I wanted to erase the texture of Matt, the feeling of his arm on my arm, the olive oil on his skin. I got the $40 bottle of whiskey out of my slim closet, my single storage space. Now was the time to drink Matt's whiskey.

The hallway outside Sonny's door was dark and quiet, the light bulb still gone from the hallway light. I could hear music coming from inside his apartment, and there was a line of light under the door. I stood in the dark and the quiet on my side of the door and I knocked. I held the bottle, in its brown paper bag, by the neck. The brown paper was twisted close around the neck of the bottle, the whole package halfway hidden behind my thigh.

The music dropped down. The floor creaked, the door opened, light reaching where I stood. Sonny said, "Hey, what's going on?"

It was the first time I'd knocked on his door, only the second time I'd ever been to his rooms, and the first time that I'd been there alone. I said, "Tracy's not around, is she?"

Sonny said, "Not here, anyway." He left the door open and walked his hobbling way back into his apartment.

I followed him into the room full of red Christmas balls hanging. It was magic, walking through those strands of fishing line and red glass. Everything was in the way but not really in the way, hanging just over my head, always at the corner of my eye. There was the zigzag of zebra-striped sectional reflected everywhere in the mirroring ornaments, and the three-legged, broken-glass coffee table. There was a box overflowing with telephones, a pile of clothes, magazines everywhere. I walked toward a clearing near the row of windows that ran along one whole side of the room.

Sonny said, "Check it out." He stood in front of a canvas that rested on a homemade easel near the windows; he'd been painting. The painting was the same as all of Sonny's paintings, again another version of Sonny's universe. This one was black and green mostly, planets and words. This one had our building mapped on it, a tiny speck in his solar system.

If it were my universe, it would have Sonny's exact rooms mapped on it, the collection of red mirroring orbs significant and mysterious as any sun, as a moon or a crater at least. Turpentine and smoke and stale beer made up the planet's own atmosphere. I was evolution, ready to adapt, to breathe turpentine air, to live on beer and smoke and cigarettes if that was what the planet afforded. But the air, the climate, the rooms, Sonny, Matt--something was still making me shaky. I leaned against the windowsill, aiming to look at ease.

I said, "I've found myself with a $40 whiskey, was looking for somebody to have a drink." I pulled the whiskey bottle from its paper bag, put the bottle on the windowsill. Sunlight came through the amber whiskey, making swimming patches of shadow on the edge of the painted wooden sill.

Sonny lit a cigarette, dropped his match in a half-empty beer bottle. He said, "Look no further." He picked up two glasses off a side table. The glasses were paint-splattered. He washed them at his sink.

My own apartment was only a single, square room. Sonny had a long, L-shaped front room, and then a second room for his kitchen. He had a raised area to one side, something that might have been a walk-in closet once but had been opened up along the front. I could see his mattress there, could see a tangle of blue sheets, three pillows in black pillowcases, no blankets. The ceilings were high. I imagined Sonny, back before he damaged his foot, on a tall ladder, putting each strand of fishing line in place, each red orb, moving from idea to execution.

"Ice?" Sonny asked from his small kitchen.

I said, "Yes, thanks."

The glass he handed me was cleaner than it had been on the side table, but still marked with red paint. I was evolution; this was Sonny's planet. I didn't complain. I poured whiskey over the ice in the red-paint-splattered glass. I poured whiskey for Sonny in the second glass, equally marked, this one with a chipped rim as well as the paint.

Sonny said, "How'd you come about a $40 bottle of whiskey?"

I said, "What's it matter?"

He laughed and said, "Just asking." He picked up his chipped glass and I picked up the paint-splattered glass and we clinked them together in a wordless toast. Then I followed Sonny--followed his tanned leg, the blond hair, the dirty sole of his bare foot, and then his bandaged leg, his arm, the strength in his knuckles where he gripped the window's ledge, his bitten-down fingernails--out the side window to sit in the patch of sun on the black tar of our shared roof. We sat at the edge of the roof. Sonny sat sideways, with his bandaged leg out straight across the roof, and his bare foot dangling down. I sat with both feet hanging over. The edge of the roof made me dizzy. Below, I could see Sonny's car, tools scattered along the broken cement. I leaned back on my palms, trying to act like I wasn't unnerved.

A line of birds along the wire took off when Sonny and I climbed out the window, then resettled back along the same wire again. The birds were black and plain, glinting in the sun. They shifted along the wire, trading positions, nervous and aware of us outside. It was a whole bird community--bird bodies, bird consciousness, some kind of bird plans going on, I'm sure--and I realized that none of those birds would ever be anything like a friend to me. It seemed strange to think of birds always around even in the city, being birds together in yards, in parks, every day forever; but no matter what, they'll never like humans. They won't love you for your millet or your bread crumbs, won't learn to trust you or your sketchy cigarette butts. They're birds, dim but wary.

There was a beer cap resting on the roof. I picked the beer cap up and snapped it between two fingers at the line of birds. The cap only made it halfway, fell in the street below instead. The birds didn't even fly.

Sonny was weathered wood, left out in the sun too long. I was pale and reflective sitting beside him. I scratched an ingrown hair that was a red mark on my white thigh.

Sonny rolled his head, opened his eyes part way. He said, "The whiskey's good."

I said, "Glad you like it."

He said, "Everything's about money."

I said, "Sad but true."

Then we sat in the sun, without saying more, and the sun felt good on my skin, and the sun wasn't about money, but I didn't say that out loud.

Sonny said, "If I had one month's rent, I could make us a fortune."

I said, "You don't have rent?" The building wouldn't be the same if he moved out.

He said, "For a storefront. An office." He pointed with his thumb back over his shoulder, toward the inside. He said, "To get the phones set up again. It's my business."

I said, "I thought paintings were your business."

He said, "The phones are fast money." He asked, "You see that stack of phones in there?"

I had seen the box overflowing with phones.

He said, "I've got this deal with health clubs. I've done it before. All it takes is a bank of phones, a set of phone books, and somebody to make the calls." He said, "I tell the health club I'll make them 40,000 in one month if they let me sell a package enrollment. Then I sell 100,000 in packages, pay the phone crew and the club, and clear the rest. Over 50 grand, easy, every time, inside a month."

I said, "Huh." It didn't seem it should be so easy, but the plan sounded clear. I knew nothing about business, about health clubs and packages.

He said, "I like to keep my income up. I let things get a little thin, this time, waiting for my insurance settlement."

He said, "Truth is, I can't sell the paintings if I can't afford to ship 'em to the desert. And I can't ship 'em till I make some money. So I'm back working the health clubs. I've done it before."

The familiar rattling drifted up, a shopping cart's wheels against the sidewalk, and Joan of Arc was down below, through the slats of the fire escape. Joan didn't look at us. He was making his way to the spot of shade on the church lawn.

Sonny sat up. He turned an empty beer bottle in his hand, holding the bottle by the neck, like he was thinking about throwing the bottle. I put a hand on the bottle too. I said, "He's not hurting you."

Sonny said, "He's a fucking freak. He looks in windows. There's women and kids around that don't need it."

I said, "What kids?" I hadn't seen any kids in the building. Sonny didn't answer. He didn't throw the bottle though, either. He relaxed when Joan of Arc moved on.

Sonny said, "Five hundred dollars, I could take care of everybody. I could get my car together, close it up so that nut case quits living in it." He said, "I could take care of you, and Tracy and the baby. Tracy needs money."

I didn't even want to hear the answer when I asked, "You're responsible for that?"

Sonny put one hand up, shading his eyes, squinting at me under his hand. After a moment he shrugged and looked away. He said, "Tracy's one of the best people I know. She'd do anything for me. Now she's freakin'." He said, "I'll help how I can."

I said, "She seemed fine about the whole pregnancy thing when I talked to her. She was almost happy."

He shook his head and said, "Have you seen her today?"

I said, "I've been at work."

He said, "She's at work. She's going crazy." He said, "She told me to get out, won't let me see her at work."

I said, "Where's she work?" I thought she was just an apartment manager.

He said, "She's making extra money. I'll show you where she works if you'll talk to her. She's nuts right now."

I said, "What can I do?"

He said, "You're smart, you're her friend. Talk to her."

We took my car, because the only car Sonny owned was the one up on blocks, in parts, fast becoming Joan of Arc's fort in back. The bar where Tracy worked was close to the river, near the railroad tracks. I pulled the Checker over when Sonny pointed. "Right there," he said. "Go in. You'll see her."

I didn't want to go in. The bar had no windows, nothing. Just one gray door painted over even on the glass part of it.

He said, "I'll wait outside."

I started to get out of the car, but then turned back. I asked, "You come here very often?"

He said, "Go talk sense into her."

I pushied my way in through the door and then through the strips of plastic that were like the plastic in a grocery store to keep cold air in the walk-in beer section. The first thing I saw inside was that Tracy wasn't dancing on the stage. It was another woman, bigger than Tracy, naked except for red platforms. The woman was working hard, bending and swaying and swinging her hair. The bar was empty in a way that seemed exposed; too much of the cracked gray cement floor was visible, sticky and damp. It should've been either cleaner or covered by a crowd. There were red lights over some of the tables. The music was loud, like over a loud party, but there were only a few men at the scattered tables, more people up front and close to the dancer. I didn't see Tracy in the dark, my eyes adjusting from the sun outside. Tracy saw me first. She came up at me sideways.

She said, "Sweetie! What're you doing here?" She was holding a sticky pink drink, pulp floating like there was grapefruit juice in it, and the drink spilled down my arm when she hugged me. I could smell Tracy's sweat even over the smoke of the room, her arms bare, her armpit in my face with the hug. Her hair was stringy in an unwashed way. I ran a hand through her hair. She shook my hand away. Tracy was wearing a tiny black leather bra under a sheer white baby-doll. The baby-doll was cut lower than the bra, letting the bra show everywhere, the strap across her back, the shoulder straps crossed black and white together.

She said, "I'll get you a drink," then turned and yelled to nobody, "Get her a drink." Her voice didn't carry over the music. A tired-looking blond woman in a metallic bustier was slicing lemons, tending bar. Tracy went over to the bar and left me standing at a tall table with no chairs. I tried to be invisible. Joan of Arc seemed to believe himself invisible every day on the street, blank-faced and moving slow. Even when he looked in the windows. I wondered if Sonny would crowd up close to the dancers or sit at the bar in back. Did he come only to see Tracy?

It had been nice out on the roof, in the sun. I liked the smell of Sonny, oil paints, sweat, and turpentine.

In the dim red lights, in her white netting of a dress, Tracy was a moth. She leaned up, over the bar, flashing her round ass, the thin line of a black thong, her white legs, ordering whatever drink she was ordering for me. But she had on her motorcycle boots. I was glad to see those boots. Tracy's white calves were small where they disappeared into the boots, but her feet looked big and solid and she walked with a shuffle like she could've kick-started any bike.

When Tracy came back she put a red drink in my face, too close and making me cross-eyed. I took the drink from her. There was lipstick already on the glass.

She said, "I want you to meet my friends." She started pulling on my sleeve, her painted nails clawing my arm through the cotton, the cotton damp from Tracy's spilled drink. My lucky magenta dress was baggy and long, not like anything any other women who were wearing clothes in the bar were wearing. There was Tracy and the bartender, a waitress, and a few women drinkers. I was Orphan Annie. My dress was almost religious, covering my shoulders and knees.

She said, "I want you to meet this great couple. They come in every goddamn day." Tracy's white mesh snagged on the back of a chair, a loose screw. The chair almost pulled over and Tracy stopped, tried to untangle it but instead ripped a hole in the netting. She said, "Fuck." She said, "You'll love these people." She waved toward the couple, a man and a woman. They were both dressed in something like golf clothes, both obese, sitting at the small ledge closest to the dancer.

I said, "Tracy, I don't want to meet anybody."

She said, "They're my friends," and she pulled me by my arm. When I stayed back, her hand slipped, her nails scratching. Tracy's belly was small and flat under the baby-doll, visible through the mesh. A tiny pea of a human floating there, dance music over the so-called soothing rhythm of Tracy's beating heart. Chemical bloodstream, alcohol and nicotine.

Tracy leaned over, saying something to the couple, and her stomach didn't even stick out when she bent over. I thought I could see dark hairs growing in on the back of Tracy's thighs below her ass, pubic hair coming back. Probably she didn't know it was there. I looked at her motorcycle boots instead. The music was too loud to hear what Tracy was saying to the couple. I was standing back but still up closer to the dancer now. The dancer was hanging on a pole, swinging, a bruise on her thigh as big as a pint glass.

If this were Matt's bar, Matt would know every dancer and every shift, as long as he could remember anyway. I didn't want to be in that bar.

The golfing couple looked at me behind Tracy. Then they looked away, back at the dancer.

I said, "Tracy."

She turned and said, "What?" Her eyes were glassy. Her mascara was triple-thick and sliding into the creases below her eyelashes. She'd tried to cover up a breakout on the side of her face, a swollen red spot, but it only made the spot more obvious, a patch of caked cover-up and powder. I put an arm on Tracy's shoulder and tried to guide her out of the way, so we wouldn't be so in front of everything.

She grabbed my sleeve again and pulled me the other way, back into the scattered tables.

I didn't want to sound preachy but didn't know what my role was supposed to be. I said, "You shouldn't be drinking, pregnant."

She said, "Mine'll be a sink-or-swim kid."

I said, "That's not the way it works."

She said, "It's got to," and she drank her pink drink, grapefruit and something. Baby brain, memory and nervous system floating in a pool of alcohol.

Tracy, in my ear, over the music, yelled, "Once I was in the back of a Mexican jail. Cinder-block walls and no windows and a rack of rifles, and this Mexican cop asking me to tell him again what my problem was. I told him to fuck off. And nothing happened. They didn't do shit. I wasn't hurt. I made it through the back of a Mexican jail, I can manage a baby." She ripped a finger through the hole in the white mesh of the baby-doll.

She was yelling, "Once I jumped off a bridge." Tracy's spit, her drink, hit my face. Her voice was thin and hard, with an edge like biting aluminum. She said, "First real decision I ever made was to kill myself. Total clarity. And then I hit the water feet first. Fucked up my hip. And I swam to the side and I climbed out and traffic up above didn't even stop and I survived." She said, "I can do this baby thing."

I said, "Tracy, that's not the right attitude."

She was twisting her dress around her fingers and tore the mesh, her hip exposed. She was spilling her drink. I tried to look only at her face, at her boots, not at the G-string. She said, "Once I overdosed. I wasn't even white, I was green, somebody said. And nobody took me in. And I got through it." She said, "What's a baby? Feeding and burping it and shit." She waved her arm, a bone barely covered in white skin.

I said, "I don't think that's the way." I was seeing the hospital's deformed-baby book, the family of mutations. Sink or swim, with skeletal variations.

She said, "One time, I wanted to stop this guy from leaving and I jumped on the front of his '67 Ford and he didn't have brakes anyway and I knew it but I hit the front and I had this leather jacket on...."

I said, "Tracy, you don't have to have the kid."

She was tearing her dress up to the bottom of her bra. She said, "It's my baby." And she turned around and she ran into a waitress, and she knocked over the tray of drinks the waitress was carrying and she said, "Goddamn." The glasses broke as soon as they hit the cement floor. Tracy got down on the floor like she was going to pick up the spilled drinks. Her white baby-doll dragged in the broken glass, pools of drinks and money, change rolling and dollars damp in piles. Her knee turned red in a gash where she'd kneeled.

I said, "You're bleeding."

The waitress put a hand to Tracy's shoulder, to the place where wings would be if Tracy were a moth, or an angel, in her white baby-doll. The waitress said, "HONEY, GO SIT down. Settle yourself."

And I reached down and put my arms around Tracy's ribs. Her body was small. I tried to lift Tracy from her arm pits, to help her up. I said, "Stand up." The torn dress slipped away under my hands. I felt her rib bones, and the fleshy side of her breast. My fingers touched the leather of her bra. When I couldn't lift her because she was throwing herself down, I put one hand on her hair, an arm around her. I brushed her hair back from her face. I said, "You're not thinking."

She turned around, and she turned fast. My hand caught in the leather strap of the bra, fingers tangled, one hand in her hair. She was under my hands and then she was yelling, not just over the music but yelling at me. She said, "Get the fuck out of here, anyway. This is my work. You can't fucking harass me at work." And she swung a foot, and I was on the wrong side of the motorcycle boots.

I couldn't back up fast enough. I ran into a chair leg, crab-walking away.

She said, "You don't know what I'm thinking."

I said, "We need to talk."

The waitress was staring at me and Tracy was yelling. She was saying, "What do you know? You don't even know when you're pregnant. You're disgusting anyway." Tracy yelled, "Who do you think you are?" I saw a man at the end of the bar stand up, a bouncer maybe. And I got up and walked across the overly exposed cement of the gray floor, the floor the same color as the outside of the bar, like they only had one kind of paint for the whole place. I left Tracy there. I wasn't Tracy's mother. I wasn't her best friend, her bonne amie. I was her neighbor.

Outside the bar it was still afternoon and quiet except for small birds that weren't even singing, just clicking in the blackberry brambles of an empty lot. The river was gray and there was a sweetness in the familiarity of it. Quiet was good. I was glad to be out of the bar. I was shaking. Sonny leaned against the side of my car, the sun in his streaked hair. The Checker was big and gleaming behind him; it was blinding, and I walked forward anyway.

He said, "How was she?"

I said, "She's nuts."

He asked, "See what I mean?"

But why would I give Tracy 500 of my $700? I said, "Money's not going to fix it."

The car was hot inside, the heat sinking into my bones with a deep kind of warm, like whiskey. It wasn't cold out, but the heat was good anyway after the bar's cool clamminess.

Sonny got in. He said, "She needs to know we care." I put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb. As I pulled away, I felt I was saving myself from something--from Tracy, the bar, broken glass and yelling and all the nakedness. Sonny had one hand on the dash. I saw the muscles in his arm. His shoulders were wide and strong and rangy--he was a coyote, desert-tanned. I was relieved to be driving again. I wanted to run my hand over Sonny's shoulder. I could see the marks on his far arm, and the bandages on his leg. I was sitting on his better side. I wanted to touch something good.

I said, "How old are you, anyhow?"

He looked at me, then said, "Forty-two." He was tapping on the dash with his palm. He said, "How would you help her?" meaning Tracy.

I said, "She needs time, probably." I said, "Forty-two and you've never been married?" I was sick of talking about Tracy. I wanted to forget about Tracy, the yelling and glass.

I watched his hand, his arm, his shoulders, the line of muscle in his neck.

He said, "Once." The answer was thin, tiny compared to what I was trying to learn about Sonny. But at least he wasn't talking about Tracy.

I said, "What happened?" expecting more answers to the scars--accidents and death. Or else affairs, unwanted pregnancies, younger women. It was always about sex. I was thinking really, come on over, unzip your jeans, let's see what you've got. I could imagine his tan belly, a line of curly hair, hip bones, my hands on the flat at the top of his ass. I wanted to see his hidden scars, the whole of his right side.

Sonny said, "We grew apart. She's better off without me."

There's a brain disorder that makes a person voice inappropriate thoughts. I wanted the disorder, could see myself having it. There'd be a relief in the rush of asking everything--about history, women and men and prostitutes and magazines. First time and most recent and if there was any kind of commitment, exclusive contracts, rules I should know, disease.

On the side of his face that wasn't scarred, Sonny's crow's feet were Matt's crow's feet, almost the same. Sonny was a place I'd already been and a place I'd never seen, and I had to look at Sonny directly every time to see who he was at all. When he wasn't in front of me, the memory of Sonny merged with the shape of Matt's body but without the history of Matt, without the needle in the overalls pocket. And then there were the scars, like nobody I'd known. Sonny's whole history was visible and his mistakes made clear. Matt was about hidden mistakes, meaning lying.

I reached over and ran my hand along Sonny's arm, touching his back where it met the opening of his tank top. I let my hand drop and brushed his thigh, then pulled my hand away. It was a clumsy reach.

Maybe he didn't hear me because I was talking into the wind of the rolled-down window when I asked, "Who are you seeing now?" He didn't answer.

Instead, as we pulled up to the building, Sonny said, "I'll get the Duster running one of these days."

I said only, "You think so?" It looked hopeless. It was a pile of grease-blackened parts, with no hood, no wheels or door.

We got out of my car. Sonny said, "Anything can be rebuilt. Look at me." Sonny was a testimonial to rebuilding. He bent beside his car, leaning against the car to keep his balance with his bad leg moving stiffly. He started picking up stray tools and putting the tools in a big orange metal tool chest. Sonny dragged the tool chest up and down three flights of stairs every time he worked on his car. I'd seen him do it. It looked painful to lug that heavy thing, with Sonny climbing the stairs on his damaged foot.

I stood beside the car. I said, "What'd you do to your foot anyway?" thinking this was the most acceptable of all the questions I wanted to ask.

He picked up a greasy rubber mallet. He said, "Long story," like he wasn't going to tell me. He started looking inside the car. Maybe he was looking for signs of Joan of Arc. He picked up a piece of lint from the car seat, a stray blue thread.

He said, "I was setting up work with this one country club, to sell enrollment packages. It was this country club that had a marina. I'd worked there before, as a dishwasher for a while, so I knew the staff."

With his head turned, I saw only the side of Sonny's face with the squinting eye and the reconstructed eyebrow. The scars were like wrinkles but swollen and raised instead of creased. He turned my way. Then it was a different face altogether,seeing both sides of it at once. One side of Sonny was doing okay, while the other had been broken in every way possible, the skin turned inside and rebuilt haphazardly. One side was a coyote. The other was a desperate mess.

He said, "The marina was like a fenced-in dock. People would come in on boats, and mostly drink on the boats, to let everybody else see that they had a boat and who was part of the club.

"I was out on the dock with this security guy, friend of mine, when everybody was gone. We started up a boat. I was standing in the wrong place. The boat turned

around in the water, and I tried to get into the boat but the prop cut right through my foot, through my shoe, like an ice-cream scoop."

Sonny reached down and ran his hand along the bandages covering his foot. His fingernails were bitten down and black with dirt at the corners.

The story of Sonny, I'd come to learn, was always about standing in the wrong place. I wanted to touch the scars at the side of his eye, to see how the raised scars would feel under my hand.

He said, "When I get my settlement, I'll go to chef school. There's chefs that make enough to buy their own boats. Maybe I could even have a cooking show, just on local TV. They have to fill airtime all day, don't they? And who'd see my foot if I was cooking on TV anyway, right?"

I couldn't tell how serious he was. They might not see his foot, but they'd see his face. They'd see his uneven eyes. Sonny wasn't the kind of handsome even local television wanted, but I wouldn't be the one to tell Sonny his scars wouldn't look right smiling over a meal cooked on TV.

He knocked on the greasy fender of his car the way a person would knock on wood for luck. He said, "So what if I'm not all factory parts?" He smiled his lopsided, scar-tugged smile.

And then I did put my hand on his scars. I touched his scarred ear.

He pulled his head back and looked away. He acted like I hadn't done anything. He threw the rubber mallet into his tool chest, then closed the lid and bent to pick up the chest, to carry the tool chest and all the tools upstairs.

Tracy, in my ear, over the music, yelled, "Once I was in the back of a Mexican jail. Cinder-block walls and no windows and a rack of rifles, and this Mexican cop asking me to tell him again what my problem was. I told him to fuck off. And nothing happened. They didn't do shit. I wasn't hurt. I made it through the back of a Mexican jail, I can manage a baby." She ripped a finger through the hole in the white mesh of the baby-doll.

She was yelling, "Once I jumped off a bridge." Tracy's spit, her drink, hit my face. Her voice was thin and hard, with an edge like biting aluminum. She said, "First real decision I ever made was to kill myself. Total clarity. And then I hit the water feet first. Fucked up my hip. And I swam to the side and I climbed out and traffic up above didn't even stop and I survived." She said, "I can do this baby thing."

I said, "Tracy, that's not the right attitude."

She was twisting her dress around her fingers and tore the mesh, her hip exposed. She was spilling her drink. I tried to look only at her face, at her boots, not at the G-string. She said, "Once I overdosed. I wasn't even white, I was green, somebody said. And nobody took me in. And I got through it." She said, "What's a baby? Feeding and burping it and shit." She waved her arm, a bone barely covered in white skin.

I said, "I don't think that's the way." I was seeing the hospital's deformed-baby book, the family of mutations. Sink or swim, with skeletal variations.

She said, "One time, I wanted to stop this guy from leaving and I jumped on the front of his '67 Ford and he didn't have brakes anyway and I knew it but I hit the front and I had this leather jacket on...."

I said, "Tracy, you don't have to have the kid."

She was tearing her dress up to the bottom of her bra. She said, "It's my baby." And she turned around and she ran into a waitress, and she knocked over the tray of drinks the waitress was carrying and she said, "Goddamn." The glasses broke as soon as they hit the cement floor. Tracy got down on the floor like she was going to pick up the spilled drinks. Her white baby-doll dragged in the broken glass, pools of drinks and money, change rolling and dollars damp in piles. Her knee turned red in a gash where she'd kneeled.

I said, "You're bleeding."

The waitress put a hand to Tracy's shoulder, to the place where wings would be if Tracy were a moth, or an angel, in her white baby-doll. The waitress said, "HONEY, GO SIT down. Settle yourself."

And I reached down and put my arms around Tracy's ribs. Her body was small. I tried to lift Tracy from her arm pits, to help her up. I said, "Stand up." The torn dress slipped away under my hands. I felt her rib bones, and the fleshy side of her breast. My fingers touched the leather of her bra. When I couldn't lift her because she was throwing herself down, I put one hand on her hair, an arm around her. I brushed her hair back from her face. I said, "You're not thinking."

She turned around, and she turned fast. My hand caught in the leather strap of the bra, fingers tangled, one hand in her hair. She was under my hands and then she was yelling, not just over the music but yelling at me. She said, "Get the fuck out of here, anyway. This is my work. You can't fucking harass me at work." And she swung a foot, and I was on the wrong side of the motorcycle boots.

I couldn't back up fast enough. I ran into a chair leg, crab-walking away.

She said, "You don't know what I'm thinking."

I said, "We need to talk."

The waitress was staring at me and Tracy was yelling. She was saying, "What do you know? You don't even know when you're pregnant. You're disgusting anyway." Tracy yelled, "Who do you think you are?" I saw a man at the end of the bar stand up, a bouncer maybe. And I got up and walked across the overly exposed cement of the gray floor, the floor the same color as the outside of the bar, like they only had one kind of paint for the whole place. I left Tracy there. I wasn't Tracy's mother. I wasn't her best friend, her bonne amie. I was her neighbor.

Outside the bar it was still afternoon and quiet except for small birds that weren't even singing, just clicking in the blackberry brambles of an empty lot. The river was gray and there was a sweetness in the familiarity of it. Quiet was good. I was glad to be out of the bar. I was shaking. Sonny leaned against the side of my car, the sun in his streaked hair. The Checker was big and gleaming behind him; it was blinding, and I walked forward anyway.

He said, "How was she?"

I said, "She's nuts."

He asked, "See what I mean?"

But why would I give Tracy 500 of my $700? I said, "Money's not going to fix it."

The car was hot inside, the heat sinking into my bones with a deep kind of warm, like whiskey. It wasn't cold out, but the heat was good anyway after the bar's cool clamminess.

Sonny got in. He said, "She needs to know we care." I put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb. As I pulled away, I felt I was saving myself from something--from Tracy, the bar, broken glass and yelling and all the nakedness. Sonny had one hand on the dash. I saw the muscles in his arm. His shoulders were wide and strong and rangy--he was a coyote, desert-tanned. I was relieved to be driving again. I wanted to run my hand over Sonny's shoulder. I could see the marks on his far arm, and the bandages on his leg. I was sitting on his better side. I wanted to touch something good.

I said, "How old are you, anyhow?"

He looked at me, then said, "Forty-two." He was tapping on the dash with his palm. He said, "How would you help her?" meaning Tracy.

I said, "She needs time, probably." I said, "Forty-two and you've never been married?" I was sick of talking about Tracy. I wanted to forget about Tracy, the yelling and glass.

I watched his hand, his arm, his shoulders, the line of muscle in his neck.

He said, "Once." The answer was thin, tiny compared to what I was trying to learn about Sonny. But at least he wasn't talking about Tracy.

I said, "What happened?" expecting more answers to the scars--accidents and death. Or else affairs, unwanted pregnancies, younger women. It was always about sex. I was thinking really, come on over, unzip your jeans, let's see what you've got. I could imagine his tan belly, a line of curly hair, hip bones, my hands on the flat at the top of his ass. I wanted to see his hidden scars, the whole of his right side.

Sonny said, "We grew apart. She's better off without me."

There's a brain disorder that makes a person voice inappropriate thoughts. I wanted the disorder, could see myself having it. There'd be a relief in the rush of asking everything--about history, women and men and prostitutes and magazines. First time and most recent and if there was any kind of commitment, exclusive contracts, rules I should know, disease.

On the side of his face that wasn't scarred, Sonny's crow's feet were Matt's crow's feet, almost the same. Sonny was a place I'd already been and a place I'd never seen, and I had to look at Sonny directly every time to see who he was at all. When he wasn't in front of me, the memory of Sonny merged with the shape of Matt's body but without the history of Matt, without the needle in the overalls pocket. And then there were the scars, like nobody I'd known. Sonny's whole history was visible and his mistakes made clear. Matt was about hidden mistakes, meaning lying.

I reached over and ran my hand along Sonny's arm, touching his back where it met the opening of his tank top. I let my hand drop and brushed his thigh, then pulled my hand away. It was a clumsy reach.

Maybe he didn't hear me because I was talking into the wind of the rolled-down window when I asked, "Who are you seeing now?" He didn't answer.

Instead, as we pulled up to the building, Sonny said, "I'll get the Duster running one of these days."

I said only, "You think so?" It looked hopeless. It was a pile of grease-blackened parts, with no hood, no wheels or door.

We got out of my car. Sonny said, "Anything can be rebuilt. Look at me." Sonny was a testimonial to rebuilding. He bent beside his car, leaning against the car to keep his balance with his bad leg moving stiffly. He started picking up stray tools and putting the tools in a big orange metal tool chest. Sonny dragged the tool chest up and down three flights of stairs every time he worked on his car. I'd seen him do it. It looked painful to lug that heavy thing, with Sonny climbing the stairs on his damaged foot.

I stood beside the car. I said, "What'd you do to your foot anyway?" thinking this was the most acceptable of all the questions I wanted to ask.

He picked up a greasy rubber mallet. He said, "Long story," like he wasn't going to tell me. He started looking inside the car. Maybe he was looking for signs of Joan of Arc. He picked up a piece of lint from the car seat, a stray blue thread.

He said, "I was setting up work with this one country club, to sell enrollment packages. It was this country club that had a marina. I'd worked there before, as a dishwasher for a while, so I knew the staff."

With his head turned, I saw only the side of Sonny's face with the squinting eye and the reconstructed eyebrow. The scars were like wrinkles but swollen and raised instead of creased. He turned my way. Then it was a different face altogether,seeing both sides of it at once. One side of Sonny was doing okay, while the other had been broken in every way possible, the skin turned inside and rebuilt haphazardly. One side was a coyote. The other was a desperate mess.

He said, "The marina was like a fenced-in dock. People would come in on boats, and mostly drink on the boats, to let everybody else see that they had a boat and who was part of the club.

"I was out on the dock with this security guy, friend of mine, when everybody was gone. We started up a boat. I was standing in the wrong place. The boat turned

around in the water, and I tried to get into the boat but the prop cut right through my foot, through my shoe, like an ice-cream scoop."

Sonny reached down and ran his hand along the bandages covering his foot. His fingernails were bitten down and black with dirt at the corners.

The story of Sonny, I'd come to learn, was always about standing in the wrong place. I wanted to touch the scars at the side of his eye, to see how the raised scars would feel under my hand.

He said, "When I get my settlement, I'll go to chef school. There's chefs that make enough to buy their own boats. Maybe I could even have a cooking show, just on local TV. They have to fill airtime all day, don't they? And who'd see my foot if I was cooking on TV anyway, right?"

I couldn't tell how serious he was. They might not see his foot, but they'd see his face. They'd see his uneven eyes. Sonny wasn't the kind of handsome even local television wanted, but I wouldn't be the one to tell Sonny his scars wouldn't look right smiling over a meal cooked on TV.

He knocked on the greasy fender of his car the way a person would knock on wood for luck. He said, "So what if I'm not all factory parts?" He smiled his lopsided, scar-tugged smile.

And then I did put my hand on his scars. I touched his scarred ear.

He pulled his head back and looked away. He acted like I hadn't done anything. He threw the rubber mallet into his tool chest, then closed the lid and bent to pick up the chest, to carry the tool chest and all the tools upstairs.