But more than the actual floral arrangements, what really stood out to me that day was the smell. It reminded me of Grandma’s bathroom. Being the conscientious woman that she was, she always made sure to have rose-scented air freshener on hand. In theory, it was supposed to mask the daily odors that humans release behind bathroom doors, but mostly it just seemed to add one more smell to the mix—one that didn’t belong. I would certainly have preferred the scent of roses to excrement, but smelling the two together somehow made the situation that much more disgusting. And so the scent of roses on the day of my little brother’s funeral only gave me the impression that something was being covered up. Something shameful and repulsive.

I sat next to my dad; my mom sat on the other side of him holding Sarah. I was relieved not to be next to Mom. The way she had been acting just plain scared me. When she wasn’t crying she appeared to be in pain, and when she didn’t appear to be in pain she was sleeping. The creepiest thing though, was how she looked at other people, myself included. It was as if she just looked right through us. I told her a couple years later that at the time she appeared to me to be sleepwalking in the midst of a nightmare after having stubbed her toe on the wooden leg of the living room sofa. In a way, I guess the whole situation had temporarily blinded her and left her in a crippled state of shock. It was just so sudden and unexpected. She didn’t see anything or anybody for a good six months after. She just looked through it all.

My dad, on the other hand, was as tough as nails. That’s not to say he was cold and emotionless, he just handled himself in the way he thought best. We all needed it. With his right arm he held me to his side, but not the way Mom was clutching Sarah to her breast. The way Mom held Sarah gave people the impression that there was a wild animal snarling and foaming beneath the pew in front of her, watching and waiting for the right opportunity to leap from the shadows and rip the helpless baby from her powerless and grasping arms. My little cousin Emily actually looked under the pew to see what the problem was. Mom just looked right through the back of her head.

Dad’s arm was like a fortress—a wall of protection. It was there, it was sure and it was strong. I watched his brawny face as he nodded and thanked all of the people who stopped at the edge of our pew to whisper condolences in his ear. I studied his bright black eyes, the rise and fall of his shaggy brows, the slight wrinkling of his forehead that occurred upon acknowledgement of another person. Some of the men attempted to shake his hand, but the walled fortress refused to release its grip upon my bony shoulder. Instead, Dad offered the men his left hand, despite the awkwardness it invariably produced.

I was even more thankful for dad when I saw Aunt Margie, or heard her I should say. For a moment I thought someone was castrating a bull in the back of the church, but then I turned and saw Margie stumbling down the aisle, my cousin Jeff holding her left arm to keep her on her feet. She was gasping and wailing and holding on to the sides of the pews for support. All of the commotion caused Sarah to start crying, but the sight just sickened me more than anything else. I had thrown fits like that before and lived to regret them, but this one was coming from a grown adult. Margie finally sat down a couple of rows behind us, moaning and snivelling the entire length of the service. I burrowed my head deeper into dad’s broad side and thought about what modifications I would make to the tree house that summer. I decided it would greatly benefit from the addition of a crow’s nest and perhaps a zip-line.

I stood by dad outside as well. We were standing on a swath of green indoor-outdoor carpeting that was spread carefully beneath a tarpaulin tent canopy. The carpeting reminded me of putt-putt golf turf. In fact, there was much there to remind me of putt-putt golf. There were obstacles, a sand trap and even a hole. Howie was suspended over the hole by an aluminum-framed contraption that had a platform made out of seatbelts and a huge crank bolted to its side. I imagined putting multicolored golf balls into the great hole. I decided that if I could get a good enough bounce off the leg of Grandpa’s metal folding chair it might just make it through the preacher’s legs, up the slight grade and into the hole. Another option was to whack the ball at the side of Aunt Margie’s head. If I were to get the angle just right, the ball would shoot up through opening in the center of the tarpaulin, roll down the incline of the roof and then plop right in. That would have been the most enjoyable shot by far but also the most difficult.

The preacher said “amen” and then moved to the side to signify the end of his homily. That was the cue for the lowering of the casket. My putt-putt daydreams fled away and my heart began to ache as I saw Howie’s box disappear into the hole. It was much deeper than I had imagined—too deep.

Prior to the funeral, I had overheard several people telling my parents that I would probably not understand what was going on because I was not yet old enough to grasp the concept of permanence. They couldn’t have been more wrong. I completely understood death. I had learned it from nature. I knew that when you smear a lightning bug on your face like luminescent war paint it never flies again. Just like I knew that if Uncle Jerry shoots your dog because it’s dying of leukemia she will never again fetch a Frisbee. That’s why when I heard that Howie had fallen from a tree and cracked his skull I knew what to expect. I knew that the days of football and forest explorations were gone and would never return. I cried for two days straight when they first told me he died because I knew very well what forever meant. What I didn’t understand at that time was love. The majority of my tears came because something that I enjoyed had been taken away from me, like a child who’s candy has been stolen. Five or so years later though, when I slowly began to grasp the ineffable concept of love, I grieved for Howie all over again.

Soon after the casket had ended its descent, my father stepped forward to the graveside, stooping to pick up a shovel on his way. He then proceeded to throw in a shovel-full of dirt while my mom tossed in a red rose. After the thump of the dirt, all was silent. A mild spring breeze unsettled my father’s short, stiff hair, his face as strong and composed as ever. My mother was an endless fountain of saltwater.

Finally, we turned in unison to exit the tent, but not three steps on and something inside turned me around and forced me back to the graveside. Kneeling down, I shoved my hands deep into the loose, fragrant soil and threw a clod of my own into the abyss. I stood a moment looking in and wiping my hands on the pockets of my blue blazer. Then, looking up, I saw that dad was there beside me. He wasn’t angry. In a way I felt like he was proud of me, like I had done what a man was supposed to do or something. We then turned to leave, his fortress of an arm deposited once more upon my bony shoulder.

Of course, all of this was too much for Aunt Margie. She screamed and then passed out cold on the cemetery lawn. The preacher was first at her side. He looked about him in shock, wondering why none of the family looked surprised or bothered to respond. Eventually Grandpa made his way over and nudged her with his foot and then told her to get up and to quit acting like a damn fool.

It was standard family fare at Uncle Jim and Aunt Carol’s: rolls with sliced ham, potato salad, green bean casserole, somebody or another’s famous meatballs. I grabbed for a roll, but Grandma sent me to the bathroom to wash up first.

My hands were filthy as were the sides of my suit jacket. I took a damp washcloth to the pockets to try and clean them up a bit, but that only made things worse. Now instead of just looking dirty, my coat looked damp and dirty. My hands were just as difficult to clean. Beneath each fingernail laid a stubborn crescent moon of dirt that was next to impossible to remove without a utensil of some kind. I searched through the bathroom drawers and behind the endless walls of half-used Avon lotions that cluttered the medicine cabinet but to no avail. By this time Uncle Joe was pounding on the door and demanding access to the facilities so I quickly abandoned my search and headed out.

Joe apologized about rushing me and noted as I passed that I’d understand one day when my prostate is the size of a cantaloupe. I just ignored him. I was still concerned about my fingernails. Seeing my dirty hands poking out of the ends of my navy, brass-buttoned suit sleeves embarrassed me. I felt out of place. Everyone else looked so nice and polished, so sincere and reverent, and then there was me, the little boy with dirty hands. I kept them inside my damp, dirty pockets for the remainder of the day and ate nothing.

The next day was Saturday – planting day – and Dad started it like it was any other. To him the setting of the sun marked a break in time that was final and irrevocable. At the new dawn all actions were in a forward motion that refused to look back, the time for reflection being over. He used to say that looking back and living in regret made one as useless as Lot’s wife. Mom, on the other hand, didn’t possess this level of fortitude. Her tears turned her into a pillar of salt that didn’t leave its bedroom for six months. But even Dad’s seemingly endless fortitude, we would later find, could not be sustained forever. Not too long after Mom recovered he would experience his own “dark night of the soul.” He never spoke a word about it, but Mom and I could both taste the salt in the air.

I wandered out to the kitchen around seven or so, just in time to see Dad rise from his seat, down his last sip of coffee and fold his newspaper all in one fluid motion.

“You better get yourself some breakfast and get dressed. We’ve got a lot of work to do.” He said this from the sink without turning his head to look at me.

“Yes, sir,” I said and then headed over to the cabinet to procure a bowl and a box of cereal. Mom usually cooked breakfast on Saturdays, but I knew it was a lost cause that morning. I crunched my Honeycomb alone. Later, I tiptoed into Mom’s room and kissed her and Sarah before heading outside.

It saddened me to see Mom in such a terrible state, and I began to resent Dad for going about his business in such an immovable and seemingly insensitive manner. But by the time I was dressed and headed out the door I was thankful for the normalcy as well as the distraction that it provided.

“Grab a pouch of corn and start on the next row, Cole.” Dad pointed toward the wheelbarrow, which held within its scuffed metal belly an array of miscellaneous garden utensils as well as a rusted coffee can stuffed full of heirloom seed packets. I shuffled through the packets until I found the corn and then knelt down in the cool soil and prepared to get to work.

“Remember to drop them in about an inch and a half and about a foot apart, okay? Do you remember what and inch and a half looks like?”

“Yes,” I replied while waving my index finger in the air as confirmation.

“How ’bout a foot?”

“Yes,” I replied pointing to my forearm.

The sun was just peaking over the eastern tree line, and I could tell by the feel of it that it would be a perfect day for planting. It was. We were half finished before we even felt the need to roll up our sleeves.

Conversation was sparse as I remember; just instructions and questions pertaining to the job at hand. I mostly daydreamed about the tree house and went about my work in silence. Eventually I grew bored and began pretending I was a seed-planting robot complete with clunky motions and sound effects. This went on for quite some time until I looked up and could see that Dad was getting annoyed. I retired my act and asked a question instead.

“How do seeds work?”

Dad thought for a moment. Then, struggling to conceal a grin he replied, “Magic.”

“No, really. How do they work?”

“Magic. Just like a said.” Dad laughed and then proceeded in a more serious tone, “And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

I thought for a moment about whether or not to take Dad seriously. He loved to pull a person’s leg, but the last comment had been stated so seriously that I couldn’t decide what to make of it. He gave me a moment to dwell on this and then, sensing my confusion, offered a further explanation.

“Everyone knows what a seed needs to grow: soil, water, air and sunlight. But no one I know can explain why a seed grows. It’s dead when you put it in the ground, but add the right ingredients and it shoots right up. Your science teacher wouldn’t be happy with that answer, but I’m not a scientist and I’m also not afraid of a little mystery now and again. I guess I just choose to view at least a portion of it as a miracle—or magic if you like.”

I smiled and laughed. I liked this explanation from my father. It was so unlike him and yet now as I look back, it explains so much. Silence ensued once more, but just as our planting was about to converge in the middle of a row a thought occurred to me.

“Is Howie like a seed? Is that why we put him in the ground?”

Dad sat back on his haunches and contemplated the dark soil at his knees. His right hand shook up and down methodically as he rattled a group of seeds within his closed calloused hand. Then, with invisible tears welling behind squinting eyes, he looked at me and stated firmly and with great resolve, “Yes, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

I remember the look of our hands that day. They were filthy and yet at that moment and in that place it was the most natural thing on the planet.

When we confronted him with it, he neither confirmed nor denied it, preferring to lose himself in that neither-here-nor-there universe of his generation. His bony shoulders shrugged, his too-long hair swished and his eyes stayed glued on the table. My wife threw up her hands, while I sat in silence after concluding that demanding the identity of the force that had put my son up to this was too bloody cliché.

My wife and I retain an unshaken exterior in the face of this crisis. The hedges are still even, the rock garden hasn’t gone to shit, and I signed my snow removal contract in September. I can still see my reflection in the ancient, gargantuan dining room set inherited from my in-laws; the asparagus and broccoli continue to be steamed to that perfect crisp and shade of green, and Thanksgiving dinner last week was complete with mustard leaves showering the tablecloth in that highly calculated but seemingly haphazard fashion. We barely flinch when neighbours inquire after Jake, and smile generously as we’re regaled with stories of their children winning scholarships, jobs in skyscrapers with impressive conference rooms, or MacArthur Foundation fellowships. We still kiss each other goodnight as we climb under white sheets with ambiguous scents like mountain air or springtime, while never once buckling and admitting that adoption has crossed each of our minds.

I try and reassure myself that our refusal to visit Jake’s coffee shop isn’t out of neglect or an unhealthy denial. We’ve asked about the place, in both geographical terms and otherwise, usually over dinner. My son will glare at me while passing the asparagus, risotto, or pork chops, as though it’s not only our questions that irritate him, but our very existences. He’ll finally mumble something with an exhaustive tone that I use with my father when I drag him to doctor’s appointments:

“It’s right between the fruit store and the post office, but you guys better not ask me to start buying fruit for you, I swear.”

“It’s fine for now.”

“Don’t freak out, I am not going to do this my whole life.”

Today is different. Maybe the tragedy of the world has finally worn me down. Maybe I don’t want my son writing bitchy songs or books about me ten years down the road. My wife looks very bewildered when I list these reasons, but pauses long enough from her sewing to write up a list of fruits to buy on the back of an old Sears receipt. A certain confidence fills my belly. I have written permission to visit my son; a note to flash before his eyes should he want to shoot me for invading his space in which he’s trying to find himself.

I walk in to the coffee shop and immediately search for him. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon and the place is quiet. I walk toward the counter displaying all the goodies through the glass windows. I imagine my son gingerly fishing out muffins for the big, busy people of the world with their nice cars running outside.

Jake has his back to me when I get to the counter, but with the sense of customers that he has probably mastered in the last three months, he quickly turns to greet me. His wild hair is tied back in a ponytail and I find myself liking this job already.

“Hi, Dad … ” His voice trails off in confusion. He is waiting for me to give him the practical reason for my visit: a death in the family or his mother in the hospital.

“Hi, son.” I try the most laid-back voice I know. Christ, I could kick myself, but a young woman has started mopping the floor around me, and I need both feet to keep balance.

“What’s wrong?” Jake asks. “Is mom alright?”

“Yes, yes, your mother is fine.”

His mother used to cradle him in her arms until he was ten or eleven, and whisper how beautiful he was. The best I could do was take him fishing and awkwardly explain the purpose of the centerfold that hung in my father-in-law’s garage. From the look of relief on his face now, I know the cradling won out.

“She didn’t come with you?”

“She was busy.” I take a deep breath and smile. “I came to visit you alone.”

Jake shrugs, and I can see that this news is about as exciting as a lead balloon. He looks over at the girl who’s been washing the floor. She nods and Jake walks over to a small table by the door. I follow him and we sit down.

“I asked if I could take a break and she said yes.” He tells me this with a certain amount of pride, as though this silent language flowing between the lost souls that lurk behind glass counters of coffee shops should impress me. It actually does, in a weird kind of way, but I pretend otherwise. I resent that a girl wearing a t-shirt that says, “There’s no candy, just get in the car!” knows how to speak to my son better than I can.

I suddenly wish I had a muffin before me to gently break apart or that my fingers were slim enough to permit me to play with my wedding band without pulling the hairs on my knuckle. Jake has pulled the elastic from his hair and it’s now being pushed from hand to hand.

“Do you want something?” he finally asks. I nod, even though my stomach is still full from lunch.

“But something small,” I reply.

He comes back with an oatmeal cookie the size of a small planet, and eyes me carefully. I realize that this is a test, a privileged visit into his world. I proceed with caution, making sure the embedded raisins don’t fall on my lap. I take a bite. It’s dry, like uninhabitable land.

“How is it?” Jake asks. His eyebrows are narrowed with the concentration of his mother, and I can only pray that my lie will miss the radar.

“It’s good,” I say.

“It was my first batch,” he announces proudly.

“You made these?”

He nods.

“I thought these places had everything frozen,” I say, swallowing a chunk with the most grace possible.

A look of disappointment crosses over his face. “That’s just the chains.” His tone of impatience is obvious. “I did my research.” I teeter between pride in him for being so thorough in his selection of a minimum wage job and the consuming desire to clobber him.

“This place is different. They have fair trade coffee, the stuff is healthy. These cookies don’t have half the butter that mom uses.”

I smile as another chunk makes its way down my oesophagus.

“So you like working here?” I ask carefully.

He shrugs. “For now.”

I nod avidly, as though this was the answer I was hoping for, as my hand cramps up under the cookie. I feel like a pointless competitor in shot put and pray that Jake doesn’t notice. He merely looks at me almost sympathetically.

“The best way to eat them is to break them apart in fours. That’s how all those bitchy rich people eat them.” He rolls his eyes and the girl with the offensive t-shirt begins giggling.

My grip on the cookie tightens. The oatmeal scent crawls into my nostrils and out to every finger and toe; my fingerprints mark its grooves; the protruding raisins dig into my skin and the sweat from my palms bleeds into the baking grease. I hang on like this for a moment, smiling at Jake, but he’s too busy looking out the window.

I see the cut before it happens. A diagonal zig zag erodes the dough from left to right, slicing through the cookie until the bigger half falls on the table in a heap of big crumbs. Before my son can notice, I pick out a loose raisin from the rubble and hold it between my fingers, its size manageable; its softness between my fingers soothing.

On the way to breakfast she caught him eyeballing one of the other hotel guests, a woman wearing brown capris and a cream tank top. Tan freckled chest. “Can you be a little more obvious?”

They spent the rest of the day by the lake, sitting on wooden deck chairs. She had a stack of Better Homes and Gardens. He watched her read for a while. He felt like smoking but not the disapproval. He fell asleep. When he woke up his forehead stung.

It felt crispy when he blinked or moved his eyebrows.

That night he was in the bathroom with the door open, shaving off the prickly vacation beard that was wrecking all of his chances for sex. She was on the couch, watching a repeat of Friends they’d seen together in the ’90s.

His chin and cheeks smooth and clean, a third of the way through his mustache, he put the razor down on the counter. He watched his own face in the mirror as the gas built up in the base of his throat, until it couldn’t be contained. He let the burp out; let it out as loud as it wanted. The laugh track on the TV started up a second later, the timing impeccable, and it made him laugh, too. He opened his throat and allowed more gas to surface. Forced out a second burp, this time uttering some passable facsimile of the word “burp” with the burp. The TV failed to comply this time and his thoughts turned to finding an excuse to go get something, anything, in the car so he could smoke on the way to it and on the way back. He sniffed, snorted, horked, and spat in the sink. He belched again without really noticing it.

TV muted and she went after him from the couch. Said she was disappointed in him. That he only thought of himself, making body noises with the door open. The people in the next room were out on their patio—she said she could see the candlelight glow—and with the patio door open they’d probably heard him.

He felt sorry for himself, having wasted a perfectly good vacation beard.

“Don’t give me that, Bruce,” she says. “Bill and I know it was you.”

My father caught my mother having an affair in their seventeenth year. He waited outside the boyfriend’s house and when he walked out my father tried to run him down with his ’92 Celica. All I did was mow down this chump’s rose garden.

She dismisses me with a flip of her dark, braided hair, tasty as black licorice. I can’t honestly say why I did it. On my way back from P.J.’s in Ardmore, a couple of frosty Rolling Rocks in my gut, surely an impulsive thing. A hit on the ol’ adrenaline bong.

“Bruce is scared shitless of you now,” she says.

“Of me?”

“I know. I told him you once didn’t fare so well with a girl scout.”

Story: after I bought two boxes of the Thin Mints and Do-Si-Dos, the little tyke stomped back the next day, accusing me of shorting her one. I smirked, got kneeled in the shin, then nailed with an uppercut.

“Who thinks Mike Tyson is out there selling cookies?” I ask.

One month ago, Annie says, “You and Bill are different conflagrations. You’re full of fire and oxygen and burning timbers.”

“And he?”

A soft smile creeps across her lips. “A gentle lasting flame.”

I’m a poet, three chapbooks to my name, Annie none, and in the two years of our semi–cohabitation my iambic pentameter has finally rubbed off on her.

Deep in Annie’s cerebellum she wishes to leave me for good. It’s not so easy. Three times already we’ve left each other “for good.” We know each other the way any two people can know each other who’ve been together awhile, only she’s no longer so sure she knows herself, with me. But three months with this guy, Bill, and still we’re doing it, and after climbing off my pelvis a few minutes ago, she says, “He didn’t mind us at the beginning because, you know, he couldn’t say so.” She lifts her head off my bare chest. “Now he’s saying so.”

I reach over on the night table and light up the half-finished Virginia Slim Annie has started. “I don’t need to pee all over my territory,” I puff and shrug.

Annie swivels her legs around off the bed. “Great. And I’m the fire hydrant.” She wiggles into her panties, snaps her bra back on, then peers at me quizzically. “He wants to be with me solely, is that so horrible?”

I jack my head from deep within the crevice of the pillow, prop myself on elbows. “I’m just not a drag-a-woman-around-by-her-hair kind of guy. It ain’t the Stone Age, Wilma.”

Annie sighs. “Bill thinks you have a Casanova Complex.”

Bill used to be a stockbroker. Then he went to god knows where for a Masters in Counseling just so he could tell others what’s wrong with them.

“So he traded in his cell phone for a leather couch and an egg timer. In my book he’s still a putz.”

Annie squirms into her jeans and, in front of the mirror, begins stroking her twisty locks with a huge honeycomb brush. “And in his book you’re the typical tragic figure.”

“And why is that, pray tell?”

“Because you’ll never want what can be easily had.” She gives an under-the-breath giggle. “That’s why you’ve resorted to stalking us.”

I came across them leaving Bella Trattoria in the trendy Manyunk District outside Philly. “Billy the Kid” wasn’t what I pictured. He was skinny, but fit, a cross between geekster Jeff Goldblum and a buffed and bronzed Jean-Claude Van Damme. I followed them, until I did a “Dick Van Dyke,” tripping over some tin trash cans.

“I’m so bad I’d be run out of the stalkers’ association,” I kibitz.

Annie is leaning on her left leg with her hand on her hip, fully dressed, ready to go. She wags her pointer digit in my direction as she swings 180 out the front door toward her Milano red Honda Fit parked at the curb. With a blanket wrapped around my waist, I wobble to the front door to catch her. “Some call it stalking, some call it love,” I yell back.

She ducks into the driver’s seat. “You don’t love anything, Bruce Johnson,” she says. “Not even yourself.”

She crosses her eyes and sticks out her tongue, then, in a flash, she zips away.

Annie’s last boyfriend, Derek, had come east, from Oklahoma, to Scranton, Pennsylvania, an industrial town, where they met at a court hearing for her friend who sprayed mace into the face of her ex-husband’s girlfriend. Derek was the ex-husband’s brother. But not long after he went east for her, she went south for herself. I was diving in Bermuda, away myself. We met under the thatched roof of a tiki bar. Three stools apart, with Macy Gray hair, and legs smoky and lean and long, like two-perfectly-rolled Cubans.

“What’s a dame like you doing in a place like this,” I tried in my best Bogey lisp.

“My pimp sent me.” She had a mouth like Kathy Griffin, crude and funny.

We were living parallel existences: my girlfriend, her boyfriend, dumped on the same day. Still, she was sad, and in a way, so was I.

I had just learned to read tarot cards. I shuffled the deck and Annie chose the Magician Card.

“A new romantic beginning is at hand and a great love affair is imminent,” I said.

“That’s a lie,” she said.

“Maybe, but you got any plans other than to sit here and drown in sorrow?”

She skipped out on her plane ride back, forfeited the fare, sailed with me from Marsh Harbour to Opa Locka. From there we rode on my Honda Shadow from Pensacola to Biloxi to Galveston up to Albuquerque to Los Angeles. Once in Los Angeles, it wasn’t much farther to Oakland, and from there not much farther to Seattle. From Seattle we headed up to Nome, Alaska. Then we hopscotched back through the Grand Tetons, down through Great Falls and over to Cedar Rapids. We ended up in Philadelphia, my home town. When it was about time for her to leave, I said, I think you should say a while, figure things out here.

She said, I think I like this town.

I show up at the Philadelphia Zoo unannounced, where Annie’s moved from junior nature docent to full-time animal attendant. It’s African white lions and red pandas for her, and good riddance to the marmosets, tarmarins and black and white colobus monkeys, who, she says, “Just throw feces and jerk off all day.”

“Yeah, but who doesn’t?” I kid.

During her break, we sit on a park bench, gobble up wieners smothered in mustard and relish, chips, split a Dr. Pepper through a single straw. A pair of South African bush elephants flap their ears lazily at us from their pen.

“If you could be any animal,” I say, “what kind would you be?”

“Umm … a Galapagos marine iguana,” she says. “They used to live on land, but there wasn’t any food. So they went to the water. Now tell me that’s not adapting!”

“I’d be a polar bear,” I say. “Can you beat a deep, wonderful dream six months of the year?”

We are talking. Even laughing. But then I say, “Name one thing Buffalo Bill gives you I don’t?”

“Orgasms,” she laughs.

But then she stops. Head bowed, eyes on the last nub of hot dog on her lap. “I’m almost into my third decade,” she says, somberly. “I think it’s time I got serious.”

I say, “What do you think are the philosophical differences between Engels and Marx?”

My parents seemed to have loved each other for a long time, then came the affair and the deceit and I started scribbling in tiny notepads humorous little limericks, so when faced with all that loathsomeness, what billows up is smarmy comedic angst.

Annie gives her lips a slight upturn. At best, a chuckle.

Ever since Billy “Don’t Be a Hero” came along, she’s been contemplating cataclysms of conventionality: picket fences, clingy kids, bourgeois dinners at the in-laws’. But Annie knows my point: marriages end.

So lately, volley is what we do:

“But you’re great with kids.”
” ‘Cause I’m one myself.”
“You’re just afraid.”
“How a person can be a full-time artist and a full-time husband is beyond me.”
“But isn’t art what happens when life gets in the way?”
“I probably wouldn’t tell you half the secrets I do if we were married.”

Here are the things I know: I’m unreligious, moody, an odd parakeet. A Leo cusp Virgo, wild and untamable, ruled by the sea.

There’s a lull in our talk. I smack the cup’s plastic bottom to release an ice cube into my mouth, but they all hold hands, spilling out together onto my Polo cotton knit.

“Ice cubes work in packs, you ever notice?” I say.

But Annie responds, “And Bill doesn’t care about being adored, either.”

We once stayed with the Havasupai tribe in an Arizonian side canyon. Lying at night, cuddled in thick blankets amid dashing streams and ruby walls, I asked her which would she prefer, to be loved, or adored.

“Loved, stupid,” she said.

I want to be adored for something and chose poetry to be that something adored for. But Annie doesn’t see why anyone would ever choose anything over love.

“To be adored,” I said, “is to be loved forever.”

“Why can’t you be a famous poet who is loved for love?” she asked.

“Because a poet is after truth, and love is not truth, because truth can’t be changed, while love can.”

Annie snickered at all this pessimism. She thinks it’s just an act, because here are the things she knows: I get choked up when I see watercolour paintings, quilt-makers (believe it or not), and alas, obscure poetry. When Annie says, You should just be happy, I tell her my father was not a happy fellow.

“The man sat in his car outside my mother’s lover’s house. For three days the door never opened. When he came home, eyes swollen from a night of sobbing, he said, “You think everything is fine, and you find out you’re not even close.”

And with that Annie managed to explain the world down to its most basic element. That nothing comes from nothing.

I take Annie’s hot dog wrapper and squish it into mine.

“I want to be with you,” she says.

“You can be,” I say.

“No,” she says. “A different you.”

Because Bill is called away to Boston on some seminar (Men are from Mars, Bill’s from Uranus, I jest), I invite Annie to Devon Seafood Grill for a few savory mussels and late-night partying.

“Throw on some clothes.”

“It’s ten-thirty,” she says.

“I’m lonely.”

She grows quiet on the phone.

“Meet me. Please.”

Annie strolls in with all the confidence of a supermodel in a Chanel perfume ad. Out on the town, she’s full-throttle, with frothy hair and strawberry-frosted lip gloss, and smoking becomes de rigueur, as is wearing marvelously expensive and impractical pale green leather pants. Unbeknownst to her, there’s a friend of mine along for the ride.

“Tom trains police dogs,” I say. “Tom, Annie works with animals, too.”

Tom is tall and handsome, but blond and not Annie’s particular flavour.

After a while, I say to Tom, “Why don’t you get us some of that buttery Sonoma-Cutrer.”

As he saunters off to the bar, I say, “What do you think?”

“About what?”

“About Tom.”

“He’s nice, I guess,” she says.

“He’s single.”

And suddenly she flees, storming out, past Tom and glasses in hand on his way back. At my apartment, at one in the morning, I dial, waking her.

“What is your problem?”

“I don’t like surreptitious set-ups.”

“Wow, aren’t you the philanthropist,” I say.

Not a sound over the line, and I suspect Annie might be sniffling in silence.

But she’s not. In a voice full of told-you-so contemptuousness, she says, “Bill said you might react this way.”

“What way?”

“Nothing. Just that you’re afraid things might actually work out between him and me, and you might try to sabotage it.”

In bed sometimes, I pry Annie to enlighten me on the jingoistic crap Bill “The Wonder Shrink” feeds her: “Love correctly, and you will live correctly”; “Never getting over something is never having been loved correctly yourself”; “Anger is simply misdirected passion.”

But Bill’s not for her. He’s boring, dead pan humor without the pan, a snoozer, C-SPAN in the flesh. So over the phone, I say, “I got news for you. That rainbow you’re walking toward, there’s no Bill at the end of it.”

“What!? How would you know?”

“Of all the words you’ve ever used when talking about him never once have you used the word love.”

She tells me to fuck off. Five days later, she hears back from me.

I grovel, “I want to make it up to you.”

She says, “Bill proposed.”

The small apartment I rent is squeezed between the park and the Delaware River. “Squeezed for style,” Annie likes to say, where the living room shutters are freestanding columns that flank the windows. I’ve got one armoire, which holds blankets, vases, electronics, and one bedroom pine sideboard that I call “the most functional piece I’ve ever owned.” My kitchen is no bigger than a large pantry.

Tonight, it’s vegetarian lasagna for Annie, my specialty. I put in layers of noodles, ricotta filling, jazzed-up pasta sauce with bits of spinach and mushroom, pop the entire chef d’Å“uvre into the oven for an hour, then set candlelight and multi-colored, long-stemmed roses as centerpiece, about to embark on a UN-sized peace offering.

“Lions are so much easier to take care of than monkeys,” Annie says, as she has taken a glass of Chardonnay while elaborating on how her new position has given her a fresh perspective. Something, she says, I should get. I swear, Annie can jump from job to job without a blink of an eye. When I graduated college, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. But I had rent to pay. I took a job as a copywriter, though was told I could move up if someone left, got canned, or died. I’ve been a copywriter for ten years running.

But I’ve known freedom, too.

The week before Annie arrived in Bermuda, I spent diving the 3,000-foot walls of the world-famous reef, sea kayaking to neighboring islands, and snorkeling out the door of my thatched-roof cabana, all the while eating coconut-encrusted fresh fish. Nights spent wrapped in a blanket on green fields with waterfalls echoing me to sleep.

After dinner, the door bell rings, and it’s a group of people, three men and two women, huddled together like Christmas carolers. They hand us information on how to protect ourselves from a spate of muggings in the neighborhood. The flyer begins with a warning: Travel in twos. Never alone.

Once they leave, I throw on a pair of jogging shorts and running shoes and do calisthenics, sidebends, at the front door.

“I should go with you,” Annie says. “It’s dangerous.”

“Nonsense. I’ll be back in a jiff.”

Before I head out I say, “I know you’re hesitating about Bill.”

Her head lurches a little.

“We’ll talk when I get back,” I add.

Annie cleans off the table of dishes and wipes down the counter top, then watches Jeopardy until I return. I rinse off in the shower and take a beach towel, grab a water with lemon, then head out to the tiny terrace where Annie is leaning back on the hind legs of a plastic lawn chair. Not enough room for the two of us out there, so I stand in the doorway. From the light inside, her eyes glisten emerald, like a cat’s.

I say, “I was thinking, maybe Bill’s not the right person. Maybe I’m the right person.”

Two days later it’s Friday night, and Annie wants to meet in Rittenhouse Square at a bar called Rouge, the perfect place, with its distinct European-sidewalk café feel and lots of resplendent Fellini-esque characters, to start a romantic weekend. I park my fanny at one of the tables, start in on a Mad Hatter, and watch from my perch passers-by and a street mime, who, decked out in clownish whiteface and rainbow suspenders, sneaks up behind unsuspecting couples, only to mimic their walks with sashay and exaggeration.

Annie arrives from across the street in a colorful Grass Roots T-shirt carrying a brightly-colored tote bag. She has to dance around the mime before crossing the street of rushing cars to get to me. Her breathing is rapid, as her hand drops beneath the table to plunk down her bag. She gestures for a sip from my glass.

“What’s mime is yours, and what’s yours is mime,” I joke.

Annie orders a swanky summer drink herself, settles in, then glances at the mime and thinks what I think: suddenly we break into a round of droll repartee about things that are nearly as annoying as mimes but not quite.

“Festering, pustulating blisters,” I quip.

“Any song by David Hasselhoff,” Annie wisecracks.

“A shotgun to the head.”

“Circus clowns.”

“People who whistle tunelessly,” I say.

Annie stops again, like the other day at the zoo, a mood change as swift as the passing rain cloud that has suddenly appeared overhead, about to crack open the sky.

“Remember Africa?” she asks.

Heart of Darkness. Our one, big international trip together. Wind-carved desert dunes. Wildebeast. And the scent of sweet perfume from the ylang ylang flower. What Annie remembers is a death in a tribe and the laibon who read the future in coloured stones. Bones tossed from a gourd onto a green cloth spread out in the shade of an acacia tree. As a symbol of moving on, the laibon told us we had to desert the area, never to go back.

Annie is silent, as if she has stunned herself into emotional paralysis. Suddenly I know her answer.

“I can’t stay,” she says.

“Sure you can,” I say.

For a while we watch passers-by and the mime trap himself in a box. Dollops of rain begin plinking the pavement, an awning rolls out above us, and the mime pretends to pack shirts into a suitcase.

When a couple kiss under a canape, out of the rain, I want to tell Annie that I can’t breathe, speak, or sleep without her. If she’s there when the world comes crashing down, I suspect I’ll have a better chance with her. These things I should say. The rain bounces off the cobblestone with repetitive splats. My pulse pounds.

I want to lean over, kiss her, but Annie is distracted. Her eyes to the sky, the rain softens. Clouds separate, revealing patches of blue.

“Who you love and what you need aren’t always the same thing,” Annie says, her eyes watery, now glued to mine.

“Whom you love,” I think to say. In a few seconds she reaches for her bag, then pushes back her chair to stand. In the wavy heat, she waits for a response, a facial gesture. I glance across the street. The mime is unpacking.

I say, “Mime in ancient Greek means, “He who gets his lights punched out.”

I wait for a laugh.