Likeness

I saw this guy tonight in Adam’s Point, by the lake—the sun was getting low, so I’d taken a break from grading—this guy in one of the green Carhartt jackets, smoking by the water. The light was really orange and in his face,
and when he turned my way for a second, I don’t know, I just needed to
check in on you. Is the ginger coming in okay, or did you have to dig it out?
I was telling Gabby about your backyard; it’s really something. Two or three times this year I walked through the botanical garden and thought to send you a photo of the bunny orchid; it’s purple and white and blue and flowers best in June, near the solstice. Sorry to hear about Luna; she was a really sweet cat. One of the last times I hung out with Matty we packed lips in his apartment and talked a lot about Dad. I know your relationship was a little different, so I don’t wanna make things weird, but he told me how Dad slapped him around this one time as a kid. Matty’s paintball gun discharged in the house and broke a pane of glass. I guess Dad took him out to eat, after, that steakhouse off Palumbo, and let him drink a beer with his burger. He was telling me this and spitting into an empty Dasani bottle. His jacket wasn’t green and it wasn’t a Carhartt but it was that same style, impenetrable knit with the hood. I just stood there by the lake looking at the guy for a second too long probably, and he kind of got weirded out. He mean-mugged and shrugged at me. The fuck are you looking at? I turned home early, and I had to take the long way since the gardens close at sundown. I’m back home now, watching the sky above the city get all purple and dark, a little white where the stars come in. Now that Gabby’s moved in I’m never really alone, but she’s out tonight, drinking mezcal on Grand with a friend. The last thing Matty said before I left his apartment—he’d screwed the blue cap on his Dasani bottle and walked me to the door—was that I should get my brake lines checked. I guess he’d heard something when I pulled in. Now whenever I hear that whining sound when a car pulls up to the stop sign by our building, I think of him and that dingy apartment. I remember how big he seemed inside that jacket when I clapped him once on the shoulder and stepped out through the open screen door. He was holding it for me.