Gary shoved his bowl forward and pulled Midge closer, as if there were no one else in the room. Angie looked at her and noticed the particular features: short, dark hair, pendulous breasts and skinny legs, ankle bracelet. Her midriff was somewhat thick. “This part is more Ken than Barbie,” Midge had said this morning, patting her stomach. “But I’ve got to have my beer. Fuck the calories.” She had one of those rear ends that was flat as a book. When she’d caught Angie looking her over, she’d winked and said, “Yeah, Gary has me on my back so much I about rubbed my ass off.”

Angie had asked her how long she and Gary had been married. Midge stared at her and grinned. “Gary is married to someone else, honey, and so am I. What do you think you’re doing with Lance? Other women’s husbands. Something about the fires of Hell. Mmm, hmm.” She laughed and picked at the curls on her forehead.     […that looked like snakes cuz she was a skank]

It was true, Angie had thought, as she’d stumbled outside into the shrill Alabama sun: she was bound for Hell. She had first thought of this after Lance’s wife answered the phone that one time, yet she’d managed the fitful sleep that followed, flipping in her bed like a pancake on a griddle. What was so bewitching about these fires of Hell? Did it really matter that he was married? That was his problem, right? she thought.

When Lance’s wife answered—“This is his wife, could I help you or take a message?”—Angie had been too panicked to speak and quickly hung up the phone. She went and got another beer, and then another, until she fell asleep into a spongy land of dreams where she was singing, but it sounded like screaming, and she was driving but the scenery never changed.

Lance mentioned Angie’s name and she looked up, startled at the sound of it. He rarely said her name aloud, seemed almost embarrassed, at times, to do so. Angie caught his eye and realized he was not speaking to her. Her heart swung in her throat.

“So Angie was standing there holding a tennis racket and the guy kept tripping over himself just to touch her, mess with her hair, adjust the damn racket.” Lance was describing the photographer’s actions during the shoot he’d stopped by to watch at the fitness club last week. “Christ. This guy was laying it on so thick you had to wade through it,” he told Gary. “He said Angie was ’A demure twenty year old with an arresting beauty’—give me a fucking break.”

“Probably what he wanted,” said Gary and winked. He leaned over and whispered in Midge’s ear until she laughed.

Only one night before, in a hotel in Tennessee, had he gotten close to saying her name, when he’d whispered “Look, Ang, one person just can’t matter this much” and he’d looked past her over the small balcony into the solid dark sky. He rubbed the skin on her shoulders with his palms. “Ang,” he’d said. “Ang.” As if the rest of her name would take up too much space in his mouth.      [nevermind that his mouth was already full of bullshit]

Lance remembered yet another funny story about how Angie had to wait for over eight hours at the airport before he could get away from his wife to come pick her up for this vacation. Gary guffawed and slapped the table until the bowls rattled and quivered. In fact, this seemed to be funnier than the story Lance told ten minutes ago about some nineteen-year-old girl he met and took out last week whose father was waiting on the porch with a shotgun when he brought her home around 3:00 am. “Can you believe that shit?” he laughed.     [this shit is unbelievable]

Angie thought, yes, she could believe it. Yes, she could fondle the trigger. She remembered how abandoned she had felt at the airport, how humiliated. She had sat there, waited for eight hours, and imagined him mangled and dead among the broken pieces of his car, or in bed with his wife in a sweaty embrace. She was willing to allow the time with his wife—after all, he was confused—but hadn’t thought she could bear her future empty of him.      [nobody needs this crap, repeat after me buhbye u will be ok]

By the time Lance actually showed up, she had counted all the tiles between her seat and the women’s restroom five times, thought only once about calling her parents and explaining just what the hell she was doing in Alabama. She watched other people met by beaming faces and open arms, and she had promised God repeatedly that she would turn right around and get back on a plane, if he would please, oh please, let Lance not be dead. Then all of a sudden—as if it were bound to happen all along—Lance was there, whole and alive. Like a sniper. He kissed her long and hard, sucked her bottom lip into his mouth in front of an airport full of strangers and said, “Let’s hit it. I’m double-parked.”      [cuz I have 2 assholes n 1 is my mouth n Im talking shit here]

How was it, that in the midst of what seemed like such a good idea, her life was right here, now?      [but she’d be ok, she would]