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into the cold, clear Brooklyn morning. Running for his life, or at least the version of it where he has this job and lives in this apartment.
    If Billy loses this job he won’t make rent. In fact, even with the job it’s often a struggle. That $12.50 an hour adds up pretty slowly. He’s had months, plural, where he’s had to turn to Jørgen for a little financial help. Billy thinks on this for a moment as he angles through a cluster of kvetching grandmothers and it occurs to him that if Jørgen doesn’t return before the end of the month then he’s going to have to cover the entire rent himself. This is not actually a possibility.
Just call him
, Billy thinks, as he barrels past discount electronics shops and the bagel place that he likes.
Denver was right. You should just call him
.
    Denver. He imagines the thought of her name stopping him dead in his tracks. (In actuality he is already stopped by two elderly Romanians who have chosen to use the sidewalk to angrily negotiate the sale of a pair of ancient Nintendo Entertainment System consoles.)
    The point is: he misses Denver. And as he gets around the Romanian guys and heads into a final sprint toward the subway stop, he thinks about her, he reflects back on the normal times, the downtime, the evenings that he’d spent with Denver just flumped out in his bed, eating Thai takeout, drinking some incredible bourbon that she’d brought over, watching stupid YouTube videos on her MacBook, listening to her plot out a piece of conceptual video art that she wanted to make out of uploaded footage of cats, seeing her smile at his jokes. Pressing his face into her shoulder as the hour grew late. Not having sex kinda ’cause of Jørgen and kinda just ’cause they were both too sleepy. The memory is a lamentation. Right now he feels like he would do anything even to be
not
having sex with Denver.
    Too bad she figured out that he was a fuck-up.
    But no
, he tells himself.
You’re not a fuck-up. You met the Devil and you walked away. That proves something. She’ll see when you tell her
.
    But how can he tell her?
    And then, right as he reaches the subway stop: inspiration.
    He has it.
    He knows how he can explain his feelings toward her, reassert his competence, and convince her to accept the major epistemological shift he’s experienced today. It all holds together. In his mind it’s an intricate crystal made of pure motherfucking eloquence. He just has to get her on the phone, now, before it all dissolves into slush.
    He judders to a halt on the stairs, halfway through his descent into the station. The last possible point where he’ll have a phone signal. A person directly behind him stumbles into his back and emits a few terse syllables of what may be Korean invective.“Sorry,” Billy mutters, but he isn’t, not really. He struggles his cell phone out of his pocket, angles it up the stairs at a chunk of sky, and punches the single numeral that autodials Denver.
    And of course it goes straight to voice mail.
    “Fuck,” Billy says. He’s never done well with voice mail.
    It’s okay
, he thinks,
you can do this
.
    And he speaks: “Uhhh, yeah, hi, Denver, I just, I was just thinking, I know we’re—I know things are—I’ve just had a really strange day today, and it got me to thinking about us, about you, and I just would really like to talk to you again, sometime, when you can, I know you probably don’t really want to because, I don’t know, I think you’re still mad at me or something, but I kinda hope that you’ll look past that and call me back and maybe I can explain a couple of things. Okay? Uh, that’s it I guess. Call me!”
    He hangs up.
Fuck
, he thinks,
that was horrible. Do yourself a goddamn favor and never speak again
.
    The taste of failure still rank in his mouth, he hurries down the stairs, swipes his card at the turnstile, and bolts to the platform just in time to see his train close its doors and pull away.
    When he finally gets to work