gone, and he was way behind on rent, so the old bat wasn’t about to do him any favors.

The possible scenarios whirred through his mind, none promising.

Arms folded, Polly smiled victorious. At least Vera’s not here for this part, she said. Goodbye, Jon.

The little minx—she knew before she knocked he would never see her again, one way or another. Good thing he’d already loaded a half dozen boxes with his books in the car. He’d been hanging around for one last weekend in the low-income housing, waiting only for this month’s benefits.

He ripped some clothes off the rack and crammed them into his hardshell suitcase. He thought to pull the hard drives out of the desktop, but a firm knock at the door changed the plan.

Jon Burns? came the manager’s voice.

He peeped through the mail slot for a close up of her varicose veins below the fuzzy hem on her pink nightgown. Behind this vision stood two sets of dark trousers, the brown pair tucked into jackboots.

He tore his beloved comforter off the bed. After shoving it out the bathroom window, he squeezed his short, lithe frame through and fell out onto the back alley. He crawled halfway back inside and tried to jimmy out the suitcase, scraping his knuckles in the process, but it stuck tight in the window frame. Summoning everything he had, he yanked it through, ripping out the rotted casement. He landed hard on his backside as the suitcase flew over his head and the window shattered on the asphalt. He trotted across the parking lot and shoved everything into the back seat of his once-yellow car.

Somewhere along the side streets to downtown Santa Cruz, his vise grip on the steering wheel relaxed. He licked his scraped knuckles and palms.

Drain the bank accounts, sell the food stamps at the co-op, gas up and be gone. I-80 might still be closed in Wyoming, so he’d have to take the southern route, head down State 99 to I-40. That meant the whole day and then well into the night just to get out of California, looking at a whole lot of nothing on the way down. He lit a long cigarette butt and inhaled deeply.

I could use a little nothing right now, thank you. And a lot would be just fine.

Sarah gazed through the canvas, tapping a tooth with her pinkie fingernail, the brush sticking out from her fist. The speakers moaned barely audible grunge, the low volume a concession to her campus apartment neighbors. Her smock, a now sleeveless denim shirt nearing disintegration, allowed her arms free movement, its front tails in a knot with threadbare rabbit ears above her otherwise naked frame.

Satisfied with the swirling background, she lined up materials for the next phase, the archangel himself—itself, whatever. The drag from pushing herself through to sunrise for the umpteenth time pressed in on her, caffeine both essential and useless at this point. But now she could fade into the canvas with hours of fine brushwork on the wing feathers.

She sketched the outline of the wings onto the canvas with a thick pencil, pausing to note how the tops of the wings on her model were not like those of the traditional angel figures in her old holy cards. They had the soft, round tops with their wingtips pointing down, as if to soothe the seer about the sudden appearance of a radiant being. Bobby had the statuette’s wings flaring out to points above the angel’s head, alarming and threatening, nearly demonic.

Typical Bobby, go for the dramatic. Why would he do something religious, though? Not his style, if he had one anybody could pin down. Nobody could pin Bobby de Vere down to anything.

She smirked. Or almost anything.

Such reveries were luxury in her life. So was further sketching the canvas.

And it ain’t the Sistine Chapel, baby.

She held the statuette’s rough base against her abdomen and glared back at its primitive warrior countenance, allowing the image to burn itself into her mind’s eye. She stroked the wings’ edges with her fingertips and let her eyes close.

Bad idea. She nodded off for an instant but was snapped back. From the base of the clay figure, an ethereal essence crept into her lower organs, invisible but tangible as warm oil. The angel was responding to her caresses with hungry urge.

She weighed cutting it off, but the weird intrusion latched onto her hot spot and surged through her. Her body went rigid, but she was too tired to even be startled, so she relaxed into the rush, delighted to find it erotic—powerful and pure, the irresistible thrill of a long lost lover coursing through her.

Well, then, not a problem, whatever it is.

Luxuriating in the wild bliss, she clucked at the momentary lapse of faith in her invincibility.

The trouble gripped her again, a strong one. She hissed and barked at her own guts.

Get thee gone! At least until I’m done here.

On another shard of broken mirror, she blended more linseed oil into white pigment, aiming for a glossy radiance that would blind any fool who would dare to gaze upon his holy countenance. Most definitely male—a big boy for all that, now that she had gotten to know him a little.

Soon she fell into the zone, and the wee hours flew by with her face inches from the canvas as she caressed the fine details of the wings into luminescent form.

At breaking dawn she turned on the drying fans, her head pounding from the fumes, stomach knotted from stress and a half-gallon of instant coffee. Splayed upon an armchair, she greeted the obedient trouble with curls of cigarette smoke and a pish-tush.

The attacks had been coming more often, and stronger, too. She expected no relief, so it didn’t matter.

But how’d she get a clit bite from that freakin’ angel?

That didn’t matter, either.

Same as always, you deal with it.

You just deal with it, she said in a sigh before falling asleep.

Jon drank in the amber and pink daybreak over the Arizona desert like morning coffee. Later, the blazing sun ensconced in the mid-morning sky, he strained to keep his prickly eyes open, but he fell into dreaming—desperate whisperings, prayers from a dusky female voice emanating from scarlet mists hiding and revealing pointed …

Wings?

… until he was jolted to attention, alarmed at the rough treatment his bald tires and non-suspension were getting on a long abandoned section of old Route 66. He had deemed the thirty-year-old Chevy Nova barely fit for an uneventful cross-country trip, let alone this battering, with nothing but desert for miles around. Dust devils skittered across the road, the only interesting visual. He threw the map out the window and cursed at getting sucked into a nostalgic detour. Whatever the old road had been with its romance of possibilities had faded away.

Along with shared values.

He glanced at his gas gauge.

Civilization soon to follow, live video at eleven.

Back on I-40, his mind rambled carefree, boiling off the excesses of the last year. He tapped and swayed to his favorite music while assessing his possibilities so recently expanded—Vera had finally left and taken their infant son, Gabriel, to live with her mother in the boonies of central Ohio.

At the start of their torrid affair, dear, sweet, without-a-clue Vera advertised herself as barren from some -osis or other, so they were both surprised at the positive test. After confirming her pregnancy at a clinic, the barely twenty babe announced her intent to divorce out from her loveless marriage. That worried him. He wasn’t in it for the long haul with Vera, had always told her so—too often, judging from the wounded expression it would put on her face, the one that screwed him up good.

She declined an abortion, surprise-surprise number three—they just kept coming that day. If he didn’t want to carry on, that was fine with her, she said. She would be a single mother.

Her strategy worked, more or less. He could not bring himself to argue with a knocked up girl with no prospects, and a baby might settle her down. It didn’t seem like anything else could settle down Lady Vera Storm. In a frenzy to exhibit something like responsibility, he offered to support her through the birth plus three months of infant care.

He regretted the words the instant they popped out of his mouth, knowing she would accept, as she did on the spot. The whole affair would be a detour for sure, but from what he declined to ask.

They both needed out of their native Midwest, so they headed to the West Coast, partly just to see what the fuss was about with this California Dreamin’, if it still or ever existed. It was probably just more delusional boomer horseshit, but they needed to point the car in a direction, and the other three seemed less adventurous.

Despite cramming themselves into a two-room, urine-stinking adobe hut for a year, they welcomed the scene change, the temperate climate and laid-back Capitola—a stone’s throw from hip, collegiate Santa Cruz where Jon could ply his wares. After Gabriel was born, the welfare benefits were not too shabby, either.

As time drew on, he feared Vera was falling in love with him, or else getting too settled for the deal. With a baby in tow, it was probably both. He froze her out for a few weeks, until three months to the day after Gabriel’s birth when she appeared in the doorway, gently rocking while pressing the sleeping infant to her bare breast.

He looked up from his newspaper.

Mom paid for tickets, she said. Gabe and I fly back tomorrow.

He’s not hungry, he said, if you haven’t noticed.

Vera stood rock still.

So this is it? he said. What time you need to leave?

Her eyes went red, her lip quivered.

Vera, don’t. Please, not now.

I’m sorry. I get it, this was the deal. But I mean …

What?

She buttoned her top. Polly’s taking us, first thing, she said. We’re staying in her room tonight. My stuff’s already out … if you haven’t noticed.

He couldn’t get his mouth to say a word.

Goodbye, Jon. She stroked Gabriel’s head. Thanks for everything.

Hey, he said to the empty doorway, you don’t ha…

Beamed away.

Big ouch.

Too many months, too many ouches—way more than he ever had to deal with before.

May this be the last one, thank you.

By day, he marveled at the cultural backwater of the southwest interstate. At twilight, he basked in the painted splendors of the red rock badlands, newly appreciative of romantic songs about being on the road. Contemplating his life-to-be, he chain-smoked and drank coffee until his eyes and innards hurt. The scenarios in his head swung from awesome possibilities to various shades of oblivion, back and forth, each thread disintegrating into the zero-visibility of the future.

Relax, man, relax! It’s all under control again.

The blizzard hit without warning sufficient to prepare ten Midwestern states for its full might. Everybody assumed winter was over. The reports said a front was coming down, but otherwise they were matter-of-fact.

Under threatening skies, Jon rolled along at a breezy 70 m.p.h. on a clear and dry I-40 until flakes began to fall. Like the dream that imperceptibly cocoons you away into its strange reality, the flurries of early twilight at first slowed him to a reluctant 50 m.p.h. Then, during the evening’s heavy snowfall, he kept to a resigned and careful 40. In the dead of night, he crawled along at a white-knuckle 30 m.p.h. in the one lane he was struggling to locate in the dim, uneven headlight beams shining into the whiteout now blowing horizontally.

The windshield wipers clucked and swept in rhythm while the motor hummed and he strained to keep the vulnerable space capsule from skidding out of control in the wind blasting across the iced-over tire tracks. No other lights—just the hood of his car, the wipers, and the gusting snow in the endless void.

Any electricity in this bass-ackwards state? Signs?

He channel surfed the radio, which offered one FM and four AM stations, all featuring plenty of static, with the AM stations adding the prize of wailing tuning tones like ham radio noise out of an old movie:

… now the Lord had said unto Abram, get thee out of thy country … these kids today got no sense of respon… your cheatin’ heart / will tell on … power in the tri-county area has been … pretty, oh so pretty … and the Lord plagued … because of the immorality of … urges, I repeat urges everyone to … come the whole night through / your cheatin’ … shall see how fair thou art, they will murder me because … the decay of our moral values has … the craziest girl on the block … severe storm warning … and crave the love … sheep, and oxen, and he asses … and I pity / any girl who isn’t … what makes our great nation’s … she asses and camels … please stay indoors and off the … wife bore him no children … chea … What mirror where? …

What weird dimension had he slipped into?

… really coming down, so please take these warnings serious… call my name … with my slave, for it may be that if she has a child, it will … for I am loved / by a pretty …

A blue sign coalesced out of the snow-flecked darkness. He switched off the radio, half-assuming it would help him read it as it floated by.

NEXT SERVICES

27 MILES

His heart sank, his head dropped. He had enough gas and cigarettes, but he had to pee and it would be an hour at least to the service area. Cellphone left behind in the escape. Visibility five feet. The shoulder now a sizable drift. He’d have to really plow into it just to get off the highway. And if there was no shoulder, then …

I’m buried in snow somewhere in a flat-ass cotton field, be discovered in the spring like a woolly mammoth.

Cold water filled the sink while Sarah braced herself on it with both hands, leaning in on her reflection in the medicine chest mirror six inches away. She gazed back at herself in female self-estimation, a test she never feared—wide green eyes, startling emeralds under lush, velvet brows; lips of perpetual offering; cinnamon skin as lustrous as her dark auburn hair. An exotic countenance that never failed to seize a roomful of eyes.

She was accustomed to the attention. But the gnashing envy got tiresome long ago, freshman year maybe. Women just hated her, and it was worse with the guys, if that were possible. They all instantly resented the lightning-strike allure adorning her unattainability. Without fail, she’d get some kind of come-on or pissy game, always an angle, always an asshole point to make.

This morning the mirror showed not the object of desire, only the wear and tear from a decade of pushin’ too hard—bloodshot eyes, swollen lids over dark circles, already looking like a well-worn thirty-something.

The archangel painting had—last night, this morning, an hour ago—devolved into a struggle, at the worst possible time of course.

Why? Bobby’s statuette was the perfect icon. Her blended colors were right on. The sangria tunnel-cloud rushing out at the viewer from the emptiness exceeded her hopes. For three straight nights she worked on the face and hands, napping by day.

Those hands. Always the hands that took forever, doing them, undoing them, starting over. Two whole nights just on the hands. Nevertheless, she got way more done this week than she’d planned, and she felt lucky at the result, even blessed, as if something had been guiding her. She might even make the deadline, or so she thought a little while ago.

Hell-bent on finishing before sunrise, she leaned into the canvas for some texture work on the robes. Her mind blanked. The angel image vanished from her inner eye as if sucked out of her. She stared at the brush in her hand with no idea what to do with it. She piffed and tried several times to get it going again, to no avail.

Where’d you go? she said to the statuette, as if it were at fault. She pointed to her head. Get your silly ass back in here, dammit. I don’t have time for this.

Now in her seventh year of studied painting, she knew this would happen, or something like it. Every new project called forth, thrilling her at first with inspiration, the hottest drug of all. Once she started, though, the demand would push her past her limits, night after night, until she was wrung out from an ordeal so depleting, it never seemed worth it. She always found the reserve to press on, but this morning’s sudden desertion wiped her out. With only an hour to daybreak, she gave it up, wagging a finger at the statuette as if it were a wayward child. Could you ground an angel?

The ringing phone brought her back. She splashed cold water on her face and gazed at her reflection in the basin water.

Mirror, mirror in the sink …

The droplets from her face dappled her reflection away. Another image replaced it, a murky profile that appeared in the basin at some unfathomable depth. Riveted, she gazed in wonderment at the sleeping young man. She could not make out his features, but she knew he was hers—all hers, yes he was, inside her deep.

Would he be comfortable there, poor fool? Was there enough room for him and her trouble?

She wanted to call out to him, but another panic gripped her, raising goose bumps and shudders. She yanked out the basin plug and blinked several times, on the verge of tears, shaking it all off as the water and its portent gurgled away.

… go away and let me drink. She laughed hard, muffling the noise while toweling her face.

The phone stopped ringing.

By the way … she said. She blew her nose on some toilet paper. … please take all the strutting peepees with you, straight to hell.

She put on her usual light eyeliner, but she would go with generous lipstick today. She smooched the mirror, fogging and branding it with a glorious invitation to intimacy.

Just follow the signs.

In the St. Louis bus depot, Jon climbed aboard for the next leg, but this bus was as packed as the one he just got off. Arms wrapped around his comforter, he stood in the aisle, cursing inside at the blizzard and the Chevy. Cars—just what humans needed to make themselves even crazier than they already were.

He glanced sideways at an enormous, middle-aged African-American woman wearing a lavender silk muumuu and clutching a great embroidered handbag that could, and probably did, hold a pair of cannonballs. She sat in the window seat, her excess spread onto the aisle seat. He looked up and down the bus. It was the only free seat, if free it could be called.

He eased in so as not to press against her too hard, but this resulted in his left butt cheek on the seat’s edge, half into the aisle. He struggled to get the comforter into a manageable ball, but it resisted him for a full minute. He collapsed into a slouch.

The woman glared at him, intimidating him with her shining skin, twinkling eyes and a grin that could melt iron. He met her gaze.

Is there a problem? he said.

No problem, she said in high tones. You barely there, skinny boy.

They stared each other down for a long moment that went from confrontational to something like respect, perhaps a bit more.

"You got a problem?" she said.

You’re overdressed and just ate sausage, he said.

She burst into an ear-splitting cackle.

Fair enough, she said. Going to Detroit to meet my new spoil-ass daughter-in-law. You?

East Lansing.

School? Job?

Not usually, no. He pressed himself into her soft mass to get fully into his seat. This should be cozy, he said, or at least warm.

Long ride next to a pretty boy fine by me.

He laid his head on her shoulder. She stroked his overgrown, dark hair.

Heck, she said, if I was twenty years younger …

You wouldn’t be checkin’ a bony white ass like mine.

Cackle.

In downtown Detroit, Jon prepared himself for another cattle car, but the snowstorm overruled the transit company’s scheduling. The bus left for Lansing thirty minutes later with only four passengers on it.

A little grace, I must be doing something right.

He spread his comforter over the two seats and curled up as best he could. As his mind drifted away, the afterimage of the internal bus lights melted into a churning fog that shrouded a pair of floating, disembodied eyes, desperate, searching for something.

He stares past his faint reflection in the bus window out at the night until he sees it—a spark on the distant horizon igniting the sky into scarlet phosphorescence. The blaze swirls into an arch condensing around the brilliance now growing in size, extracting the energy from everything around it. It’s coming for him, whatever it is.

Not good.

The bright being stands on the side of the road as the bus approaches—a fierce angel of pitiless retribution.

Very not good.

The brakes squeal and cough as the bus slows to near standstill with the angel at his window glaring right at him, rage flashing from the coal-fired eyes. Chills shoot through him. The angel raises four feet of iridescent scimitar. A shower of sparks cascade off its robes and wings as it twirls about and hurls the blade at his face with a spine-cracking demon-screech.

Twice blinded—first by the shattering window, then by the midmorning sun sparkling through the fogged window to the hum of the cruising bus. His heart pounded, his temples throbbed. He rubbed his eyes hard until his visual field was all shimmers and flashing lights.

Starved for anything familiar, he slid open the window and rejoiced at the tranquil landscape drifting by, the rolling grasslands cool and moist with patches of snow, yet naked maples and birches under the sky bright blue. Someone complained about the open window, but he ignored her. The bus purred along, and he rested in a contented delight he’d almost forgotten he was capable of—until he shot up from his seat upon seeing the proud hunter green sign:

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

HOME OF THE SPARTANS

NEXT EXIT

Sarah checked herself out in the mirror of her antique mahogany dresser. On her last shift, the floor supervisor got on her case for wearing outfits too racy for a businessmen’s clothing outlet, but she was going to push it today. Besides, the high collar on the black silk blouse with sheer long sleeves offset the mid-thigh black leather skirt. No problem. She was selling everybody into the ground.

And he’ll never let her fire me.

From the dresser drawer she selected red satin panties with an embroidered green and gold dragon front and center. A daring ensemble, but sitting anywhere in that skirt sans hose would be, so it was perfect. She would sit up front, stare at him the whole time with her legs crossed, see if he could still walk after fifty minutes.

After class, she would lug her folios to an interview for next fall’s monster nine-credit Form and Composition Intensive. A leather skirt for an interview? She couldn’t work it too hard, but she never had to, unless this guy played at being one of those above-it-all types. Pooh, the little creep had never seen anything like her before. He’d see the mother lode if need be.

After the interview, off to the mall.

Thinking about it all re-awakened her fatigue. This just had to be her last year at Mishy-gan State—this quarter, then summer, over and out.

After sticking bandaids onto the sore spots, she stamped her feet into black one-inch spikes.

Look out, fellas, here I comes.

Rasping to get the smoke out of her lungs, she mashed out the lipsticked cigarette hard and sang.

"But I don’t cum no more, no more.

So hit the road, Jack,

‘cuz I don’t cum no more."

She strapped on her long leather coat, flung out her thick hair, and was out the door so loaded down with bags and art, all morning people fell over each other getting out of her way.

Chapter Two

OUT OF THE NOWHERE AND INTO THE HERE

NO TRUMPETS, PARADES OR committee of welcome, just the clatter of silverware on a plastic tray echoing through the MSU Student Union grille. Jon peered out from behind the university rag. A low yowl leapt from his mouth when he saw the familiar torn side pocket on the king-size Navy greatcoat.

Kevin Trerice Nelson glanced sidelong at the work-study cashier, attention buried in her tablet. He dumped a pastry, plate and all, into the good pocket as Jon snuck up behind him and clapped a hand on his shoulder.

Gonna pay for it? he said.

Nelson whirled about. His eyes blazed, then softened.

Sock a bye baby, he said. It’s the birdman. He wrapped a crushing hug on Jon and spun him in a wide circle, emitting a rebel yell like an air raid siren. He hooked Jon’s arm and escorted him away.

Sir? said the cashier.

Nelson spun around.

Coffee’s two dollars, the bear claw’s three.

Sorry, Nelson said. He counted out from a heavy handful of change that didn’t promise the tally.

Studying? he said.

Aristotle is blowing my mind, she said.

So much mind, so little time.

Blank stare.

Jon paid the tab. Optics is a gas, he said.

And may you enjoy a brilliant career in packaging, Nelson said.

Thanks, she said with a curious look.

As they moved on, Jon poked Nelson in the shoulder.

Ripe fruit, he said.

I have joined Undergrads Anonymous, Nelson said. Just got my one-year chip. It might be a one-week chip, but my latest dance partner wouldn’t tell me how old she was, so I’m not counting it.

Maybe she wasn’t, um … Packaging?

You’re just out of practice.

They located the messy table against the windows in the farthest corner of the dining hall. Jon inspected the coffee cups, empty dishes, a saucer filled with mangled toothpicks next to four empty cola bottles in a straight line, another copy of the day’s campus newspaper upon three trays stacked upside down, folded to expose a completed crossword. He stared at the still life that had been his morning setting for a decade.

They sat.

Patsy and Tommy? Jon said.

The same, said Nelson, or so I heard. Been out of touch myself.

Silver?

Tenured right after you left, otherwise—

We knew that was coming.

—same as he ever was.

So nothing’s changed, eh?

Scout’s honor, Nelson said. He pressed a thumb and fingertip together in Jon’s face. Only a few eenstie-weenstie things are different. Nothing you’d notice.

Jon fell back in his chair. Got a place?

Yep.

Need a roommate?

Hell no.

He waited as Nelson crammed the bear claw into his mouth and washed it down.

But I’m broke and need to split the rent, Nelson said between gulps. So you’re in. What happened to the Great Westward Expansion?

The Injuns won.

About time. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Welcome back, little big man.

The snow crunched on each step as he followed Nelson up the wooden staircase that ran up the side of the house to the second floor flat. Spreading wild from under his tatty watch cap, Nelson’s light brown hair hung to his shoulders now. His cherubic face was long unshaven, which for him meant curly tufts along the jawline and a light mustache, none of which ever seemed to grow. It was a tough call under the cadet coat, but he felt sure the girth had expanded over his year away.

I was in shock the second time, Nelson said. "Sweating like a pig, freaking out. Didn’t trust driving,