Shared Room on Union

They were parked on Union, in front of her place, their knees locked in conference around the stick shift, Janna and Justin talking, necking a little, the windows just beginning to steam. We’d better stop, she said. I should go now. It was one a.m., a Thursday night turned Friday morning. Squads of drunken students were on the town. So far nobody had passed the car. Hey, take it to a Travelodge, man! Nights like this, that sort of thing could happen—one time a rigid hand had rammed the hood, another time someone had smacked the passenger window a foot from her ear, Justin’s fingers in her hair stopping dead.

I won’t miss this part, he told her.

I really should go, Jus.

Friday was her “nightmare day,” a double shift at the upscale café/bistro where she was now manager. Thursday nights she insisted on sleeping at her own place, alone. Sleep wasn’t really the issue, he sensed. This seemed to be a ritual of independence, and he knew she would maintain it strictly, having declared she would, until they moved in together in the new year. Other nights of the week they slept at his place or hers. They would be moving into a storm-worn but solid Victorian redbrick bungalow, three bedrooms, hardwood floors, in a druggy neighborhood now being colonized by bohemians and young professionals. Justin and Janna were somewhere on the chart between those categories. In March they planned to fly, tongues somewhat in cheeks, to Las Vegas to get married.

These separate Thursday nights, this symbolic vestige (as he saw it), tore him up in a small way. He could never take in too much of her. He had never been in this position before—the one who loves harder and lives the risk of it. It hadn’t been this way at first. Then it was this way, then it wasn’t, and now it was again, but more so. This must be a good thing, he felt—this swaying of the balance of desire—and he would try to work out in his mind why it was a good thing, and the words “reciprocal” and “mutuality” would pop up from somewhere, and the idea of a “marital dance,” which he thought he had probably read somewhere, yes, definitely . . . and his mind would start to drift, unable to concentrate on the matter for so long, and he would simply want her body next to his again. For now, no excess seemed possible.

Okay, he said. I know.

I’ll see you tomorrow, Jus.

Great.

From somewhere the remote, tuneless roar of frat-boy singing. Possibly the sound was approaching. One of the ironies of existence in this city of life-term welfare and psychiatric cases was that the student “ghetto,” on a weekend night, could be as dangerous as any slum north of the Hub or in the wartime projects further up. She tightened her eyes and peered through the misty windshield. She had a vertical crease between her brows and it would deepen when she was tired. That one hard crease; otherwise her face was unlined.

What’s that?

The boys seemed to be receding, maybe turning south toward the lake. Then another sound—the flat tootling ring of a cell phone, as if right behind the car. Still in a loose embrace they looked back over their shoulders. Someone was there, a shadow, as if seen through frosted glass, standing by the right fender.

What? Yeah, but I can’t talk right now. Right, I’m just about to. What’s that? Yeah, I believe so.

I’d better go, she said.

I’ll walk you in.

It’s okay, she said. She didn’t move.

Call you in five minutes, the voice said in a clumsy, loud whisper. Me you, not you me, okay? The shadow wasn’t there by the fender. There was a rapping on the driver’s side window, a shape hulking. Justin let in the clutch and pinched the ignition key but didn’t twist. With his free hand he...