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“Predominantly Chinese Library.”
    Mindy was at UT hoping to study nursing, but on the first floor of her dormitory was a theatre—Dobie Theatre—an independent house that showed art films, documentaries, foreign features that garnered awards, and Mindy felt called to it, spending all her money and free time there, watching stories that seemed so distant to her life’s history—a bungled existence in the depressing town of Scrape, Texas.
    Beyond the movies was the boy. Alexei. His neat shaved head, his precision features.
    “You come here all the time,” he told her.
    “I like movies,” she said.
    “Who doesn’t?” he asked.
    And Mindy just shrugged.
    Alexei.
    Their hands touched once when he was taking her ticket.
    The next time he saw her he asked, “Do you like to take walks?”
    After her movie, they walked out of the theatre onto Guadalupe, the bright light of day, nearly blinding their eyes, and they held hands going south.
    When they got to Cesar Chavez he led her east to Congress and south again to the bridge over Town Lake.
    “You got anywhere you’re supposed to be?” he asked.
    “No,” she told him.
    Alexei looked at his watch. “In about half an hour, you’re gonna see magic.”
    They waited. The sky grayed to dusk. Others gathered around them. Alexei said, “Don’t listen to anyone,” and Mindy looked at him, “to these people,” he told her, “to their talking,” he said, “plug your ears with your fingers. I don’t want them ruining your surprise.”
    The sun sank behind them, orange light and murky sky.
    Alexei pointed. He pulled Mindy’s hands from her ears, held them, “Look, look, look, look,” he said. And, to Mindy, it seemed like a cloud of smoke was wafting from the bridge beneath them, but then she realized it was something flying.
    “Are they bugs?” she asked.
    “Bats,” he said.
    Alexei.
    He could make bats magic, could make bats a surprise.
    Later, he bought her ice cream. Later, they were back in her dorm room.
    For weeks, they wandered with each other. To the capital building made of pink granite. To the Central Market on Lamar Boulevard where Mindy stood mesmerized, staring at produce and fish. “I’ve never seen this kind of food,” she confessed to him.
    But some people’s hearts need constant change to feel happy.
    “You’re doing what?” she asked him.
    “A study,” he told her.
    “I don’t get it.”
    “It’s like a three week thing,” he said, “I go in, take some pharmaceuticals. They monitor me. Make sure the drugs are working.”
    “Isn’t that like, dangerous?” Mindy asked.
    “Could be,” he said, “but it pays good.”
    Alexei.
    “I’ll miss you,” Mindy told him, the last day they saw each other.
    “Don’t be so dramatic,” he told her.
    When he was away, Mindy’s symptoms showed. 
    Some things are nothing, but nothing can’t always be forgiven.

  
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
      
     
       
     
     
     
     
     
     

    OLD BURT
     
    But it hadn’t been a dozen years. There was a boat ride. A deep sea charter.
    AA has all these acronyms.
    One is HALT: hungry, angry, lonely, tired.
    You don’t want to be those things.
    “One is too many,” thought Burt, “a thousand isn’t enough,” he thought, “the alcoholic’s mind is like a bad neighborhood, don’t go there alone,” thought, “this too shall pass.”
    Old Burt changed HALT to SHALT in his mind: the S stood for sea sick.
    He was sitting there with the salt smell heavy on his breathing, the horizon bobbing up and down, a bucket of minced mullet at his feet, the sloppy sound of the waves on the hull. He knew the trick: stare at the horizon, the stillest spot on the sea, but it wasn’t working. Every so often his vision chanced glances at the clouds that seemed to move in unnatural ways, and he thought he’d be puking soon, and he kept saying the serenity prayer, “God grant me .  .  .” But then the steward came by:
    “Beers, sodas,