Rumors abound — especially after the pregnancy. I wasn’t immune to the rumors. They were what had drawn me to Julie. And it was Julie that drew me to Kelly. Dating Kelly gave me access to Julie, the real Julie, and for that I’m endlessly grateful.

Her first night at Jean’s Julie dreamed she was sitting cross-legged and topless in an inflatable pool. Toddlers in bowler hats danced on its rim. She squeezed her tits, spraying milk at the toddlers, but instead of their mouths she hit their chests, foreheads, their adorable feet, and on impact they plopped in the pool and helplessly drowned as Julie aimed for the ones who remained.

“What’s it mean?” Julie asked her grandmother.

“Means you need a job,” Jean replied, and then gave her directions to town.

Downtown at the body shop a veiny mechanic dozed on the trunk of a Buick. The pizza parlor tripled as a bar and salon —  beefy men in swiveling chairs sucked down Schlitz as clumped hair fell from their heads. Someone named Rhonda sold chowder and bait from her Sprinter cargo van. A handwritten HELP WANTED sign hung from a suction cup on the front door of the grocery.

“Is that true?” Julie asked the cashier.

“I’m going to college,” he said. He had a rigid, symmetrical face, which loosened into a grin when he said, “Harvard.”

“I think my sister might — ”

He cackled. “Not really. U of O. The fuckers.”

“It’s still a good — ”

“My parents say it’ll corrupt me. Little do they know, right?” She smiled. How long he’d been waiting for someone to talk to? “You can work every day?” he asked.

She nodded.