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or do business, and Rene doesn’t take them all into his bed. It reminds me that I’m right about what and who I think I am.
    “I need some more work this week,” I say. “Only nothing too dangerous.”
    Rene laughs at me. We’re lying on his bed and he’s on his back with my head on his chest, so my head bounces up and down when he laughs at me. “You always say that, my man. You say you need cash, but you’re afraid to get busted. You want work with no risk. I got no work with no risk. You don’t make a hundred dollars running an errand if there’s no risk.”
    “What do you have, then?”
    “Maybe some package deliveries. Next week.”
    “How much?”
    “One-fifty each. Special for you. That’s top dollar, my man.”
    “What’s in the packages?”
    “For one-fifty, you don’t get to ask. That’s what all the money’s for. For a guy who ain’t afraid to get busted and knows better than to ask.”
    “I’m sorry,” I say.
    “You’re learning,” he says. “You’ll learn. You want the job or not?”
    “I just can’t afford to go to jail.”
    “Who would look after Chloe.” He says it like a flat sentence, not like a question. He says it like criticizing me, throwing my own words in my face so I can get a good look at them.
    See how wrong they are. “Let her fall, Jordan. She ain’t you.”
    “Yeah, she is,” I say, and sit up and reach for my shirt. “Sure she is.”
    “You want the work?”
    “How long do I get to decide?”
    “Day after tomorrow. I don’t hear from you by then, I make other arrangements.”
    “I’ll think on it.”
    “You do that, my man. You think hard. Think what you want in this life. Don’t throw a good life away.”
    When I get back to the Chock full o’Nuts, Chloe is AWOL.
    “Shit,” I say out loud. “Shit, shit, shit. Shit.”
    It races through my mind that maybe we’ll never meet up again, and then I can take dangerous work, or even get a day job, and live more like other people do. But I don’t really want her to be gone. I just run through the advantages of having it forced on me.
    I ask the waitress which way she went, how long ago. She looks at me like, What am I, a friggin’ detective service? But she doesn’t say any of that. Just shrugs.
    I walk out to the street again. Listen to the traffic noise and take a deep breath of carbon monoxide. Then I think, maybe she went to the leather store to look in the window. Maybe she even went to the leather store thinking I’d be there, looking in the window.
    She’s not there. Just the guy with the hair island, who recognizes me immediately and looks elated to see me again. He waves me in. I shake my head. He waves again. No, really. Come in. I shake my head again. I can tell I’m inflaming his passion every time I say no.
    Then I think, at least I’ll touch that coat. Try it on. That will be a moment, anyway. Something I can go back to in my head just before sleep tonight. I go inside.
    Guy says, “You like that coat, huh?”
    “It’s a pretty nice coat,” I say.
    “That would look great on you.” He takes it off the halfmannequin.
    I drop my own duster coat to the floor. “Come over here by the mirror,” he says.
    We walk toward the back of the store. He helps me into the coat like gentlemen did for ladies in the fifties. Or so I hear. He’s standing behind me, his eyes on me in the mirror.
    I look at myself. I’m everything I thought I would be. I’m everything I always knew I could be. I never should have put it on. I know that now. It sinks into my stomach like a heavy meal I forgot to chew. I can’t take it off now. If I take it off, I’ll never be me again.
    I turn the collar up. Roll the sleeves back two turns. Push the sleeves up to my elbows.
    The guy is smoothing it down in the back, over my ass. Like leather needs plenty of smoothing; sure, we all know that. I feel his hands at my waist. He moves up a little closer behind me.
    Then, when I don’t move away, a lot