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idea what he was talking about, though I later found out it was needlepoint. “Eileen has your travel.”
    I went back and told Rensselaer what was happening. “Jesus,” he said. “I can’t believe I got you to quit school for this. I thought I was managing him.” I said it was okay, but when I got to Rosey Grier and the unicorn, he said, “See, he’s actually losing it. That’s what I didn’t count on.”
    Jillian came over and said, “Cerise is nice, but two months? God. When are you going?”
    â€œFriday.”
    â€œI’ll make you a kit,” she said, and the night before I left we had dinner at the Thai restaurant on Stovall Street. It was the first time since the Swedish book night that I’d seen herwithout the friends. When she put down her menu she said, “Do you ever get this big feeling of well-being for no reason? Just really happy all of a sudden?”
    â€œYes,” I said. “I think so. Like you go outside and everything looks perfect? I think I get that about twice a year for, like, twenty minutes. Is that the kind of thing?”
    She nodded, but her look gave me the feeling I’d just blown it, that she spent whole seasons in that condition and that forty minutes a year was the record low score. She picked up a canvas knapsack from the seat next to her and handed it to me.
    â€œYour kit,” she said. Inside were three sweet potato mini-pies from the Lofton Street Bakery, a beer from Riddenhauer’s, a George Jones CD, a novel about fly-fishing, and a topographic map of the area I was going to.
    â€œThanks,” I said. “You went crazy.”
    â€œNot at all. It’s the minimum of what you’ll need.” She opened the map and pointed to a whorl of elevation lines. “Megan and Steve and I camped up here. If you take this trail there’s like fifteen waterfalls on the way.”
    â€œDo you go a lot?”
    â€œAs much as I can,” she said. “Even if it’s just over by Jonesboro in the Shawnee Forest. Sometimes just putting the big socks on gives me that feeling you were talking about. When people tell me their problems I want to say, ‘Buy a pair of hiking shoes and call me when they’re worn out.’ Most of them would never have to call.”
    â€œI wondered about that.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œWhen I met you,” I said. “You were wearing that vest and the boots and everything. I was wondering if that was something you really did or, you know. A style.”
    â€œLick rocks,” she said, drawing herself up in the booth andsaying it with the same mock umbrage she used on the friends. I felt both anointed and doomed, as if I’d been grandfathered into those photo collages and stuck safely to construction paper, mugging at a bowling alley birthday party or making cowboy coffee in a national wilderness.
    Later, though, when she was dropping me off and I already had the car door open, she said, “Henry?” I turned to face her and she was on me with a kiss that lasted twelve seconds and crossed the blood-brain barrier. When it was over I tried to do it again but she pulled back, shook her head, and said, “I don’t know what that was. Call me when you get settled, okay?”
    I went up to my apartment. It occurred to me that it couldn’t have been Jillian who’d said, “Fuck you,” to Rensselaer the first time he called me. She didn’t talk like that. Maybe it was Suzanne.
    Â 
    I was almost at the ticket counter of the Clayton bus station when I realized that the clerk was the woman who lived across the hall from me, wearing makeup that made her look a little less spectral than she did at home. I stopped for a second but then continued to the window and said, “Hi, how are you?”
    She said, “Can I help you?” as if she didn’t recognize me.
    I bought a round-trip ticket and asked, “How