He liked this place. Liked the dark wood paneling and the gleaming brass fixtures, liked the faded prints of early Stone Coast. Bean’s Tavern had been around since the Revolutionary War. The food was good, the beer was better. He and Max came here sometimes for dinner. It was busy but somehow private thanks to the smoky lighting and high-back leather booths. Once a month Swift hosted dinner in the tavern’s back room for the six or seven graduates and current students of the Lighthouse program who lived locally. Lighthouse was a low-residency program which meant that the majority of students spent fourteen days on campus at the beginning of each semester participating in intensive workshops before returning to their regular work lives. During the rest of the semester the Lighthouse students corresponded online or by phone with their faculty advisor. The idea behind low-res programs was to offer MFAs for those unable to interrupt their lives and current careers to earn their degree. Now and then another Lighthouse faculty advisor joined them at these monthly get-togethers, but the idea was Swift’s and he paid for the dinners out of his own pocket. He received monthly living expenses from a strictly monitored trust fund left to him by his father. The money had been a sore spot for a few years. Swift had petitioned legally once for control and had been denied. That had been a humiliating process. There was nothing like having friends, family and your health-care professionals go on the record that they did not believe you were (or ever would be) competent to manage your own business affairs—and then having a judge agree. It had been equally humiliating when his trust-fund checks were cut in half the minute he’d begun to earn a steady salary teaching. The official explanation was simple and blunt. While his trustees approved of his decision to work, too much money would present a temptation to him. In other words, it was only a matter of time before his next relapse, and they all knew it. Anger over that had helped him through a few difficult nights. And, in fact, the amount of his trust-fund checks had gradually increased to an additional couple of hundred dollars each month, so someone somewhere had apparently determined that Swift deserved an atta boy after six years of being clean and sober. He would never be allowed control of his trust fund—that had been spelled out to him in court—but for the most part he no longer cared. The extra money was nice, but he lived comfortably within his means, and he was proud that the only time he’d had to ask his trustees for an additional dime was for the down payment on his house. “Sometimes I wonder if poetry is even relevant in our modern society,” someone down the table was saying. It was a popular refrain at these dinners. Swift had long ago decided it was a rhetorical question and no longer engaged in the debate. Maybe he was getting old. He tossed off the final mouthful of drink. He restricted himself to one scotch on the rocks on these evenings. He was actually a little shy in intimate gatherings and the alcohol helped, though he knew better than to start relying on that. Tonight he was dealing with his various stresses by allowing himself a second drink. It was getting to be a habit after each run-in with Max, and even as he ordered it, he wondered if he was starting the first slippery steps down a very steep path. But the nagging, restless want had stuck with him all day, and it was starting to scare him. Three, four hours. That was the longest the craving should persist. Especially this long into his recovery. But as it didn’t seem to be fading, he needed to numb it. Despite what the professionals advised, he believed that tonight his best option was alcohol. Coping strategies came in all sizes and shapes. He liked this little band of students and ex-students, but he didn’t want to be here. Nor did he want to hear anything more about Tad Corelli