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When he knocks, I am already
at the door and watching through the peephole, but I don’t
answer.

“Mia! Mia, you here? I got
to talk to you. Mia! You home?”

His voice echoes through the
stairwell and the red-haired girl across the hall opens her door to
glare at him, then slams it.

Denise comes up behind me
and whispers, “Who is it?”

“Mia!”

I open the door and pull him
in. Rainwater rolls off his hair, drips to the floor. “You can’t
just scream at someone’s door,” I say.

“I have to go, anyway.”
Denise stands against the hallway wall. Donny holds his hand out to
her, and she shakes it. “Denise,” she says.

“Donny. Donny Donaldson,
Doctor.”

“Oh, really,” she says, then
looks at me.

“Vietnam,” I say.

“Ohhh.” She nods. “How
nice.”

“You don’t believe me?” he
says. “I got proof.”

She waits.

“Not here. What, you think I
carry it with me? It’s at home. Come over any time, I’ll show it to
you.”

“I believe you,” she says,
and Donny stomps his foot on the floor, says, “Goddamn it, don’t
you patronize me. I was a goddamn doctor. Doctor
Daniels.”

“Okay. You’re a doctor.” She
looks at me again.

I tell her not to
bother.

“Two minutes,” he says, “but
I made sure they felt no pain those two minutes. Me. I did that for
them, and they’d tell me, they’d say, ‘Doctor’—and I told ‘em,
‘Don’t you dare call me Doctor’ ‘cause I don’t want formality when
I’m holdin’ their heart, their life, in my hands—‘Doctor,’ they’d
say—‘Thank you.’” He grabs her hand and squeezes it, and I see her
wrist turning to get free. “’Thank you,’ they’d say. They knew.
Y’see? They knew they was dyin’. We all know, just ’fore it
happens. And thanks to good ol’ Doctor Donaldson, they went
peacefully. Maybe even while havin’ some fun.” He rolls his eyes
and smiles, bounces his head around like he’s drugged, high. He
laughs, then stops abruptly and steps closer to her, having to look
up. Denise is pretty tall, for a woman. At least five-nine. “Point
is, I don’t got to show you no goddamn proof.”

“Donny,” I say, “the living
room is right through there. I’ll be there in a second.”

He dismisses her and says to
me, “Thank you.” I hear him grunt when he falls onto the
couch.

Denise backs against the
wall and holds herself. “Mia.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think William
knew?”

“No. I don’t. ”

She nods. “Okay. Right.
Okay.” She pats her hair and moves away from the wall, toward the
door. “But, not just about that.” She puts a nail in her mouth, and
then must taste that it’s fake, because she lets her hand fall.
“I’ve been wanting to ask you, and then I didn’t want to ask
because I didn’t want to know because it’s—because, if I knew, that
would…that would—”

“What is it?”

“Did Jake—? I wrote
him—William—this letter, and—believe me, I know it wasn’t the right
thing to do; I know that now, anyway—but in the—I’ve been relying
on the idea that it didn’t get there until
after,
you know? But what if he read
it—”

“No,” I tell her. I make it
sound strong, sure. “Jake would have said something. William told
him pretty much everything.”

“You’re
positive?”

“I’m positive.”

“Do you promise? That’s
stupid, isn’t it? Asking you to promise. But you can’t lie in a
promise.”

“No, you can’t.”

“So? Do you
promise?”

“I promise.”

“Pinkie swear?” She laughs.
“I’m kidding.” She hugs me fast and tight, then lets me go. “Thank
you. I’ve been so—‘What if?’ You know? What if my letter was
what—”

“You did what you thought
you had to do.”

“No,” she says. “I was
selfish.—Don’t. I know what you’re going to say, but I should have
waited.” She looks at things on the walls and runs her hands over
her back pockets. “Anyway. I have to get back and pack my clothes
for tomorrow.”

We hug again—this one
longer—and make promises about emailing. But the door closes behind
her and I don’t expect to hear from her, or to write
her.

“Mia! She gone? Hey, what
happened in here? Fire?” The sound of a hand slapping the wall.
“I’m thirsty. You got any water?”

“Coming.”

I pour a glass and bring it
out to him. He sets it on the table without drinking any. “I wanted
to say…I wanted to tell you, with my whole heart, I’m sorry. You’re
an angel. You know that? You are.”

“It’s okay.”

“You don’t even know what
I’m sorry for.”

“For before. I know. It’s
okay.”

“Damn, girl,” he says. “Here
I am, comin’ out in the rain and payin’ ten dollars—it ain’t cheap
comin’ here, ‘specially when Lenny makes me pay more for an
address—and you act like you want me to leave.” He pulls a pack of
cigarettes from his shirt pocket, then searches his pants, back and
front. “Got a light?”

________

Donny smokes in the
passenger seat and I tell him to open the—

“I know, I know.” He rolls
it down, but the smoke comes in, anyway. He offers one and I say
no. There’s not even a craving.

“Where we goin’, anyway? I
live the other way.”

“I already told
you.”

“No, you didn’t.”
“Damn it, Donny, yes. I did. I told you twice.”

“Well, I don’t remember. I’d
jus’ like to know where we’re goin’, is all, and on a dark and
rainy day with you drivin’ like Andretti, I don’t
think—”

“My friend’s. We’re going to
my friend’s house, and then I’m taking you home.”

“Take me home
first.”

“No, Donny. I already
explained—”

“Take me home! I want to go
home. Take me first, then go see your friend.”

I pull over in the lot of an
abandoned tire store. Faded red paint advertises a
close-of-business sale, sixty percent off, and a tangled chain
hangs from the door handle. The windows are smashed, jagged, and
we’re stopped where others aren’t likely to stop. “If you want to
get out, get out.”

“Shit. I was just kiddin’.
Why’re—can’t you take a joke?”

I pull out of the lot and he
falls quiet.

Kudzu drapes roadside bushes
and trees, and miles down the sky the cloud line ends.

“…helicopter crash this
morning killed its two pil—”

I punch the button, search
the stations until I find music.

“Wait! I wanted to hear
that!” Donny reaches out and I catch his hand, say,
“
My
car.”

I don’t know if I’ll stay
here, and if I do, I don’t know for how long. I suppose I might
save for a while—there’s plenty of time until Jake comes home—and
use the money for a truck and first month’s rent somewhere.
Somewhere I’ve always wanted to go. Only, there’s nowhere I’ve
always wanted to go.

It hits me, then, that I can
go anywhere and that there’s no one to stop me or to choose my
destination for me. Not Jake, not Jake’s Army.

I’ll go north. That much I
know. Somewhere where there’s snow.

________

Denise doesn’t answer her
door and her lights are off, but her car is outside (as is
Brian’s), so I know she’ll get William’s lighter before she leaves.
I drop it through the mail slot.

________

On the way home after
dropping off Donny, I stop at the grocery store to pick up the
snacks Jake asked for, plus some. I’ll add a note to the
box:
Friends?

I turn onto my street, and
though everyone else is at work and the street-side where I park is
bare, my tire bumps up against the curb, then rolls back down. I
open the door and float to standing beside the car until I’m
looking over the roof, and I can’t remember how to breathe, or that
I do breathe, and the mess behind my ribs lurches like I’m on a
ride and I remember what Denise said about leave and that his
mother said tell Jakey something or something and I steady myself
on the door and I think I am smiling, I’m sure I am smiling, and
there’s some noise, like a donkey braying, which is strange, and I
think I say, “Oh…” and my next thought is the baby, I have to tell
him about the baby, but I don’t want to tell him because then his
whole visit, so short already, will be focused on the stupid baby,
and I have to warn him about the letter, too, tell him it’s
bullshit, all of it, that leaving him won’t make it better, but
later, I’ll tell him later…

He pulls me from the space
between my car and the door and closes it for me, then steps closer
and circles me with his body and says, “How’re you
doing?”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kristen Tsetsi is a former
reporter, a former English professor, a former screenwriting
instructor, and a former cab driver. Currently, she is the
American Fiction
editor
and an award-winning fiction writer whose work won the Storyglossia
Fiction Prize and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She
lives near Nashville with her husband.