Free We Live in Water by Jess Walter

here it is: Who isn’t crazy sometimes? Who hasn’t driven around a block hoping a certain person will come out; who hasn’t haunted a certain coffee shop, or stared obsessively at an old picture; who hasn’t toiled over every word in a letter, taken four hours to write a two-sentence e-mail, watched the phone praying that it will ring; who doesn’t lay awake at night sick with the image of her sleeping with someone else?
    I mean, Christ, seriously, what love isn’t crazy ?
    And maybe it was further delusion, but as I sat in the car down the block from our old building, I was no longer wishing she’d take me back. Honestly, all I hoped was that Tanya at least thought of me when she read our page.
    I really do think I’m better.
    And so when I started the car to go home, and they crossed the street toward Tanya’s condo, I was as surprised as anyone to feel the ache come back, an ache as deep and raw as the one I felt that night in late October when I first saw the lamp go out.
    I told the other officer, the one at the scene, that I didn’t remember what happened next, though that’s not entirely true. I remember the throaty sound of the racing engine. I remember the feel of cutting across traffic, of grazing something—a car, they told me later—and I remember popping up on the sidewalk and scraping the light pole and I remember bearing down on the jutting corner of the building and I remember a slight hesitation as they started to turn. But what I remember most is a spreading sense of relief that it would all be over soon, that I would never again have to see the light come on in that cold apartment.

Helpless Little Things
    I FUCKING HATE PORTLAND.
    It’s so earnest and smug. There was a Portland guy here in Shelton on a meth pop and even he had it—that too-sweet-to-believe thing. Like a lot of chalkers, the guy’s teeth were rotted, so he couldn’t say his R s and I used to fuck with him about it.
    So you’re from Poland?
    Po’tland, the dude would say calmly.
    So you prefer being called Polish or Polack?
    No, I’m f’om Po’tland.
    Fuck off, Polack.
    Then one day on yard, someone racked the poor helpless guy for standing too close and knocked out two of those black, hollow uppers. It was weird—afterward he could say his R s again, but he had a low humming whistle whenever he spoke. So we called him Kenny G. He actually believed this was an improvement.
    I suppose I’ve hated Portland since I took a pop there. It was a shame, too, because it was the perfect Portland scam. A guy in my building was a volunteer recruiter for Greenpeace, and one day when he left his car unlocked I stole his pamphlets and sign-up logs. I couldn’t use that shit in Seattle so I drove to Union Station in Portland, picked out two lost kids who looked like they could be college students, and put them out downtown. There was a girl, a little redhead named Julie, and a loaf named Kevin. I put gay Kevin on Burnside a block from Powell’s and sweet Julie on Broadway, on the corner in front of Nordstrom.
    Kevin was okay—friendly, made good eye contact—but Julie was the find: nineteen, short curly red hair, and what looked like a decent body under her hippy dress. She’d been kicked out of her house for accusing her stepdad of feeling her up, and though I’d heard that story a hundred times, it was harsh coming from her, because, like a lot of good-looking girls, she seemed convinced it was her fault.
    I figured the bookstore would be the better place, but it wasn’t even close to Julie’s haul at Nordstrom—no one more eager to help the environment than a guilty white liberal dropping sixty on a tie. But then I switched them and Julie kicked ass at the bookstore, too, so it was all her.
    It was almost too easy: the kids stopped shoppers, flashed a Greenpeace brochure, and asked them to join. Thankfully, most people don’t want to join, or claim they’re already members, but they’re more than happy to give a