I pictured her on the other end of the line in her black and white uniform with her short hair slicked back exposing every inch of her clean, young face. She works hard for the money.

"What do you want to do?'' She asked. My second floor apartment had become very cold in the past few days (as low as 50 degrees!) and I'd been having little half-dreams about her being there with me, talking softly, close to my face as I fell asleep shivering. But she doesn't like that kind of sentimentality, so I answered:

"Make out."

"Oooooooh.'' She replied, her onomatopoeia sounded encouraging. She noticed.

"Oooooh GROSS, I mean.'' She said. Then laughed. "I'll be over in twenty minutes.''

I cleaned up my apartment and changed out of my own work uniform and into my favorite T-shirt and a zipper down sweater and I lay in my cold bed in the dark, finishing my beer. I could still smell food on my skin from PIZZA DIVE so I rose and took a shower. I turned the spicket and while waiting for the water to heat up, I looked out the chest-level window in my shower, out over the entire night-soaked, one-story neighborhood. Having a window in the shower is bad and good: I often forget that my head and shoulders are visible to the whole neighborhood when I'm singing with my mouth open or masturbating or doing any of the private things one does in the shower. But the sill provides a great place to set a beer bottle. And a cold beer and a hot shower at the same time are a magical combination.

I dried off and re-donned my T-shirt and sweater and lay in the cold dark, my wet head dampening my pillows. Waiting. Sipping.

My hair was dry by the time her silhouette peaked in my front door. She
closed it behind her and walked to my bed. Her hair was indeed pulled back, her white face like flashlight. She carried two empty beer bottles for some reason, and she set them on my nightstand before lying down with me. I inhaled deeply but her smell wasn't strong enough to hold onto. She'd been bartending that night and didn't smell like food.

"Do you have any weed?'' I asked.

"Yeah. A little.'' Getting high after working five hours in a restaurant or bar, especially after you've washed away the food smell and you feel new, is even more magical than cold beer in a hot shower.

We sat Indian style, passing the pipe between us in the dark, droning about work, and after a few hits from the pipe I appreciated the temporary bursts of life brought to my colorless room and her small, perfect face, by the lighter's flame. We cashed the bowl and lay back down.

"I'm pregnant." She said.

I knew it wasn't mine; I hadn't come either time we were together. "Really?" I asked, trying not to sound too surprised.

"No." She laughed again.

"Seriously though: are you? Lots of my female friends have been pregnant. It's not that big a deal from my perspective. Everyone seems to go through it. Actually, the fact that I've never accidentally gotten anyone pregnant makes me scared that I might be impotent." I paused and contemplated my possible impotence. "But anyways, if you are pregnant you can talk to me about it."

"Thanks."

"You're sure you're not pregnant?"

"Yeah. I just felt like saying that." She changed the subject to something about her parents, whom she lives with, and as she talked she rolled onto her side, away from me: "Spoon." She ordered.

I was stoned and out of order, I wouldn't comply. I am not a teddy bear. I'm some other animal. I said: "Actually, I'd like you to turn over and face me when you're talking."

"Why?" She asked.

"Why do you not like one bit of tenderness?" I tried to keep it lighthearted but lowered my voice to encourage softness. "Turn around and talk to me up close."

She complied and continued her story in my face but she didn't lower her voice and with every word she pulled back. By the end of her story she was two feet away again.

"Man, what is up with you?" I asked.

"I hate you and I don't want to be close to you." She smiled, putting her feet against my leg, attempting to push me to the edge of my bed.

"That's pretty funny." I said. Stationary. Immobile. "Hate is really really funny."

She brought her knees up and placed her feet higher, against my hip, holding her breath and her laugh to save momentum and with a push like birth she managed to roll me over onto my stomach on the edge of the bed and I had to put my hand against the wall to stay on the mattress. I'd seen others in the same position in my bed; it was like I was being taken from behind. Pushing myself off the wall with my palm, I grabbed her foot and stumbled to my knees on the mattress, then rose to full height, standing on my bed, holding her by the ankle like a fisherman about to have his photo taken.

"That actually feels good." She said. I looked down, almost six feet, to her face: "You're stretching out my leg: thanks. I've been standing up all night."

Lifting her up further, her leg cracked loudly under the weight of her torso.

"Oh holy shit! I'm sorry." I used to always hurt my sister accidentally when we played rough as children.

"No. It feels good." She said. "Do the other one." We giggled hard like friends and I grabbed her other leg and lifted her until her ankle cracked. Then her knee. Then her hip. I eased her down slowly, like water ballet, onto the mattress and slid down next to her. We were both breathless, our giggles dying.

"I feel a lot better now that you're here.'' I told her. I usually keep those thoughts away from her but I felt warm and dull and happy.

"Why?'' She asked as if she wished I didn't feel that way.

"I dunno. It's just nice to have you here. It's nice being in the dark talking to you. Not that I usually feel 'alone' or anything, but right now I don't feel alone at all. I'm glad you're here.'' She was on her back and I rolled over her so that my face hovered above hers. "Is that so horrible?"

"Take your sweater off." She commanded, grabbing the zipper.

"What's wrong with my sweater?"

She let go of the zipper. "Nothing. I just want to see you without it."

I unzipped it and shed and laid back, trying to think of something to say, so I could say it softly and she'd have to lean over to hear me..

"I like you in that T-shirt." She said, sounding surprised. "I like that T-shirt.''

"I hope you like how I look at other times too."

"If you go get me a glass of water I'll have sex with you." She said. And the room got cold again.

"What?" My voice was louder. "What a fucked up thing to say."

"Well no…I mean…I was going to anyway but…"

"That is so shitty: fuck you, you're a bitch, totally." My words made us laugh. But I was hurt. "Why are you so dispassionate? I can't believe you said that."

"I was just kidding." She claimed, not really trying to convince me.

"You weren't kidding.'' I got out of bed. "I'll get you a glass of water, but it's because I like who you are and not because I want to fuck you." I got up and I was sad. Walking to my bedroom door toward the kitchen, my head was saying "water" again and again and in the quiet dark I thought I heard an ocean outside but when I tried to focus on the sound, it went away. And I remembered how, when I was 14, almost ten years before I'd experienced a vagina, I used to fantasize about fucking in the water and the beach always made my adolescent frustration worse. I've since had sex in the ocean. Only once, at 23; it was clumsy and lame.

I stopped at the door, looking back at the dark bed. Her white face still visible from ten feet away.

"You know, you fetishize sex.'' I lectured. "You treat sex like it's separate from your life. Like sex is over here; and you're over there, and you're looking at it trying to figure out what you want to do with it. You're like some little boy who just discovered his penis and now he's obsessed with it as this outside entity. That's what you're like.'' She said nothing. I walked off into the kitchen. "And you're only getting tap water." I yelled back over my shoulder, "No ice cubes.''

I filled a glass from the sink, came back and sat down on the bed, emptying half the glass into my mouth before passing it to her. She took a drink and said: "You're right: I do see sex as this other thing. Because I live at home and I have to sneak around, and I can't do it where my life takes place.''

"That's not really what I'm talking about.'' The hurt in my voice even turned me off and I wanted to shut up but couldn't through beer and pot and pride. It was having fun sticking up for myself; making up interesting analogies and whatnot. We still laughed, slightly. I said: "One of these days you're gonna regret how you've been to me and say to yourself: 'He actually cared about me and respected me and treated me sweetly and I was an asshole.' When you grow up.''

I studied her face, waiting for her expression to change. That's all I wanted but it didn't come. "You're making me want to leave your house.'' She said flatly, then cocked her head like a bird. A half-minute later she lifted out of bed. She walked out of my room, the light in the dining room came on, she rustled things, I heard her blowing the ashes out of her pipe. I didn't want her to leave, but I didn't apologize. I felt weak enough for lecturing her, without going back on it just so she'd stay. It wouldn't have helped anyway. I was very sorry, but and attempt to get her to stay would have seemed lonely. And lonely is ugly.

She left

I ran to the kitchen and peaked out the blinds to the front drive. Her car was gone save the trail of her tail lights dying down the street. I put on my shoes and left for New World Brewery.

In the truck I smoked a cigarette to stay warm and turned the radio on: a new Guns N' Roses song played! My childhood faves! Finally! After all this time! It was fate, I decided: I only got to hear the new Guns N' Roses song because she bailed. I turned it up and cruised along 275, smoking and listening: the song was flat and dull. Axl's cadence was weak and uncreative. He'd lost it. Fuck. As I pulled off the Ybor exit, I flicked my cigarette out the truck window and it blew back at me over my head. I felt my back burn.

""Shit! Shit! Fuck!'' I couldn't stop the car and jump out: the stop sign was still 200 yards ahead. Trying not to lean back onto my lit cigarette, I gunned my truck. At the stop sign I forgot to shift into neutral and the truck lurched violently as I bailed out the door with my seatbelt still attached. The cigarette bit into my back with tiny razor teeth.

Unhooking the seatbelt, I frantically unzipped my sweater and threw it to the ground but the cigarette still singed my skin. I did a pain dance to the truck radio, whipping my shirt like a sail in rough winds until the cigarette fell out, onto the ground. The song stopped, the DJ came on: "That was a cover song by Guns N' Roses from their 1990 E.P...'' I reached back and felt a finger sized hole in my T-shirt; the one I look so damn good in.