SUCKER

I.

I met Monica at a twelve-step fellowship meeting in Decatur. She gave

me the impression that her life of crime was behind her. She said she
never wanted to look at heroin again, and she had no desire to go back
to transporting illegal drugs. The money was good, but there were too
many problems associated with organized crime. She wanted nothing
to do with her past life; she loathed it. The first night she came to my
house and told me these stories, I was aghast but enthralled. I’d never
heard such bizarre stories before, and never thought about real people
being in the mafia. But almost instantly, I felt a part of that world. All
the excitement and danger of Monica’s former life cast a lurid gleam
into my living room and the cobweb of her past connections was
hanging about my walls. I basked in the stories she was sharing with
me, night after night, and vicariously placed myself in them with her. I
loved to hear those tales of murder, deceit and blackmail . . .
For two years, she lived in a one bedroom apartment paid for by
the “Italians”. She was expected to carry drugs once a week from
Chicago to St. Louis. They paid her one thousand dollars in cash for
each trip, and there were lots of perks. The Bosses took a liking to
Monica and the nephews offered protection to their little sister. On
occasion, they even pandered to her desires, bringing her a box of
Godiva chocolates, a rare bottle of wine, and a gossip magazine. She
cut all ties to family and friends because nobody could know about her
job. For her, this would be a short period of her life, a sacrifice. She
couldn’t trust anyone and it was too dangerous to have a boyfriend.
She lived in near solitude but I saw that this was part of her
persona; she was a loner, except for Kate, her one close friend in the
city. Monica talked very fondly about Kate. Kate was the one person
who really understood her, who really cared about her. The two of

1
them went to clubs on the weekends. Dancing was Monica’s passion,
her release. On most nights, she occupied a small half-moon stage
above the crowd, grinding her hips and tossing her hair in the colored,
flashing lights. She was untouchable in the clubs. Guys tried to dance
with her but she preferred the women.
She became addicted to heroin through her job; by accident she
explained. When I told my father this story, he said to me to stay far
away from her. He said that the people she worked for were dangerous
—they gave her drugs and made her do illegal things for them. But I
checked and it wasn’t anything like that. They didn’t want her on
drugs. They expected her to do her job properly.
What happened was this. Before making her trip every week,
she went to a loading dock in the city, an abandoned warehouse. It
took up to three hours to load the car. The workers had to get under
the car to remove a false bottom. Then, slowly and methodically, they
filled the hatch with millions of dollars worth of cocaine and heroin.
While she was waiting, Monica sat with the guy in charge of transport,
who usually took some heroin off the top for himself. In the backroom,
Tomas showed her how to shoot up heroin. She seemed naïve about
the effects of the drug. She said how the next day her whole body was
craving it and she didn’t expect to get sick.
Heroin and drug trafficking became a way of life for her. She
learned to hide her habit and do her job. The Bosses met with her
once a week for lunch in a fancy Chicago restaurant. They gave her
money to buy clothes on Michigan Avenue. They wanted her to dress
up and look nice. During the lunches, the Bosses never mentioned
anything about the job; they talked casually with her. She told me they
were checking to see if her head was on straight. I imagined three
older Italian men, smoking expensive cigars, and acting like
gentlemen. Monica exuded a cool, sexy demeanor. She had narrow
eyes like an Asian, but high cheekbones like a southern belle. Her fair,

2
freckled skin and thick auburn hair reminded me of Rita Hayworth in
her early twenties. So I could see how she appealed to these older
men. She was self-assured and street-smart, with a touch of feminine
mystique.
Monica didn’t like being hooked on heroin. She described the
terror that came over her while driving the contraband, a paranoid fear
that was arising for the first time. For a year, she carried out her job
without a doubt in her mind, without a speck of paranoia. One time a
police officer stopped her on the highway and she just smiled, giving
him a fake name and driver’s license. She told me the alias she used,
and how she had changed a couple letters around in her name. But
once using heroin became a chore, she lost her thrill-seeking panache
for crime. She mentioned the long process of her desire to stop
running drugs for the Bosses. She said she had to “work on them
slowly,” because you couldn’t just walk away from the mob . . .
But what captivated me more than the stories was the person.
Monica projected an unsurpassed quality of self-control. She did not
have to convince me that her stories were true and it was not charisma
that attracted me to her. Rather she came across more at ease with
herself than anyone I had ever known. She was content. She seemed
to have a self-knowledge that freed her from the inside, which gave her
a quality of supreme independence. With Monica, I felt the blood
flowing in my veins! There was nothing ostentatious, nothing
pretentious about her. And yet, my moments with her were so intense,
as if everything were a matter of life and death.
I began to worry that her connections to the mafia were not
totally severed. We had plans one night to do something after the
twelve-step meeting, but she never showed up. When I looked at my
phone, there were no messages. I tried calling her but she never kept
her phone on. Later that night she called me. She said they picked
her up in the afternoon and took her into the city. “Who’s ‘they’?” I

3
asked. “My people,” she replied. “But don’t worry; everything’s taken
care of now.” The Bosses had wanted to meet with her one more time.
Over dinner, she told them she couldn’t work for them anymore. “This
isn’t a career,” she said. “I’m young. I want to do something with my
life.” I felt sorry that she was entangled in this mess. Would they ever
let her alone? But she said this was it. “It’s not like the Sopranos. You
wouldn’t understand. These people really care about me. They want
the best for me.”
“So they’re not going to knock me off?” I joked. We laughed
together about her situation.
Monica was a very secretive person. She never shared in twelve-
step meetings, and she never opened up. She often left early before
people gave hugs to each other. After we had been dating for some
time, other members would ask me why she always left early, but I
didn’t have an answer, I didn’t know. My only guess was that she was
afraid of getting too close to people.
As I reflect on Monica’s extreme secrecy, I am struck by an
incongruous fact. On the first day we met I remember she told me
about transporting drugs. But why would she reveal her biggest secret
to a complete stranger? That evening I had come to the twelve-step
meeting with a friend, and we stood at the entrance to the fellowship
hall. My friend introduced us while both of them were having a
cigarette. Monica didn’t mention anything about her job when my
friend was standing there. It was only after my friend stepped away
that she said she ran drugs across state lines. She smiled at me, and
rolled her eyes at the same time. I found her attractive but not
devastatingly so. Her face was unique, with her lifted cheeks, and
light, freckled skin. Her narrow, catlike eyes might have glanced
waywardly when she thought I wasn’t looking.
I just assumed she liked me. When I told her that my father lived
in Chicago, she asked if I would go there with her sometime. She said

4
she wanted to buy old records. But I knew better than to take a
newcomer into the city. I’m no dummy, okay; I pay attention to these
things. There was a good chance that she would ditch me to look for
drugs, and so naturally, I was suspicious of her and on my guard.
Being an English instructor, I also noticed the way she talked, which
was not always perfect English grammar.
Her parents dropped her off at meetings (her license was
revoked and her car impounded by the police), and once or twice a
week, she would come over to my house. I remember the first time
she got into my car after the meeting; I was surprised that we were
actually alone together. We had communicated on the phone several
times, and I had received one of her strange text messages (“I’d rather
be humping a pile of dry acorns than be here.”) I hadn’t been with
anyone of the opposite sex for over six months, and I tried to suppress
my excitement. She too seemed nervous and giddy. When we arrived
at my house, I opened the door and turned on the lights. I asked her if
she wanted some tea. “Sure,” she said. I heated the water and
brought two mugs over to the couch.
She pursed her lips together and sucked in her cheeks. “What?”
I asked. Then, fluttering her eyelashes, she stifled a bunch of giggles
in her throat. “What is it?” I asked, laughing.
“Okay here goes,” she said. “I think I have a crush on you. This
has never happened to me before, and I didn’t want to tell you, but I
can’t hold it in any longer. You are so hot!”
“Stop.” I said.
“No I think you’re gorgeous, I can’t help it.”
“You don’t even know me,” I said.
“I’ve been staring at you in the meetings for weeks. Didn’t you
notice?”
“No, I didn’t.”

5
 “I love your hair, your dark, curly hair. I love guys with dark
hair.”
I must have been blushing. I remember my chest felt extremely
light.
She went into a swoon. “I can’t stop talking about you around
my mother and father and my friend Brian. Ever since I met you, my
stomach has been acting funny, I’m nervous all the time. You have to
understand this is not me. This never happens to me. I don’t know
what’s going on.”
She waited for a response. I didn’t want to say anything to give
myself away. I tried to act cool, detached. I recalled our first
interaction and wanted to imitate her self-control. But now she was
different, sweet, merry, school-girlish.
“We’ll just have to see what happens,” I said.
But that night was the most magnificent night of my life. And
even after the long period of agony I’ve endured since, I still somehow
believe in the wondrous magic of that first night . . . Every word she
spoke resonated with me, plucking some taut heart-string. I marveled
at each utterance. It was not the words themselves, but the natural
emotion behind the words that captured me. She seemed to be
undressing her soul, speaking in a pure language of fact. It was as if
every time I heard her voice, cold water splashed into my face,
awakening me into the present moment. Her candor bewildered me.
Every moment was sacred and eternal.
As a writer, I pride myself on telling the truth, certainly on an
emotional level. From her behavior, I sensed this was also one of her
deepest convictions. But beyond telling the truth, she was supremely
real. I supposed very few of us could claim reality like she could. Her
life was surrounded and barricaded on all sides by a towering, exigent
reality. Perhaps this was the insidious paradox that haunted me after

6
our first meetings: how could something that felt so real, not be real at
all?
We shared stories and unearthed our pasts. She told me about
her involvement in the mafia, and here is where I formed my image of
her as a cool, sexy, intelligent femme fatale. I was in awe to have
stumbled upon a woman like this, with such an extraordinary story to
tell. I relished the opportunity to engage with a woman both
dangerous and provocative. Ever since I quit drugs three years ago,
my life has been unusually quiet and uneventful. My friends joke that
I’ve reached my retirement thirty years early. I wake up before the
light of dawn to meditate in a windowless room with candles and
incense. Four days a week I work a part-time job at a community
college, the rest of the time I am writing a novel. My entertainment is
a small library of books that I am building.
Into this isolated world, Monica fell. I embraced her as a beloved
guest. She added to my world, not subtracted from it. She multiplied
the dimensions . . . She seemed totally unique, like nobody I’d ever
met before. But she said the same thing about me! My own surprise
and delight was reflected in her laughing eyes and freckled face. On
the one hand, I thought, “How could it be possible? I’ve been waiting
my whole life for this very thing to happen. Dreams and reality do not
match up this perfectly.”
On the other hand, I argued with myself, “How could it not be
possible? This is the great mystery of life. We want something to
happen and we long for it with all of our energy until it appears.” And
then, I thought of my mother, who passed away several years ago, and
there seemed to be a cosmic significance to the whole event. As
Monica and I embraced on the couch, the strong vibrations dancing
between us led me to believe my mother’s spirit was in the room.
Carelessly, I must have mistaken these high oscillations to mean that
Monica and my mother were somehow united, in what way, I don’t

7
know. My imagination must have married the two. In my rapture for
Monica, I concluded that my mother came down that night to sanctify
our love. Monica was my soul mate . . .
Maybe I should talk about the despair, the loneliness I felt before
I met Monica. Why is it so difficult at times to be without a companion?
I had broken up with my last girlfriend six months earlier (no, I should
correct myself; my father pressed me to break up with her because she
was anorexic). Nevertheless, there was no lasting emotional bond
between us; we cared for each other in a superficial way. Following
that relationship, I entered a period of elusive loneliness, a reoccurring
phase for me. The only difference was that, in this wave of loneliness,
I had pangs of erotic craving.
Every man (and woman) can relate to the feeling of sitting in a
public place when your attention wanders over to the faces of the
people next to you. You notice one woman in particular and she
appears to be all alone, like yourself. Your eyes keep wandering back
to her and soon fantasies are breeding in your fertile imagination. As
you go about weaving a romance in your head, the stranger begins to
take on an aura of the beautiful, the unattainable. Go ahead, your
thoughts tell you, Approach her and begin a conversation. But no, your
conscience halts you, She’d look at you as if you were crazy, or maybe
you’d embarrass her by your foolish advance. The longer you sit in
limbo, the more disheartened you become, fed up with your
proliferating desires and the paralysis that inhibits you from simply
approaching her. You leave abruptly, getting off at the next stop or
rushing out the doors in a spell of dizzy unrest.
These sorts of jarring experiences were frequent for me. I lived
in the constant production of my fantasies, and was beset by the
nagging obsession of how to bridge the two worlds. At the time I was
reading a book by Robert Greene, a thick volume called The Art of
Seduction. Greene’s book became my bible and I eulogized it to all my

8
friends. I described to them the “seductive process” (24 steps laid out
in Greene’s book) and how I planned to seduce as many women as
possible, completely off the cuff, in shopping malls, bookstores, and
museums. This was an experiment. I wanted to test the limits of my
reality, to discover whether I could engender a fantasy in real life.
What bothered my friends was that, to them, the “seductive
process” implied dishonesty, cunning, and deceit. It was true that I
had not given a great deal of attention to the “morality” of seduction,
but I looked upon the whole matter as an act of play, nothing where
anyone would get hurt. Sadly, however, it turned out that Greene’s Art
of Seduction was just another one of my passing phases. In the end, I
approached three wary females and was turned down by them all. But
let me return to my story . . .
I couldn’t wait to tell my father, who’s my mentor and confidant.
“We’re in love,” I said. “I’ve never felt so close to another human
being. It’s a spiritual thing. Mom was right there beside us on the
couch, giving us her blessings.”
“You shouldn’t be dating women who are new to the program,”
he stated forcefully, with a measure of caution in his voice. “You’re like
a leader to them. They look up to you. It’s not right—I don’t agree
with it.”
“Dad, for the past three years it has been like a creed of mine to
stay away from women in the program. You know how I feel about
those people. But Monica’s different. She really has it together. She
doesn’t whine in meetings, she’s totally at ease with herself, very
intelligent. You should meet her.”
At a Mexican restaurant, over lunch, I told my best friend Ray I
was in love. He responded with his usual cynicism, “Haven’t I heard
this tune before?”
I unraveled the extraordinary circumstances surrounding her, her
connections to the mafia, her dancing in the clubs, her heroin

9
addiction. My friend listened skeptically, conceding that if it was true
what she said about her past, I could possibly be in danger. This was
exactly what my father had told me.
I balked at their disapproval and tried to explain how wonderful
she was as a person. “Her days of iniquity are over,” I assured them.
“Don’t think of her as a criminal. She’s more real than any person I’ve
ever met. Don’t pigeonhole her like that.”
But it seemed people close to me were playing devil’s advocate.
This was unnerving because I was so thrilled about my new
relationship. I wanted to share with everyone how I had found my soul
mate at last. But my joy was deflected, my happiness sized down.
What was offered in the name of “compassionate concern,” felt more
like an attack against my true feelings of love.
I didn’t expect to have sex with her on the second night. I had
formed a pure image of her in my mind. My love for her was pure, not
tainted by lust. Around Monica, I knew I could hold back my urges
because what I felt was deeper than a mere physical attraction. We
sat on the couch and she told me about a sensitive spot on her arm
that she sometimes asked people to massage, but she had her own
special way she wanted it done. She wanted me to lightly run my
fingertips over her arm. She unzipped her hooded long sleeve, and the
article fell off her bare shoulders like autumn leaves. Underneath she
had on a “wife-beater”. I could see her nipples through the fabric. She
wasn’t wearing a bra. Her breasts were firm, medium-sized. As I ran
my fingers over her arm, she writhed, tilting the long curve of her
neck. Her eyes closed and she became silent for a moment. Then she
said, “Let’s go into your bedroom.”
On my bed, she had me take off her jeans. She was wearing
tight spandex Victoria’s Secret panties with a neon band. I continued
to run my fingers all over her body. She kept giving me instructions;
how I should barely make contact with the skin, just grazing my fingers

10
over the contours of her body, and so on. After I did this, she squirmed
childishly and pulled me next to her. Her eyes were big and
fathomless. I fell into her and we began kissing.
“Wait,” I said. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
“What?” she answered.
“I have Hepatitis C.”
She became silent again. She once told me she had received her
nursing certification, but I couldn’t tell if she knew what Hepatitis C
was or not.
“It’s a problem with the liver,” I said. “But you can’t really get it
through sex. You can but it’s not very likely. One in a million.”
I tried to downplay the virus I was carrying. What surprised me
was her face; she was smiling playfully. As if the idea of me having a
disease was cute. The information didn’t really bother her. She still
wanted to have sex . . .
I adored being in her company. We would sit on my couch and
laugh together. We laughed wildly, poking fun at each other, at
ourselves. She understood my humor better than any of my closest
friends. We were always in a state of giddy attraction, bouncing back
and forth with our comebacks and sly jokes like two high-flying
acrobats. Confidence came naturally to me around her. Always I was
at the peak of my charm, funny, smart, witty, eloquent, and fully
conscious of my powers to seduce her. There was an aura of magic
possibility when we were together.
Her mafia friends were still calling her though. They wanted her
to do another run. The nephew who took over her runner job had a
temper and was pissing people off in St. Louis. In addition, he didn’t
know the route well enough yet. They needed her to talk to him and
explain to him what to do. I began to worry about some of the
information I had shared with my friends. I was in such a state of
exhilaration that I’d told several friends about her connections to the

11
mafia. I wanted to brag about her, to show off, “Look I’m dating this
super-cool chick connected to the mob.” But a close friend warned me
that anyone could turn her into the police for a reward. After all,
Monica had over thirty thousand dollars in cash at her parent’s house,
in her closet, in two pink duffle bags. (I wondered, “Why pink?
Wouldn’t it have been better to use muted colors for hiding such an
enormous sum?”)
In fact, the situation between her and the mafia was not over
yet. We were expected to be together on a Friday night after the
meeting. Then, all of a sudden, right before the meeting was over, she
got up and left. This was typical behavior for Monica, but tonight was
different—we were supposed to see each other. I sent her a text
message, saying I thought we had plans.
I was frustrated. It bothered me that she was so inaccessible, so
prone to disappearance. In an effort to get her out of my mind, I went
to Barnes and Nobles Bookstore and tried to read. Was she mad at
me? Whenever something like this happened, I blamed myself. I must
have said something wrong. I must have offended her. A cluster of old
ladies sat at a table next to me. All I can remember is the croaking of
their voices aggravating me even more. I moved to another part of the
bookstore and my cell phone rang, but then disconnected. It was her.
I tried calling back but her phone was off again. She would turn her
phone off right after she tried to call me. These little antics riled my
nerves. If she was trying to call me, wouldn’t she leave her phone on?
I left the bookstore because it was impossible for me to concentrate on
anything other than her. Then, on the way home, I received another
call. “What the hell is going on?” I said.
“Can you pick me up at my house at 10:15?”
I felt my heart sink. “Okay but tell me what happened. I thought
we had plans.”
“I’ll tell you when you pick me up.”

12
 At 10:15 she got into my car, and I interrogated her. She said
“they” called her in the meeting and wanted to meet with her “one
more time”. What could she do? They took her to the Olive Garden to
have a chat. I pictured the nephews in designer silks with diamond
studs; the dark, glistening hair combed back, the penetrating Sicilian
eyes and heavy brows. They huddled round her in a booth, she said,
beseeching her in honeyed voices to return to the job. They evoked
their kinship, mentioning how they brought her up in the city, and how
they offered her protection. There were too few runners and none of
them had much experience. Could she make one more run this
Saturday?
She started to cry. Fake tears rolled down her high cheekbones.
She said she was living with her parents now and trying to start her life
over. The Italians patted her on the back and told her it was alright,
not to worry, they would find someone else. That night they gave her
a two-week early birthday present . . . gold earrings and a diamond
tennis bracelet.
“But now it’s over,” she said to me.
“I don’t believe you. You said that the last time you went to the
city to meet with the Bosses. How do I know it’s over?”
“I could just tell. Trust me. It’s over now.”
We embraced. My anger seemed to lessen and then went away
completely. Her hands were soft, warm. Her skin was rose-colored;
she glowed like amethyst. It was a relief to have her next to me again.
Our relationship was bittersweet. I obsessed over her when she wasn’t
with me, but when we were in each other’s arms both of us were in
ecstasy. Now that I look back on it all, I see the high tides of a heady
romance.
But that’s what I wanted, right? Remember, I told you that I
longed for erotic uplift and sexual intimacy. How we are propelled by
our desires to unknown ends! If only I knew the cost of giving myself

13
over to another human being, entirely, without question, without
suspicion. If only I knew what it would cost me in mental suffering . . . I
have tried to write this story many times. I work on it endlessly, in a
state of fever or lassitude, whatever I am feeling. I have tried to see
clearly everything I know about Monica. But this is still not to
understand her. Monica is an enigma, she can never be understood.
I’ve often thought that perhaps there is no Monica.
No, my obsession has been to construct a reality that will
assuage my confusion. I realize that the last four months of my life
were void of truth and reality. I never met her family and she never
met mine. She never met any of my friends. We were always
detached, secluded.
That’s why my friends would say to me, “How do you know she’s
telling you the truth? She’s the only person who tells you these
things.”
“You have to meet her,” I would say. “She’s so real. It has to be
true.”
She came over to my house once a week. We started having
sex. She told me that she was on the Depo. “What’s the Depo?” I
asked. She said it was like the birth control pill except you go to the
doctor every three to four months to get a shot. She said that it was
99.9 % effective.
“Do you want me to ejaculate in you?” I asked one night.
“Sure,” she said.
After we had sex several more times, I said, “You know, I’ve
always been worried out about getting my girlfriends pregnant. But
with you, it’s different. For some reason, I feel like it wouldn’t be the
end of the world if anything were to happen. It might even be fun to
raise a kid together.”
She smiled at this. “Oh baby, you’re so sweet. But I don’t want
to have children right now. I’m way too young.”

14
 I didn’t see her for another two weeks. Things at home were
constantly involving her. In four months, I can count on both hands the
number of times we saw each other. But we talked on the phone a lot.
She called me at 8 o’clock every morning. She was my wake-up call. I
boiled tea and listened to the mesmerizing sound of her voice. I loved
talking to her at any hour of the day. We had such a powerful affinity
that a simple phone call from her gave me a jolt of happiness. For her
too, I assumed our calls were a sort of medicine. I got used to talking
to her five or six times a day, even though I was slowly forgetting what
she looked like.
Monica was the perfect lover. When she was with me, she
disclosed everything at once. She swung open the doors to her
mysterious life, and invited me into her secret chambers. She spoke
about her past with a poignant sense of candor and openness. But
when we were apart, she retreated to another part of her psyche, as if
her mind were a fortress of connecting rooms, where by fleeing one,
she could enter another. Away from me, she grew pregnant with even
greater secrecy.
She was extremely flirtatious around other men, especially in the
twelve-step fellowship, but this never bothered me because I knew that
she loved only me. But it did seem odd how friendly she became with
other men, and how easily she latched onto them. And despite her
secrecy, I sought to gain access to the other rooms in her fortress. If
she was not cheating on me, then what was she hiding?
She gave me some clues. She said all her past boyfriends had
cheated on her. She had the key to her last boyfriend’s apartment;
one afternoon, she opened the door and heard something going on in
his bedroom. She serenely watched her boyfriend having sex with
another woman—and then, all of sudden, she screamed, and startled
them out of bed.

15
 After such a traumatic event, I understood that it would be hard
for her to trust me, but I wanted her to know that I was different than
her other boyfriends. I loved her, and wanted to swear my loyalty to
her. One evening we made vows to each other. I tried to hold onto this
idea of a pure Monica, despite her unsavory past. I pictured us getting
married, buying a house, having children, growing old together . . .
In love we see what we want to see, hear what we want to hear.
This seems to be one of the riddles of human nature. When love is
involved, the lack of reality is great, and the gap between appearance
and truth incredibly wide. Everyone around me was telling me that
something about this woman was rotten in Denmark. But I didn’t
listen. Instead I followed my ideals.
One night on the phone, her tone of voice was grave. There was
something she had been meaning to tell me. It was a secret. “What
secret?” I asked. But she didn’t answer—there was deep silence on the
other line as if she were dangling the phone over an abyss. I was
thinking the worst. Then she said that she couldn’t tell me on the
phone, it was too hard for her to talk about it over the phone. “Come
over to my house,” I said. No, that would be even harder. She would
have to write me a letter.
I tried to forget about our conversation, but something she said
on the phone that night bothered me. I was brooding over the secret,
trying to guess what it could be. I remembered her saying, “If we
stayed together for another two or three years, and I waited to tell you
this, then you might think you wasted your time with me.”
I tried to figure out what this meant. How could I be wasting my
time with her?
Melissa, a close friend and coworker of mine, was also a die-hard
fan of true crime mysteries. She swooned with fascination and anxious
curiosity whenever I told one of Monica’s mafia stories. In many ways
Melissa was following my love life as if it were a true crime story.

16
Because every week I passed on to her the latest installment from
what Monica had told me the week before. One week it was the
grotesque murder in an abandoned warehouse. Another week it was
the extravagant Christmas party at one of the Boss’s mansions. This
week it was “the secret”.
“What’s the secret?” she asked.
“That’s the thing,” I said, “She won’t tell me.”
“Maybe she’s committed a murder . . .”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Maybe she’s in the government protection program.”
“No, that doesn’t sound right.”
After a couple days, I asked Monica if she had finished the letter.
But it was almost as if she had forgotten our conversation.
“Oh, I started it but . . . I couldn’t finish it,” she said.
“Do you feel like you can tell me?” I asked.
She didn’t say anything for another two minutes. We just sat on
the phone in silence. I heard her breathing heavily over the receiver.
“This is something . . . very few people know about me. I don’t
like to talk about it and I don’t like to tell anyone. My parents know
and my best friend Kate knows. But that’s all. My parents and I
decided that it would be best if we didn’t tell my older brother.”
“When I was twenty-two years old I went to the doctor for a
cough. They examined my lungs, ran a test and found that I had
cancer cells growing around my ribs. Every couple months, I go to the
hospital to get fluid removed from the tumor. The last time I went to
the doctor, he said the cancer had spread to my aortic nerve. He said I
had five years to live, at the most.” As she was explaining this, her
voice became very steady.
She went on, “These last couple days I’ve been thinking that
maybe . . . Listen, maybe we shouldn’t continue this relationship.”

17
 “No. Please don’t say that;” my voice was weak, overwrought.
“Don’t think that because you have cancer I won’t want to be with you.
That’s crazy. My mother was sick, Monica, I know what that’s all about.
You’ve got to believe me. You’re the most amazing person I’ve ever
met. When you’re with me, I have this overwhelming feeling that no
matter what everything will be alright. You have to trust me. Please.
I’m meant to be in this relationship, I know I am. Don’t run away from
me.”
“I’m surprised I even was able to tell you. All last week I was
thinking about breaking up with you—”
“Monica—”
“Just listen to me, okay? I know you’re different than my other
boyfriends. You’re the first person I feel like I can be honest with and
not get hurt. I’m so used to keeping things inside of me.”
Then she paused. “Okay, I know you love me. I believe you. I
really want to change things. I want to be able to trust people. But you
have to promise me something,” she said.
“What?”
“You can’t tell anyone about my cancer.”
“I promise,” I said.
I told my father and one of my close friends. It was too difficult
for me to keep a secret like that inside. But the response I got from
them was unheard-of. Both of them implied that there was a good
possibility Monica was telling me a lie, a falsehood. A story! It was an
insult to hear such a thing from people who supposedly cared about
me. I was in love with this young, beautiful woman who had been
diagnosed with a terminal illness. Her cancer was more real to me
than anything else. And they told me to “get more of the facts”. It
confounded me that her situation did not evoke pity or compassion in
them.

18
 Because, to me, everything about her life made sense now.
That’s why she left home, got involved with crime, and took drugs.
She was a thrill-seeker, flirting with the terrifying proximity of death. I
sympathized with her and wanted to support her, to help her confront
her disease. Now that she had cancer I was ten times more involved.
It almost felt as though I had a purpose or mission to fulfill. I told her
that her cancer would give my life new meaning. Of course I would be
with her until the end. I pictured myself coming to visit her at the
hospital. I wondered what it would be like to love someone after their
hair fell out. Or to hold your lover’s hand as she was dying?
It was hard to talk about the cancer with her. She didn’t want to
discuss it. I remember then, abruptly, she said she didn’t want to see
me for a couple days. She took a train into the city to see her friend
Kate. They went to the clubs at night and expensive spas during the
day. She paid for everything with her dirty money.
It was a big deal for her to see me again. We sat on my couch. I
boiled hot water for tea. She was quiet, sullen. She spoke very slowly.
She shielded her face with her hands, and lowered her head onto my
chest. I couldn’t see her face at all. It seemed like she was crying but I
wasn’t sure. I wanted her to think positively about her disease. “I’ve
been doing some reading on my own,” I said. I suggested a book
about “spontaneous recovery.” I mentioned to her that Lance
Armstrong had been on the cover of Newsweek.
But she didn’t want to hear any of these things. She was sick
and she was going to die.

19
II.

I always tried to keep things on an even keel around Monica. While she
never lashed out at me, or exploded with sudden violence, I was
continually expecting her to. She carried everything inside, all of her
repressed emotions, all the stories of her past. I was the only one who
knew about the mafia, who knew about the cancer, and the drugs.
And she never discussed her feelings. If she wanted to, she could
make her face turn to stone. She was capable of a total absence of
emotion. It made me nervous. Her secret-burdened life, I imagined,
was degenerating her. The night I saw her in the meeting hall with a
disguise on, my gut-feeling was confirmed.
She wore a black beret and aviator sunglasses. Her cheeks were
plaster-pale and every inch of her body was covered with dark clothing.
“What happened?” I said. She strained the muscles in her face,
and gave me a forced smile. I could see that something was wrong.

20
Her eyes darted around under the dark sunglasses. There were other
people in the room. “I don’t want to talk about it here,” she said.
I walked into the hallway and called to her.
She stood five feet away from me. She looked like she might be
crying. “I told you I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.
It was clear to me from the way she was acting that I had given
her Hepatitis C—that the tests had come up positive. I stared at her
and a spell of nausea turned in my stomach. My head was light,
vertiginous. I knew I could not chair the meeting. I walked out of the
building after asking someone to take over for me. I couldn’t bear to
look at her.
I blamed myself because I had told her the wrong information.
Another recovering addict who also had Hepatitis C had told me that it
was almost impossible to give somebody the virus through sex, and
that’s what I had been telling her. But now I considered the possibility
that this other person didn’t know what he was talking about. I started
to worry. Maybe I was misinformed . . . I began to resent myself for
being so dangerously stupid. Knowing that I gave the person I love
Hepatitis C, someone with cancer and a weak immune system,
frightened me. I didn’t know what would happen next, she could die.
But it also riddled me with shame and self-loathing. How could I
destroy another person’s life like that?
And there was another problem. A couple days earlier, she was
complaining about excessive bleeding from her period. Her period was
going into the third week, and her mother urged her to make a doctor’s
appointment. I told her I would go with her. I wanted to support her.
But now I feared the Hepatitis C would cause even more complications.
She went to the doctor the day after her birthday and the doctor
said that the excessive bleeding could be the result of two possibilities:
either there was a cyst in her ovaries, or the cancer cells were

21
spreading. In order to find out which one, she needed to get a
sonogram.
“What’s a sonogram?” I asked.
“You don’t know what a sonogram is?”
“No, I forgot.”
“It’s what women get to find out if they’re pregnant.”
“Oh.”
“Will you come with me to the hospital?”
“Of course I will sweetie.”
If only the story ended here—if only I could say that I drove her
to the sonogram appointment, and in the next few days we awaited
the results. But I can’t. What puzzles me is that in real life—unlike the
tragic stories we like to tell—when one problem follows another and
this goes on for some time, eventually, there is a reprieve. Eventually
things quiet down. This does not hold true for my experience with
Monica. The explosive events kept happening, without a moment to
pause. I began to wonder whether a heartless, spiteful god was
laughing at me.
The next morning, the day we were supposed to go to the
hospital for the sonogram, she called to ask a favor. Could she borrow
my car? Her best friend Kate was in Decatur, an hour and a half away
from Decatur, and she needed to get picked up. When I asked why she
couldn’t take the train, she said she couldn’t and that was all. But
Monica didn’t have a driver’s license. I thought about driving her
myself but I did not want to drive four hours to pick up Kate. I
reminded my girlfriend that she had a sonogram appointment at 3
o’clock.
She became silent on the phone.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’m just pouting,” she said.

22
 By 12 o’clock, the problem was resolved. She talked to her
mother and told her she was “in a bind”. If her mom didn’t loan her
the car, she would have to obtain a car illegally. Her mother complied
and agreed to keep it a secret from her father. Monica then moved the
sonogram appointment back to 5 o’clock pm, but she still wanted me
to go with her.
She asked me to pick her up at her house and drive her to her
mother’s workplace, where she would get the car. When I came to pick
her up, she and her father were sitting in lawn chairs on the gravel
drive waiting for me. He was a sulky, oafish man with wisps of dirty
blond hair on his bald head. I looked at him and waved uneasily. He
grinned back. The night before Monica had told her father that I gave
her Hepatitis C. She said he was not happy about it. Today he looked
apathetic. He waved to me, friendly enough, thinking I was driving his
daughter to work. She carried her work smock in her hands. In the car
I felt extremely close to her again. She seemed to have forgiven me,
and seeing the sun playing on her red cheeks, made me happy. “I do
love her,” I told myself. Then I pulled up to her mother’s car in the
parking lot of Farmer’s Insurance, we kissed and said goodbye.
Five o’clock passed and she didn’t return. I called for the eighth
or ninth time but her cell phone was off. I kept thinking about her
sonogram appointment, and the Hepatitis C. What if she was still
losing blood? I cursed myself for letting her go. Why did her mother
have to give her the car?
I went outside. It looked like it might rain any minute. The sky
was darker than I’ve ever seen it before, an anemic black-grey. The
short rows of corn across from my house stuck up like battalions of
men. I dazed into the corn as the sky turned a thousand shades of
grey to black. The soldiers were marching toward me in their upright
rows. The patterns in the field shifted. Soldiers came at me from
every direction. The sky crackled sharply. Rain started pouring down.

23
 The next day I didn’t hear from her. Over the course of the night,
I had thrown my languid body into a hundred contorted shapes. My
sheets were crumpled up in a ball on the floor. Sweat was dripping off
my forehead. I called in sick to work.
The sunlight fell between the curtains and blinded my eyes. I
turned over again and gripped my pillow to my chest. But I couldn’t
stay in bed any longer; the bed itself had become a drainpipe of sweat
and obsessive fears. My body was tingling with the raw energy of
sleeplessness. Over the course of the long night, the bed had
accumulated the residue of my warped thinking and now was drenched
and clogged with it.
Toward evening, my friend Melissa pleaded with me to leave my
house. It was “pure self-destruction” what I was doing, she said. We
went out to Chinese and the only thing I could eat was a bowl of
wonton soup. We were eating when my phone rang. I scurried outside
the restaurant to have some privacy. Monica’s voice was hysterical.
She said she was in “some place”.
“What place?”
“I don’t know. This is a meaningless nightmare.”
“What’s going on?”
“They locked me in some place I can’t even see out the
windows.”
“Who locked you up? Tell me what happened?”
Her parents had had her committed to a psychiatric ward. My
phone showed a 630 area code. She kept saying how much she loved
me and missed me and wanted to be next to me. But then her voice
changed abruptly; now she was bitter, frustrated and full of malice,
and she blamed her parents for doing all of this to her. I still didn’t
know what happened. She said that she passed out in the car and
rolled into the middle of an intersection. Immediately I thought of the
excessive bleeding. I had warned her not to drive. I tried to get more

24
information but she was outraged by the events, which, as she
described them, happened completely against her will. Her parents
thought that she was on drugs so they petitioned to have her put in a
mental ward. I remained supportive and concerned.
Monica complained bitterly about her situation. In one day, she
called me eleven times from St. Mary’s hospital in Aurora. She ranted
over the terrible mistake that had been made, which caused her to be
locked up against her will. She must have been using the phone next
to the nurse’s desk because I heard some voices in the background.
She bashed them for humiliating her. She refused to take showers
because a nurse had to sit there and watch. She spoke of the
schizophrenic patients who stalked the halls in their smelly hospital
robes. She grumbled about the scheduled meetings she was required
to attend.
“It must be a mistake,” I echoed her words.
“Oh baby, I miss you so much. I wish you would come here and
visit me.”
I was surprised by how quickly she managed to get out.
Evidently she talked to a counselor who spoke to her parents and
convinced them that she wasn’t on drugs. Here I must say that her
release from the psychiatric ward filled me with unrest. I spoke earlier
about a reprieve, and her lock-up had the feeling of a reprieve. I
mentally rested for a day, with the false hope that the pandemonium
had finally ended. But when she was released, not even forty eight
hours later, the unchecked, overflowing drama resumed its original,
diabolic course.
“I have something I have to tell you,” she said to me after she’d
been released from the hospital.
I knew that tone of voice. It worried me that she was using that
tone again, the overly pensive, weighty tone which meant there was
yet another secret to be disclosed. I didn’t know if I could handle it.

25
My inner reserves had all been depleted. I stood up out of nervousness
and cradled the phone to my ear.
“Remember when I told you about me passing out in the car?”
She began.
“Yes,” I said.
“I want to be totally honest with you. That’s why I’m telling you
this. I love you, and I care about you, and I want you to know
everything about me.”
“What’s going on?”
“You know how many things I’ve been dealing with lately. I guess
I couldn’t handle them all. I guess I wasn’t strong enough to take on
everything at once. It was too much for me.”
“What are you talking about Monica?”
“When I got to Decatur, okay, I dropped Kate off at the train
station. We were fighting. I was mad at her for causing me all this
trouble, having to pick her up and everything.”
Pause.
“She threw a 10 bag on my dashboard. I don’t know where she
got it.”
“And what happened?”
“I thought I could handle it. I don’t know what I was thinking. My
tolerance must have gone way down. I OD’d and the car rolled into the
middle of the intersection. When they found me, they said there were
two semis parked on both sides of the road. One of the truck drivers
called the paramedics. I could have died, they said.”
I took a breath and felt my head become light.
“According to the nurses, the paramedics had to revive me. I
was sitting in the car, dead for over five minutes. Can you believe this
shit? I almost died. You were right when you said I should go to
therapy. I should have listened to you. I’ve been trying to do this all
on my own, that’s why I went back to drugs. I know that’s why it

26
happened. I can’t keep things inside of me anymore. You were right.
I’m starting therapy on Monday with my parents. We have a lot of
issues we need to work out. There’ll be some sessions for you to come
too. I want you to be there with me.”
“I thought Kate was your best friend. I thought she cared about
you.”
“I guess not.”
“I didn’t know Kate did heroin.”
“Neither did I—”
“Can we talk more later, Monica;” my head was whirling in a
vortex of confusion. Nothing made sense to me anymore about this
woman. I needed to talk to someone else.
I called my father. “Break off the relationship immediately,” my
father counseled. “Do not agree to meet with her. And do not sleep
with her.”
“It’s not that simple, Dad. You don’t understand. I’m in love with
her.”
“Wake up, Christopher. You’re hallucinating. Don’t be a fool.”
For my father and friends, who never actually met her, Monica
was a character in a story, or many stories, I told. Their advice to me
was simple: Stay away. “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck,
quacks like a duck, then most likely it’s a duck.” And I could see their
point of view; because, clearly, Monica’s reckless life was not normal.
But to me, Monica was not a fictitious character— she was real. Her
light, freckled skin was soft to the touch and her giggles were
contagious. She shaped reality with her beautiful words, and her
daring vivacity. She was a sincere and honest person. Therefore the
advice of my friends and father only confused me more. I wanted to
trust their judgment but something didn’t match up. They never
experienced her; they never fell in love with her; they never kissed her
lips. What I describe, then, in these pages, is a no man’s land between

27
two competing realities, the one convincing because it had the
consensus of the group, and the other convincing because it had the
felt-power of something real to me.
I called her that night and tried to break up with her. I told her I
thought we should take some time apart from each other. She needed
to get better and focus on her recovery. Being in a romantic
relationship would only complicate matters.
“Since day one, things have been unstable.” I said. “In the
beginning, I used to worry about the mafia, now it’s Hepatitis C,
cancer, car accidents and overdoses. Consider what I’m going
through, Monica. It’s just way too much for me to handle. And I know
it’s not your fault sweetie. I don’t blame you for any of it. It’s just that
I think it would be best for both of us . . . if we took some time apart.”
But when I heard her voice, I couldn’t—I couldn’t break up with
her.
“I thought you wanted to support me. I thought you were going
to come with me on this journey.”
An unassuming innocence overlaid her plaintive voice. I
remembered her devotion to me, and how she affirmed my existence.
I remembered our laughter in public, which was both obscene and
gratifying. I remembered our happiness and wanted to take back
everything I had said, to recant it all, and declare my love for her once
again. I wanted to tell her that I was wrong and she was right, and that
things would work out between us.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t apologize for your feelings.”
“You’re right,” I said.
Neither of us spoke for another minute. I imagined she was
holding back her tears.
“Maybe in a couple months . . . we can get back together. When
you’re feeling healthier. I love you Monica and don’t want to lose you.”

28
 “You’re contradicting yourself! Don’t say you love me. It’s not
true! How can you say you love me?”
“Please, don’t be mad at me . . .”
“I’m not mad.”
I was seriously considering the possibility of us staying together.
Because I did care about her . . . I wished none of this had happened.
Her voice was charmed, I swear. I heard it breaking over and over
again and was seduced back into thinking I could be in her life.
“Maybe things will work out,” I repeated.
“You do what you have to do,” she said. “Sleep on it and we’ll
talk about it tomorrow.”
That night I fell asleep thinking that things would work out
between us. It was good that she wanted to talk more and go to a
therapist with her family. I had hope for us even though I knew it
would be a burden for me to carry on the relationship. But I woke up in
the morning, feeling just the opposite. I woke up with the conviction
that I couldn’t stay in this relationship. It was because of me, not her.
My sanity was too important.
Now I feared that what my friends and family had been saying all
along was true. I knew it was over between us, I would tell her when I
got home from work. Simply knowing the truth, I felt a tremendous
burden lifted from my heart. I moved around the classroom at my
workplace with lightness and avidity and helped the students in my
usual good-humor. For the last four months, Monica, and the events
surrounding her, had been on my mind non-stop. It was a relief to
know the merry-go-round was through.
I called her when I got home from work and told her that I
couldn’t stay in this relationship. She sounded upset, but she didn’t
yell at me. She said she felt deserted, and described the depth of her
emotion. I was always amazed with Monica’s insight into her own
feelings. She was intelligent in so many ways. The call ended with us

29
discussing whether we should see each other again. She thought that
we shouldn’t. And that was the end.
Except I received a strange text message a couple hours later. It
was a “farewell poem” written in a cryptic-techno language. She had
sent me one of her poems through text message before. I
remembered a poem she sent me when we first fell in love. I figured
that she was just coping with the fact that we weren’t going to be
together anymore. It seemed normal enough behavior so I didn’t
respond to the message. The next morning I woke up and my phone
showed that she had called at 6 o’ clock. I listened to my voicemail.
She sounded like she was still half asleep. She asked me if I would
take her to the sonogram appointment she had missed. Her Dad
couldn’t take her, she said. But I had work all day. I called her back
but she didn’t answer.
Then I received a text message from her at work. Melissa, my
friend and coworker, was in the room. The message read, “I have good
news and bad news. The good news is that I’m healthy, I don’t have
cancer anymore. The bad news is that something may have gotten
planted in me before my period. But don’t worry about it. I have the
financial security with whatever choice I plan to make.”
This message startled me. Not only did it startle me but it
angered me. Because she had been telling me all along that she was
on the Depo shot. She also told me the day after we had unprotected
sex that she went to the doctor to get the morning-after-pill. And then
there was the whole story about the excessive bleeding. What was she
talking about? Pregnant? How could she be pregnant?
In a moment of absolute recognition, my friend Melissa offered
the possibility that Monica was a pathological liar. “You can’t believe
anything she says.” And then the room titled to the side as if it had
been tapped by a giant finger. Everything I laid eyes on swirled and
formed new patterns as through the tiny glass pieces of a

30
kaleidoscope. I thought about everything she had ever told me, and
doubted it. I doubted everything at once and the whole relationship
began to take on another color, another tincture. I saw a different
person, not Monica, but somebody else. A con artist, a cheat, an
expert manipulator. Who knows? This whole thing could have been an
elaborate scheme to have a baby with me . . .
Melissa tried to calm me down. But I was trembling in paranoid
fear, the shifting fractals of my vision cascading before me. All I could
think about was the tainted past—how my memory of the past was not
the real past but a false perception, a foamy mist of glittering, empty
illusions. And then I remembered Robert Greene’s The Art of
Seduction. I recalled the erotic pangs I had before I met Monica. Now I
could see my karma in action. I was being punished for trying to live
out a lurid fantasy.
Then I seemed to return to my usual self. On the desk in front of
me was a newspaper. The headline read: Elizabeth Edwards
Diagnosed with Cancer. I skimmed the article and found that the
presidential candidate’s wife was told by doctors that she had no more
than five years to live. The cancer cells were discovered near her ribs.
Could Monica have taken her story right from the headlines?
After work, I decided not to go home. I couldn’t go home. It was
impossible to be by myself in this state of anxiety. Instead I drove to
Monica’s house. I had to confront her about a possible pregnancy. I
wanted to talk to her father and find out if she’d been telling him some
of the same outlandish stories. And then, I’d tell her to get in the car
with me and I would take her for a pregnancy test.
I forgot to mention where Monica lived. This may have been an
unconscious slip on my part. From the beginning of the relationship, I
tried to ignore the fact of her upbringing. She lived in a small
encampment of mobile-homes under a busy highway. The boxy,
manufactured homes were set up on plots of grass jutting out of a

31
system of gravel roads. The expressway made a thundering sound
over the small encampment, sometimes vibrating the plastic awnings
of the trailers.
As I pulled down the narrow roads, bunches of children ran out in
front of my car. They had tawny skin, curly black hair, and beady eyes.
Their faces and elbows were coated with dust. They made faces at me
and put their hands on my car. After driving past, I watched them
scatter behind the mobile homes.
Monica’s house was at the far end of the encampment. It
overlooked a field of tall wild grass. I crept forward slowly in the dazed
heat of the afternoon. A cat ran onto a patch of dried grass and licked
its paws. There was a van near the field with its hood up. I parked my
car and went up to the door. No doorbell. I reached for the plastic
cover. It was open. I pulled it forward. “Monica,” I yelled.
Then I saw her face appear from inside the trailer. The curtains
were drawn and heavy shadows submerged the built-in furniture. She
made an expression of complete surprise. “What are you doing here?”
She said. I saw her father come out from the shadows. He had the
dazed expression of someone who has been smoking pot all day. I told
him that there were some things I needed to talk to him about.
We stood outside. In a resolute voice, I said: “I want your
daughter to take a pregnancy test. We weren’t using contraception.”
But she got in between us and started waving her arms, making
it hard for me to communicate with him. She ordered her father to go
back inside the trailer. He walked a few steps toward the door and
then turned around. “I want her to take a pregnancy test,” I repeated.
But she was still talking over me. I looked to the ground; she didn’t
have any shoes on. She didn’t have any make-up on either. She
looked like a totally different person than I remembered. She was not
the person I had known for the last four months. The amethyst glow
was missing from her cheeks. She looked drawn and empty. Like a

32
drug addict. Her father sat complacently in his lawn chair, watching
his daughter beat her arms and stir up dust.
I ordered her to get inside my car and she did.
“What do you think you’re doing,” she screamed. “I haven’t told
my parents everything yet.”
But her voice held no more power over me, and her eyes looked
frightened and small. She tried to be angry, indignant, offended, but I
had already proven that she was a fake, a fraud. It was as if she didn’t
have her lines prepared. She just fumed inside herself like a stubborn
child. “Game over,” I said. “I’m not playing your stupid games
anymore. All I want to know now is if you’re pregnant. After that I
don’t want anything to do with you.” I turned the ignition. We drove
off.
“Which way?” I asked. My voice was imperious.
“Washington Street.” She was cowed in the passenger’s seat.
We drove for a little while, in silence, until my anger exploded
again. “That was a pretty low, dirty trick you played. Hep C? Cancer?
After you take this test, I never want to see you again. You’re not
yanking me around anymore. We’re done. We’re done.”
I will never forget her black fingernails. She wore a French
manicure with black tips instead of white. I used to appreciate her for
being different, for not wearing white. Now I glanced at her face in the
car, and her cheeks burned bright red with humiliation and repressed
anger, and the next thing I could feel was her nails digging into my
right hand. She broke through the flesh, and three drops of blood
trickled down my wrist. “You bitch!” I yelled. Her eyes flashed a
malignant gleam of satisfaction.
As we got closer, she called Planned Parenthood, asking to have
an appointment. I parked the car on the side of the street in downtown
Decatur. I heard the voice on the other line, “We only give tests if

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you’ve been over two weeks late for your period. Have you been over
two weeks late for your period?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice faltering.
I got out of the car. My temples were pulsating and my vision
was breaking into fractals again. I slammed the door. I stood in an
empty parking lot staring at a brick wall. “If she’s two weeks late for
her period,” I thought out loud, “then everything she’s told me is a lie
and she is pregnant. This crazy woman has been trying to have a child
by me. She’s orchestrated the whole thing to get money for a kid.”
She saw me burning up in the parking lot. After she got off the
phone with Planned Parenthood, she must have called her friend Brian,
because when I came back to the car she was talking to him, saying
how I’m the crazy one.
Then she got out of the car and started walking to the other side
of the street. “Come on,” I yelled. “Let’s go—let’s go get tested. Right
now. I want to hear what the doctor has to say.”
She strutted down the sidewalk with a sour, despicable look on
her face, as if I had ruined her. Then a car pulled up to the end of the
sidewalk. A blond guy lowered his window as we approached. I said,
“Are you Brian?” He looked at me cursorily, and replied, “Yeah, I’m
Brian.” I started to say, “She needs to take a pregnancy—” But she
had already gotten into the passenger seat of his car. And before I
knew it, they were driving off.

CRA
6/10/07, 10/4/07

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