Free My Life in Heavy Metal by Steve Almond

her unable to do anything worse than hug me fiercely and offer to pierce my septum.
    I slip outside, into the lousy mucky air. Everyone watches me leave, the slutty aging reporter chick, which, if I were still drunk, might actually be a step up from aging reporter chick. But the booze is all through with my blood; it’s coming off in acetone fumes, and the parking lot is empty and I’m leaving alone.
    I don’t want to worry about what anyone else thinks of me, because that’s not the point. It’s that I’m worried about what
I
think of me, what’s become of me, why am I spending these precious years I’d always dreamed would involve a good man and a marriage and a little kid or two, why am I spending these years mooning over some smoothie from the Kingdom of Cheese?
    This red Tercel tears into the lot, which is weird, because Brisby drives a red Tercel, and then Brisby himself lunges out of the car, still in his prisoner’s outfit, and heads for the club, looking strangely pissed off, his little plastic chain dragging on the ground behind him. He must have forgotten something, keys or wallet. He’s always forgettingsomething. A minute later he comes out again and I duck behind this pillar thing, but I can hear him crossing the lot and just the imagined sight of him, his goofy walk, his mouth pinched at the corners, the disappointment in his eyes, that alone is enough to start me blubbering. By the time he reaches me, I’ve collapsed into his arms and I’m sobbing, Sorry. I’m sorry. It’s not my fault I fell for Computer Boy. I didn’t mean to. But he’s cute and he likes me and I’m not getting any younger, Bris. I’m thirty-fucking-three years old, you know? And besides, besides, you weren’t there. You were supposed to save me. You were supposed to keep me from doing something stupid. What was I supposed to do without you there?
    I’m not sure how much of this is intelligible, though, because my head is buried in his chest and the words are coming out all snotty. Brisby puts his arms around me and tells me it’s okay,
shhh,
it’s okay, and strokes my hair. I was just worried about you, he says. That’s all. You had a lot to drink.
    Then he lets me cry until I’m all done crying.
    Maybe we could get some coffee, he says finally. Okay?
    And it’s such a sweet gesture, so much what I want. Just to sit there and sober up and shoot the shit with Brisby. What about Christine? I say. Won’t she be waiting up?
    Brisby looks down for a sec, shakes his head. Don’t worry about it.
    Is everything cool? I say.
    And now I can see him struggling to keep
his
game face on. He reaches down and jerks at the plastic chain around his ankle. What a stupid costume, he says. I should have come as Unsightly Grout Fungus, like I originally planned.
    The stripes make you look taller, I say.
    I guess. It wasn’t my idea.

    He’s still got his arms around me, loose, but not too loose, and I keep thinking how this should be awkward, the way our bodies are touching, because we’re such pals. Then Brisby does this wonderful thing. He takes his thumb and forefinger and gently lifts my chin and presses his lips to my forehead and keeps them there for a minute, breathing through his nose. And I don’t know what this means exactly; Brisby’s holding me and there being nothing awkward about it, him holding me and saying
shhhh,
his breath flowing into my hair, the two of us on our way to get coffee, to talk, but not talking yet, just standing there in this empty parking lot, swaying, and that’s all.

The Last Single Days of Don Viktor Potapenko
    The Don had hit a slump. You could see it in his step. “Like a hurdy-gurdy man,” said Peck, the Bitter Bartender. “Like a guy who works as a fucking monkey keeper.” Peck did a little jig behind the counter. No one paid attention. “What’d he ever do?”