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one foot up on the table, nudged up against the lit candle. And I could see the beer bottles, six or eight, strewn sideways on the floor, all near his hand, trailing on the carpet. Then I saw someone else in the room – Anne Murphy, with something in her hands.
    I got one more wink, just one short glimpse before the candle was blown out. One short, incredible image flashed against my retinas so it stayed there like a ridiculous and unbelieveable afterimage. Anne Meadus Murphy from next door, spreading a blanket over Brendan’s soundly-sleeping body. Tucking him in, though he gave no sign of knowing she was even there.
    It took me ages to get into the house that night. I couldn’t get the keys to work, so I sat on the front steps, eventually lying back for a while to look at the stars. There aren’t as many stars in the city as there were where I used to live, I remember thinking that. The orange of the streetlights rubs away the weaker ones like an eraser on paper; at my old house, you could look up and see the delicate sweep of the whole Milky Way, watch the fall of the Perseid and the Leonid meteors, lie under a million stars burning like bright diamonds in the black. At my new house, head out of the clouds, I could watch one of Brendan’s cats, stalking the night-wandering, sky-stumbling moths – and then eating them.
    I got into the house eventually. If you hold your breath and concentrate, sometimes that gives youenough control to make the tip of the key stop shaking. I dropped my jacket at the foot of the stairs and stuffed my keys back into my left pocket – there are some things that stay in order, like where you put your toothbrush, and which cupboards hold the glasses, and which ones the plates.
    Then, somewhere halfway up, my feet forgot just how many stairs there really were.
    She must have heard me fall from the other side of the wall, must have heard me hit the bare hardwood at the foot of the stairs. Because when I opened my eyes, the side of my face already swelling from where I had hit the floor, Mrs. Murphy was kneeling right in front of me, holding a mug. And I still have no idea how she kept getting into my house.
    â€œTea,” she said quietly, smiling. “Just tea.” She had more concern in one eye than most people have in both for me lately.
    I’d like to say that I threw open the curtains the next day and shouted out that it was a new world, a new and wonderful world. But I don’t have any curtains upstairs yet, so I celebrated morning by squinting my eyes shut against the latest hangover, rolling over and burying my face in the pillow until after noon. And, over and over again, feeling the throb of my badly-bruised face like a taut little drum, hit hard with every heartbeat.
    When I did get up, it was hot outside, the sun blazing the way it does for far too few St. John’s summer days.

Hot Tub
    A T THREE IN THE AFTE RNOON, THE SUN blazing, John climbed into the hot tub and felt the gentle fizz of the bubbles catching on the dark hairs of his legs and arms and on the fine, almost-invisible hairs on his back. He felt the heat of the water move in toward his bones; it almost seemed to bounce back out again through the tissue, warming as much coming out as it had moving in.
    There were kids in the nearby pool, three dark-haired kids from Quebec – he had heard them talking in French to their mother, who lay on a beach chair under the sun, diligently working sunscreen into her long, slender arms. Three dark-haired kids like cut-out versions of the same person at different ages, looping through the water like otters, going over and under the line of blue and white floats that separated the deep end from shallower water. Watching over the edge of the hot tub, he could see the womanhad long fingers, too, watched as the fingers followed the contours of her arms and shoulders.
    John’s kids were over at the rented cabin, fighting and