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me and you hittin’ the streets with our hands in each other’sback pockets, passing secret notes to each other at parties, talking on the phone about our friends every night. I mean, I can get someone to ask you out for me if you’d like that better.”
    She starts laughing.
    And I say, “I’m totally serious.”
    â€œGive me a break, James.”
    â€œJust say yes.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œCome on. Say yes.”
    â€œIt would be way too complicated, and you know this.” She pulls her hands out of mine. “I used to go out with one of your best friends. Way too many people would get butt sore and have their feelings hurt.”
    â€œFuck ’em,” I snort, a line of smoke spraying from my mouth. “We don’t need any of those people. We could run away together and live a real life.” Leaning in closer so that our faces are only inches apart, I say, “Where nobody knows who we are. Anonymous. Invisible.”
    Nina puts her hands on my chest, pushing me away slowly. Denying me. The same way she’s been doing since the first time we ever met.
    And she says, “As sweet as that all sounds, me and you lying around some Paris apartment all day drinking wine, smoking good cigarettes, reading each other poetry, and watching old black-and-white films on a projector—”
    â€œLike in that movie The Dreamers ,” I cut in.
    â€œYeah, just like that,” she says. “But that’s not what you really want, James.”
    â€œYes, it is.”
    â€œNo, it’s not. You don’t want anonymity whatsoever. You like that people know who you are. You like being a big deal. You love the fact that there are people out there who absolutely adore you and treat you like some semi-god whenever you come to town or they see you out at a bar or a party. That’s why you haven’t been able to write a second book.”
    â€œDon’t say shit about my second book,” I snap.
    â€œI have to, James. It’s the truth. It’s not that you’re so busy agonizing over every word like you told the girl who interviewed you for Esquire . It’s because you’re afraid that people will brush you aside if the second one isn’t as good as the first one.”
    I shove Nina’s hands off me and step back and go, “Fuck you. Don’t you try cutting me down like that ever again, because I will fucking critique your bullshit life in a second and it won’t be pretty.”
    â€œWhoa, whoa, James. Settle down,” she says, her eyes getting big. “Just calm down. I wasn’t trying to cut you down at all. So let’s just drop it. Please. You live your life and I’ll live mine.”
    â€œFine.” I finish my cigarette and drop the butt into an empty beer can sitting on the dresser beside me and let my attention get dragged briefly into a lively conversation being held in the hallway right outside the bedroom door about who would win in a fight between Hannibal Lecter and Leatherface. This goes on for, like, thirty seconds until both people arguing concede to a third person that Robert Mitchum’s character in the movie The Night of the Hunter , the Reverend Harry Powell, would easily destroy both Lecter and Leatherface, and then there’s like a minute of loud drug-snorting sounds.
    Nina and I both laugh, and I light another cigarette.
    â€œOkay.” She smiles. “Now about this birthday present.”
    â€œOh right.” I grin. “You mean this.” I reach into the inside pocket of my blazer and pull a white envelope from it.
    Nina takes the envelope and opens it, and her face lights up. She yells, “Oh my god! Bowie,” and rips two tickets from the envelope. Two tickets to the David Bowie, Peaches, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah concert next week at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley. “You got me David Bowie for my birthday!”
    â€œAnd this, too,” I tell