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names, but back in 1990 it ranked 212th among all American baby names, slipped in between Alejandra and Marie. There are approximately 10,500 people in the United States right now with the name Chloe. Sometimes you find the name with an umlaut over the e (nearly twenty minutes is lost trying to find the meaning of those two dots over the vowel, and when I do—its purpose simply to differentiate between the o and e sounds at the end of the name—I realize it’s been a waste of time), sometimes without. I wonder how Mia spells it, though I won’t dare ask. Where would Mia have come up with a name like Chloe? Perhaps it was on the birth certificate of one of Mia’s prized Cabbage Patch Kids, flown in from Babyland General Hospital. I go to the website. I’m astounded to find new skin tones for this year’s babies—mocha and cream and latte—but no reference to a doll named Chloe. Maybe another child in Mia’s second-grade class...
    I research famous people named Chloe: both Candice Bergen and Olivia Newton-John named their daughters Chloe. It’s the real first name of author Toni Morrison, though I highly doubt Mia was reading Beloved in the second grade. There’s Chloë Sevigney (with the umlaut) and Chloe Webb (without), though I’m certain the first is too young and the second too old for Mia to have paid any attention to when she was eight.
    I could ask her. I could climb the steps and knock on the door of her bedroom and ask her. That’s what James would do. He’d get to the bottom of this. I want to get to the bottom of this, but I don’t want to violate Mia’s trust. Years ago I’d seek James’s advice, his help. But that was years ago.
    I pick up the telephone, dial the numbers. The voice that greets me is kind, informal.
    “Eve,” he says and I feel myself relax.
    “Hello, Gabe.”

Colin
Before
    I lead her to a high-rise apartment building on Kenmore. We take the elevator to the seventh floor. Loud music pours out of another apartment as we make our way down the piss-stained carpeting to a door at the end of the hall. I open the door as she stands by. It’s dark in the apartment. Only the stove light is on. I cross the parquet floors and flip on a lamp beside the sofa. The shadows disappear and are replaced with the contents of my meager living: Sports Illustrated magazines, a collection of shoes barricading the closet door, a half-eaten bagel on a paper plate on the coffee table. I watch silently as she judges me. It’s quiet. A neighbor has made Indian food tonight and the scent of curry chokes her.
    “You okay?” she asks because she hates the uncomfortable silence. She’s probably thinking this was all a mistake, that she should leave.
    I walk to her and run a hand down the length of her hair, grasping the strands at the base of her skull. I stare at her, placing her upon a pedestal, and see in her eyes how she wishes, if only for a moment, to stay there. It’s a place she hasn’t been for quite some time. She forgot how it felt to have someone stare that way. She kisses me and forgets altogether about leaving.
    I press my lips against hers in a way that’s new and familiar all at the same time. My touch is assertive. I’ve done this a thousand times. It puts her at ease. If I were awkward, refusing to make the first move, she’d have time to reconsider. But as it is, it happens too fast.
    And then, as quickly as it began, it’s over. I change my mind, pull away, and she asks, “What?” short of breath. “What’s wrong?” she begs, trying to pull me back to her. Her hands drop to my waistband, her drunken fingers clumsily work my belt.
    “It’s a bad idea,” I say as I turn away from her.
    “Why?” her voice begs. She grasps at my shirt in desperation. I move away, out of reach. And then, it sinks in slowly—the rejection. She’s embarrassed. She presses her hands to her face like she’s hot, clammy.
    She drops onto the arm of a chair and tries to catch her breath.