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The first-floor windows are boarded up, no doubt to prevent burglaries, so there’s nothing but a blank wall of siding for the bottom fifteen or so feet. But a concrete ledge juts out about ten feet up, presumably marking the support between floors. If he could get to the ledge, he could use his athleticism to hoist himself and grab a bottom rung of the fire escape. He’d be like a monkey hanging there, but his devotion would be on full display.
The alley is lined with the city’s black garbage containers, hard plastic boxes about four feet high with two large wheels on one side of the bottom. Lincoln rolls one over just beneath Amy’s window. He steps back and vaults onto the top, balancing on his knees. So far, so good. Bracing himself against the wall, he carefully stands. Because of the wheels on the bottom, the container lacks stability, but Lincoln keeps his legs apart and stays on the balls of his feet. Then he reaches up with his left hand to grip the concrete ledge. He’s just poised to make his move to the fire escape when the hard plastic top of the container collapses like a trapdoor, dropping Lincoln into a loose pile of garbage and toppling the fragile contraption. He lets out a shout as he falls and lands on his back, fortunately cushioned by the garbage that is spilling into the alley. (So many banana peels—or are those plantains?)
Before he can scramble to his feet, a man leans out of a building across the alley and yells something in Spanish. Then another head appears in another window. More Spanish screams.
Above him, Amy opens her window and looks down on the pitiful scene. She yells something in Spanish to the heads across the street. Lincoln catches the word amigo. Then she tells him sourly, “Clean up that crap and then come around to the front. I’ll let you in.”
Several more heads appear in windows across the street. It’s as if they have skybox seating to observe his little fiasco of a show. All watch silently as Lincoln pushes the garbage—dark, smelly, semiliquid, much of it pouring out of paper grocery bags—back into the container. His pants are wet in patches and his hands are foul, but he carefully picks up the last stray pieces before waving cheerfully to his unsmiling audience and walking around front again. Amy buzzes him in and greets him at her door on the second floor. She’s wrapped in a white robe, and it looks as if she’s hastily run a comb through her hair. “You smell like shit,” she tells him. “Go wash up.”
The apartment is a railroad flat, one long hall with rooms off the sides. Amy directs him to a tiny bathroom, spotlessly clean but crammed with jars of makeup, tubes of shampoo, and assorted cosmetics. Lincoln goes to work with a ball of scented soap and finishes by squirting some perfume onto the dark stain in the back of his pants. He emerges smelling like a nineteenth-century fop.
“In here,” Amy calls out from a room down the hall. Lincoln follows her voice and finds her sitting on a worn, blue sofa, her legs crossed and her arms folded across her chest. Standing a few feet away, also wearing a bathrobe and with his arms folded, is Tony Buford.
“What?” gasps Lincoln. The facts of the situation are too terrible for his mind to grasp at once—he has to absorb their implications slowly, let the awfulness seep in. Amy and Buford are seminaked together early in the morning. They
were unconnected, in separate compartments of Lincoln’s life, but they were his friends. Doesn’t this count as a hideous betrayal? How long have they been carrying on together behind his back? Is he always, in all ways, a cuckold?
Amy doesn’t offer any solace. “Well, what is it you wanted?” she demands.
“I...ah...” Lincoln stares at Buford, who appears to be as peeved as Amy.
“You’ve interrupted my yoga lesson,” Amy says impatiently.
Lincoln looks from her to Buford. For the first time, he notices two mats open on the floor. “Yoga?” he says. “I thought...”
Amy rolls her eyes. “Jesus Christ,” she grouses.
“I’m a professional!” Buford exclaims, furious. “An academic and a yoga teacher. You never took me seriously.”
Trying to compose himself, Lincoln notices the man’s pencil-thin bare legs, the way his maroon U of C bathrobe can almost wrap two times around his slight torso. “We got off on the wrong foot,” Lincoln says.
Amy doesn’t want to see this confrontation escalate. “Maybe we should cancel the lesson for today,” she tells Buford.
He starts rolling up his mat. “I practically handed you success,” he mutters at Lincoln, “and you were too pigheaded to recognize it.”
Amy motions Lincoln not to respond. Buford tucks his mat under his arm and marches down the hall to another room. When he’s gone, Lincoln tells Amy, “I didn’t realize.”
“I found his card in your apartment—in the bowl by the door where you drop your keys,” she explains. “He’s an excellent yoga teacher, and he’s giving me a break on the price because I’m your friend. Do you know how expensive a private yoga lesson is otherwise?”
“What about the poetry part?”
“I told him we could skip that.”
“I hope I haven’t spoiled it for you.”
“He’ll recover.” Amy softens. “He really does like you. And he thinks you’re a brilliant editor.”
Buford emerges a few seconds later, dressed now in a polo shirt and blue jeans and carrying his mat and a small athletic bag. “For a guy as smart as you are, you can really be a jerk,” he tells Lincoln.
“Right,” says Lincoln.
“Your problem is you think too much. You’re doing all this thinking, and you don’t see what’s right in front of you.”
“I’m sorry,” Amy tells Buford. “I’ll come to your class Monday.”
Buford sighs and disappears down the hall. Amy and Lincoln hear the door close behind him.
With her yoga lesson canceled, Amy gets back to business. “Well, what was it you wanted?” she asks coolly.
