The sky was blue, the earth was green, the moon was new, and you were happy. The night, you knew, could be a dream that swallows you, and you were happy. I'll light the route wherever it leads, I'll follow you, and I'll be happy. The sky was you, the earth was me, the moon was three, and we were happy.

Everything that happened was a blur, but she definitely ran from the parking lot with a friend of hers. She left behind some matches and some nasty schnapps masking as classy pomegranate liqueur, and the ashes of some letters in an old can of cheddar cheese crackers she'd thrown to the birds. And you remember addressing each and every envelope, sentimentally expressing what you believed were the most pressing confessions, and waiting for her to post back her affections, but you'll just have to interpret the smoke that might read like the words she never wrote, drifting up to the sky by the Sears, drifting higher and higher till it disappears. You better watch out; there are so many noises out there. Sirens and pistols and evacuation whistles crying since the end of the affair. It didn't have to happen the way an assassin will relieve the room of its air. It could have unraveled gradual and left you believing that what you once had was still there. And in the darkening parking lot, slowly the local kids show with their Goats and Darts and bottles of ammonia and throttles and racing hearts, and nobody notices you stand there and watch them run under and over the smoke, all that speed but they never really go. Doubling back when they get to the end, doubling back so they might try again.

Did you hear about their party, the one they told no one to tell me of—as if that even should alarm me, or send me crying to the telephone, that they were throwing this big soiree, inviting everybody else on earth, and they conveniently forgot me, so they can chuckle to themselves. Don't give a fuck about their party, pushing nerds into the pool, mixing mojitos at the barbecue like it's still 2002. I'm not going to their party: Too many asses just like you, with telescopes aimed at the sorority, with dopey 'staches to outdo one another. They should call it a retarty. Some place where they can take their helmets and listen to the Arctic Monkeys, and shoot their shooters and their Jell-O. Yeah, they should call it a retarty. Bacardi floaters get ignited—tomorrow morning they'll be sorry. I'm glad that I wasn't invited to their dumb retarty, their stupid fun retarty. I'm not going to their party because their sorry party sucks.

In a bar in a hotel, he asked why there's no television, were they putting on airs? And the bartender told him nobody was holding a gun to the back of his chair. The man said to her, "Babe, I know some young people's names, and I would like to know yours." She said, "You don't look familiar, but you look like a billboard, of this I am fairly sure." He said, "I am deeply tanned like the Marlboro Man, or a luxuriant Coppertone body." She said, "Give me a hand with this case of cold lambic and I might pull your drawers like that doggie." And I have stuck close to the facts, or at least something roughly their equal. And if it's not exact, it was something like that, you know, something nice about people. She put up the stools at a quarter to two, and at two sharp locked up the keep. Then they sat in the lobby drinking all the free coffee while the highway just talked in its sleep. It seemed to live out all that they dreamed about, a freedom so fresh and so tender: The rush of a bus sounded like sweet escape, and a Ford Escape sounded like surrender. They stared into each other over a low table covered with leaflets about local attractions, and when they focused their glimpses, their lips were within inches, and they kissed as the morning shift vacuumed. And I have stuck close to the facts, or at least something roughly their equal. And if it's not exact, it was something like that, you know, something nice about people.