But there were days, weeks even sometimes, when life poured out around her in an uncontrollable flow. Bills were paid late, she cut someone off on her way into the drugstore parking lot, her favorite evening television program was in reruns and nothing she did, not even double-triple-checking to see she had her keys before shutting the car door could staunch the leaking out of all those points she'd accumulated in her favor. In times like this Judith would find herself huddled on the floor of her walk-in closet rationing peanut M&Ms out of a bag, humming her nursery tune to herself, guilt paralyzing her from even being able to knock the rhythm of the chorus to "Hit Me Baby One More Time" on her nightstand before turning out the light to no sleep, no sleep at all.

Only a small part of her knew this might not be the most rational behavior ever exhibited by someone who'd graduated Cum Laude from a mildly renowned institution of higher education. But usually that small portion of her brain was otherwise occupied thinking up ever more intricate tasks that by her completing might save her from causing some terrible tragedy. After her fourth attempt in one afternoon to walk from her cubicle to the bathroom and back without allowing the wales of her corduroys to swish against each other failed, again, of course, Judith felt as if the possibility of her salvation had been buried under a concrete slab. Everyone would know she was a fraud.

Because of Judith children in East Tennessee went unshod, floods covered the Midwest, wars raged in African nations that had been unstable for years and ants drowned in the watering pail she'd let rainwater collect in outside her front door. Some days even an un-rinsed dish spelled out her failure in crusted, hardened cheese. Disaster loomed everywhere, begging to be let in.

***

Billy figured his girlfriend, Catherine, didn't like cigarettes. Who did?

"She doesn't know," he said.

"That's silly," Teri, his roommate, said.

They lived over the café. Billy, the proprietor, had taken Teri on as a tenant when business went south. They sat like this daily, in the afternoon, smoking cigarettes al fresco when the minuscule if not nonexistent lunch crowd disappeared or resumed its nonexistence post-2 p.m. The sidewalk radiated the heat from the summer sun. They smoked, sweat.

"Isn't she meeting you here?" Teri stomped out her cigarette.

"Yeah," he said.

"You got another one of those?"

Billy pulled hard on his cigarette, then: "Sure," he said, placing the pack on the table, looking around the square and fumbling for a match.

She lit her second in as many minutes. "So what's she going to do when she finds out?" she said.

"I don't know," he said. "We've only been going out a month or so."

"She could have ideas. Big ideas -- about you. You might not realize it. Maybe you're her knight, you know, the quintessence of perfection."

He pulled. "I kinda doubt it," he said, blowing smoke.

A homeless man from the church mission shuffled up on the sidewalk behind Billy as he blew another cloud. Teri's eyes went wide as Billy registered a figure's presence at his back and quickly feigned a dramatic cough, doubling over and placing his lit cigarette firmly under his sandal.

"Got an extra cigarette?" the stranger's voice boomed over them.

"Oh yeah, sure," Billy said, sitting back up and proffering the pack. He lifted his sandal and glanced down at the flattened, nearly full-length smoke on the ground.

"What a waste," Teri laughed. "Close call, eh?"

"Yeah, I thought it was her."

"I don't begrudge no man his cigarettes," said the stranger. "I ain't nobody's damn wife." He puffed hard and grinned, returning the pack to its owner, who grinned himself.

"It ain't like that," Billy said.

The stranger held his wide smile and nodded and began to shuffle on, but Billy quickly pulled two cigarettes from the pack, lit one, and urged the old man to take the remainder. "I need to quit," he said.

The stranger would be happy to oblige, he said, but as his hand met the pack his own eyes went wide at the figure of a young woman who had been clomping up the walk quickly only to stop dead in her tracks to witness the transaction.

"Hey," the old man said to her.

"Hey Catherine," Teri said.

And finally Billy turned to see her, his damsel in distress with her eyes pinched down to a scrutinizing slit. He smiled, releasing the pack to the bum and sucking on his newly lit cigarette, quick pulse of his heart in his chest. "How's it going?" he said, pulling, blowing smoke.

Catherine broke from her stock-still stance as the old man shuffled on down the walk. She pulled a chair to the table as Teri lit the last cigarette and Billy went on like all was as anyone could have expected. Thin, awkward smiles passed between the three.

"You got another cigarette?" Catherine asked. "Or did you just give the bum all you had?"

Teri laughed. Catherine scowled. Billy smoked. "I just quit," he said, raising his cigarette and pointing down the walk to the old man.

"You can have mine?" Teri offered, but Catherine winced now like she'd been punched in the stomach.

"This will go down on your permanent record," she said, giving both of them another helping of her slit-eyed disappointment.

Billy shrugged. Teri puffed. All eyes turned to watch the old man shuffle away.

***
LYRIC
Sundown. A dark lit place--
your place.
Body parts: lips, fingertips.
Oil on skin. A dress on the floor.
Show me how you do that trick, you say. Breathe on me.
Desire creeps up like an animal,
driving me backward,
like on The Discovery Channel.
Sweat stings. Pleasure, spikes, pain.
It's better bad. It's

NIGHTMARE
cold, midnight dark, and I'm being chased through my middle school library. Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret. My pursuer is a Viking -- armor, sword, a helmet with two pointy horns. He yells, This will go down on your permanent record, chases me out the door, through the schoolyard, onto the fenced-in football field. There's a house where the end zone isn't -- two stories, busted-out windows. I run up the front stairs, onto the front porch, in the front door. He's still behind me, the boy from school. I run through the kitchen, down the hall into a bedroom. I hide under the bed and find a Barbie, round like she's swallowed a wheel of cheese whole. Impossible, but this is a dream. I pick up my doll and walk toward the door, listening. Silence. A knife pierces the wood. I hold up the cheese wheel Barbie to block the blade. The boy disappears, the house disappears, I wake up in a

THE NICK
nearly empty gravel parking lot, just before day breaks over the run-down bar under the billboard: "How She Move." Inside, her ears throb from squeals of the guitar player for possibly the worst band on Earth. Smell of booze, piss, smoke. Ends of staples break the skin if you touch pretty much anything.

Light creeps in through the cracks around the door. He grabs her around the waist.

She says, "There is nothing sexy about this place."

In the bathroom, they fuck, and she stares at herself in the mirror. She stares at his ugly sideburns. It hurts, then it's over.

She pays her tab, and walks out into the morning. She owes the bartender a dollar.

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