new spark plugs. I will never be a painter. I am not a writer.”

Zero wanders up behind him, and he tears off the piece of sketch paper and crumples it into a ball, throws it in the air. Zero’s eyes light up. They play ball with the piece of paper—he throws it high, and Zero waits for it and jumps. Finally the paper gets too soggy to handle. Zero walks away, then sits and scratches.

Behind the house is a ruined birdhouse, and some strings hang from a branch, with bits of suet tied on. The strings stir in the wind. “Push me in the swing,” he remembers Penelope saying. Johnny was lying in the grass, talking to himself. Robert tried to dance with Cyril, but Cyril wouldn’t. Cyril was more stoned than any of them, but showing better sense. “Push me,” she said. She sat on the swing and he pushed. She weighed very little—hardly enough to drag the swing down. It took off fast and went high. She was laughing—not because she was having fun, but laughing at him. That’s what he thought, but he was stoned. She was just laughing. Fortunately, the swing had slowed when she jumped. She didn’t even roll down the hill. Cyril, looking at her arm, which had been cut on a rock, was almost in tears. She had landed on her side. They thought her arm was broken at first. Johnny was asleep, and he slept through the whole thing. Robert carried her into the house. Cyril, following, detoured to kick Johnny. That was the beginning of the end.

He walks to the car and opens the door and rummages through the ashtray, looking for the joint they had started to smoke just before they found Bea and Matthew’s house. He has trouble getting it out because his fingers are numb from the cold. He finally gets it and lights it, and drags on it walking back to the tree with the birdhouse in it. He leans against the tree.

Dan had called him the day before they left New Haven and said that Penelope would kill him. He asked Dan what he meant. “She’ll wear you down, she’ll wear you out, she’ll kill you,” Dan said.

He feels the tree snapping and jumps away. He looks and sees that everything is okay. The tree is still there, the strings hanging down from the branch. “I’m going to jump!” Penelope had called, laughing. Now he laughs, too—not at her, but because here he is, leaning against a tree in Colorado, blown away. He tries speaking, to hear what his speech sounds like. “Blown away,” he says. He has trouble getting his mouth into position after speaking.

In a while Matthew comes out. He stands beside the tree and they watch the sunset. The sky is pale-blue, streaked with orange, which seems to be spreading through the blue sky from behind, like liquid seeping through a napkin, blood through a bandage.

“Nice,” Matthew says.

“Yes,” he says. He is never going to be able to talk to Matthew.

“You know what I’m in the doghouse for?” Matthew says.

“What?” he says. Too long a pause before answering. He spit the word out, instead of saying it.

“Having a Japanese girlfriend,” Matthew says, and laughs.

He does not dare risk laughing with him.

“And I don’t even have a Japanese girlfriend,” Matthew says. “She lives with a guy I work with. I’m not interested in her. She needed money to go into business. Not a lot, but some. I loaned it to her. Bea changes facts around.”

“Where did you go to school?” he hears himself say.

There is a long pause, and Robert gets confused. He thinks he should be answering his own question.

Finally: “Harvard.”

“What class were you in?”

“Oh,” Matthew says. “You’re stoned, huh?”

It is too complicated to explain that he is not. He says, again, “What class?”

“1967,” Matthew says, laughing. “Is that your stuff or ours? She hid our stuff.”

“In my glove compartment,” Robert says, gesturing.

He watches Matthew walk toward his car. Sloped shoulders. Something written across the back of his jacket, being spoken by what looks like a monster blue bird. Can’t read it. In a while Matthew comes back smoking a joint, Zero trailing behind.

“They’re inside, talking about what a pig I am.” Matthew exhales.

“How come you don’t have any interest in this Japanese woman?”

“I do,” Matthew says, smoking from his cupped hand. “I don’t have a chance in the world.”

“I don’t guess it would be the same if you got another one,” he says.

“Another what?”

“If you went to Japan and got another one.”

“Never mind,” Matthew says. “Never mind bothering to converse.”

Zero sniffs the air and walks away. He lies down on the driveway, away from them, and closes his eyes.

“I’d like some Scotch to cool my lungs,” Matthew says. “And we don’t have any goddamn Scotch.”

“Let’s go get some,” he says.

“Okay,” Matthew says.

They stay, watching the colors intensify. “It’s too cold for me,” Matthew says. He thrashes his arms across his chest, and Zero springs up, leaping excitedly, and almost topples Matthew.

They get to Matthew’s car. Robert hears the door close. He notices that he is inside. Zero is in the back seat. It gets darker. Matthew hums. Outside the liquor store Robert fumbles out a ten-dollar bill. Matthew declines. He parks and rolls down the window. “I don’t want to walk in there in a cloud of this stuff,” he says. They wait.

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