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shoulders when she removed that silly hat, and said, “I’m not capable of much.”
    He stared into his black beer, the blackest beer I’d ever seen. He smiled with a closed mouth. I looked away and spotted Adam, whom I’d almost forgotten about, leaving by the back door with a woman, and was relieved. Things became blurry then, and I was scooting one of my fingers into the thigh holes Rex had made in his Levi’s. “They’re bloody expensive where I’m from. I need to buy some while I’m here,” he said, and I wanted to nibble those jeans right off of him, right there in the booth, with Brenda Lee or a voice just like hers coming from the speakers behind us, with smoke and dust and cinnamon wafting toward us from the bar, and hot little Christmas lights that kept falling off the edge of the booth, making a tangled mess in my hair.
    There was an old woman, a grumpy regular I recognized, leaning against the jukebox. She stumbled over and sat down on the stool Ella had been sitting on. I thought about young Ella and her young husband and wondered if they’d patch things up tonight or if what was happening between them was bigger than just one evening. I wondered if she’d write poems about her troubles or if she’d come by my office to tell me more.
    â€œCheck her out,” Rex said. The grumpy regular wore a lopsided wig and too much blush, a bitter orange smeared across her lips. She was screaming that her drink wasn’t strong enough. “I can’t fucking feel it,” she said, tugging at the wig with both hands. “I need to feel something , damn it. Easy on the orange this time, hard on the rum.” She pounded her fist on the bar. “Give a girl what she wants, would you?” she said, loud enough for us to hear.
    â€œIt doesn’t matter how much she drinks, she’ll never feel it ,” Rex said, leaning into me, gently beginning to untangle the lights from my hair. “She’s immune to it. And her wig doesn’t fit.”
    I wanted to tell him about my mother, how she owned a dozen wigs. Red and brown and blonde and black. An unusually thick wig. One made of human hair that didn’t wear well, that fell in thin strands across her face after a day outside. I wanted to tell Rex about the synthetic ones, how superior they are, about the two my mother bought in Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard that promised to make her look famous, like Cher or Dolly Parton, and the one that hung down her back, and another that framed her cheeks and fell just below her chin. I wanted to tell him how sometimes, if my mom was in a rush or being picky, trying to match her hair with her dress, she’d scatter the wigs around the apartment. First I’d see several naked Styrofoam heads in my mother’s room, on a pillow or on her desk, maybe a couple of heads in the living room, on the coffee table, or face down on the couch. And then, throughout the day, I’d find them—a wig on top of the television, another on a bookshelf, smashed between the dictionary and antique clock, one hanging from a hook next to the spare keys.
    I wanted to tell him how one late night I accidentally sat on the Dolly Parton, how I pulled it from behind my back, screaming. I wanted to tell him how funny my mother thought this was, how she fell into my arms laughing.
    I wanted to tell him how in the right light an unexpected wig looks like a little dog, asleep.
    I wanted to tell him, but I knew from past experience that stories about my mother’s illness, even ones meant to amuse, made people cringe and move away from me. So I let him talk about the farm, the miles and miles of dirt and feed, the wide-open spaces, all that air. He was telling me that the clouds at home were thick and heavy and black, how sometimes he was convinced that standing on just the right chair or ladder he would be able to touch one. He lifted the beer to his mouth and finished it