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at him as if he just canceled Christmas. He remembers a time when The Sopranos was big on TV and people in New Jersey complained about it and protested the show. They said that it depicted people in New Jersey as rude and boorish and wasn’t realistic. He still laughs when he thinks about this. The first time he saw The Sopranos, he thought it was a documentary.
    He’s stuck in gridlocked traffic on the Garden State Parkway and feels almost as if he never moved away. He just paid one toll and is now sitting in traffic simply waiting to pay another. It’s raining slightly, which makes his day even worse. New Jersey drivers are bad enough on a sunny day. When it rains, they drive their cars as if the sky is falling and they’re being chased by demons. It’s the only state he’s ever been in where the people drive a hundred miles per hour in the snow and yet twelve miles per hour in the rain.
    This isn’t his home, but this is where his stuff is. After the divorce from Beth, he put all of his things in storage about five miles from his old condo. That’s the hardest part about his hatred for this state: He has to keep coming back to it. If he wants warmer clothes, he needs to come to Jersey. If he needs to pick up old files or tax returns, he has to come to Jersey. If he just wants to look at the TV he owns and hasn’t used in years, he has to come to Jersey. Most importantly, if he wants his mail, he has to come to Jersey.
    The mail is at Beth’s condo, which is coincidentally his old condo and Beth is coincidentally his ex-wife. The good part of remaining friendly with his ex is that it has allowed him to keep a formal address while not actually having a home. He hasn’t had a house or apartment for two years, but Beth still collects his mail for him. Most of it is junk. It’s not like any bank is crazy enough to give him a credit card, and he doesn’t own enough of anything to get any real bills.
    He’s not too far outside New York City, but he might as well be in Florida. The entire Princeton area looks more suburban than the rest of the state and is actually quite pretty. It’s one of the few things he liked about the area. Pulling up to his old apartment complex, he sees Beth’s blue PT Cruiser in the parking lot. Right next to it is a slick black Audi and he knows this means that Evan is home.
    Spence grits his teeth a bit and sighs. Evan is Beth’s husband and not remotely someone he would call his pal. Beth was friends with Evan before the divorce. About a month after the split, that friendship “suddenly” became something more serious and he moved into the condo. The ink wasn’t even dry on the divorce papers before he settled in and married Beth. Spence thinks that Evan is a douche. As it turns out, the feeling is mutual.
    Spence gets out of his car and looks closely at the PT Cruiser. Beth has been taking care of it, and it still looks almost new. Much better than his car. The Cruiser is in his name, even though it’s Beth’s car and always has been. The payments were cheaper and, after the divorce, it seemed easier just to keep it that way until the thing was paid off. Like the agreement with the mail, this arrangement pisses Evan off big-time.
    Spence had hoped that neither Beth nor Evan would be home and that he could just slip in, grab his mail, and slip out again. No such luck. He prepares himself and knocks on the door. He still has a key, but he knows that using it will just piss Evan off even more than he already will by just being there.
    Beth looks surprised to see him, although he knows he told her he was coming. He smells food and realizes he caught her about to have dinner. Garlic hits his nose, and he knows it’s toasted French bread. There’s probably fresh veggies, too. He loves both of those things, and Beth cooks them well. Now he really despises the Big Mac he had an hour ago, and he feels it churn