Title: Ollie Ollie, In Come Free

[cosmic_tuesdays]

Title: Ollie Ollie, In Come Free
Author: Hannah Orlove
Fandom: House, MD
Pairing: Daniel Wilson/OFC
Rating: R
Notes: Companion piece to Blood Letting. Written for werewolfbigbangThanks to mer_duff for cheerleading, perspi for hand-holding and consultations, and pwcorgigirl and nightdog_barks for beta-reading and Southern-picking. Title comes from the song Drive by R.E.M.

And a very special thank-you to ayalesca for lending me her dragons.


He’d picked twenty-three because it seemed like a good lie. Twenty-four and twenty-five sounded too old, and too big to pull off if someone looked too closely at his face or his hands. Twenty-two and twenty-one were too young, and if he was that age he wouldn’t bother to lie about that. He knew people – maybe not everyone, but some of them, sure – would tell he was lying, so he’d needed to pick a lie everyone could agree on. Besides, twenty-three sounded so mature back then. So much more, when he hadn’t known where he’d be two weeks into the future, much less three years.

He might even be home by now if he’d wanted.

And now he was twenty-three, and he could barely believe he’d gotten here. The ceiling fan whirled around, left on forgotten from last night and still not doing a damn for the humidity, casting shadows here and there in the early morning light, and it gave him something to look at before he’d need to pull himself out of bed, get dressed, and figure out where to go next.

There was a cheap diner down the block from the hotel, so there was that. And he had enough with him to keep going for a couple more weeks before needing to settle back down. So there was that, too, if he wanted, if he didn’t want to find an apartment and settle down for a few months again. Summer was coming; finding a place that needed a warm body for a graveyard shift wasn’t ever that hard.

The full moon was coming too, just four days away. He didn’t feel it like his brothers did, but it was in him just the same. If he was going to look for reasons to move on again, it was one of the best ones – move at night and sleep in the day, try to keep out of the worst of the humidity and heat with overpriced motel air conditioning.

He’d need to sort through his clothes again, if he wanted to travel as light as possible, the way he always did.

Staring down into his coffee – his birthday coffee, with birthday pancakes and birthday scrambled eggs – he thought east might be a nice direction to go. South-east, maybe. He hadn’t been to the coast in a while, and there was always work in shipyards. And when that was done, if he kept going, he might be able to hit a farm with a decent growing season. Strawberry farmers always needed an extra pair of hands.

He looked up at the waitress who’d come back over, who smiled at him when he asked if they had any ice cream. “It’s my birthday,” he explained, and she smiled for real, her cheeks going up, and soon enough he had his birthday ice cream. It was chocolate. His favorite.

“It’s on the house,” she said, and he smiled for real right back at her.

He’d waited until late afternoon to check out of the hotel, sleeping through most of the day. He’d bought a fresh road map at a gas station, double-checked the routes to take and stashed some beef jerky and energy bars at the bottom of his pack. It was already early evening when he started down the roads and night fell fast this time of year, but he wasn’t afraid. A single man walking alone at night wasn’t weak the way a single woman was, and wasn’t dangerous the way two men alone were. One man alone said a lot of things, and he’d learned how to tell most of the stories if someone wanted to listen. There weren’t schools or seminars or lecture series on how to do it right, but he’d managed to learn it just the same, casting himself in stories and roles just like he’d always done. His brothers playing a game, Jane in senior year, a trucker dropping peaches at sharp turns, four women heading out to a party the next town over – or nobody, just himself on the side of the road, stopping to look up at the stars and find north to make sure he was headed in the right direction to find something new.

He knew what would be there, and what would be on the way – starched sheets, the smell of vinyl booths, hoots and chirps from when nothing thinks there’s a person to hear, aches when the jerky’s not enough and the slow creep of morning. Maybe washing dishes again, or mopping up first-grade classrooms, loading trucks or picking fruit or just another room to sleep in for a few days before moving on again.

-

Cucumber season wasn’t something he’d thought about for a long time: it used to be he just went to the store and bought them, like bottles of apple juice. But he knew it well now, working the fields over and under, delicate work that was nobody’s friend. He kept his ears open and heard about oranges and strawberries, peaches and watermelons and tiny island limes. People’s plans to get fields of their own some day, go back home and start a family, work hard and keep their kids from joining them out here. He joined everyone for lunch and dinner because he’d stick out if he didn’t and nobody noticed if he didn’t say much.

He hadn’t needed to lie about his age when he got asked this time, and when he said it out loud, he didn’t feel any different, not like when he needed to remind himself of what was and wasn’t true – and by now he knew lies are easier to believe when they’re built out of true things. It’s something he’s known since fourth grade when he moved schools and had to explain his brothers and his birthday to the class.

He looked up at the horizon, thought about everyone’s face in the classroom, some of them getting it before the rest; he forgot about what he was doing, and dropped the other half of his sandwich into the dirt. Picking it up and dusting it off – it was just dirt, no need to be fussy if that meant going hungry – he took another bite before he noticed someone had come over and was about ready to say hello.

He squinted up at the face shadowed by the wide-brimmed hat. It was Jake. “Hey there.”

“Dan, right?” He nodded. “We’re going out to Jack Burton’s later, you wanna come?”

“Ah,” the press to say no and keep his distance was strong, but he got paid last week and could afford a few bucks for a couple of beers, “Sure. I’ll just tag along, okay?”

“Yeah, we’ll make sure to get you.”

“Thanks.” Dan gave a small salute to Jake who smiles and tips his hat in return.

It was nice having something to look forward to for the rest of the day, and that made the work go a bit faster. He watched Jake and his friends hang around each other, with each other, and he was glad to get a chance to join in even if it was just for tonight. And they did pick him up, waved him over when he was a bit slow in walking over to their group and hung back just a bit, having trouble remembering how to do one simple thing. He’d gotten a seat in the back of Luis’ pickup, dust kicking up into his eyes and whipping his hair as he looked back at where he’d just been.

The little roadhouse bar dusty and loud, all bright lights and colored signs promising local live music on the weekends, people shouting and yelling and he felt good in there, pushed around and laughing at things that weren’t so funny after some time to think about them, a young guy playing with the men because they knew he’s lonely. Kept to himself, didn’t follow them, had to be called over and invited.

The bartender served up beer in green glass bottles, nothing like the warm fuzzy bubbles he had at the few illicit off-campus parties, instead cool and smooth and smelling just a bit like fresh bread. He said that when Jake clapped him on the shoulder and asked him how he liked it, and he hooted in laughter.

“You don’t drink much,” Jake yelled over the crack of the pool table.

Dan smiled as best he could. “These are expensive! If I drank, I couldn’t eat!”

Rick and Eddie laughed at that, two other guys who didn’t have anyone waiting for them at the end of the night. It came after Dan was ready for it, the three beers hitting him harder than he thought they would – everything felt out of joint and out of touch and later as he lay on his bed too dizzy to take off his pants, he wondered if this was what it felt like for his family. Maybe just a bit, maybe enough, maybe nothing like it at all.

When the room was still he peeled off his clothes and crawled into bed, and when he woke up the next morning all he could think to do was piss, holding it just long enough to get to the toilet. He lingered in the shower, still hoping something special would happen to him, he’d look in the mirror or turn on the sink taps and something would appear in his brain that told him something special.

Dan had wanted to leave, today if he could, but there were another few weeks to the harvest and the pay was really good, all the tourist money, almost as good as strawberries and way better than cotton. So he walked over like he did every day, bought his lunch from one of the trucks like he did every day, but what made this day different was that he went right over and sat down with his sandwich and bottle of pop right next to Eddie in the shade, the first one to stake his claim on a seat.

“How are ya doing?”

Dan shrugged, took a swig and wiped his forehead with the bottle. “Pretty good. It was a lot of fun last night – thanks for bringing me.”

“Ah, it’s fine, we liked having you. You should talk more, you know?”

He shrugged again and took a big bite. Everyone was sitting in the shade soon enough, everyone he went out with last night and a few more besides, and it was nice not sitting alone. He liked being part of the conversation, the back and forth of the talking, but he slowly drifted out of talking to look over across the fields and watched the family over there with lunches spread out on blankets. While everyone around him was tossing their ideas about the Madame President back and forth he didn’t bother to liste,n but watched the way the wife handed her husband his water, the way the kids passed their food around to share with each other.

Next Friday night he was back at the roadhouse bar all over again. Nobody minded he didn’t share stories more than two years old – learning what it meant to be lonely, to be dirty, how to eat out of garbage cans and sleep anywhere – and he didn’t buy any beers after his first and drank three more, charming his way into them, each going down easier than the last. Most of the other workers were staying put – they already traveled plenty far to get here, and there’s plenty of work all year round for them, some of it farther away than the rest but all of it honest labor that kept them fed. They were all going on about what they’ll be doing five weeks, six months, two years down the line and he couldn’t add anything and didn’t know if he wanted to think that far ahead. He managed to get Luis to buy him a fifth beer and then a sixth, which he regretted before he got back to his place. The ride was bad, everything shaking hard in his head and his stomach, and it was just the start. He ended up puking out everything he had, but not in time: he started in the parking lot before he realized what was going on, catching some of it in his palm, then staring at it and flinging it away. He ran to his room and slammed the door behind him, not bothering to lock it, finally getting to the toilet and heaving even more into it, foul and sharp and bitter.

He was still drunk when he got done, drunk and sore and tired, and he didn’t bother to get under the covers, squeezing his eyes shut tight to keep from crying. He missed his mother.

He felt fine the next morning, same as usual and hungry for breakfast just like normal, and all that happened was Gary and Luis ask him how he’s doing since he looked so shaky last night. Dan shook his head and said, “I’m doing just fine.”

“You looked really bad.”

“I’m fine. Nothing a hot shower couldn’t set right.”

“Okay, man.” Gary slaps him on the arm. “You take care o’yourself.”

“I gotcha.” He didn’t bother checking the parking lot and took the long route around to make sure he wouldn’t know if anyone didn’t clean it up. The radio report said it’d rain this week, and that’d do it. If he was in a hotel he could count on people like himself to clean it up, but since he’s not, nature will have to take care of it for him.

-

Flipping from nocturnal to diurnal took a couple of days at most, and every time Dan moved he learned how to do it all over again. He’d also learned night was the time to move in summer, the cooler air making the humidity bearable – it still felt like suffocating in the shvitz, but it wasn’t as bad as trying to travel during the day. He did it just fine, since he didn’t have much of a choice about moving at all, so he took the choice to go at night.

There were diners that served breakfast twenty-four hours a day and only closed on Christmas and Easter. There were all-night Laundromats, bars that made last call at three in the morning and served better food than the diners, truck stops and train stations and bus depots where he looked like he fit in, someone off the street who was just as dragged-out as everyone else there, ready to count out exact change for a sandwich since he couldn’t afford to tip. Maybe they could. He didn’t know. He wouldn’t stay long enough to find out, anyway. Sometimes he’d consider going somewhere by bus or train – if he paid with cash, he couldn’t be traced, not that he kept a credit card anyway – but he could get where he needed to go on foot, and like always, he needed that money to pay for food. Food first, shelter second, and a lot more stuff tied for third place.

Big cities were easy. Everybody had something to do, no matter what time it was, and there was always room for another tramp to blend in, no matter where he came from or his accent. Small towns were easy, too, since nobody who wasn’t from them stayed around. Dumpsters behind big grocery stores were always good for day-old bread and dented cans, lost and found bins at coin-laundry places gave him new clothes for free, and all sorts of public service buildings where no one minded him coming in for a few minutes to brush his teeth or scrape a cheap razor over his chin. He’d learned how to go weeks without a shower, and he still thought it was funny he’d rather skip showering than brushing his teeth. His mother would be proud.

If he worked a stint in the fields or cleaning dirty tables, he made sure to get fresh toothpaste and shampoo and found luxury in brushing his hair and lying on the floor to read eight-for-a-dollar books from bargain bins. Sometimes he picked hunger and bought a six-pack of beer or a bottle of something cheap and tried to make it last more than three days, and never quite made it. If he worked something where he needed to get up at a certain hour to be someplace, he didn’t care what time of the month it was or what day of the week and knew that he’d never need to, not while he was out here, and that gave him a weird feeling he never tried to focus on.

The moon rose and fell and grew and shrank and he was always the same, never changing along with its cycles and patterns, never shifting, always the same, always ten good fingers and ten strong toes, never smelling someone from yesterday or seeing better at night.

It was on his mind while he brushed his teeth to get ready for another day in the orange groves. The day was – according to the reports – going to be as hot as it got this time of year, with more than enough humidity for everyone, plenty to go around. He spat into the sink and washed off his face; his brothers never liked summer too much, no matter what day it was or what they were doing, but he’d never had much of a problem with it.

He’d bought deodorant and used it anyway, even though it wouldn’t matter after working twenty minutes. It was the principle of the idea, of using something he’d bought until he couldn’t use it anymore, of using something that said he wasn’t being a vagabond right now, or a tramp, or a bum, or anything else that meant homeless runaway. Store-brand stuff worked just fine, especially if he knew if it didn’t matter how effective it was or not. Just that he used it.

It didn’t occur to him until he got to the fields, standing under the shade and rubbing sweat off his forehead and thinking there wasn’t any way his brothers could stand this for more than a few minutes – that nobody knew who he really was, and a moment after that, he hadn’t spoken to anyone like himself, in any of the ways that mattered and some that didn’t, for nearly six years.

Deep down he figured it was the sort of revelation that should have happened at night under the stars in a moment of deliberate introspection, but that wasn’t the case. He had more trees to prune back, the kind of fine-tuned work only hands could do, and he couldn’t give himself over to thinking about what he’d done with his life. He had to save it for the shower that night, even though it kept peeking out as he picked rotten fruit from the branches and kept a good one, just one, for himself. The owner could spare one for all the acres. Nobody was watching and he ate it right there in the shade, sucking the juice off his fingers when he was done before picking his shears up and getting back to his job.

-

There were more and more empty houses as he went, lost in what used to be fields that were going back to nature without people taking care of them. They were still standing fine, four walls and a roof and good solid floors, and that was all he needed to decide to spend the night there if he hadn’t realized how far away the next town was and morning was coming. Most of them were totally gutted, everything gone or smashed or stolen before he got there, and he’d gather a handful of branches to sweep away glass and dust and make a clean space to sleep. If there were any doors to close, he slept behind them, and if there weren’t, he slept in the house anyway. Sometimes there’d be a little piece of who used to be there that was left over for him to find, scraps of newspapers from 1943 with details about Allied troops, or feral tomato plants strangling each other in the back yard, or just some trash left over from the last person who came through.

He always checked the doorframes, just in case, knowing he wouldn’t find anything but wished to just the same. He still remembered the first time he realized other people didn’t have mezuzot in their houses and in their bedrooms, when he all of four years old and too young to know not to ask about that sort of thing. Back then, it took a lot of talking to get him to understand why other people were different; now he’s learned that lesson well enough to never forget it.

He got caught inside an abandoned house once, sudden rains sweeping up and waking him up in the middle of the afternoon, the roof holding strong enough to keep it out until nighttime fell. The porch was fine, too, and he sat there and watched it come down, for no reason other than to not be moving or going or working, just staying still, just for a little while. He couldn’t get back to sleep and hadn’t brought any books and he wanted to make the last of the jerky last, so that left the rain, which he took just fine. It’d been dusty as hell walking yesterday anyway.

Dan had walked to the edge of the porch and sat down, dangling his feet off the side as rain fell down all around him. He’d need new shoes soon, not quite yet but in a couple of months if he kept walking this much; fewer truck drivers made pick-ups in this area this time of year.

He breathed in the sounds of the drops hitting the grass and rooftop, the smell so bright compared to the same smell in a city, and looked out over the horizon that he could see through the rain, the slow curve of the hills and still-fallow fields. Looked at all the empty space, and him alone inside of it.

Literally no one else on the planet knew he was here. Nobody. His brother had always laughed at his tendency to use “literally” for emphasis when he didn’t mean it – not literally, he’d joke right back – but now he did. He kept staring down at his feet, up to the roof, out at the horizon, and tried to make sense of the knowledge he’d just come across.

He didn’t know where his brothers were right now. They could be anywhere, Chechnya or Mongolia or Shreveport, and he had no way to find out. He didn’t know, okay, he did know where his parents were. Dan knew his parents, and he knew, had known since he’d walked out of his dorm room, that they’d keep his bedroom just the way it was the instant they got the news, everything precise and perfect and probably buried under dust by now. They’d keep it that way just in case, if any news got back, something to make sure they’d be able to sleep at night.

There wasn’t a way right then to pretend he was back home, but he could close his eyes and breathe in the smell of the rain and remember long summers climbing trees and wrestling with his brothers, cook-outs and bike rides, the same sort of scent bringing everything out of the past to sit right in front of him. If he tried hard, took in a big breath, he could remember the sound the leaves outside his bedroom window made when they knocked against the glass in summer thunderstorms, the exact texture of the sprinkles on the ice-cream cones everyone got after a day at the water park, running to eat them before they got in the car and the afternoon’s rain came, murmuring and crashing towards them over the horizon.

When it finally stopped, the sun had almost set, the humidity all washed out of the air leaving nothing but the smell after rain. He waited a little while before heading back in to get his stuff, hoisting his backpack and bag up and setting his shoulders to set on out, stopping to take a look around.

The moon was in its third quarter, moving over to new, and out here in the country it was as bright as a full moon was inside a city. For a moment, he cupped his hands and opened his mouth, all set to howl and tell the world where he was so it could find him, but he stopped, let his hands fall and looked up at the early night sky. After a few minutes, he hefted his pack again and set out on the road.

-

He’d gotten used to people not looking at him early on, so the glances he was getting had started to get weird. A whole bunch of kids on the other side of the park – he’d decided on heading East again, a couple of weeks walking to the ocean and the shipyards – lounging around on some blankets and towels by the public grill, and a couple of them looking his way very carefully and talking to the rest. He’d been sitting on the bench when they’d gotten here, and maybe it was time he moved on and left the park’s lawn to them.

“Hey!” One of the girls who’d glanced called out as he hefted his bag. “Hey, you!” He made a show out of glancing around and pointing to himself. “Yeah, come on over! We won’t bite!”

He smiled, remembering when his brother had used that exact phrase to get someone to come over to play with them, and it worked now, too. He kept on smiling when he got there, nine kids, three boys and six girls, with two of the girls lighting up the grill and pulling meat out of a cooler and everyone else lounging. The girl who’d called him motioned for him to drop his stuff and join them, jerking her thumb over her shoulder, “We’re having a barbeque if you wanna hang around.”

“Thanks.” He joined them on the blankets, everyone introducing themselves – “It’ll be easier if y’all say hello to each other too” got them laughing and Mike said hi to Fi and Sam and Clara said hi to Rick and Susan, and Andy and Irene unwrapped the meat and waved the sausages at Chris. Dan wound up shaking hands with everyone at least once, a couple of times twice.

They were all classmates, sophomores heading into junior year, taking a few weeks to drive around in a van. “Off to see the great America,” Susan said, tossing her ponytail with a flourish Dan knew she’d practiced. “We got some tents if we need to, sleeping bags, you know? For when we can’t get to motels.” Dan smiled and nodded. “You know, right?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, sometimes you’re out on the road and you’ve just got to stop.”

“It’s a lot nicer than the backseats, too. Just out under the stars.” She leaned onto her side, popped open a container of blueberries and started passing them around.

“So how long have you been caravanning around?”

“Two, three weeks?” Susan asked, getting a murmur of approval. “Something like that. Not long. Since the twenty-eighth.”

“Nineteen days.” Dan said without thinking.

“What?”

“Nineteen days.” He looked around and shrugged very deliberately to put everyone at ease. “I’m good at keeping track of time.”

Mike leaned in, “Can you do that day of the week in what year trick?”

“No, but I can always tell you what phase of the moon it is.”

“I know full and new, and that’s it.” Fi spat out a blueberry stem.

“There’s a lot of phases. Wax, wane, new, old. But it’s pretty useless.” He waited for effect. “I mean, not many people buy me drinks because I know it’s a quarter full. You need to list all the state capitals for something like that.”

“All thirty-eight? I can do that. Baton Rouge, Boston, Jackson, Concord, Trenton, Providence, Harrisburg, um…”

Mike grinned at Sam. “Take your time.”

It didn’t take long for everyone to find something to do, either cooking and getting the food out, starting a footie game, or just lying on the blankets. Rick and Clara kept him company, sprawling half on top on top of each other while they talked to him about the current state of their college careers and what they were planning on doing with their degrees when they graduated. “I keep saying paper airplane, but my mom wants it framed, so I can’t argue with her,” Clara said. Sometimes Dan stopped to wonder if the credits he’d gotten – almost three years’ worth – were still any good, and if so, if he could pick up where he left off or transfer them over somewhere else. She went on, “I understand she wants it, but it’s just a piece of paper, really. You can get those anywhere.”

“Not ones that expensive,” Rick said. Clara giggled behind her free hand; her busy one was twinned up in Rick’s, fingers laced up together. They’d been holding hands like that since before the start of the footie game and nobody had said a thing about it. This was a close group, but this was a little group inside of that, and Dan could tell – he remembered his brother with his girlfriend of nearly four years – they meant it as much as they could. Little kids. They were the age he was when he ran away, way too young to want to be doing what he did. He knew he wouldn’t be such a romantic figure if he hadn’t gotten lucky enough to find a cheap motel yesterday to shower at late that morning.

“So what’ll you do when you get back?”

Rick shrugged. “Classes? Graduate? We’ve got two years and we’re not going to just drop them.”

“Yeah, but they’re not going to start right away, are they?”

“No, but getting back to campus, getting moved into a new room. We’ll need some time.” He lay back on the blanket, propping up on his elbows. “Maybe start a part-time job.”

Dan nodded carefully. “That sounds pretty good.”

“Where – I mean, can I ask where you’re going?” Clara cocked her head.

“Sure. I don’t know.” He laughed when he realized what he’d said. “I mean, yeah, you can ask me, and no, I don’t know where I’m going.” He kept the fake smile on his face as both the kids smiled back at him, definitely taken in with the idea of what he was doing with his life. He’d been taken in, too, for about a week and a half until the first time he got caught out halfway to the middle of nowhere and ended up needing to take a crap in a ditch by the side of the road.

“Soup’s on!” Andy yelled, stopping everything else going on within earshot. Dan got into the circle around the barbeque like everyone else, waiting for his turn, not wanting to push forward and stand out, even though his stomach was growling. It’d been a long time since he’d gotten food that smelled this good. It tasted as good as it smelled, too, and by now he knew not to ask what animal he was eating – if he didn’t know he could pretend it didn’t matter, just close his eyes and chew and swallow and not think of the chapters and verses and how he probably shouldn’t be eating it anyway. Hunger was a powerful motivator, and a great way to shove the cares away until he wasn’t hungry anymore. The potato and pasta salads were pretty good, too.

The conversations kept going, pairs and trios passing people between the groups to make a huge pack of sounds. He kept a set level of talking and spent most of the time murmuring and didn’t volunteer anything, which nobody noticed, just smiling at his hard-won knowledge. It was almost endearing, and a little sad, at least from where he was sitting.

Still, at least there was a free meal that afternoon, and even an invitation to come along since the second van still had some room and he wasn’t carrying around that much stuff anyway. “Come on, it’s got to be better than just walking.”

“I don’t want to impose.”

“We insist!”

“And I have to respectfully decline your invitation.” If he’d had a hat, he’d have tipped it, but he didn’t, so he just grinned his buy-me-a-drink grin and hoped for the best.

“You’re sure?” Sam asked. Dan nodded, and that was that. He waved them away as they drove off, and hefted his pack up and headed away in the opposite direction, kicking up dirt as he walked. It was too easy to feel sorry for them and too hard to feel cheerful, and it wasn’t any trouble at all to feel hopeful for them. It wasn’t like they were running away, after all – just taking a vacation. Scuttling around, bumming around, with tents and sleeping bags and places to go back to when they were done with their caravanning. And if it went like it should, like it was supposed to according to every folk tale and popular movie, they’d come home stronger, smarter, more well-rounded and generally better and wiser than when they’d left. Leaving home to seek your fortune did that, or at least it was supposed to.

Of course, they weren’t exactly running away, or staying away – sure, they were going away, they’d gone away, but they had mobiles, they could call home without a fuss, they knew where they’d be sleeping next October. He didn’t know if that was a luxury or a privilege. He just knew, as he waited for the light to turn green, that it wasn’t something he had right now.

Of course, there was the chance he could get that too, and if he started moving now he might make it back with enough time to take Alpert up on his old job offer.

As soon as Dan crossed the street, he turned around and started going back the other way. He glanced over at the setting sun; there were a couple more hours to nightfall. Plenty of time for walking. And, for a change, he knew right where he was going this time around.

He also knew it’d be at least a week to get into pissing distance of Alpert’s orchards, so just to make sure he got another gas station roadmap and made sure to double-check it against the stars when it got dark enough to see them in the city’s light and when he got out into the dark of the countryside again. For a moment, he held his hand to his forehead, laughing quietly when he imagined a sextant and compass to guide him. The moon was a quarter full, starting its cycle again, and he knew he needed the time to go but stopped to look at it anyway; it was too early to see the rabbit or the man, depending on where in the world you were standing, and it wasn’t yet time for people to be pulled by it either. But a new month had started just a few days ago, and even though most people didn’t know Adar from Shevat he did, and knew just as well that it was time for him to get moving again.

It wasn’t a good time of year for hitchhiking, and he wasn’t on a good road set for truckers, so it wasn’t worth his time to wait for anyone to come along. Just to move on his own, the way he’d gotten used to.

Dan didn’t take the exact same route back – it’d be a couple extra days tacked on for him to get back to the right road system – so he didn’t end up coming back down the same roads he’d walked out on. He hadn’t kept a journal of them, and some things looked the same everywhere, and after a while one side road winding between two farms looked like every other. Keeping track of when he got closer to cities and town was easy, though, not just for the lights at night, but for fewer animals, more and better cars, more signs declaring where he was and how far he was from some place. But mostly the lights at night, streetlights and lampposts and stoplights at four-corner stops out in the middle of nowhere kept blinking their lights for nobody but him, neon signs of old flags and places to eat and drink and sleep. Pull the day out of itself, chop it up, try to keep it going for as long as it can.

His parents had raised him to never be afraid of the dark. They’d taught him and his brothers to understand they didn’t need to be scared of it, or scared of what might be out there just because it was dark. He couldn’t defend himself the way his brothers could, couldn’t move through the dark they way they could, but he knew how important it was to have the dark. His family marked everything with light, and light didn’t matter if there wasn’t dark.

He stopped to think about it at the bottom of a glass just a day’s walk from where he needed to be – Alpert wasn’t exactly in the city, anyway, and after this one last drink he’d go to that same cheap motel he’d stayed in last time and clean himself up and get a bit of sleep – was about the best time he could think of to do it, since he’d left the real countryside behind yesterday morning just before dawn. The motel was right where he’d left it, and he had to stop a while and look at it, not quite ready to go back in, still getting used to being back at a place he remembered. He’d tried getting used to the idea of it getting here, and now that he was here he shouldn’t have bothered and just thought about drive-in movies instead, since it hadn’t done him any good to think about it before he saw it. And it was just a seedy motel halfway down a city block with decent rates for long layovers. It wasn’t anything special or important, just another place for him to sleep a while.

The soap smelled just the same, and Dan stood in the shower, cold water running down, sniffing deeply and smiling that this one tiny thing, something he could hold in his hands, hadn’t changed a bit. He curled up under the covers, cheap and starched and stiff, and sighed happily; the first night back in a bed was always the best.

He took another shower when he got up, just because he could, changed into his better clothes and locked the door behind him and started on his way to Alpert’s, who was right where he’d left him, behind his desk by the window overlooking his main orchard.

“Hello?”

Alpert glanced up from his screens, blinked, and broke into a grin. “Daniel Wilson. Good to see you back.”

“Glad to be back.”

“I really didn’t think –” He let out a chuckle, got up and walked to clap him on the shoulder. “Well, anyway, you got here just in time, we’re filling in some new fields and we’ve got plenty of tools for empty hands.” He shook Dan’s shoulder, still smiling, and stopped for a moment. “Anyway, right, are you staying in town again?”

“I’ll see if my old room’s there.”

“Let’s get your stuff ready.” Alpert moved back to his screens, Dan took the only other seat in the office, and soon enough he was on the payroll, shaking hands and promising to share some stories when they both had the time -- “Maybe we can go back to that bar, the one with those great slingshots”, “I’d be glad to, Tuesday?” – and heading back into the orchards, saying hello to the foreman and being recognized by him, too. Not by anyone in the fields, though, but there’d be plenty of time to see if anyone else had come back this year later, once the day’s work was done.

-

The last room he’d rented in the city, a dingy loud-at-all-hours place right above a bar, got snapped up by some struggling artist a few weeks ago, or so the owner said. It took a bit more searching through the papers and around the city but Dan found a tiny place a couple days later, a set of rooms two stories above a diner that needed another dishwasher for some of the hours he had free from the fields. It was a bit farther from where he wanted to be, but cost about the same, and he’d learned a long time ago how to get by with less: less food, less sleep, less everything.

He still celebrated the way he always did when he got a bit of space to himself, which was a bowl of chocolate ice cream at the nearest place selling it, that this time happened to be underneath his bedroom. This time, the ice cream was in a real ceramic bowl, with a real metal spoon – there’d been a couple of times both had been plastic, matching the feel of the tables and chairs. This place was a better sort of eatery, a few shades above a greasy spoon that knew what its customers wanted to eat and didn’t need to make a fuss serving it to them. He liked that about it, and when he told the server he smiled back and told him to wait one minute, and Dan gave him his special twinkle-in-the-eye grin when he got back with a tiny plastic cup of rainbow sprinkles. “Thank you.”

“It’s nothin’. Just enjoy ‘em.”

“I will.”

He’d had chocolate bars before – one of the first things he’d bought right out of the gate, right after he’d left – but there was something special about sitting down to ice cream, one of his favorite things already. It being chocolate made that much more special. There’d been just a few times he’d asked his parents about ordering it and they’d explained why it wasn’t for their family, and the idea of teenage rebellion through chocolate just hadn’t occurred to him since it wasn’t outright unclean the way oysters and cheeseburgers were. Mostly it was just another food his family didn’t eat. Not until he came along.

It took him three weeks of living away from home to get the courage to walk into a drugstore completely across town from campus and put down two bits for a cheap little bar that he gobbled down in an alleyway, and he brushed his teeth over and over when he got back to the dorm just in case Jim could smell it on his breath. It was the first thing he bought when he got across state lines, just because he could, and he still remembered the first time he had chocolate as ice cream, right after he’d come home for summer after freshman year and went to the annual carnival on his own, stood in line and waited for people traveling through town to serve him a scoop of the stuff.

The diner wasn’t as hot and humid as the fairgrounds were, and he was sitting down and not trying to hide from anyone, not more than he normally did. This was better stuff, too, not as grainy and probably made with real cream instead of some fake powders, and he didn’t need to lick off his fingers once he was done. But it took him back to straw under his feet and troupe of pixies dancing on stage and that same rich, full taste with every single bite. He ate it slow, to make it last, and scraped the bowl as clean as he could when he was done.

It was nearly eight weeks too late to be birthday ice cream, but it tasted great just the same, good enough that he smiled all the way up the stairs and through the shower, and kept licking over his teeth even after he brushed them, trying to catch the last traces of its taste.

He took Alpert up on his invitation to go out two weeks later, after plenty of snatched conversations, the same kind they’d used to first get to know each other last year. They ended up at a bar near downtown, somewhere much more expensive than most of the places he went when he wanted someone to serve him a drink – live music playing from a decent local band and a few couples out on the dance floor.

“I like to watch them dance,” Alpert explained when Dan asked him why he liked this place, with a still-around-the-eyes grin of his own. Dan could tell there was more to it than that, but understood enough not to press.

The bar’s snacks were better, too, and whether or not Alpert didn’t notice or mind Dan was eating most of the basket’s contents, he didn’t much care. “So really, where have you been?”

“Around? Out? Let’s go with ‘around.’”

“I’m serious here, I really did not think you were coming back.”

Dan took a long pull off his beer. “I didn’t know if you’d meant it. I mean,” he fumbled to make Alpert’s sour expression change back, “you have so many people coming through, they’re all working for you, you know every one of them, but I’ve worked for guys who’ve said they’d have work for me next year and I could tell they said it to everyone.”

“And you think I’m just like everyone else?”

“I think you do a decent impression.” That got his smile back, and a cheerful clink of bottle to glass before both got drained and slammed down onto the bar. There was another bottle, then another, and Dan had to politely refuse an invitation out onto the dance floor so he could get to bed at a decent hour, which made Alpert laugh and call for a final round and a taxi to send Dan back home.

He woke up feeling fine, almost tempted to come in late but decided against it – even if the boss was his friend that didn’t mean anything when it came to meeting the bottom line – and caught the bus that let him off a half-mile from the offices and walked the rest of the way, reminding himself the same way he did every morning to see if there was anyone living near him who’d be willing to give him a ride to work.

The offices weren’t as busy as they’d been for the past couple of weeks, and Dan was quickly sorted into his own tasks for the day, more work that machines could do but humans and animals could do with more care. He caught a glimpse of Alpert talking to someone, probably a dealer, and let the moment slide away as he got swept along between the trees out to the edge of the planted fields, where clearing the land was more of a priority than wondering who his boss and friend was chatting with, never mind that he’d somehow gotten to thinking of him as both of those things.

It turned out to be a woman selling beehives, not to rent them for a few weeks like Alpert had done before but install them permanently on the property. There was the possibility of Alpert expanding them to a side business next to the nectarines if the bees did well enough on their own. Permanent hives had been something Alpert had been looking at for a couple of years now but only just got the time, money and certification to pursue. When Dan next talked to Alpert, he was smiling about it, more than ready to start blabbing on about terms Dan knew he’d never hear outside of this sort of office, the kind that was out on the fields and right underneath a tiny apartment set-up that let the person living there rush out into the fields at a moment’s notice. Just in case an arm got caught in a motor, or an angry dog had run into the driveway, and watch while one of his itinerant workers manage to calm it down before he could run back inside and get his gun.

As ways to get to know his boss went, Dan had a hard time thinking of a more memorable one.

-

Getting into the routine was easy enough, always having a place to go and some sort of responsibility waiting for him when he had a moment – he could catch a few minutes to do nothing in the fields but never for long since there was always someone else around. The idea of quitting dishwashing occurred to him a couple of times but never seriously, and never stayed for long; it was close enough to where he lived that he could stagger upstairs, shower, and fall into bed a half-hour after his shift ended, and besides, the pay from that went to making sure he had a place to keep a bed for a while. Alpert paid better than some others he’d worked for, but he needed that money for winter. Or what passed for winter in the South. If it didn’t get cold enough to for real snow then some part of him knew it wasn’t real winter, just the fallow part of the year. And it was still a ways off, plenty of time to save up for it.

Still, it would’ve been nice to get some reading done. It’d been ages since he’d been able to pick up a book, and the time he got off from the sinks and orchard wasn’t enough, and just going to a movie wasn’t the same.

Laurence stood beside him at the dish sink and laughed deep as he rinsed out another link in the endless chain of coffee cups. “Who’s got time for books anymore?”

“Vernita’s working on the Rings trilogy.”

“Vernita’s part-time, but okay, one.”

“Marlon’s got that book group for skiffy stuff.”

“Marlon ain’t a dishwasher.”

“So then it’s just us that don’t have time.” He plunged his hands back into the suds. “Us lowly dishwashers.”

“Yeah,” Laurence smiled again, “I guess.”

At least it was easy to talk to everyone, in the kitchen and on the fields – he wasn’t the only one in either place working all the time, and he wasn’t the only one who wouldn’t be around a few months from now. Dishwashers came and went. Janitors filtered in and out. Waiters and waitresses were a constant flow. Some stayed, more than he’d thought at first, but enough that it didn’t faze anyone when he said he wouldn’t be here this time next year. Most of the people in the kitchen itself had been there for a long time, and had the burns and scars to prove it, marking their hands and arms in all sorts of constellations, weird star charts of tiny injuries and bragging rights about fishing stuff right out of the pan and grabbing something right off the fire and always slipping with the same knife in the same spot.

Dan remembered how his hands had blistered and bled and callused and cracked again over his first few weeks out working, not backbreaking work like digging a ditch, but rough work still for hands that hadn’t done more than rake leaves or shovel snow. He’d tried wrapping them in an old shirt and that’d helped a bit, biting off the callouses at first helped him feel better, breaking down and buying some lotion worked all right but not for long, and in the end he’d given up and learned to live with rough hands. It was just before Passover his second year out that he’d remembered and realized his grandfather, his dad’s dad, had hands like this. It’d been a long time since he’d gotten hugged by him or see his face but he could suddenly remember when he was five and moved up North, running his small hands over the rough patches and old, smoothed calluses from so many years of building houses, and even his paws were rough, the scars carrying over. He knew that even if his grandfather was alive he probably wouldn’t ever see him again, and if by some miracle that next year in Jerusalem they got to share the four cups together he’d be able to talk to him about his own hands and earning his life from them.

He’d read about earning his life through his hands in textbooks and old novels, and it wasn’t until he’d started doing it that he’d understood what they’d been talking about. Thinking back on them while walking back to the bus stop after another long shift made him consider how much they’d gotten right and wrong. He’d have to look some of them up when he got the time, but they seemed to be pretty much dead even.

Some days he wondered what his brothers were doing, if they’d gone off to med school and a juicy internship like they’d wanted, if they were earning their lives with soft hands, if they’d ever gone out West like they’d talked about as soon as they’d all gotten their drivers’ licenses and maybe settled down out there once they’d arrived, or if they were still on the East Coast somewhere to be close to Mom and Dad to help hold down the fort in case he came back. It’d been eleven years since he’d seen his family but he knew how his brothers would act. Even if he’d left them a note before he’d left, it wouldn’t do shit to keep them from doing that.

Well, maybe Reuben. But not Jimmy. Oh, hell, not Jimmy.

-

The bees did their job just fine and then some, buzzing around and ignoring the people testing the soil, checking the blossoms and bark for the flowers that’d just come in. The summer humidity was doing its job too, and some nights he’d spray himself with the faucet’s nozzle in between plates and bowls, which nearly always got a laugh from the person working next to him, maybe Laurence, maybe Nelson. He always shook the water from his hair – he needed a haircut something terrible by now – and made little growling noises for extra effect. It almost always got a laugh, sometimes a slap on the back, and maybe a cup of coffee gratis, which he’d always gulp down hot no matter what time of night it was. But he usually just bought one up at the counter if the bus was early and he had a few minutes.

“So how’s work out there?” Len – who still sometimes joked about the sprinkles – offered the pot; Dan pushed the mug over, letting him fill it back up. Bottomless was worth the extra fifty cents.

“Long.” He poured some cream in, let it mix, and sipped. “Picking’s coming up, and that’s always a lot of work, and Alpert’s got the buyers coming in to check the stuff out early.”

“He sells them to canneries, right?”

“Some, not a lot. He wants to sell them to supermarkets, you know, ride the organic produce wave, maybe make his own jam line if the bees work out.”

Len whistled. “There’s no way you could pay me to work next to bees.”

“Scaredy-cat.”

“For things that sting, damn straight.”

“Still not over those wasps?”

“Hornets, Dan, hornets. Oh,” the bell over the door jingled, more late-evening customers coming in, “Hold that thought, hey there, can I get you anything?”

“Just coffee.” The voice made Dan turn around on the stool. He sighed and immediately pulled his shoulders up and back, not in a mood for it but without a choice.

“Hey!” He grabbed his cup and went over to their table. “What’re you doing here?”

“You know them?” Len asked.

“We work together at Alpert’s. Mike and Eddie.”

“Pleased t’meet you.”

“You too,” Eddie nodded. Mike took the menus as Dan sat down and Len moved off.

“So what brings you here?”

Eddie shrugged. “Change of scenery. And you talk about this place sometimes, so we thought, why not give it a shot.”

“If you went out drinking, where’s everyone else?”

“Aw, we’re not drinking, we’re here to eat. Then we’re drinking. You wanna join in?” Dan jerked his thumb over towards the kitchens and Eddie nodded. “Ah, gotcha.”

They kept talking, not over much, and when Len came back he didn’t need to stand there long to get any attention.

“You do breakfast all day, right?” Mike asked.

“As advertised.”

“I’ll get the pancakes, some hash browns, and a glass of orange juice.”

“Ham-and-cheese omelet, coffee with two creams one sugar, and a side of toast. Dan, you want anything?”

“Oh, un, uh, sure.” He shook his head to clear it. “Wait, is this…”

“We gotcha,” Mike said.

“Oh,” Dan grinned. “The breakfast burrito, no bacon, side of hash, to go.”

“Coming right up.” He clicked his pen and headed off to the back.

“Man, I’ve never seen you eat bacon,” Mike chided.

Dan laughed, took another sip of now-cool coffee. “I’ve seen where pigs sleep, it’s where they shit. I’m not eatin’ something that lives in that.”

Eddie smiled. “If you had some you wouldn’t care.”

“So I won’t, then.”

“And if we gave you bacon without you knowing it and told you it was something else?”

“Then you’d be lying.” Both of them laughed at that. By the time the food came out, his shift was five minutes away, so he just had Len stash it in the fridge until he could have it for breakfast and said good-night to everyone before tying on his apron and getting back to the suds.

-

Last year Alpert had explained how harvesting was different from one farm to another depending on what it was. He’d described the huge orchards that sold to supermarkets around the country, the smaller ones that got by on tourists and local supermarkets, and as he’d ladled out another serving of dinner – “it’s the least I can do for you after what you did today, you’re not saying no” – in his tiny kitchen he’d talked about being careful about expansion and the cost of getting too big.

This year Dan knew what to expect, not just from harvesting fruit before, but from having harvested fruit in these orchards before. There were still a few littering the ground here and there, some ripe and some not, leftovers from the last round of harvesting. He kicked at one that the bees hadn’t gotten to, a rock-hard piece that’d fallen out of someone’s basket, and glanced over at the rising moon. Full and rising low on the horizon; he’d been restless this week and that was just one of the reasons why. Maybe he ought to take Alpert up on his invitation again; he was too busy these days to get drunk, something he’d almost always found the time to do when he’d had a place to get drunk in. At least tonight he could finally take him up on his offer for dinner at his place.

Thankfully, as he found out just after sitting down in the kitchen, Alpert kept a few beers in his fridge, one of which was uncapped and set down on the table with no questions asked. Alpert didn’t get one for himself, waiting to fill the teakettle and turn on the burner before sitting down across from Dan.

“So the bees are working out,” Dan said.

“Yeah, they’re, they’re doing their job.”

“You don’t need a license for them?”

“Not to keep them – if I want to sell the honey, yeah, the state government’s got its regulations.” He laughed. “Eight months ago I didn’t even know there was the word ‘apiculture.’ Isn’t that a great word?”

“A word just for beekeeping?” Alpert nodded, and Dan took another drink. “That’s a pretty good word. Maybe not as useful as ‘nimble,’ but if the situation calls for it, then I guess it’s just the right one.”

“Nimble?”

“Or ‘joyful,’ whatever. Something that comes up more often.”

“Point taken.” He got up just as the kettle went off, grabbed a mitt and poured himself a cup of something rich and spicy-smelling. “It’s one of those words you don’t know you need until you know it.”

“I’ve known a few words like that.”

Alpert smiled, sitting back down and wrapping his hands around the cup. “English always surprises me. It’s got so many ways to put words together, and it’s always so full of things, but it doesn’t always have the right words for, you know.” Dan nodded, giving Alpert the space to finish his thought. “People that aren’t typical people.”

“Most of English isn’t English. It steals from everything.”

“That is true.” Alpert took a sip. “Just, I know if other people knew the right words, even if they’re not English, things would be a lot easier.”

“Some things don’t translate one-for-one.” He took another long drink of the beer, almost finishing it.

“Yeah.” They drank in silence for a while, sipping quietly, before a timer dinged and shook them out of the trance. Alpert got the chicken out of the oven, turned off the rice cooker, and finished setting out the dinner he’d promised. They kept talking through it, about this and that and other things, but never getting back to that question of the words for being almost normal, not even during dessert and a couple of rounds of cards.

“No way, I’m not letting you catch the bus.” Alpert smiled, grabbed his keys, and gently prodded Dan down to his car.

“They’re still running,” Dan protested out of habit.

“This time of night you’ll be out there for at least a half-hour before one comes and I can get you home by then. Come on.” He held the door open for Dan, who stopped grumbling as soon as he got in. Four beers wasn’t a lot for him anymore, but getting into a moving vehicle right after the last drink of the night wasn’t something he did much, everything moving around so much more thanks to the alcohol. He was glad Alpert didn’t want to talk, happier to lean his head back and to the left, stare out the window and watch the stars turn into lampposts turn into streetlights turn into apartments, flowing into each other, cars next to them going their own places with their own people inside. But not almost-people inside. Not even almost-almost-people inside. He was drunk enough to know for sure.

“Night, Dan.”

Dan smiled. “Good night, Isabel.”

Alpert laughed. “Go get some sleep.”

“I hope to.” He closed the door and waited to see Alpert drive off before heading inside and upstairs, not bothering with a shower, stopping just long enough to strip everything off before getting into bed. He’d learned how to sleep with his shoes on a long time ago, but messing up sheets – even pre-stained eight-buck-sets from thrift stores – still bugged him. He knew Jim and Reuben always slept on top of the covers when they were on all fours. It was kind of like that.

He flipped over, staring at the ceiling fan making quiet circles, and thought about Alpert and the way he’d pulled his shirt up and pants down to show Dan his oophorectomy scars, not looking him in the eye but talking clearly, and Dan had recognized that tone of voice. Everyone in his family used it when they had to explain themselves all over again in words other people understood. He’d gotten his own speech memorized by the time he was eight and knew his parents’ explanation for him by heart too. Being a special person who couldn’t do what it was that made them special – English didn’t even have the right words for Isabel –

The next thing he knew it was morning and definitely time for breakfast with almost no time to eat. He skipped it to shower, waiting until lunch to stop his stomach’s grumbling. It wasn’t like he didn’t remember how to not eat for a few hours. Long days at the end of summer meant more work hours, and maybe he should’ve thought ahead and brought a change of clothes with him yesterday, but sleeping on Alpert’s couch felt like it’d be too much, at least while Alpert was still paying him. Dinner had been different, dinner had been a chance to lose a night’s pay at the sinks and trade that for some time with a friend, and maybe he could do that again only without the trade. The season – the part of it that mattered to the people in the fields – would be over in a few days, everyone talking about it, a general buzz just like the bees, and when that was done there wasn’t anything keeping him at the sinks if he gave a couple weeks’ notice. Less than that if he didn’t want to be polite; there’d been a couple of times when he just hadn’t shown up at all, more than ready to move on.

He smiled as he reached for another bright nectarine. There’d been that one time unloading trucks, and another where he’d had enough of the monkey suit and said good-night at the end of a shift and left his mop in the closet, plus that busboy thing. Plus the dorm.

He scowled, tried to get his mind back to work. There wasn’t enough time for nostalgia when there were so many trees that needed attention, plus loading the trucks up, and it was a Saturday so there’d be the dinner rush crowd. The part of him that’d reminded him about the dorm corrected it to Shabbos, and he growled and tried to think of something else entirely. That movie theater in town, and that drive-in he’d passed coming in – he could work with that. He hadn’t been to the movies in a long time, and he had enough that he could afford a show or two before heading off somewhere else again. And even if he didn’t make it to them this year they’d be here when he got back.

It didn’t feel odd to him to think about it that way, and he kept on thinking about that all through the day and into the night, at the sinks next to Vernita, who kept on about her new cat, and then through the shower and while he lay back just like last night, staring up at the fan and its flickering shadows. Of course he’d be coming back. He had a commitment to his friend. Not just for dinner again next week after the whole harvest was over.

He knew he wouldn’t come back right here or try to see if his last place would be open the next time Alpert needed hands for his orchards. There were other good places to look next year. He smiled at the silly idea of asking Alpert if he could stay with him, of course he’d say yes, of course everyone would get the wrong ideas about them living together for the wrong reasons. Dan raised a hand, traced the line of the fans with a finger around and round, then rolled over and pushed his head into the pillow, trying not to think about where he’d end up sleeping.

The next night he skipped dinner to make it to the liquor store before it closed, and drank out of a cheap plastic tumbler in what he guessed was supposed to be the living room. It was a tiny place, the sort of place for someone like him who didn’t plan on really living in it. He snorted at the bad joke and poured another drink; he didn’t remember why thinking a cup would be a good idea.

If he stayed somewhere more than a few months he could get real glasses, more than two plates and one bowl, better than fifth-hand furniture and a chair by a window and who knew, maybe he could hang something on a wall and leave his packs in a closet. He could shed the old habits he’d worked so hard to make like winter fur, stop worrying about milk cartons and police broadcasts and telephone pole flyers and everything else. It’d been thirteen years. He could stop. He could stop any time he wanted to.

-

It felt different this time. He’d gotten a bus to take him away and started walking as soon as he got off, just like he’d done last year, using the stars to make sure he knew where he was going and sleeping during the day, like he’d always done even if switching over was harder this time. But there was always something behind him now. Not literally, not the way he’d used to use it, but – it was literal if he faced the right direction, because if he turned around and started walking he’d end up back where he started. He’d always been able to do that for home, and now he could do it for Alpert’s orchards too.

He knew he was spending time without any return on it now, just waiting. He’d never really waited before, and he didn’t really know if he liked it. Time moved the same it always did, moons rising and falling and growing fat and shrinking away while he waited for something he knew would be coming. That part was different too, something coming. Dan didn’t know if he should go early or not, cut off the time and go ahead, or if he ought to keep on waiting for spring to come and for everything to be ready for him.

Somehow from seeing an advertisement in a window he ended up raking leaves in a graveyard with three weeks’ good pay in his pocket and the promise of more if he stayed on through winter. It was going to be a cold one – the regular groundskeeper liked to keep the radio playing in the little kitchen in the funeral home, and from how much it’d been raining the weathermen predicted at least two inches of snow over the weekend. Dan almost laughed his coffee out his nose.

“Whoa, whoa,” George passed him a napkin once Dan stopped coughing. “Easy there. Wouldn’t mind telling me what’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Dan wiped his nose off, took the offered glass of water and had a sip. “It’s not that funny.”

“Someone’s gonna need to mop that up.”

Dan looked down at the cup and sighed before getting up to get a towel. “Nothing,” he repeated. “Just that, where I grew up, two inches was what you’d get on a Tuesday.”

“Just because we don’t get it much doesn’t mean we don’t know what snow is.”

“I just think they’re making a big deal of it.”

“Two inches is a lot when you don’t get much at all.” George poured himself the last of the pot and tipped some half-and-half in while Dan kept wiping. “And it still gets cold.”

“Yeah, I know, and yeah, six inches for last year.” He gulped down the last of his coffee, put the rag and cup in the sink. “Two inches a weekend is still something back East, but – maybe if it stuck around, but it’ll be gone by Tuesday.” He looked over at George, who nodded and shrugged after a moment of consideration.

“I can see how you think that,” George said as they made their way to the toolshed, pushed the door open with a deep grunt and pulled the chain to turn on the light.

“Yeah,” he sighed. “And I know ‘cause it doesn’t stick it’s a big deal since there’s never gonna be three feet of it in the front yard.” He made a show of smiling. “You get used to what you grow up with.” That got an honest laugh from George – just one, but a good one.

He kept thinking it over throughout the Protestant section, wondering about the conversation as he raked leaves off someone’s daughter. It didn’t make him angry that he didn’t fit in perfectly, but it was still a problem that other people needed to make a problem out of it. So what if he’d grown up with snow and didn’t eat pigs if he could help it, so what if he was just trying to make his way. Some things weren’t worth the energy but some things he couldn’t stop thinking about even if he knew that. He’d gotten used to what he’d grown up with in more ways than one.

Tonight was definitely a night for a decent bottle. He leaned against the rake and stared up at the late November clouds making their way across the sky. There’d been a couple of funerals last week, plus the local witches rented out in the gazebo on Halloween, and he’d wished he’d been able to hand out candy, but people didn’t go trick-or-treating in the sort of building he lived in now. He went back to his raking, smiling at the memory of his mother always checking her kids’ candy hauls, making sure everything that came into the house was safe. They’d lived inside an eruv and she checked anyway, and until he found out from other kids at school that their mothers didn’t do that he didn’t think it was weird. He wondered if the kids living in town had their mothers check, too, and if they did, why they did. There wasn’t anyone around here who cared about the lunar cycle the way his family did and how that messed with what they could eat, but there might be other good reasons.

Yeah, a good-sized bottle of something strong, and a chocolate bar.

True to the weathermen’s word, they got two inches by Sunday morning, and the morning was spent cleaning off the driveways and paths. George bundled up three layers thick and laughed when he saw Dan arrive in his regular work clothes without anything else.

“I suppose you’re warm enough in that?”

“No way,” Dan replied with his fake-answer smile, playing to George’s attitudes to Dan being from up North. It worked, leaving George shaking his head and trudging to get the dust-covered shovels. Dan never did it much, not if he could help it, but he didn’t think he could explain he wanted to really feel snow again.

It took a while for muscle memory to come back, but when it did, the work started to go faster and easier. The whole day would’ve been spent cleaning off the grounds back to front if the embalmer hadn’t shown up around ten with her two kids in tow. Dan was working on the footpath and looked up as she got them out of the car. “Hey there, Vanessa.”

“Oh, Dan! Look,” and that was a bad sign from her, no hello at all, “I don’t want to ask you if you’re busy, but –”

“Hey Danny!” Rico cried.

“Baby, please, hold a minute. Look, Dan, Harper Denmen came in yesterday and he’s downstairs for the viewing tomorrow, and I can’t do all the work he needs then, but Rafael’s got his ankle and his mother’s not –”

“It’s okay, Vanessa. I can get them.”

“Thank you, thank you,” she clasped her hands together and turned to her sons, “Rico, Gus, you’ll be okay with Dan for the afternoon, right?” The two boys shouted ‘yes’ from a nearby snowbank. She smiled big at Dan, who jerked his thumb towards the main grounds.

“Lemme tell George first. I’ll get them in a minute.”

Looking after the restorer’s kids for an afternoon when the rest of her family was busy wasn’t exactly in his job description, but George’s brief pep talk had plenty of wiggling room. Besides, it was a chance to play in the snow on billable hours, and he’d forgotten how soft it was when it was still new. Rico and Gus had been by their mom’s workplace a few times, never around the bodies, but enough to know Dan by now, and know him as the younger of the two groundskeepers and by that logic the one more fun to talk to. Dan grinned at them and showed them how to pack up snowballs and push little forts together and dig out mazes and racetracks for the little toy cars they had in their pockets. Later, sitting on a cleared-off bench with the sun still hiding behind thin gray clouds, Dan explained how much snow fell each winter where he’d grown up and the way he and his brothers had dug tunnels and built forts inside it, and how they’d rushed outside without stopping to put their shoes on when they saw the first snowfall of each year. He didn’t mention that he was the only one who didn’t run outside covered in fur, but made sure the rest of what he said was true.

They ended up eating lunch outside, only coming inside long enough for Dan to have a cup of coffee spiked with hot chocolate and Gus and Rico to have their hot chocolate straight-up. By the time Vanessa was done with Denman her sons were pretty well tired but more than ready for more snow, and both she and Dan laughed watching them roll around in it, failing at making snow angels and angry they didn’t come out like they did in TV and comics. Dan had to get down and show them how to do it right, and once they’d made a couple their mother put her foot down and they had to go home. It was only about two, so he ended pulling another few hours of the sort of work he was brought on to do – thankfully away from George, since he didn’t feel up to talking to him. Not right now.

It’d been nice to have the excuse to play in the snow. He knew he could go to that park near his place after work, or just stay on the grounds when his shift was over, but knew it wouldn’t be the same as really playing in it the way he’d done for the first time in years. Some things were better when they were with someone else. He paid for it that night, shivering in the shower as soon as he’d warmed up enough – he’d felt cold during the day but hadn’t realized he’d been that cold, too happy to feel snow in his hands again. That got him to laugh, flexing his fingers to get the pins-and-needles out of them, as he thought about how Jimmy and Reuben would only start to get comfortable down here in weather like this. Dan bunched his hands into fists and shook them out, trying to think where he could get a decent pair of gloves. Maybe just borrowing them from George for a few days would be enough. Even if it didn’t snow again it’d stay cold, and even if it wasn’t going to stay this cold he might as well keep his fingers safe. His mother always took special care in winter to make sure he stayed warm.

Winter always made him miss home the most, and it’d been nice to talk about it without having to check himself every third word that he didn’t let something secret slip out.

Still, word got out – the snow wasn’t even gone by the time Vanessa had talked to her sons and then to George, who waited for Dan to pour himself a cup of coffee to say, “You didn’t tell me you had brothers.”

To his credit, Dan didn’t snort anything out, just finished his sip. “Yeah, two.”

“Oldest? Stuck in the middle?”

He smiled without feeling it. “Runt of the litter,” and was a little disappointed that George hadn’t picked up on the hint. That was surprising; he always hated having to take twenty minutes to explain himself, but for some reason wished he had to do it now. Instead, they stayed quiet while the newsman went on about the herds of centaurs immigrating into the Ukraine peninsula from the Russian steppes and what that could mean for global agriculture.

Halfway through re-salting the driveway, he wondered if it was because explaining meant George would know, and no matter how he took the information then it wouldn’t be something he kept to himself anymore. Maybe. Sometimes he’d run through scenes and plans of what he’d say if someone asked, or if someone looked like they’d be able to handle it, ways to be cool about giving the information, but maybe there wasn’t a good way to do it. At least Alpert could pull down his pants or ask someone to use his first name. Dan didn’t have any shortcuts. Which was some of the problem with that, because if he was like the rest of his family he could demonstrate – but if he was like the rest of his family, he knew he wouldn’t be here in the first place, holding his hand up to his face, watching the sun finally peek out between the clouds.

-

“So what brings you back so early?” Alpert spooned another helping of three-bean soup into the bowl and handed it back to Dan, who started eating before he realized he had to answer.

“Sorry –” he gulped the mouthful down and started over, “I was thinking that with all the side stuff you’ve got now, you needed more people, so I might as well stop by.”

“The bees are taking pretty good care of themselves.”

“That’s, that’s not what I meant. I mean, there’s always stuff you need done around here and –”

“Dan, it’s March.” If he wasn’t getting himself tea, Dan knew this was big. “You’re not here to get a jump on things, are you.”

“No, I’m not. I’m here, well,” he stared down at the cooling soup, looked back at Alpert, “Well, no, I really am here to get a jump on things.”

Alpert took a deep breath and let it out slowly, through his nose. “If I let you into my house and feed you and show you hospitality then I think the least you can do is be honest with me.” This was different. He wasn’t bluffing, Dan could tell if he was – and if he wasn’t then it wasn’t a good time to push back, not now.

“I got tired.” That got him to look back at Dan. “I got tired, and I wanted a place to stay.”

“What –”

“And this was the only place I could think of to go.”

Alpert blinked a couple of times; Dan kept his face as still as he could get it. “How long did it take you to get here?”

“A couple weeks.”

“I mean since you last woke up and started walking.”

“Eighteen hours. Seventeen and a bit, but most of eighteen.”

He nodded slowly. “You’re getting the bed.”

“Look, I –”

“It’s for tonight. That’s all. We can get you something in town tomorrow. What, you were going to sleep in an alley somewhere?” Under a bridge, but he didn’t need to tell Alpert that. “It’s late for you, and I don’t want to find you passed out in the hallway. Come on, take a shower before you start smelling this place up any worse.” He smiled. “Look, you followed me home, I’ve got to take care of you, right? Isn’t that how it works?”

“I can take care of myself fine.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it.” He laughed, then stopped suddenly enough to get Dan’s attention. “I do need more people, actually, so it is kind of good you came along now.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“Yeah, actually, I kind of need someone in the office with me.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s getting big enough I need that sort of help. You won’t need to go to meetings or write memos but I need someone to help me keep track of land records, vendor sales, you know, documents and phone calls.” Dan wobbled on his feet that had nothing to do with how tired he was. Alpert shrugged. “Okay, maybe a memo or two. If you think I need them.”

“Wait, so what is it you’re offering?”

“I think people call them ‘personal assistants’ now.”

“What makes you think I can do something like that?”

“Most of an economics degree.”

“I left school after three years.”

“Which is still more than what I had, and I’m the one running the business.”

“Could I shower first?”

“Go ahead.”

“Hold on.” He rooted around in his bag before pulling out a small paper bag sealed up carefully. “Got this for you.” Alpert unfolded it, and the little charm glinted by itself when it fell into his hand.

“What is it?”

“Personal charm. It works for the first person who uses it – it’s supposed to help keep the menopause stuff down. I can’t use it, but I figured…” He trailed off, watched Alpert hang it around his neck and tuck it down his shirt, his face going soft around the eyes.

“Thank you.”

Dan let himself linger in the shower after he managed to scrub most of the dust off, longer than he needed, breathing in the steam when he finally shut off the water and had to brace a hand against the wall to keep upright. He pulled on the clothes Alpert had lent, stopped to take another deep breath with his eyes closed, and made his way to the bedroom. Alpert was already there, reading a book, and looked up from the bed when Dan came in. “Sorry for taking so long.”

“I can take one in the morning, it’s fine.” He looked down, definitely not really reading anymore, then said, “So you showered.”

Dan nodded slowly. “So I showered.”

“And did you take any time to think about it?”

“I took some time.”

“So what?”

“Sure.”

“Sure, what?”

Sighing, taking in a deep breath, Dan answered, “Yes, I accept the offer.”

“Thank you.”

Dan waited until he was out the door to start to push it closed and half-whisper, “Good night, Isabel,” which got the usual chuckle.

“Go get some sleep.”

-

Finding a place to sleep in town wasn’t hard, just a read through the classifieds and some phone calls to make sure when he could come by to see them. The best one was about the size of the last place he’d stayed. This time he’d be above and below other little apartments with the closest diner two blocks away, and he went ahead and went there for dinner. He could pay for the place tomorrow.

The bell jangled when he pushed the door open, a tiny sound in the buzz of the overhead lights and low hum from the back. He got seated at a table by the window by a tired, sighing waitress who smiled at him when he turned her question around and asked her how she was and let her go ahead and answer honestly. He got his dessert in a metal bowl with a plastic spoon, and scraped it as clean as he could, slowing down halfway through to take a bite when a car passed by to make it last.

“How is it?” The bright lights made her hair look like one of the wigs his mother’s friends used to wear, and it moved like one too, the way it didn’t fall like it should.

“Not that great.” He put on the most apologetic face he could, did one of his I’m-sorry half-laughs, “But, that doesn’t really matter, it’s still ice cream.”

That got her to smile for real again, “Just like Chinese food.”

He hadn’t eaten Chinese food in nearly six years. “Right, like that.”

“So, you want anything else? Coffee? We got decaf.”

“Umm, a ranchos burrito to go, and that’s it.” As she made her way to the kitchen, he went back to looking out the window and the uncapped streetlamps lining the sidewalk. It wasn’t late enough for him to be the only one awake, but it was late enough for him to be the only one in here. He’d gotten this feeling a lot when he was walking here, the same thing of being the only one around – the waitress and whoever was in the back didn’t count, they were part of the diner and weren’t going to go out walking. There wasn’t enough dark here to get a good view of the stars, the weird city-light dark that never got where it did out away from people, and he realized he hadn’t checked to see how tight he could close the windows’ blinds, and then realized he could get a new set if it was a problem.

He almost couldn’t sleep after he realized that. The blinds in the apartment closed fine, and he spent a while opening and closing them. So he didn’t need new ones. But he could get new ones if he needed, since he was staying. Of course he was staying. Even if it wasn’t here – it was about as big as his old place, and the water in the shower didn’t get that hot – he was staying put.

Even after a long, not-hot-enough shower, he stayed awake, curled up under the covers trying to not think about what he’d do next, and if he should bother with furniture if he didn’t want to stay there. He hadn’t signed anything or put down money, he could pick somewhere else if he wanted.

-

Getting back to work usually wasn’t anything special, even if it went from nailing up bedroom walls to strawberry picking, but he hadn’t sat behind a desk since the afternoon of the day he’d left. He didn’t remember them being so high until Alpert showed him how to adjust the chair. He also ran him through the phones, most of what the computer did, and all the filing cabinets, then closed the door and let Dan fend for himself. The old entry room had been redone to add a desk and work area, sectioned off by short walls and a couple of plants, so there was some sense of it being a real business office, at least how Dan assumed everyone imagined them, going by what was on TV.

It took most of the morning for someone to call, asking about a purchase order for some sort of truck, and Dan did his best to tell her what she needed to know. Before she’d called, he’d stared out the window, gone to open it, then sat back down and watched nothing happen. It was more exciting to watch it through a window than to see it in the office. This was too early for much to be going on outside, no chance for him to try to spot anyone he knew from the last two years – assuming they were hired on for the main growing and harvesting seasons, which were still a ways off. Not so far that if he went around to the other side of the building he’d be able to watch everyone who was out today, but he knew better than that. He stayed inside through lunch and finally broke down and asked Alpert if he could take a short walk around three.

“Sure,” he waved him off, “You can take twenty minutes, go ahead.”

“Thanks.”

Everything smelled pretty close to how he remembered when he stopped to take it in. It wasn’t like it smelled in July, and he couldn’t pick up everything as well as his brothers could, but he still remembered the tang of the fresh dirt and new-cut grass. The bees were going too, and he waited by a hive to watch a few of them as they came and went, before he had to hurry and get back to the desk and hope he hadn’t missed anything.

By the end of the third week he’d gotten used to the pattern of working inside. He still took the bus and walked the last half-mile and brought his lunch with him when he could, but he ate it inside and skipped it less, didn’t have to stick it out if it started to rain since he was inside all day, realized he needed a better set of clothes by the middle of the first week and resolved to do the best he could when he got his first paycheck.

He still came by early some days, even though his hours were already set out in advance – it was getting into real spring and summer would be by soon, so he had to get an earlier bus if he wanted to pretend he had the orchards to himself, just for a few minutes. It was nice enough now, and it’d be even better after the buds flowered and the leaves opened up, and he didn’t have to ask to know if Alpert ever went walking around at three in the morning or eleven at night to be the only person awake in his piece of the world. Dan wanted to ask if he could stay over one night to see the orchards early in the morning, knew he shouldn’t, so he just came early and didn’t say anything when Alpert joined him outside in the fresh light. He’d take the offered coffee and drink it quietly while the day warmed up and got started, never asking if Alpert celebrated the trees’ birthday the way Dan was supposed to.

He forgot what he shouldn’t be doing when he started to wave to people he knew from the last few years if they looked his way, somehow so happy to be there he thought they’d be glad to see him back in some way or another. If they recognized him, he couldn’t say, so he decided to skip his afternoon break and take a longer lunch to head over to say hello face-to-face, which didn’t go as well as he’d hoped, nobody really smiling with their eyes or giving him the full story even if he asked, and he knew he’d never given them his full story either but still felt like he’d been open enough to let them talk to him now.

He still had work to do, and that usually did the trick for getting him to stop thinking about other things, even when he knew what was bothering him would still be there tomorrow, and every day after when he was working here. So he did his best to get the inspectors on the phone to make the appointments for the new hive locations, see if there was enough money left for a new set of mower blades, and find another ream of paper for the fax machine and printer. Things to do, things to get done, things to remember to do in the morning after he turned off the lights and locked the door without saying good-night. He’d get used to it if he had enough time. He didn’t have anywhere to go.

-

“This your place?” He shut the door behind them, tossed her coat onto the nearest chair to free his hands, brush the hair off her neck and kiss here there.

“You like it?” God, she smelled fantastic. No perfumes, no sprays, just her sweat, God, all that dancing.

“Just asking, ah,” she sighed, tilted her head, “anyone else coming?”

“Nah,” he kissed her again, took her chin in hand and turned her head to look her in the eyes, “it’s all ours.”

“Good.” That smile, man, she looked like she was smiling with her whole body, it looked like she was laughing. He kissed her again, tasting the drinks they’d shared, God, he could taste her under that. He ran his hands through her hair, long and brown and soft and tangled it around his fingers, happy to keep kissing her but his cock was getting in the way again until she moaned out and it was just where he wanted it to be. He’d swear he could smell how wet she was now, slipping his hands down to feel, then she moaned deep and full, “Wait.” He didn’t want to wait at all, but pulled his hands away and whimpered softly when she took them in hers and asked, “You do have a bed, right?”

“Right this way.” He spun them around, pulling her as they smiled and then pulled her back in to twirl around and dance a bit like they’d done before with the music loud and people around them dancing too. Just the two of them now, in his bedroom, swaying softly together and pulling each other in for more kisses. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, tilted his head to kiss her neck to hear her moan, nibbled it just enough before returning to kissing her. She shook away and started to take her clothes off and he had to do the same, shoes and socks and pants falling away until he was naked except for his t-shirt. She’d left her panties on, and somehow this was just like in the movies with her pulling the shirt off him and him pulling the panties off her. She pushed him onto the bed and straddled him, her thighs around his hips, and he ran his hands up her soft back, marveling at how soft and small she was in his arms.

He had to stop to get a condom but he was back right away, ripping it open and rolling it down just like he’d practiced and lying back like she’d wanted him, letting her climb up onto him and hold him and he arched at her touch and if she said anything he didn’t hear over the sounds in his head, and then she pushed onto him and she was coming down him and he felt every single fucking inch fucking him fucking her, God, he didn’t want it to be over but she was so soft and so good. It’d been so long, and he held onto her, pushing up as she cried out along with him as she rode him, and he came pushing into her as hard as he could. He knew she wasn’t done and he was still hard and it was too much for her to be on him now so he pushed her off as gently as he could, and nudged her onto her back, sliding his hands where he’d wanted to put them, and she was just as wet as he’d smelled, wetter now if anything, and he found the right spots to touch her just right, to make her clench and come so happy.

He cleaned himself up in the bathroom, cock and hands, and rolled into bed next to her where she was already under the covers. She sighed when he pulled her close, spooning up together, and let himself float like that, gentle and warm, until he felt himself falling asleep. When he woke up the next morning she was still asleep, which made him sigh with relief. Her purse was still by the door, and he set the coffee going before checking her wallet for a driver’s license to make sure he remembered what to call her.

Her name was Beaux, and he wondered what kind of name that was as he put the license back.

She wandered into the kitchen in her rumpled clothes from last night just as he finished pouring himself a cup of coffee. He held up the half-full pot, “How do you take it?”

“Oh. Um, cream if you have.”

“Milk work?”

“Sure.”

“Sugar?”

“Nah.” He handed the mug over, and smiled when she took a sip and then started to drink in earnest. She wrapped her hands around it when she set it down on the counter, leaned over it, then shook her head and murmured her thank-you.

“You’re welcome. You want something else? Cereal?”

“Do you have toast?”

“I’ve got bread, but I don’t have a toaster.”

“Toaster oven?”

“Sorry.”

She smiled. “Then can I borrow a pan?”

“By all means.” He stepped aside to let her work, laying the bread out in the pan over the flame, pressing it gently with a fork and flipping it over before sliding it onto a plate, then doing it again before asking him if he wanted any. He didn’t, but said yes to have an excuse to keep watching her hands and fingers.

“You can do it in the stove,” she said with a mouth full of toast and melting butter, “but it doesn’t come out as well. Not as even.”

“It’s really good.”

“Thanks.”

He took a drink of coffee to help wash down the crust. “So…I don’t have a car, if you need a ride back to wherever.”

“I’m fine sticking around here for a bit.” She licked the last of the butter off a finger. “I’ve got a couple people I can call, see if they’re not busy later.”

“Good. That’s good.”

“Great.” She stopped for a minute. “Is it – do you have a spare toothbrush?”

“Right this way.” There was only one bathroom in the apartment, so Dan spent twenty minutes on the couch while Beaux brushed her teeth and showered and toweled off – in that order, going by the sounds – before he had a chance for his own grooming. Good thing she hadn’t used up all the hot water; better thing he got a good sniff of her hair, still warm and smelling of fresh shampoo, when they had a good-bye kiss. It took a while for her to get out the door – not in a bad way, just in the way of a lazy morning that took its time getting somewhere.

She’d left her number by the fridge, a little surprise that made him burst out grinning.

The next Sunday they ended up walking over to that new place that’d opened up a couple of months ago that neither of them had been to yet, and took their time getting there to talk on the way. By the time they were seated, they’d gone over the weather, recent movies watched, length of time in the city, current occupation, and had just moved onto travel. She nodded politely when he talked about going down to the Keys one December a while back, and he whistled when she talked about her trip to California.

“I don’t think I’ve met anyone who’s gone there.”

“No, really. I got my passport stamped and everything.”

“California always seems like – this big magical land out West where everything is brighter and cleaner. I wanted to go out there when I was a kid, but I think everyone does.”

“You want to know a secret?” She leaned in close, and he did too. “You know how they say it’s like the movies out there?” He nodded. “They’re more right than you can imagine. You really should go someday.”

“Tell me about it.” He laughed at the face she made. “No, really. I’m sure you’ve got some great stories.”

“Great stories, have I got amazing stories.” The first one she told – their first week of hitchhiking ending early and in the local hospital because of a few animals that were also sleeping in an abandoned house – could’ve happened just about anywhere, but the way she told it, bringing her whole body into it and mapping everything out in the air with her hands, was what he’d wanted to hear more than the story itself. They swapped anecdotes over their sandwiches, compared the toppings and sides, and she kissed him good afternoon.

Beaux was an electrician with a local construction company, a former Marine Corps of Engineers who still went out to the shooting range every two weeks to stay sharp, thirty-five years old with a short string of bad boyfriends and one botched engagement, plus a taste for hard beers and loud music, and knew both at the same time was best. Also mixed drinks: after their second meal out together, which included a lot of argument over what their first date actually consisted of and whether or not they were too old for that sort of thing, they went to a bar a bit nicer than the one where they’d met, and she introduced him to a couple of drinks that hit him the way his first good beer hit him years ago.

Dan didn’t take her home, and she didn’t have him follow her back to her place – there was more than enough time for that later, but good-night kisses just couldn’t wait.

-

“How can you not own a coffee grinder?”

“The same reason you still don’t have a toaster.” She ate another spoonful of cereal.

“It tastes better that way.”

“It still gets me up in the morning. I guess it shows where our priorities are.”

“Ha ha.” He spooned some more instant into the mug and waited for the water to boil.

Beaux brought the bowl to her lips and swallowed the last of the milk with a loud slurp, then licked her lips and grinned at Dan’s expression. “So anyway,” getting back to the morning’s first conversation that had carried over from last night, “they’re only three hours away and if we leave early Friday we can spend the weekend there.”

“Okay.”

“Hang on, okay? That’s all you’ve got?”

“I’m okay with it. Isn’t that what you want?”

“It’d be better if you had a bigger reaction.”

“So you wanted me to get upset? Jump for joy?”

“No, Dan, it’s, it,” she hissed, pulling her hair back with both hands, “Most people have bigger reactions to this sort of invitation.” He nodded, waved a hand for her to go on. “It’s a thing that most people understand is a big step in a relationship.”

“I know that.”

“So would you act like it?” He looked away, grabbed the kettle and poured the water. “Don’t give me any bullshit on you being tired or some excuse like that. Be honest with me, why aren’t you –”

“Why do I need to? Look, Beaux, I want to do this, I want to meet them, but –” he had to look away again, “It’s not as big a deal where I come from. Meeting someone’s parents isn’t as, I mean it’s still important, but you wouldn’t need to see them for anything.”

She nodded slowly, crossing her arms and glaring at the floor. “I get that.”

“I’m sorry for not acting the way you expected me to, but I haven’t had to see anyone’s parents in a long time, so – just deal with the fact that if I’m nervous it’s because I want them to like me and not because I need to ask him for your hand or anything.”

“That’s how we do things down here.”

“I know, and I’ve never needed to do them before, so can you deal with that?” He moved closer, trying to meet her eyes. “Please?”

She sighed. “Okay.”

“I’m not going to cut and run just because I’m going to meet your parents.”

“I know. I…I think I thought you weren’t taking it seriously enough.”

“Beaux, you know I’m serious.”

He wanted to explain to her that he knew it was a big deal, that the last time he’d gone to meet a girl’s parents it was almost fifteen years ago and he’d already known them for years from being in their daughter’s same age category for the shul’s youth activities, that it really didn’t mean as much when he knew on some level any relationship outside of the twelve tribes wasn’t valid, but the best one he could think of she might understand was that he was too old to worry about what someone else’s parents might think of him.

“Should I bring them some nectarine honey?”

That got a faint smile. “Couldn’t hurt. Dad’s got a huge sweet tooth.”

He nodded. “Jam too.”

“That’ll do it.”

Sure enough, the gifts did the trick, adding gasps and smiles to the hugs and handshakes when they walked in the door. It gave them something to talk about that didn’t have anything to do with him for a while and gave him some time to get used to talking to them, sitting with better posture than he’d ever used at work while her father served generous helpings of everything and her mother finally finished talking to her daughter about her garden and moved to talk to Dan for a while. He smiled and nodded, being as polite as he could, answering the best way he knew how by being clear without telling them everything.

“Oh, I was born in South Carolina, but we moved away when I was five. I guess I missed it – you get used to what you grow up with.”

“And where’d you go?”

“Beaux didn’t tell you? All over the place, and I’ve had a lease for my apartment for almost three years, if that’s what you mean.” Two years and eight months this June first.

“Yes, but after you moved away when you were five – where’d you go?”

He gave one of his you-pay-for-the-next-round smiles, remembering family vacations to see relatives or new places. “We went all over the place – Pennsylvania, Canada, back to Carolina, New York City –”

“You didn’t tell me New York,” Beaux slid in.

“Remind me to someday. Anyway, yes, I’m finally settled in, I got my job and everything.”

“But he still doesn’t have a toaster.”

“You’ve got to have a toaster,” her father mused.

“And I keep telling him that, but he never listens.” She kissed him on the cheek, making everyone else at the table smile and Dan blush while he did.

It wore him out more than he thought it would, just talking and not much else, and he didn’t even eat much for dinner – and he knew how to do that, too, skipping over foods he knew he didn’t want in his mouth if he knew what they were and he had a choice about it – so all he could do after his shower was crawl into bed and wait for Beaux to join him. She snuggled up right next to him, moving his arm over her waist under the blankets.

“So are we having fun yet?”

He laughed quietly. “Plenty of it.”

“You sure did talk a lot tonight.”

“If I’ve got a good reason to, I will.”

“Like making your girlfriend’s parents like you?”

“Something like that.” He took another deep sniff of her hair, still a bit wet, still rich with her own smell.

“Thank you.” The shock of it got him to stop. “For coming. This means a lot to them too. You know I told them about us, and…”

Dan wanted to pull away, roll to the other side of bed, jump out of it and run, “Please don’t say things like that.”

“What –”

“Shhh. Shh. Let’s just get some sleep.”

It took a while for the answer to slip out in the darkness; by the time it did even still holding on to her, he almost didn’t hear her “Okay” from how close to sleep he was.

If Beaux was still thinking about it the next morning, she didn’t say anything, the two of them dressed before breakfast and explaining their joke about toasters to her mother while she opened up one of the jars of jam and took a taste. Her face made Dan wish he had a camera to show it to Alpert later. Miming just wouldn’t cut it.

“Beaux,” she said, not bothering to swallow, “You’re going to get me more of this.”

“Aye-aye, ma’am.”

Her father ambled into the kitchen a little after that with timing even Dan had to appreciate, the coffee already bubbling and the toast set out, and with everyone assembled around the table for a slow breakfast before a tour of the garden he finally felt like he could relax a little bit.

Later, everyone having voted to go downtown for lunch to give Dan a taste of hometown life, the four of them were strolling – and that was really the word for it, strolling, nothing else fit for her mother’s hat – down some of the side streets with her father talking about the town’s little history while Dan tried not to think about what ‘old’ meant for back where he came from, and without listening he disagreed to something and realized he shouldn’t have been quite that honest. It took a moment to realize what he’d disagreed to, which was that he went to church. Any church. On Sunday or otherwise.

“I just don’t see much reason to go. I…” he groped for a good way to talk about it, shrugging and using his body to tell them he was a little embarrassed even if he didn’t feel that way, deliberately curling in. “I guess I never got into the habit.”

“Your family didn’t take their kids to church?”

“No. We weren’t really big on that.”

“Oh, oh.” Her mother sighed. “I was – well, I was thinking we’d all go together tomorrow, if you’re comfortable with it.”

“I’m fine with going,” he said almost too fast. “I’d be happy to go. I didn’t pack anything for it, but I’d be fine with going.”

Her dad gave him a strong look-over. “I think I’ve got some suits in the attic that might fit. We’ll have to dig around to check.”

The clothing was too big for Dan, hanging loose on his frame, but not by much, not by enough that it looked like he was a kid playing dress-up. He’d planned on Sunday morning being a lazy affair of newspapers and coffee but somehow realized he was being introduced to the local pastor who smiled too gently for Dan to be comfortable when Beaux’s mother explained he didn’t go to church.

“At all?”

Dan did his best to act sheepish. “Sorry, no. My family never went.” The pastor nodded, still smiling gently.

Thirty minutes later, when everyone was done talking about their hats and was seated, the pastor stepped up to the pulpit – and suddenly Dan understood what people meant by acid flashbacks, the sight of him up there and everyone down on the pews almost but not quite right – and cleared his throat, started with what Dan guessed were weekly news pieces, and then suddenly shifted. “I’d like to take a moment – would all members of the congregation, please bow their heads.” They did. “And would all those who are considering joining the congregation, please bow your heads.” He gave another pause. “And would all those who have accepted Christ our Lord into their hearts, please bow their heads.”

Dan glanced around, side to side and back to front, and realized this was another moment he could use ‘literally’ in a literal way, being literally the only one who wasn’t looking down at the floor. For a moment considered bowing his head too but decided against it.

Long after the service was over, during Sunday dinner, he shrugged at Beaux’s parents’ questions. “I don’t know why he kept giving me the skunk-eye. Maybe he just didn’t like me very much.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“Neither can I, but maybe there was just something about me.”

“That’s really quite a shame to hear,” her father said.

“Just how it goes. You can’t please everyone – don’t tell me it never happened to you.” That got a small concession. “I think after he heard I didn’t go to church, he decided I was some sort of atheist or something.” That got a reasonably loud laugh, which was enough for Dan to shuttle the conversation over to something else, not really caring much what it was they were talking about. He was ready to not talk for a while, and if on the ride back Beaux thought it was strange he wasn’t saying as much as she was, she didn’t mention it. They kissed good-night by his building and he took the elevator up instead of the stairs, more than ready to fall asleep. He still needed to shower and brush his teeth and he really wanted a beer or a couple of fingers of bourbon and maybe the beer would be all right, he had enough time for a beer, grabbing one on the way to the bedroom and flopping down on the bed before unscrewing the cap and gulping it down.

If he could just stop thinking about it – not even the pastor, at least that he knew why even if he wasn’t going to tell Beaux that ever – if he could get back to where he didn’t have the weekend so big on his mind he’d be better for a while. He’d liked the weekend just fine, just great, fitting in just fine and then something had to happen to remind him he didn’t. It would’ve been so easy to just bow his head, go along with what everyone else was doing, but he knew he wouldn’t have been able to look at himself in the mirror. He just couldn’t do something like that even now, when it’d been God knows how many years since he’d darkened the door of a synagogue. He fell back against the bed, closed his eyes, and knew it was seventeen, and took a moment to figure out how many full moons there’d been in that time, then how many new ones. His moon. Not his brothers’ moon. His moon was the one that wasn’t there. It was just how things worked for him; it was how they’d always worked. He knew who he was because of what he didn’t do. It was his life, right down to the bottom of everything.

He didn’t have a choice about it, about not doing it, not shifting – he couldn’t help it, there wasn’t any prayer to help him out, to turn something in him from off to on. He didn’t want to anymore, he’d gotten used to it and stopped resenting it a long time ago, but it wasn’t just that anymore. He curled up on his side, shoes still on and not caring even with just one beer, too tired to care. He didn’t even know if he wanted a choice, and he knew he didn’t have a choice anyway. He could act the part until he couldn’t, and that was how it worked. He was who he was because of what he didn’t do.

Dan pulled himself to his feet, started to take his clothes off and pad to the shower. Turned it on as hot as he could get it, breathing in the steam and letting the water run through his hair before soaping it up to get clean and ready for tomorrow.

He wanted to call in sick, but showed up thirty minutes early to make the coffee and called Beaux that night to chat. He wasn’t twenty-three anymore, knew he didn’t have the luxury of cutting and running – he had to put on his game face and show up even if he wanted to just get up and leave. So he told Alpert about Beaux’s parents and how much they loved the honey, went over to her place for dinner on Thursday with a bottle of sweet red wine, and they went out dancing on Saturday night because that was what they did. It was what he did. And that felt nice, nice enough, to do things instead of not doing things.

They talked about the framed art hanging on coffee shop walls and how overpriced it was – “If it’s an original painting, sure, but photo prints? They’re nice and all, but this one? That’s my gas bill for last month.”

“I kinda like it.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t. Just that I think it costs too much.”

“I know. And I know it costs too much, but I still like it.”

“Didn’t really peg you for an artist-type.”

“Oh, I’m not – wait, what’s that mean?”

“It means since you don’t have anything hung up, I didn’t think you cared for pretty pictures.”

He chuckled. “That’s the rest of my family.” Beaux sat up straighter at that, ears practically perking up. He went on, amazed at how easy it felt, “I think – we had some at home, but it was there to take up space on the wall, not because anyone really liked it. We’d go to museums and I’d be the only one who’d really – okay, I’d be the only one who cared about the paintings, but sometimes photos would get someone’s attention. Mostly black and white stuff. But not a lot. Mostly me.”

“All art? Not just…postmodern stuff, or weird conceptual things?”

“Pretty much everything. Some collages, I guess.”

“How come you care when nobody else does? You smuggled art history books under the covers at night?”

“Just the way I am, I guess.” The conversation kept moving on after that, dropping art for the coffee itself and a fast-resolved discussion on whether or not it’d be worth it to split a piece of cake, and Dan didn’t let her know but was glad she didn’t make a big deal out of his rare family talk. He played dialogue over in his head, telling her he was glad she didn’t make a deal of it and if she didn’t he’d say more.

“So,” she said with her mouth full of poppy seeds, “tell me about New York.”

Dan swallowed his bite before starting, always careful to not say the wrong things or too much where he shouldn’t, like how Jimmy got all restless because he couldn’t run on all fours around the hotel room. He told Beaux about a big family vacation from a town to the city, going to the museums and restaurants, running with his brothers under subway tracks and through parks to chase birds and going to the top of the biggest buildings and daring each other to look down. Some museums were better than others – he still could see Reuben’s face in the diorama room at the Natural History museum – and he still remembered the way some hallways seemed to suck up all the noise he could make.

She leaned in when he started talking about the Chinese New Year festival, how they didn’t know it was coming but found out on the second day of a week-long trip, and they all went to see it the night before they left. He tried to explain how frustrating it was for an eleven-year-old version of himself to get a lecture on the history of the festival and the meaning of the traditions when all he wanted to do was see fireworks, and didn’t say a thing about how he and his brothers stopped being frustrated when their tour guide started to talk about the Chinese using a lunar calendar, and how it suddenly clicked in his head because it made more sense to go by the moon than something else.

Dan smiled when he got to the nighttime parade, how they got there early to get curbside seats to see everyone and everything as it all went by, and Beaux’s eyes went wide when he told her about the dancers and the dragons. He told her about the fireworks reflecting and shimmering on their scales as they swam through the air and roared along with the people underneath them, fearsome and wonderful, how some made clouds appear right around them and others slithered down to come face-to-face with the crowds and hover just a few feet away, shaking their whiskers and thrusting their horns, before moving on with the rest of the parade.

Some of it he had to mime with his hands, and some of it he told her he couldn’t do at all, “We got to say hello to them earlier – the dragons, I mean. It was in the park at the bottom near the ferries, the Bowery, the day before the festival, and it was a thing to get young dragons used to being around people. There was a guy with them, this trainer-person, and he let us pet one of the younger ones,” he held his hands about three feet apart, “and their whiskers were as soft as they looked, and it blew fog right in my face.”

“I’d love to see them someday.”

“We’ll just have to make plans for February. You’ll need good boots.”

-

The next time she showed up at his place, she said she had something for him. Brown paper bags could mean anything from beer to take-out to lacy underwear – and that’d been an interesting night – and he really hadn’t expected a gift and didn’t know what to guess when Beaux sat him on the couch and handed him something in tissue paper.

“Wow.” Dan traced a thumb over the edge of the frame. “You – wow. Thank you.” He leaned over, kissed her square on the lips, “Thank you.”

She kissed him right back. “You’re welcome.”

“I didn’t think – what you said about how much it cost…”

“I can budget, and I’ve got some more clients, but I know you liked it.” She jumped onto her feet, almost bouncing on her toes. “So where should we hang it? Over here? Bedroom? Come on.”

“In a minute.” He kept staring at the photo. “Just give me a moment with this.”

“Bedroom, then. That way you two can be alone for a while.”

By the end of the night after some trial and error and double-checking the lease agreement it ended up in the bedroom after all. Dan had to admit it really worked, and spun to grab Beaux off her feet and turn them around to land on the bed, dinner coming after inaugurating and welcoming the piece into the bedroom.

The rituals that made up his life now didn’t fill it or mark it the way the old ones did, but they still filled it, and for now, a Saturday night spent slow-dancing with her out on the floor and gently buzzed on slingshots, it worked fine. Not great, just fine, and maybe that was why he was so restless tonight. Maybe he hadn’t had enough to drink yet, maybe she was wearing too much perfume and he couldn’t smell her hair, maybe he made a mistake and should’ve gone to the movies with her instead.

There were lots of people out tonight, and he knew plenty of guys checked Beaux out when they thought she wasn’t looking, he thought he saw a couple of them doing it tonight – hell, he’d done it, but at least he’d had the balls to talk to her, not keep making eyes over at her when they thought her boyfriend wasn’t looking, either. He turned his back to them as the music got louder, started to twirl Beaux around along with it and smile when she laughed. They had another round of drinks, made jokes about walking home and what she was packing in her purse, danced through two more songs getting looser with each verse and chorus, and then Beaux pulled away and laughed and said, “I think I’m done for the night.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely. Aaaahhhb-sah-lutely.” She shook herself out from the shoulders down. “I gotta use the bathroom first, so you think you can wait outside?”

“I’ll be right there.” He watched her move off, and for a moment stood out on the dance floor alone before breaking it apart and leaving to wait right by the door. It wasn’t that late, but even if it was it was too bright here – in the whole city – to see any stars, and maybe that was getting to him, not moving around. He didn’t miss it the way he missed his dad but sometimes he did want to go out into the country and sleep by the stars and maybe he could talk Beaux into it, get some sleeping bags and hike out through some fields…

“Watch it!” Someone shoved him aside. He stumbled back a step in reflex and it was easy to move forward in instinct and anger and push the jerk back. The guy turned around, glaring, and Dan recognized his face. “What?”

Dan swallowed. “You were, you were flirting with my girlfriend.”

“Listen, I didn’t even talk to anyone –” He stopped when Dan grabbed his arm.

“You were looking at her wrong,” and he was on thin ice but wanted to keep going to the middle of the pond, wanted to keep pushing out, “and I want an apology.”

“What the fuck?” There were a few people around now, watching.

“Tell me you’re sorry.”

“Fuck that, I’m not sorry, even if I was I’d be sorry to her for picking you, fuck off, come on.” He tried to wrestle free but Dan held on tight.

“Tell me you’re sorry.”

The guy twisted loose and snarled, “Listen, you son of a bitch –”

The guy wasn’t even talking about Beaux and didn’t know about Dan but it set something off in him, and before he knew what he was doing, Dan punched him. His fist hit the guy’s face and pain shot up to his shoulder. He swore and shook his hand to get the pain out. The guy stumbled back, everyone yelling, and then the guy yelled something else he didn’t hear and punched back. Dan saw it coming and managed to turn enough it hit his good shoulder instead of his face. He twisted on his feet and the guy charged at Dan, who stood and rolled with it, spinning to keep the guy going.

He fell into the dirt and grabbed Dan’s leg and pulled him down too. He tried to get on top of him but Dan kicked back, hit his face again. He tried to scramble away but was too close, the guy tangled in his legs, and the guy pulled at one ankle and grabbed the other, hauled himself up Dan’s body.

Dan grew up wrestling with his brothers when they were on all fours. It was just practice for now. He kneed the guy in the balls and he let go and curled up, his hands in his groin and shouting in pain.

The crowd had gathered around them yelling and whooping. Dan pushed himself up and away. He got onto his feet and slapped the guy’s head with both hands, grabbing his ears and pulling hard and the guy was making sounds Dan hadn’t heard in a long time, grabbing Dan’s hands but not getting a good enough grip to pull them away. Dan pulled the guy up to his knees and head-butted him right in the face. He smelled blood – everyone was yelling and screaming now – and he let out a growl. He bit the guy’s cheek, sinking his teeth in and not letting go. Everyone was screaming, and huge hands were on his body, pulling him pulling them apart and holding him and he was kicking but couldn’t get free and spat to get the guy’s blood out of his mouth.

“What the fuck!”

“What the fuck is this!” Beaux yelled back. Two bouncers held Dan back while another held the other guy, and someone from the crowd was looking at his cheek. It was bleeding pretty well, two perfect half-moons next to the blood from his nose. Under the parking lot’s streetlamps it looked fake, coming out of him like that, and Dan spat again and the bouncer on his right held on tighter.

“Fucker bit me!” The guy’s bouncer was pulling him back as hard as he could, and the guy was still moving and everyone was still yelling. “Son-of-a-bitch bit me!”

Dan shouted back, “You’ll thank me for it in a week!”

“Fuck you mean?” He looked so confused, like some lost puppy, God it was pathetic.

Dan was gibbering, laughing, “Full moon’s in a week, motherfucker!”

“What the hell?”

“Dan, come on!” Beaux yelled.

“Full moon, you –” The guy stared at Dan and his eyes went wide, suddenly scared. It wasn’t even how it worked but most people didn’t know that and Dan knew this idiot didn’t either. He laughed again.

“Baruch Ha’shem to you too.” Dan grinned, blood still on his teeth. The guy went limp in the bouncer’s hands, and the ones holding Dan suddenly let go. He shook his arms out, glaring at everyone and wishing he knew how to swear in Hebrew, and stalked off in silence instead. Nobody came after him.

It took almost a minute for Beaux to come running. He didn’t look back, staring down at the sidewalk, heard her getting close and saw her shadow appear before she finally made pace with him.

“You mind telling me –”

“Ask me when we get home.”

“Daniel, you –”

“When we get home, okay?”

She didn’t say anything, her footsteps and presence next to him more than enough. She waited all through the walk, getting into his place, and after they got into the kitchen she turned the light and patiently waited for him to finish brushing his teeth. All the energy he had was gone, leaving him where pulling out and sitting in a chair was almost too much to think about and do. He wanted to curl into bed and forget but Beaux was here and he owed it to her.

She sat down across from him. “Okay, we’re home.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So what was that about?”

“Did you ask anyone?”

“Someone told me you’d been fighting over me, which would be sweet if it was the eighteen-hundreds.”

“I was really drunk.”

“You had three drinks. You were not ‘really drunk.’”

“Okay, I wasn’t all that drunk.”

“So what was that all about?”

“I don’t know, I was just –”

“You bit him. I’ve seen and done my share of dirty fighting but that’s really far out there.”

“Yeah.”

“So – so what? Dan, I don’t even know how to think about what you were doing. And that thing you yelled at the end, what, was that Russian or something? Were you on drugs or –”

“It was Hebrew.”

“What?”

“It means ‘praise God.’ ‘Praise the name,’ actually.”

“How come you know Hebrew?”

Blessed be the name. Blessed are you, Lord our God, creator of Heaven and Earth…for anything and everything. Dan closed his eyes, knew it wouldn’t get any easier, and somehow found himself feeling better for knowing what he could say. “I’m Jewish.”

“All right, so that’s the Hebrew. Okay. And that, the biting, what –”

“I’m a werewolf.”

“What.” It wasn’t a question this time.

He didn’t know why he was smiling, he just was. “I’m a werewolf.”

“How come I’ve never seen you on all fours?”

“That’s because I can’t. I don’t shift.”

“Don’t you have to? Isn’t that how it works?”

“It doesn’t, that’s the thing. The…the switch inside to do that is stuck. So I don’t shift. Even if it’s a full moon.”

“Dan, I don’t know if I can believe that.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Didn’t think it mattered.”

“Something that big does.”

“I know. And that’s why –” He sighed. “I promise I’ll tell you everything, but I’m going to need some coffee.”

“Pour me a double.”

Dan spun the grinder, poured the water, and set the machine to percolate; he set out the mugs and sugar with particular care, leaving the cream in the fridge until it was needed. Three parts coffee, two parts cream, just the way she liked it. When he set it down, she pulled it close, wrapped her hands around it, and didn’t drink right away.

“Just tell me.” She looked up at him, face open and still. “Please, just tell me.”

He started from the beginning.

It’d been a long time since he’d put any of it into words for himself, never for anyone else, and he kept stumbling over himself while he tried to keep going; he kept doubling back to add more, retreating to say something differently. He didn’t know what she did and didn’t want to hear so he told her everything he could think of, letting it all come out of his mouth without trying to think too much about it before it left. As he kept going, it got easier, less tangled in his head and mouth, digging up the thoughts he’d kept inside for so long. Where he’d come from, why he’d wanted to go, what made him leave in the end. God, he’d been such a stupid, stupid kid. Twenty years old, angry and tired of being angry, thinking the same things as every angry kid and coming to the conclusion everyone would be better off without him– no more guilt, no more worrying, no more of them forgetting he was their brother and son and not someone to feel sorry about – and how, somehow, he’d managed to go through with it, actually run away in the middle of the night when everyone else was asleep or away and couldn’t stop him. And by the time he stopped being angry and realized he’d been just as wrong he’d been away for so long it was too long to come back. It was too big to go back anymore, too much, more than he could handle. And he knew it’d be all right if he went back, open arms would be waiting for him. But he also knew he couldn’t just go back, show up on the doorstep one day. He had a life here now, one where nobody knew who he wasn’t, where he could just be someone without anything. He hadn’t thought of what he’d brought with him, didn’t like to think about it even when it happened every lunar cycle, too used to being away to think to go back anymore.

When he was finally done it was well into Sunday – thank God it was a Sunday and neither of them had work – with dawn just a couple of hours away, the first all-nighter he’d pulled in years. They’d gone through cup after cup of coffee, Beaux saying almost nothing, just listening, and when he was done she looked like she didn’t know how to say anything anymore, just a fragile, gentle expression on her face.

She stayed quiet as she pushed her mug away, stood up, and walked over to him, sitting in his lap the way he liked and wrapping her arms around him, holding him to let him know she was there. He wrapped his arms around her too, fingers in her hair that she’d let down when he talked about going over to friends’ houses for the first night of almost every holiday from Pesach to Yom Kippur, pulling her close to breathe her in.

“You could, you know.” Her voice was muffled against his shoulder. “You could go back.”

“I can’t,” he pleaded.

“You can. You left, you can just go.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“You won’t if you stay.”

“I don’t want to.”

“You’ve done it before. You don’t need to be scared.”

“But it’s too much to go.”

“It’s more if you don’t.”

“I know,” he cried into her hair, “I know.”

-

He waited until Thursday morning to knock on Alpert’s door. He’d walked over when it was still night, waking up early again because he still knew what to do when he knew what was coming for him. He waited until the day was really going before getting up from his desk and knocking on the door to Alpert’s inner office. There was a muffled “come in” and Dan opened the door gently and sat down in the chair opposite the desk. Alpert clicked a couple more keys, “Just a moment,” then took off his glasses to smile at Dan. “So what’s going on?”

“I need to resign.”

“I’m sorry, I’m going to need more than that.”

“I’m going away for a while, so you’re going to need to get someone else.”

“Someone to fill in for you, or replace you?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“So where exactly are you going?”

“Back home.”

“Holy shit. Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“And what brought this on?” Dan thought about telling Alpert about the fight, then shrugged it off when Alpert shook his head. “No, I don’t need to know. When are you leaving?”

“This Sunday.”

“Are you coming in tomorrow and Friday?”

“Yes. Why? You want to throw me a good-bye party?”

“Maybe a going-away dinner. You could bring your girlfriend, what was it, Beaux? I know I said hello once, but we never really got introduced.”

“Beaux, yeah.” He smiled. “That’d be nice.”

The rest of the week was a flurry of getting everything set up so Alpert could manage for a few days before he got someone new – “I’ve gotten used to having help,” he confessed when he asked Dan to describe his work for the job listing – and making sure he didn’t forget anything. He met his landlord and got his lease signed over to Beaux, and kept putting off packing for the trip, trying to plan how long it’d take to get from here to there.

Friday evening, after turning off the computer and handing Alpert the keys, showering and putting on one of his better shirts, Beaux drove him over to Alpert’s place. He had to tell her it took so much less time than the bus, the not-very-funny joke making her laugh and letting both of them relax a bit. She’d met Alpert once when she’d picked up Dan for the trip to her parents’, but that took all of four minutes to exchange names and occupations. Dan wasn’t scared about them getting introduced, and smiled when Beaux started talking shop about opening her own business soon and if he had any good advice for that he might share over coffee one day.

“Call me Isabel,” Alpert offered, and Dan knew this, at least, would be okay.

He lingered a bit and then followed them upstairs, caught a bit of Alpert’s explanation – “…it’s not quite right, but woman-who-lives-as-a-man is more of a mouthful, so I needed something easier to say and most people know that phrase already…” – and went back down outside to give them some more time together. He was still there when Alpert came back outside, where they stood quietly together for a while, watching the afternoon move into dusk, faster now that it was starting to get ready for autumn.

“She’s a keeper, all right.”

“She really is.”

“So how’d you meet again?”

“She looked hot, so I asked her to dance.”

“Of course.” He chuckled, then cut off suddenly. “Listen, I know you don’t want this to turn into something – here, just take this.” He pressed an envelope at Dan, whose eyes went wide when he opened it. “It’s not a lot, but it’s enough so you don’t have to walk home. And it’s a gift, so please don’t refuse it.”

There wasn’t anything Dan could say, except “Thank you.”

“The charm works perfectly, by the way.” He pulled it out of his shirt, dangled it from a new, delicate chain. “Not a single hot or cold flash since I put it on.”

“Glad to hear that.”

“Come on,” he slapped him lightly on the shoulder, “Dinner’s not getting any warmer.”

It was a fantastic meal, Alpert pulling out all the stops; he must have been preparing the meat for days, and actually had been, at least some parts of it that needed extra time to marinate and simmer. It lasted much longer than everyone expected, drinking beer and eating too much and laughing bittersweet, and at the end of the night Alpert gave Dan some honey to bring home and the biggest hug he could. “Promise you’ll take care of yourself.”

“I promise.”

He wasn’t going away forever. He knew that. He just didn’t feel it; he didn’t feel much of anything, not sure what to do with himself in the little limbo. Two more days before heading off, every moment with Beaux that he could, then one more day, one last night before she drove him over and he kissed her good-bye at the train station. The train would get him close, a bus would get him closer, and he’d walk the rest of the way from the depot. If there wasn’t any unexpected catastrophe it’d take almost the full day and get him home sometime around noon.

He knew he should be asleep but even after that dinner he couldn’t calm his mind down. Beaux was already dreaming, groaning over something that made her rub her face into the pillow, and he pulled his knees up to watch her, reached out to stroke her hair. She’d joked about cutting it once and he’d pushed against that, even though she was being silly; some nights he thought he’d fallen in love with her because of her hair.

Dan climbed out of bed, got dressed, and slipped out the door as quietly as he could, down the stairs and onto the street and started walking. It wasn’t that late, just later than he’d been awake and out in – God, in years. He didn’t need to be out this late anymore since he didn’t travel, and didn’t need to be awake this time of night – this time of day since he’d gotten something that waited for him in the morning. The realization made him laugh and stare up at the sky with the stars hidden by city lights, the waning moon still the brightest thing he could see. It’d be new in two days, new on the night he’d be getting home. If he went. He could still cut and run like he’d done, start running into the night and not look back. Glancing up at the windows, imagining everyone sleeping upstairs safe and sound, he remembered how he felt back on that night, more scared than anything else, knowing he wasn’t anywhere yet and could still turn around and stay and that there wasn’t any chance he’d do that. Everything about going back was too big. He knew these signs lit up on their own, the street names, the bus routes without having to think about it – the best store for apples and the right shop to stop for a late afternoon coffee and which place had the French chocolate bars.

There was a life here he’d become a part of, adjusted to, using words he’d never heard until he came down here without thinking about them. He’d gotten used to warm winters and changing his shirt twice a day in summer. There was – there were the ways people said hello, they took their time, how it was so much like home with everyone knowing everyone else and always speaking kindly, slowly, the way people did their best to hide things away.

There was a pay phone across the street half-lit from one of the streetlights. He’d grabbed his wallet before leaving; he dug two quarters out of the change pocket, dropped them down the slot, took a deep breath and dialed the numbers. The dial tone was almost a good thing. He closed his eyes as it rang two, three, four times and he didn’t know what he’d do if no one picked up, maybe just stand here a while and –

“Hello, Wilson residence.”

Dan’s eyes snapped open.

“Hello?”

He stayed silent. They were still there. The number was still the right one, they were still there. Home was still there.

“Hello? Who’s calling? Who is this?”

Dan’s hands were shaking, and he could, he could if he wanted, he could say hello and hi and here he was, but he hung it up, gingerly, not slamming it down, just keeping it quiet. He couldn’t stand to hear more. He kept walking until he stopped shaking, wandering through the streets until he felt ready to turn around and head back to kiss Beaux good-bye.

He knew if he’d stayed on the line he’d hear her ask if it was him. And he didn’t think he could stand to hear her say his name.

-

Dan had come home before. There were Thanksgiving vacations and semester breaks, summer camps and camp-outs and sleep-overs, and he felt like he was fifteen and fresh from a sleep-away camp all over again, looking for familiar sights along the road, thrilled and sad to be going home. He pressed his face against the window, trying to see if he recognized anything. It’d been eighteen years – eighteen years, six months, almost half his life. He didn’t know if there’d be anything left to remember until the bus passed by the old drive-in and he shook to see the sign faded and worn but still the same, still the same one he remembered.

After that it was easier, even exciting, to look around and see what he could, his heart leaping up into his throat and staying there: past all the new houses into the old ones, past the old ice-cream store advertising it didn’t serve chocolate, creeks and parking lots and big trees and home, home, home. He almost leapt off the bus, not having to stop and think about where he was, just hefted his bag up and started to walk without having to check anything for directions. He knew the way home from here. He took in a deep breath; it was almost September and autumn was in the air that it wasn’t when he was down South, something rustling though the air, getting ready to wait for winter to pass and spring to return. He didn’t know how he’d forgotten that smell.

Moving on foot took out the excitement, reminded him there was still time to turn around and run away, but coming so far meant he couldn’t go back anymore. Going slow like this meant he had to think about it now, too. He couldn’t doze or drift off in a seat on a moving vehicle; he had to look around and see what he remembered and how it was different – trees missing, houses the wrong color, toys in yards where there hadn’t been any before, the front yard all wrong, the car missing from the driveway. He stopped, stared, and walked up to the front door and rang the doorbell. No one answered.

He waited a couple of minutes and went to check around back: there was a newer car back there, something blue instead of red, and both Mom and Dad’s bikes were there too. There weren’t any newspapers but mail was in the box, so they must have gone out for the morning. Maybe for brunch, maybe grocery shopping, whatever, but something that’d be over soon and bring them back home. Where he’d be waiting. Right here. Not so patiently, but when they got here, he’d be here too.

Dan dropped his bag down and sat on the steps of the front door, knowing they’d be home soon. He counted the cars passing by, always hoping it was the old station wagon. Even if he didn’t know what would happen when it arrived, he knew that when it did, he’d finally be here waiting.