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can only get a glass of – the man gasps, draws in a long rippled breath and resumes his stuttering blats. Sleep apnea. His girlfriend Lauren has a sweeter version of the same. His ex-girlfriend.
    As she leans forward to direct turban guy, the top of Vanessa’s thong makes a hot pink T – for touch – above the waist of her jeans. He bends to kiss Vanessa’s blinding white skin but Todd stops him.
    Vanessa and Todd were in the back seat with him.
    He unties his laces and ties them again, redoes the left one to match the degree of tightness of the right. Pictures his bed and imagines lying in it and staring up at the Lego projects suspended from the ceiling. Star Wars ships, space stations, lunar vehicles. It was the only toy he ever asked for as a kid, and he had accumulated enough pieces, he once figured out, to build a human-sized single-car garage. He used to hide his creations from his brother, Beau, the human cruise missile, as Dad called him. There was nothing Beau got more pleasure from than destroying things Quinn felt protective of.
    He follows Vanessa out of the cab. Todd grabs his arm. “Not yours.”
    Who even laid the charge against him? Vanessa?
    â€œYou tell us, Lothario,” he remembers one of cops saying. A female cop?
    He lies down on the cot’s starchy pillow, fingers the scab forming between his nose and lip. A second scratch, along his neck, is also a mystery. Hit with the whirlies, he sits up again.
    Shrugs off Todd with an elbow to the face.
    Like splinters working their way to the surface, his lost memories appear in bits and shards to be nervously pieced together. Like last weekend when he’d woken up on top of Mount Doug to a strange dog licking his face. He gradually remembered the bottle of whiskey and the fire he’d made in the woods to burn the epic poem he’d written to Lauren, though the night climb up the mountain is still patchy. Two weeks before that incident, he’d woken up in a stranger’s car. He’d been walking home from downtown, late, it had been raining and he must have wisely sought dry shelter. Luckily he woke up early and got out of there before the owner found him and called the police. He looks around the cinder-block walls. Not so lucky this time.
    It scares him that he can get so drunk he’s basically unconscious yet still moving around doing things. Because at that point, who exactly is making the decisions?

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    Quinn hands in his final exam of the term: history of structures. Feels light-headed, empty, as if all that crammed information had actual weight and substance. Is pretty sure he aced it. Since Lauren dumped him, three weeks and five days ago in the room in which they first made love, he’s had nothing to do but study.
    Out in the hall, a group of fellow architecture students are coaxing people to go celebrate.
    â€œQuinn, come to Mandy’s and my place,” says a sad-faced girl named Rebecca, the corners of her eyes and mouth listing downward as though plagued by gravity. “You can’t study any more so you have no excuse this time.”
    â€œYou have to come,” booms Ritchie. He drapes a sloppy hand on Quinn’s shoulder and yells, “It’s time we brought you down to our level.” Twenty years old and already sporting a paunch, Ritchie’s the type of guy for whom loud is funny.
    All term, Quinn has refused these kinds of offers because he’s not comfortable in groups. Groups have too many variables, which therefore make it impossible to know where you stand. It was complicated work, some made it a career, and he had enough on his plate with his job, Lauren and maintaining an A average in order to keep his scholarship. He’d made a decision early on to remain an unknown quantity here in school, with the hope of being labelled enigmatic.
    â€œDo you even have a personality?” Lauren had asked last month during their fight and her