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There’s a T-shirt thrown carelessly onto the unmade bed.
A stack of books on his desk—a different desk than he had last year, a bigger mattress, an ivy-green comforter with huge pink roses that must have come with the other furnishings in this apartment because he would never buy such a thing.
Condoms in the drawer by the bed.
Lotion on top of the table, a box of tissues.
In his closet, a half-full basket of laundry, which I lift out in one big scoop and press to my face.
West’s detergent. West’s scent overlaid with sawdust and sweat, musty dirty laundry smell.
I run my finger along the line of shirts hung up in his closet, clothes I’ve seen him wear, clothes I’ve taken off him.
I open every drawer, rummage under the bed, and I don’t know what I’m looking for until I find it at the bottom of a stack, tucked inside a manila folder.
A note I left him one morning. A snapshot of the two of us that I liked enough to get it printed and give him a copy—me and West at the bakery, goofing around, flour on his nose and on my cheekbone, light in our eyes.
A printout of an email I sent him after he left Putnam.
I love you, and I’ll miss you, and I want everything good for you, West. Everything wonderful. I want you to be happy. I want you to be whole.
Two hundred dollars in twenties, tucked inside a Christmas card.
I close the folder and put it away.
I stand in his dark bedroom feeling elated and guilty.
The next thing I know, I’m in the kitchen. I take the carton of cigarettes out of the freezer and methodically open every package and empty them out into a pile on the kitchen table.
I break them open, roll them between my fingers, emptying the loose tobacco into a mound.
I don’t know why. I just do it. I do it and keep doing it, swallowing over the ache in my heart and the numb cold I’m rolling between my fingers until it’s done and I can’t take it back.
Then I return to his room, dig out that note I wrote him, and put it on the table. At the bottom of the page, I write a new message.
If you eat enough tobacco, it’s poisonous. Hell of a lot quicker than smoking them.
I put a fork next to the pile I’ve made, sweep all the empty papers and filters and cellophane wrappers into the garbage can that I find beneath the sink, and then look at the little scene I’ve created.
I’m losing it.
But I feel curiously detached from having to care about what’s normal and what isn’t. Curiously entitled to my behavior, my stalking, whatever displays of emotion I feel like directing at him.
I don’t know if what he did to me is what entitles me, or if it’s that folder in his bedroom. My name on Frankie’s school form. Every sweet moment that ever passed between us.
Either way.
I gather up my books, find the porch light, and flip it off before I let myself out.
I sit on the top step beside the front door and look at the sky.
There’s a wilderness of stars up there. I lay back and let myself wander through them until I’m lost—even more lost than I already was.
I trace the shapes of those lights with my fingertip, looking for patterns, and I think about the first time West kissed me on the roof of the house where I grew up. How we went up there to look at the stars. How we were stoned, and I loved him so much, his mouth on mine, his body and his heat and his beautiful face.
The tears that fall down my temples and soak into my hair are hot, but I don’t brush them away. It feels good to cry.
