the rearview. Watching Jean’s cigarette pulse, something inside her unraveled.

Kelly kept the bedroom. I slept on the couch. I did what I could to stay friendly. I vacuumed, paid the electric, took out the trash, and shared all of my groceries — not just the milk. Some nights, over dinner, I worked up the courage to ask about Julie. Kelly might say, “She’s fallen in love with a hippo. A fine man, despite his size and indecent genus. They’re moving to Kenya to be near his family.” Or, “Fuck off, Wil,” and carry her plate to her room.

A month passed in this manner. Kelly took a lover. A brickish man with veins lashed to his arms and rifles tattooed on his neck. They fucked every night. So I took a lover as well. A co-worker with wonderful breath. My unique situation disturbed her. She left me. Kelly’s lover started coming over for dinner. The three of us would sit in the kitchen, scarfing spaghetti, Kelly and her man saucily kissing and groping under the table. One night the guy carried her to the stove, swept the pots to the floor, and tore off her skirt as I twirled spaghetti around and around my fork.

I went for a walk. The sidewalks were crunchy and orange with leaves. I could feel a crack opening up in my life, widening, widening, into an empty crevasse. The crack wasn’t Kelly. It was Julie I missed. Her life, imagined, had mitigated pain I didn’t know I felt.

She hadn’t called for more than a month. And that night, with Kelly distracted, I copied Julie’s number into my phone. I called on my walk. It rang ten times. I hung up. Tried again. Twelve rings. I walked on, dialed again, ten, twelve, fourteen rings before the clatter of a phone lifted off its receiver. “What?” someone groaned. Then their voice was consumed by coughing.