He said if we’d met when we were five years older we might have made a go of it. He didn’t say it unkindly. He’s not an unkind person—and certainly not as clumsily blunt as his mother, Phyllis. He said it because I pressed him about our future. That’s what you get sometimes—back of the hand, so to speak, when you wanted a kiss. I think we were eating spaghetti, one of the only dishes I made then. Outside, full dark.

I may ask Tucker what he remembers about it all—because he was with us many nights in those years. It was a small apartment, a one-bedroom not far from the freeway exit everyone took to the university. It was a small building, all one level, with four apartments in a row.

Jason and Tucker were in the same two-year grad program —a large school I won’t name. The program was public administration and they both despised it but needed jobs. Instead, Jason wanted to do art, Tucker history. It was the early 1970s, which might have been a time with less worry about jobs, but Phyllis had laughed at Jason’s art efforts.

“If you want to starve, sure, pursue it,” she’d said.

She was masculine, was a strong blunt woman, a nurse . She knew how to work and believed in it. Her hair looked like someone put a bowl over her head and cut around it. Practical was the word for her, and all her clothes were that way, too; unstylish but clean, neat, ordinary. I think she shopped at JC Penney.

Jason himself looked like a sea captain with a brown beard matching brown eyes. He had a lovely profile with a strong, aquiline nose. His only visible flaw, endearing to me, was a chipped front tooth. He was well over six feet tall and had to buy clothes at the Big & Tall Shop. How Phyllis was his mother, I don’t understand. His father was long gone; off in South America somewhere teaching natives how to increase crop yields. They’d been divorced a long time. His mother Phyllis had long ago had an affair that ended his parents’ marriage. She had then married the man of the affair, a doctor. They drove twin canary-colored Volkswagens.

Jason’s mentor at the university loved his large wood and metal kinetic sculptures. His mentor invited him, as a senior, to give an art talk at an important forum at the school and he did, to a standing room only crowd. But the lecture and turnout didn’t encourage Jason.

“The P.A. degree is a sure thing,” he told me.

“But you hate it,” I countered.

We were standing near his studio space on the campus. From other cubicles wafted the smell of oil paint and mineral spirits. His work outside, dripping with rain, on a large cement paver patio space.

“I can’t stand the idea of being poor,” he said.

I pointed at the senior show booklet. “Look at how your work is featured. Everyone loves it. They put it on the cover.”

“I can’t do it,” he said and that had been the last time we spoke of it.

***

One night the three of us—Jason, Tucker, and I—sat up talking classes, politics, and more. I had one quarter left of classes to finish before graduation. It was a small apartment with lousy cheap furniture and French casement windows that cranked open right to the driveway. Yet I was happy there. There were so few encumbrances. Bricks and boards wobbled with our record albums and books. We didn’t have a car. Both of us rode ten speed bikes in the era of no helmets. My leg muscles were like iron.

I seem to recall that Jason got mad at Tucker, some dispute about a grade on a quiz in a class they both took.

“She counted your answer more highly, and we said the same thing.”

“Not so,” Tucker said back. “You missed the part about public office equals public good.”

After ten minutes, Jason just stormed out. “I’m going to bed.”

Tucker had the most beautiful Southern accent and he’d say my name, “Mary Ann,” multiple times, as though it were a lyric poem. Now he started in.

“O Mary Ann, Mary Ann, let’s go for a walk,” he said.

For once, no rain; for once, the moon drifting white and unearthly yet seeming to smile on us. Halfway down the block, he pulled me close. There was an opening at a driveway, a garage door gaped—a welcoming darkness. Up against someone’s workbench, near shovels and rakes, we kissed and kissed. We’d both been drinking red wine. Still, I think the air smelled like lilacs. And new grass.

“Oh, your hair,” he said. “So soft.”

Had we both sensed this was coming? I can’t say now. I had thought he might be gay. There was never a mention of a girlfriend. He was the opposite of Jason—more slight, for one, and with milky blue eyes. His voice entranced me.

For me, the kisses’ pleasure was quickly tainted with guilt, though I didn’t care to stop. Rarely had kisses been so liquid.

“What are we doing?” I said.

Tucker didn’t come to the apartment again for weeks.

***

I thought we were good together, Jason and me. Looking back, though, I hardly remember our conversations. He was tall, athletic, strong. And he had dark moods—but was unable to voice them. I didn’t understand: at the beach, he’d stand and kick the fire apart. “What are we doing? What’s the point of it all?”

Thinking he was kidding, I had laughed. “We both got mizzle-shinned,” I said, pointing to his bare legs. We had both been sitting too close to the fire in our shorts. My legs had blotches like sunburn.

When Jason said we met too young, though, I was mad. If he wanted us to end, I would hang on. If he wanted to marry, now I’d say no. It was a confusing time. Shouldn’t the world be ruled by passion? I thought. I didn’t understand about Jason and money; I didn’t get his mother’s influence over him. If my own parents said one thing, I’d do the opposite.

One night Jason and I sat up listening to music. Maybe we were smoking a joint. I know that “The Lark Ascending” by Vaughan Williams engaged us in spaced-out listening. How lost one could get in the music, the lark’s flight. I thought we were having a good time, but then he said, his tone as hopeless as it had been at the beach, “I don’t think there’s any possibility of communication

between two people.” Was he thinking of the solitary lark?

“Are you serious?” I asked. I could see a faint gray outside signifying dawn and knew the paperboy would be coming by. It had happened before, a touching moment when the kid said “good morning,” handing us the newspaper, his eyes wide at people up all night, talking.

“Deadly serious,” he said. “There’s no way to understand another person.”

“What is it you want me to understand?” I asked, touching his arm.

“See,” he said. “That’s it exactly.”

That night when we went to bed, he refused to touch me, lying like a log on his side. Maybe I’m in over my head, I thought, maybe this is just not going to work out.

***

One day we walked up to the Blue Moon tavern on 45th Street to drink beer and play pool. It was a summer day with soft air smelling of honeysuckle. Maybe it was a month after Tucker kissed me. The future still lay ahead of us like a monopoly board with a confused layout of moves; would the next card read, “Go back to Marvin Gardens?” Or would there be a surprise card, “Job in another city.”

Would I follow Jason? I could extend the lease on our tiny apartment, stay here alone and plot out my next move. I could get a puppy.

Up at the Blue Moon, Jason wanted to play pool and I agreed to go along. It was a warm afternoon. I wore my long hair pulled back in a thick ponytail but the front fringed out over my forehead and ears. Probably I wore jeans and a tee shirt, my ubiquitous clothes back then. And those Dr. Scholl sandals in red. Jason had on jeans, too, and a faded denim shirt.

Jason was an agile pool player with a great eye and a wicked bank shot. I was terrible. After watching for a while, he put a quarter up—the signal that one was challenging the last winner for a game. And then a couple of guys nodded to us, we shook hands, exchanged glances, and we were off.

It had been a late afternoon when we’d walked up, and now it was early evening. Eating just a few chips, I found the beer had made me tipsy fast. I felt half ill. And now we steadily lost—Jason was mad—and I couldn’t make any shots.

“Are you actively trying to fuck up?” he asked, shaking his head at my last shot.

“A break,” I said, “Let’s have something to eat.”

Jason insisted on continuing, though.

“Ask someone else to take my place,” I said. The heat, the beery smell of the place was starting to hurt my head.

He collared a sometime bar friend, Tom.

I went to find the bathroom, a shoddy unisex stall with a sticky floor. Then I stepped outside to clear my head.

One of the pool players and I had been eyeing each other all night. We joked around. He tried to show me how to hold the cue stick better, not that it helped. He was thin, rangy looking, blond and sunburnt. Now he followed me out.

“Hey,” was all he said.

Then a quick, “That sourpuss—is he your old man?” He winked.

“More or less,” I replied.

“Wish it was less,” and he grabbed my arm.

I had wanted to order food. How had I ended up outside? And now this blond tugging me to him—with an electricity that sparked. Then we were kissing, my back against a telephone pole along the street.

“Lou,” he said, “That’s me.”

“Guess mine,” I said back. Oh, my head ached.

Then there was Jason—a near explosion of energy, a shove, a punch. Lou was down the alley and gone.

“Let’s go.” His tone was dry ice.

I staggered a bit behind him as we headed back to our apartment. My backpack—I’d have to get it tomorrow.

“Wait,” I said more than once, feeling my sandal coming off. My feet were swollen and they ached.

In a side yard down the last street stood a yellowish-gray dog. No, I realized: it was a coyote. It had a sloping back that ended in skinny haunches and a long, fringed tail.

“Jason, look!” My voice tried to reach him.

He turned only slowly, his face flushed with irritation.

“What now?”

“Look at the coyote,” I pointed.

“What are you talking about?”

“What are you talking about?” I said, turning back to what I’d seen.

And it was gone, of course. When I’d seen its scrawny sides, the ribs, I felt pure sorrow. And its eyes had seemed to bore into mine. It was hard to express. Is this what Jason meant—not understanding another person? I wanted to cry, suddenly. His face, the profile I admired, everything was slipping away.

Jason disappeared around the corner, and I followed.

It was all I could do. I couldn’t be positive about the coyote, could I? What had I really seen? Maybe it was just someone’s mutt. The light was fading fast.

My left foot ached, and I kept stepping ahead on those hard wooden soles. Soon it would be fully dark, and I’d be walking through the door.