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said.
    Ruby let my duffel bag drop.
    I don’t mean to freak you out, man, Ruby said, And I’m not irresponsible. Just lonely. And Einstein’s the sexiest man ever, next to Martin Luther King, Jr. And when I saw you at the airport, standing alone in the fluorescence, checking for your wallet, I don’t know what the fuck happened to me.
    It was just so human how you were, Ruby said. Ruby’s smile.
    I was wounded by a blow of love, Ruby said.
    My heartbeat at my ears was a siren.
    Then my lips were flying lips against Ruby’s. Ruby’s lips were soft, his breath was cigarettes and beer and the sweet smell of his soul. Wekissed big, a deep kiss like in the movies, my hands in his hair, down his back, and onto his ass.
    But it’s not the truth.
    Thanks, I said, For the ride. For everything.
    ALL DODGES SOUND the same when you start them up.
    Vaya con Dios , True Shot said.
    Happy Trails! Ruby said. Until we meet again!
    Keep smiling until then was the song in my head as I put the key in the door of 205 East Fifth Street. Down the street, Door of the Dead van turned right on Third Avenue. True Shot shifted into second, and just like that the Dodge van was gone. I turned the key and pushed the steel door and I was inside, under the unrelenting fluorescent halo in the hallway.
    APARTMENT I - A WAS on my right. It took me awhile in the bright to find the right key. Just as I turned the key in the top lock, the door behind me, I -C, opened up as far as the chain allowed. A cat tried to jump out the door, but a foot in a dirty fluffy pink slipper kicked it. The cat yowled and ducked back in. The woman stuck the cat she was holding in her hand out the door first, before she stuck her own self out. This cat was a longhaired yellow and looked at me with the New York drop-dead fuck-you.
    What I first saw about the woman was her blue shower hat and the Kleenex under the elastic part of the shower hat. Then her eyebrows: two red swoops exactly the way in my mother’s penmanship how she crossed her T’s: too fancy. Then it was Scotch I smelled, and cigarettes. Scotch and cigarettes and cat shit and kitty litter.
    Mrs. Lupino came together all at once as herself when she spoke. You knew all about her with that voice, deep as a lava flow, soft as mud.
    You Ellen’s cowboy? Mrs. Lupino said. The one that’s moving in?
    Ellen? I said. How do you know about Ellen?
    She told me about you, Mrs. Lupino said. Everything .
    The one from potato country? Mrs. Lupino asked.
    From Idaho, I said. Yes.
    Mrs. Lupino’s hand on the yellow cat was liver spots and pink Lee Press-On nails.
    Then do it! Mrs. Lupino said.
    Do it? I said.
    What you do with the cigarettes, she said.
    I put down my duffel bag and my suitcase. Rolled a cigarette with one hand like I can, handed the cigarette through the opening in the door. Mrs. Lupino took the cigarette, pink Lee Press-On nails, liver spots, put the cigarette in between her lips, wrinkles all around her lips, no lipstick. I lit Mrs. Lupino’s cigarette.
    Watch for my babies because I’m opening the door, she said, and closed the door, undid the chain, and opened the door again. Cats everywhere.
    Upstairs, another door opened, and at the top of the stairs stood a person and then a little dog, a terrier, who started yapping, then a bigger dog, then an old dog, limping, with spots. There was no light on the second-story landing, and I couldn’t see who was standing at the top of the stairs. The person was big and wearing a long robe, that’s all I could tell, except I knew this person was black.
    Things start where you don’t know.
    That person was Rose, Rose and his dogs, Mona, Mary, and Jack Flash. Bracelets, lots of bracelets, the clack-clack of them.
    Rose upstairs, Ruby just gone around the corner. The closest those two ever got. Except for in me.
    It’s all right, Rose! Mrs. Lupino called sing-songy up the stairs. This is Ellen’s cowboy.