I think this place is supposed to be charming. I see all sorts of hand-made hippy kitsch in the windows, like guitar-shaped lamps, big-ass woven tablecloths that don’t match anything, art on the walls that’s lower in quality than something generic you’d see on a shitty motel wall but just weird enough to stand out in a place where the rule is obviously nothing’s supposed to look like it's following rules. 

Of course we’re outside, sitting at a normal black metal table, sipping tea from paper cups in an alley that’s brick all across the ground and up the walls in the distance on either side. 

“Sorry,” says Jolene out of the blue.

I know what she’s apologizing for. “It’s fine.”

A cool breeze sends a sharp, unusual chill down my spine, and I shiver.

Looking around again as I finish my tea, I’m glad the streets are empty and we’re alone.

“So, Candy wants to fuck me.” She doesn’t pose it as a question. A little muffled giggle escapes with the words.

“Yeah.”

“And now you’re getting threats from his boys-club friend?”

“Ah,” I sigh, preferring our empty surroundings . . . manufactured to look quaint and inviting, though now abandoned due to plague and maybe poverty . . . over thoughts of the rat-faced fucker. “Maybe Jeeter’s more of a long-term problem.”

“What do you mean?” She leans in. She’s loving this.

I let out another tired breath, and imagine I almost see it turn white in the chilly air. “Yeah, he’s probably gonna use his hate for me to better himself, get rich, get all buff or whatever, I don’t know.” Fuck this feels dumb to even talk about. “And he’s gonna show up at all the worst times and try to throw it all in my face, like I give a shit.”

“He’s your nemesis?”

The thought is depressing. “You ever met the guy?”

“No, no,” she answers quickly. “When Candy told me about his . . . problem . . . I figured the last thing I should do would be meet the dudes that got his brain all scrambled to shit with that woe-is-me nonsense. I mean, Candy’s fucking harmless. I wish I could keep him in my room and squeeze him every night like a teddy bear.”

“That would be both heaven and torture for him.”

“Exactly.”

We sit for a few seconds in the vast, empty, echoey quiet. 

Her face changes. I know what she’s about to ask, and close my eyes to prepare. “How have you been?” None but the two of us would know she’s really asking, How intense has your death wish been lately considering Jeeter, the promotion, and everything else?

I hate and love that I have to be completely honest with her. I love it more than I hate it. 

Hey, having Jolene to bare my soul to puts so many other things in line. Like it makes it totally fine that Caylee and I tend to thrive on shits-and-giggles, laughing at one another and everything else (especially the older we get). It makes it fine that the best I can hope for from any of my guy friends is endless talk of who’s fucking who, and who’s tits are best these days, and blah blah blah.

I realize I’m taking too long to answer, stalling in simple appreciation. “I’m ok,” I say. “But I guess it’s like everything has two sides. Everything has its limits. Like, for example, I’m working out, ok, but the idea of being a bodybuilder or some shit feels fucking laughable. Like I’d be wearing a Halloween costume all the time or something. And I got this promotion, which I’m really fucking nervous about. It’s gonna get me out of the house.” I leave a space to show I don’t know how good or bad that is. “But it’s not something I chose. Nothing at all feels like something I chose, y’know?”

“I know.” The smallest smirk at the very edges of her Mona Lisa smile tells me more than words ever could that there are, in fact, many things I’ve chosen, and am choosing, and will continue to choose. She shivers a tiny bit, and asks, “Want to go walking?”

“Sure.”

We step out into the brick alleyway, where smoke from a once burning trash fire rises hypnotically from a grey metal can in the distance. The moon appears above as we pass a set of decrepit apartment buildings. My upper legs still fucking ache like they’re being chewed out from the center by termites. I bumble along, trying to ignore the pain, as Jolene glides beside me. 

Whenever we stand or walk next to each other like this, I get a sense of how small she actually is compared to me. Her tiny compact frame makes me feel like a ridiculous exaggeration of an oafish, beastly goon. 

I don’t let myself fully imagine easily lifting her like a monster proud to hold and carry its tiny fairy companion.

We see no one else.

I feel my face fall in the darkness.

“Say it,” she says softly, and stops by some stairs that appear to lead only to the side of the nearest brick surface.

We sit, leaning against the cement rail at either side of the stairs, facing each other.

“No,” I say.

If not for Jolene, I might turn endlessly from hopeful to crushed . . . from resolved to despondent, or eager to dashed . . . in moment after moment. I might go from fine to spiraling down in any instant. And I might not even know. But with her here, and the way we both see without needing to say anything, I can’t ignore how turbulent my own fucking inward state actually is. 

I’m down again. Yeah, yeah. Middle-age loser fretting about having to meet new people and work nights. I’ve got my pudgy, ditsy mentee who didn’t even show up the one time we agreed to meet. I got the worst of all losers for a nemesis who’s bent on showing I’m wrong. But the worst part…

“I want to be here.” She says it, and I know she knows what I can’t even admit to myself.

“Why?!” I beg. Why wouldn’t she want to be with a legion of fun, shiny folks her own age getting up to mischief and laying into each other’s perfect bodies as if they didn’t have plenty of time left to spare? That’s the question. “Why would you want to be here, alone, with someone old and fucked up like me?”

She stands from her rail, and approaches.

I swear I see shadows of movement off in my peripheral vision, but don’t even turn to look. Evildoers or whatever be damned. My sweet Jolene is all that matters. If only I deserved her.

I’m either thinking like an incel, or the exact opposite.

She’s with me now. She reaches to brush her fingertips along behind my ear and down my jaw.

For a moment, I know we’re both lost together in the limitations of the massive moon’s dim light and all the surrounding darkness that calls to me to tell me I should be in a place like this . . . I’m home, yes, in withered streets.

But how could someone like her feel the same in a place like this?