She rested her hand upon his chest, leaned over his body, a mannequin of who he used to be, and whispered something to him. I knew I should turn away, and allow her that moment, that one private moment amidst the boisterous gathering, a couple hundred people on a frozen February evening crammed into the quaint funeral home just outside of Chicago.

Elvis in the parking lot of that sad motel in Pigeon Forge draped a pink nylon scarf over your neck and kissed you on the lips when we told him it was our anniversary, which I thought was bull shit but you motioned not to say anything, as if that old fart in the bedazzled polyester pant suit and oversized rhinestone-rimmed sunglasses and dyed black pompadour that probably wasn’t even his real hair, this dime store wig pulled out of a cellophane package, would do something, but you were always “you don’t know for some people sometimes” and you were right. All I said was “c’mon buddy, ease up there with the lips” and he flipped like a switch to

On the way to my office, I notice how there's just enough snow to top the grass, and the brown patches in between, like marshmallow frosting, and all the trees that had looked so crisp and dead are outlined in white piping, and it makes everything seem brighter and clean with a spot of light blue in the sky escaping from beneath the choking gunmetal clouds,

Sadie says we have to leave, take off, get the fuck out, to somewhere, anywhere, the beach maybe. “We just have to leave,” she says to me at three-something in the morning. She just walks into my room and says that. It doesn't matter that I'm in bed, asleep, with some too-tanned Tri Delt from my American Lit reading group I ran into at the Hideaway while Hank and I were sitting outside on the curb

The more Sadie talks about wanting a new house, the more she seems to speed up, and I grab the “oh shit” handle and hold on as tightly as if I’m riding in a New York City cab blindfolded. I can feel my heart throbbing hot and dense in my chest right beneath my suit breast pocket, and my mouth is dry, and I remember that I forgot to take my pills today so I look out the window, up at the cerulean sky and the aimless clouds likes layers of marshmallow fluff

She was low in the morning, as low as anyone could be after a full night’s sleep, but maybe she didn’t sleep, maybe she was like me, tossing and turning on the flattened futon in my one room studio upstairs, wrestling with what if and what could be and what might happen and whatnot and whatever. I didn’t know.