kentucky vintage '78.

But equally, guilt gnawed at me. The watch had probably been part of a cache of stolen goods, and my guess was that it had “fallen off the truck” as T’s cousins had been transporting their haul to their farm. It was a tainted asset – the proceeds of a felony – and my status as an accessory would harden the longer I secreted it. It was as if I were keeping a vial of the Devil’s saliva on a shelf in my bedroom closet. Eventually it would seep out and begin to burn a hole in my soul.

We work in a place where people use their hands to make beautiful things. This means that when I watch your hands and memorize their lines no one thinks it’s out of the ordinary. One of the perks of my job is watching your hands and imagining them on top on my skin. They would scrape at me a little because making beautiful things is harder work than it seems, and your fingertips are rusty with it.

I’m already scouting where to smoke it. The women’s showers at midnight! But Jeff gave up strip clubs and I gave up weed.

She changed the locks and got summer-beer kisses from gentle men in soft short-sleeved plaid Carhartt shirts. Delightfully less-gentle men named after cities. Dallas. Jackson. Austin. Cody. Logan. Tall, brown-boot-wearing men who didn’t shave. Skinny-hipped men with jingly keys on Jolly Rancher-colored carabiners clipped to their belt loops. Soldiers on leave, camouflage-wearing country boys, fishermen with strong, dirty hands. Hunters who carried knives and operated heavy machinery and liked their steaks cool and bloody on the inside. She collected them like dented bottle caps, flicked them from her thumb when she was finished.

When he was small, Tom’s family left him behind at the Iowa State Fair. A security guard found him curled up sleeping in the straw under the Tilt a Whirl. He remembers riding on the guard’s shoulders, the smell of his oily hair and somehow, the sound of a cello.

She’s got a memory like a slow watermill. Hold, turn, spill. She keeps everything she needs for as long as she needs it, and then she lets go. Anything she forgets, she scoops back up again.

Abou’s emotions passed like the seconds of the shot clock. His parents said he could watch until 8:15, but they wound up watching well past 10 pm. The Lakers won in overtime, but it wasn’t a pretty win. Howard missed 12 free throws and Kobe shot a measly fifteen percent from the field. They all sat and cheered on the Lakers, like a family, as if nothing had really been said. Later, while the rain still struck the rooftop, hard, like the rhythms of the Sabar drum, Abou cried. It was soft enough so that his parents wouldn’t hear, but loud enough to cry out to his Grandpa Idrissa, who was many lands away.

And all of it asleep on a Saturday morning in the Haight, rustling through the paper at the Gold Cane Bar and pressing a can of Pabst to my head, still recovering from that cross-country flight. I got in late last night and we slept on the cold floor of her friend Cassie’s stout, angled apartment until Cassie left for work early in the morning, and we crept together, naked, into the warmth of the lone bed – hiding under a comforter, pulling it over our heads, leaving our dangling feet exposed but breathing each other’s warm breaths in our makeshift fort.

The front doors open again, and two more Elvises walk in – one’s a GI Elvis and the other one’s the Elvis I like, the one with the gold jacket. They both head back to the beer fridge, and keep the door open so the whole room gets some of the cold air.

Drizzle or downpour. Torrential showers or light dew. Bipolar weather conditions coinciding with their mood. But who could blame them for any hint of bitterness? They rode the crest of waves and were diminished directly to foam. They do their best to deal with unresolved feelings. On good days, raindrops trickle down upon skin like infant laughter. Goosebumps develop like a delightful Morse code reply.

The walk up to the restaurant is nice. A calm breeze blows small bits of trash up the street with us as we walk. Kids ride their bikes along the sidewalks and across the street, wending and looping like small human roller coasters.

Pin you hair and put on the reddest lipstick and a little dress that makes you feel old-timey; extra-girly, like something blooming. Lean against the doorframe drinking ice clinky frontier whiskey in the yellow bug-light glow. Listen to the frogs and crickets out back, steam-pulsing like a machine. Let your welcome home lips stain the glass of his hot mouth.

The telephone poles looked like crucifixes. I had the time to contemplate them, and that was how silent it was. We all remained inside like the person on the radio demanded us to. We looked out the large window, having pushed aside displays of shelved books and tea sets to see the large, male tiger, his testicles hanging noticeably from his crotch.