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the Circle Jerks giving way to alternative, that great compromise, down, down, down to the singles he’d just today been petitioning radio stations to add, husks of music, lifeless and cold as the squares of office neon cutting the blue twilight.
    “It’s incredible,” Sasha said, “how there’s just nothing there.”
    Astounded, Bennie turned to her. Was it possible that she’d followed his musical rant to its grim conclusion? Sasha was looking downtown, and he followed her eyes to the empty space where the Twin Towers had been. “There should be something , you know?” she said, not looking at Bennie. “Like an echo. Or an outline.”
    Bennie sighed. “They’ll put something up,” he said. “When they’re finally done squabbling.”
    “I know.” But she kept looking south, as if it were a problem her mind couldn’t solve. Bennie was relieved she hadn’t understood. He remembered his mentor, Lou Kline, telling him in the nineties that rock and roll had peaked at Monterey Pop. They’d been in Lou’s house in LA with its waterfalls, the pretty girls Lou always had, his car collection out front, and Bennie had looked into his idol’s famous face and thought, You’re finished . Nostalgia was the end—everyone knew that. Lou had died three months ago, after being paralyzed from a stroke.
    At a stoplight, Bennie remembered his list. He took out the parking ticket and finished it off.
    “What do you keep scribbling on that ticket?” Sasha asked. Bennie handed it to her, his reluctance to have the list seen by human eyes overwhelming him a half second late. To his horror, she began reading it aloud:
    “Kissing Mother Superior, incompetent, hairball, poppy seeds, on the can.”
    Bennie listened in agony, as if the words themselves might provoke a catastrophe. But they were neutralized the instant Sasha spoke them in her scratchy voice.
    “Not bad,” she said. “They’re titles, right?”
    “Sure,” Bennie said. “Can you read them one more time?” She did, and now they sounded like titles to him, too. He felt peaceful, cleansed.
    “‘Kissing Mother Superior’ is my favorite,” Sasha said. “We’ve gotta find a way to use that one.”
    They’d pulled up outside her building on Forsyth. The street felt desolate and underlit. Bennie wished she could live in a better place. Sasha gathered up her ubiquitous black bag, a shapeless wishing well from which she’d managed to wrest whatever file or number or slip of paper he’d needed for the past twelve years. Bennie seized her thin white hand. “Listen,” he said. “Listen, Sasha.”
    She looked up. Bennie felt no lust at all—he wasn’t even hard. What he felt for Sasha was love, a safety and closeness like what he’d had with Stephanie before he’d let her down so many times that she couldn’t stop being mad. “I’m crazy for you, Sasha,” he said. “Crazy.”
    “Come on, Bennie,” Sasha chided lightly. “None of that.”
    He held her hand between both of his. Sasha’s fingers were trembly and cold. Her other hand was on the door.
    “Wait,” Bennie said. “Please.”
    She turned to him, somber now. “There’s no way, Bennie,” she said. “We need each other.”
    They looked at one another in the failing light. The delicate bones of Sasha’s face were lightly freckled—it was a girl’s face, but she’d stopped being a girl when he wasn’t watching.
    Sasha leaned over and kissed Bennie’s cheek: a chaste kiss, a kiss between brother and sister, mother and son, but Bennie felt the softness of her skin, the warm movement of her breath. Then she was out of the car. She waved to him through the window and said something he didn’t catch. Bennie lunged across the empty seat, his face near the glass, staring fixedly as she said it again. Still, he missed it. As he struggled to open the door, Sasha said it once more, mouthing the words extra slowly:
    “See. You. Tomorrow.”

Ask Me If I Care
    Late at night, when there’s