Lloyd and Beth had met in September, more than three years earlier, at a Friday afternoon gathering hosted by a mutual friend. Tall and gangly with an enormous mop of curly hair, their friend Rennie had gone to high school with Lloyd. Beth knew him from her freshman year in the dorms, when she and Rennie lived on the “Wellness Floor.” Anything but well, Rennie loved all things self-destructive — particularly unavailable women.

“She lives right downstairs in the basement apartment. Her name’s Denise. She’s dating a basketball player. She’s beautiful. And I want her,” Rennie said to Lloyd, counting off these pertinent facts on his garishly long fingers as they stood in his tiny kitchen.

“Wait, she’s dating who?” Lloyd said, eyeing Rennie’s petite female friend with the bob haircut and unmistakable laugh. Beth was sitting at Rennie’s kitchen table, the only significant piece of furniture in the room besides a folded-up futon, talking rapidly to her roommate, Darlene, about her recently acquired job at the new coffeehouse in town. Several other people stood around as well, chatting nervously as they sipped their beers.

“Ah, some basketball player. Who cares? Point is, a few more of these babies,” Rennie held up a partially empty bottle of Miller Genuine Draft. “And I’m going down.” He pointed across the small studio apartment — past the futon, past the bookshelves with his philosophy texts, behind several towering racks of heavy metal CDs — to an inordinately large, three-framed picture window overlooking a busy campus street.

“Out the window?” Lloyd said. Beth was making eye contact with him now, smiling openly. He smiled back and nodded.

“That’s right,” Rennie said. “Goin’ out mine, goin’ in hers!” He broke out into laughter and toasted Lloyd’s beer bottle. “I’m just waiting for the right moment.”

The evening sped up after that — driven forward by alcohol, the temporal accelerant. Eventually, Lloyd and Rennie joined Beth and Darlene at the kitchen table. The others gathered around them, some sitting on the floor, others crowding onto the futon. They did two rounds of shots from a bottle of Drambuie, after which someone produced a packet of clove cigarettes. Soon, the apartment was awash in blue smoke. Beer bottles lined up on the table, dead soldiers standing at attention. Lloyd fell easily into the rhythm of the conversation, delivering salvo after salvo of well-timed sarcasm.

Finally, Darlene could take no more and bolted from the table toward the bathroom.”Oh, shit,” Beth said, giggling and stumbling after her.

“She’s gonna hold back her hair,” Rennie said. “Now that’s a true friend.”

“Don’t expect the same degree of loyalty,” Lloyd replied.

“Oh, you’re funny,” Rennie said, standing up and finishing his beer.

“Where you going?” Lloyd said, trying to finish his bottle but struggling with its bland staleness.

“The time has come, my friend,” Rennie said. “To the window!”

A small crowd of revelers followed Rennie as he flung his tall, lanky frame across the room. Lloyd stayed at the table, yelling obscenity-laced cheers and struggling to light a cigarette. Rennie rolled open one of the window panels and tried to remove the screen. Failing that, he reared back and kicked it. The screen popped out of its frame and tumbled out of sight. The air shook with high-pitched whoops.

Rennie awkwardly straddled the now-open window then turned back toward his house guests. “For those about to rock,” he began … but never finished. As he lifted his other leg over the window sill, Rennie’s balance shifted too far forward and he toppled, arms flailing, toward the grass below.

Lloyd managed to summon enough reflexes to grab Beth as she fell straight backward into him. Suddenly, they were immobilized — locked stiff on the sidewalk like some ridiculous pantomime. If he moved too fast, they would slip further and fall to the ground. But if he waited too long, Beth would begin to struggle and the result would be the same.

While they stood together, motionless and entwined, a red Chevy Cavalier screeched to a halt at the stop sign several yards ahead. The car stereo’s emitted a low, relentless thud. Someone from the car yelled something, but Lloyd couldn’t make out the words. The Cavalier lingered a moment, then the tires spun — hard and bald on the icy pavement — and the car disappeared.

He managed to get Beth to her feet and then held on, hoping that their clumsiness would lend some softness, some warmth to the situation. But she pushed him away and kicked at the snow bank in front of her.

“Goddamnit, my fucking cigarette went out!”

“Jesus, what is your problem?”

“I just want to get out of the cold. Please, let’s just keep walking.”

Lloyd felt two thin streams of mucus running out of his nose and mingling with the dried blood on his upper lip. He wiped at it with his hand, leaving a dark red streak on the back of his wrist.

“That’s disgusting.”

“Sorry to offend you,” Lloyd said. “Why don’t you have another cigarette?”

Beth turned and glared. “Fuck you,” she said.

Her harshness cut him, deeply. Yet he accepted it, granting Beth a certain freedom on the basis of a peculiar trust. Simply put, he believed that she didn’t really mean it. She just couldn’t help herself. Beth was more emotional than he. She lived under the great psychological strains of all truly sensitive people.

What’s important, Lloyd believed, was that they stay together. The two of them, united, as a couple, no matter how painful, was more important than any superficial cuts that Beth may inflict upon him. The idea of being apart from her terrified Lloyd.

Still, he was tiring quickly and his patience was almost exhausted. What he really wanted was some simple answers that would make him feel better, so they could go home and go to bed and not be up until dawn arguing about it.

“Why can’t you just tell me what happened? I didn’t do this for the hell of it,” he said, pointing to his nose. “You know I’m not like that.”

“I told you. I went into the kitchen to ask him for a beer.”

“And,” Lloyd said, drawing out the word.

Beth screamed, partly over the wind, which was picking up noticeably, and partly out of a desperate, claustrophobic rage. “Don’t be sarcastic! You know I fucking hate that!”

They reached a cross street and turned right. More houses and a few three-story apartment buildings regarded them. The street was darker and wider and silent. One house in particular that Lloyd always liked to look at was a faded blue Victorian crammed on a small, narrow lot. It had a tiny front porch guarded by two towering, overgrown pine trees that almost blocked the door.

But it wasn’t so much the entryway that fascinated Lloyd. No, it was a small window on the side of the house, up on the second floor. Usually, late at night, a warm orange glow emanated from this window. Lloyd assumed it looked into one of the bedrooms. He imagined a perfectly warm, safe, welcoming place of peace and conversation.

A sharp wind cut into them, causing their eyes to tear. Beth made good use of the opportunity and started to cry. She tried to walk firmly and strongly, but the ice caused her to hesitate and the snow tripped her up. Lloyd stayed close behind, his shoulders now hunched. Finally, she lowered her voice — sobbing, sniffling — and spoke.

“I mean, how was I supposed to know?” she said. “He’s her husband.”

When the crowd drifted away from Rennie’s picture window, Lloyd wandered over. A mild early-autumn breeze blew through the apartment, thinning the cigarette smoke. He didn’t see a mangled body lying on the lawn below, so he figured Rennie was well on his way to his dangerous liaison.

“Did he really jump?” It was Beth, standing close and sipping a Zima.

“Eh, jumped, fell … it depends on your perspective,” Lloyd said.

Beth laughed, focusing intently on Lloyd. “Who is that girl down there?”

“Dude,” Lloyd said, breaking into his best Rennie imitation. “Her name’s Denise, and she’s hot. She’s also dating a basketball player.”

Direct hit — Beth laughed again, harder. “He is so insane,” she said.

“Totally. Totally insane,” Lloyd said. He struggled to contain the adrenaline that Beth’s presence was triggering. Everything he said or thought to say seemed stupid or inconsequential. A pause swelled between them and they both drank.

“So she’s dating a basketball player,” Beth said. “And how about you?”

“Nah, no basketball players for me. I try not to date anyone who can take me off the dribble.”

Beth’s eyes lit up with a mixture of amusement and confusion. “I’m sorry,” she laughed. “Is that a sports reference? I don’t follow sports.”

“I don’t either,” Lloyd deadpanned. “I don’t even know what that means!”

He got her again. “Stop!” she said laughing. “You’re gonna make me spit.”

“Alright, alright,” Lloyd said. “We can’t have that.”

Again, silence. Beth shot him her look: upturned eyes, sly smile. “No, seriously. Are you?”

Lloyd considered prolonging the dumb sports joke but decided against it. “No,” he said, making quick eye contact.

It didn’t take long after that. She moved closer, smiling, driving home her eyes. Lloyd felt the thrill of intimacy shiver through him. They kissed, quickly at first. Then they gave themselves over to it, and the room went silent around them.

“You can see it in his eyes, Beth.”

“What?”

“His eyes open too wide. He’s out of his fucking mind.”

“Shut up. He’s Amy’s husband. They’re my dear friends.”

“Jesus Christ, Beth. We just met them last month. They were drunk off their asses. We all were.”

“Don’t talk to me like that. You don’t understand me. You never have.”

Again, her harshness cut him. Lloyd waited several moments for the pain to fade before speaking again.

“So you asked him for a beer and then what?”

“He asked me for a kiss,” Beth said. “He told me he’d give me a beer if I kissed him.”

Sirens on the highway. Lloyd felt the wind blow then heard the sound of a twig break off of a tree branch and jitter its way through the limbs of its former body to the ground.

“Jesus, Beth.” Lloyd said. “I was right in the next room.”

“I wanted to.”

They made out in front of Rennie’s picture window until they were exhausted and thirsty. When they stopped, the apartment had all but cleared out. The only ones still present were Darlene, sitting with her arms folded over her stomach on the futon, and a Chinese exchange student, seated alone at Rennie’s linoleum table trying to read a copy of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea.

Lloyd and Beth eyed each other with a mixture of happiness and uncertainty until he spoke. “I guess the party’s over.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Want to get out of here?”

”Yeah, definitely.”

With a few well-chosen words, Beth somehow got the exchange student to agree to walk Darlene home. One could only imagine the awkwardness of a boy from across the world, who barely spoke English, walking home a girl who had just projectile vomited into Rennie’s toilet.

Beth led Lloyd out of the apartment and into the coolness beyond. At the time, they’d both lived in the dorms. That meant either of their roommates could be home to ruin the privacy they so desperately sought.

“Let’s just go walk around for a while,” she said.

“Sounds good.”

They set off through the parking lot of Rennie’s apartment building, which was close to campus. Conversing was easier than Lloyd had anticipated, his intense beer buzz serving him well.

Before long, they left campus and wandered into a quiet, tree-lined residential area. On these winding side streets were both the well-kept middle-class homes of townsfolk and university staff, and the run-down dwellings used by students who managed to escape the dorms and chose to ignore the fraternities and sororities.

Lloyd longed to pin Beth against one of the huge oaks along the sidewalk and kiss her again. But he kept walking, satisfied with the warmth of her hand in his.

“Look at that house,” she said, their feet crunching through piles of dry, recently fallen leaves.

“It’s nice.”

“Nice? It’s beautiful!”

It was a huge Prairie School style house, made out of mauve brick covered with vines. The windows were enormous and decorated with flourishes of frosted white.

“Let’s live there,” Beth said.

“I’ll call my Dad. He can float us the down payment.”

“I’m serious,” she said, faux-annoyed and smiling.

Lloyd pulled her closer as they walked. He kissed her on the cheek, then the mouth. Lloyd had never been this forward with a girl before. They stopped and stood kissing for a moment or two, then Beth pulled away excitedly.

“We can set up two studios in the attic,” she said. “A dance studio for me and a writer’s den for you.”

“What makes you think I’m a writer?”

“You told me you were an English major. You must be a writer.”

“Maybe I just read.”

“Oh, you do more than read,” she said, tapping him on the nose.

“Well, dance studios are usually pretty big. Are you sure you don’t want the whole attic?”

“Well, do you mind taking the smaller room downstairs? Off the foyer?”

“I’ll make do.”

“Thank you, Lloyd. You’re so sweet.”

Lloyd’s mind raced desperately. He’d always believed that Beth operated on some intricate form of advanced logic that could, eventually, account for all of her actions — no matter how inexplicable and devastating. Lloyd had faith in this and would wait patiently, for days at times, for the logic to reveal itself. He wanted to feel good about things. He wanted to be comfortable again. He needed to be warm and to sleep.

“What do you mean, ‘you wanted to’?”

“Lloyd, this isn’t working,” she said, screaming again. “You don’t understand how hard it is for me. You’re the only person I see anymore. I need people in my life.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s why we’ve been going out to the bars every fucking weekend for the last month. And, Beth, he’s not ‘people.’ He’s married to your so-called dear friend.”

“I really don’t think she would care.” Beth sniffed. “In fact, she’d probably make me the same offer.”

The wind pushed at them, harder. But Lloyd didn’t feel the cold anymore. His face, his chest, burned. He found a brief moment’s physical solace in his jealousy before the horror enveloped him.

”I know you hate me. I’m sorry.”

“Jesus Christ, Beth, I don’t hate you.”

In the attic, Beth pranced across her dance studio’s shiny hardwood floor. Mirrors hung from every wall, so there were hundreds of her — kicking and leaping with poetic grace.

Down a broad spiral staircase made of dark wood, across a plush carpeted hall, Lloyd sat in the room off the foyer at his big oak roll-top desk. A single soft-light bulb illuminated a sheet of white paper rolled lovingly through his antique Corona typewriter. A tumbler of good Irish whiskey sat beside it. A cigarette smoldered lazily in the ashtray. He attacked the keys with gusto.

In the bedroom, a big brass bed covered in silk with a velvet canopy and a vase of fresh red roses on the nightstand. In the den, a polished Howard Miller grandfather clock gently tolling away the hours. In the kitchen, fresh fruit and handmade pasta and homegrown spices. Mountains of lentils on the counter and firm blocks of tofu in the fridge.

In the bath, pure water and perfumed soaps and soft, thick linens. Sandalwood incense drifted from room to room. Billie Holiday’s sultry moan floats through the hallways like a child’s ghost.

Every day a new beginning. Sex and freedom and peace in this big, beautiful house set into the unshakeable foundation of their perfectly balanced lives.

“What a dump,” Lloyd thought.

It was late February, and it was late at night. He was at an after-party in an apartment that overlooked the dilapidated downtown shopping district of a very cold Midwestern college town. The place was small but seemed larger because it was crowded and everyone was talking at once.

Lloyd had enjoyed himself at the bar, but now his buzz was wearing off and all he could think about was sleep. Sunken deeply into a tattered thrift-store couch, Lloyd had grown increasingly bored staring at, through and around the same faces that he’d been looking at all night.

The much older long-haired man to his left hadn’t offered him any weed. Rather, he’d spent the entire party trying to convince a very young, very drunk girl beside him to be his nude sketch model. For purely artistic reasons, of course. To her credit, she’d taken his weed and at least two CDs from the shelf behind them.

Lloyd didn’t trust these people. He knew them only through Beth. They were nice enough to him but, that was just it, they were nice enough to everyone. No one really gave a fuck. They bragged about having slept with each other’s girlfriends or boyfriends last week, last month, last year. Then they laughed it off with cold hints of surrender in their eyes.

Finally, Lloyd willed himself up off the couch and headed toward the kitchen, where Beth had disappeared 30 minutes earlier to get them more drinks. When he got there, it was even smokier than the living room and much smaller. Lloyd brushed past two girls sitting at a linoleum table, smoking furiously and complaining about their missing boyfriends. One of them was short and full-figured with a huge mushroom cloud of crudely dreadlocked hair. The other had a startlingly beautiful face but was so skinny that she was threatening to disappear.

A large, antique white refrigerator stood at the other end of the room. Bodies, smoke and noise obscured Lloyd’s vision. He edged closer and tried to smile at the people around him. There she is, he thought happily. There’s Beth.

She was standing in front of the refrigerator with Scotti, the man who shared this apartment with his wife, Amy. It’s amazing, Lloyd thought as he edged further into the kitchen and caught a puff of mentholated smoke in his face, Scotti looks like a young Mick Jagger. How come I never noticed that before? Lloyd was going through a major Stones phase, though he felt a much stronger rapport with Keith than Mick.

Still, the long, stringy hair. The wiry frame. The bony arms. A little stooped over. The sunken eyes and pouting lips, and the strange, almost epileptic sway to his stance.

Lloyd had been so intent on getting through the kitchen that, momentarily, he forgot why he was there. Then, suddenly, Beth stood just a few feet in front of him. Lloyd was so relieved to see her, so happy to remember that she was there with him, to walk home with him, that he stopped just to savor the moment. These people needn’t mean anything as long as he had her. They would always be together, wouldn’t they?

Lloyd looked at her, but she didn’t return his gaze. And his delight froze and shattered into horror when he saw Scotti’s left hand slide down the small of her back and his fingertips graze the back pockets of her jeans. Lloyd stood still as Scotti brushed hair out of Beth’s eyes with his right hand and leaned closer to her, those Jagger lips threatening murder. Scotti seemed to dangle from the ceiling on an invisible string. The two moved closer together — dull, drunken eyes growing brighter with each half-inch of space filled, each relentless downbeat of the music still blaring from the living room. Then the sound of the party was sucked from the room.

“Beth.”

Someone said it before he could. Was it the mushrooom-haired girl to his right? Her emaciated, vacant-eyed friend? Faces turned. Smiles melted away. Eyes widened, expectantly. The smell of sweat in a dense room of sour breath and smoke. Lloyd’s hands shook; he wished they wouldn’t but he couldn’t help it. Beth tried to force a smile, but Lloyd could tell that she was flustered and uncertain. She hadn’t been thinking, only reacting. Beth couldn’t help herself. Lloyd knew that.

Scotti didn’t try to separate himself from Beth. He just looked up and spoke. “How you doin’, Lloyd?”

He didn’t sound startled; he sounded disappointed. His big, bloodshot eyes opened wider than they should. A tangled mess of hair. Stooped and grinning, not giving a fuck. Scotti spoke again.

“What’s up, man?”

Lloyd lunged at him. Had he not been standing so close to the linoleum kitchen table — with the girls and the hair and ashtrays and the bottles — maybe he would have looked cool. Maybe he would’ve grabbed Scotti by his thrift store t-shirt, pressed him up against the white refrigerator and said something really, really clever and menacing.

But Lloyd’s foot caught the leg of the table, and he stumbled forward with a loud crash and a chorus of screams. He swung clumsily, visualizing a right hook. Punching Scotti was the only thing that could save his dignity now. But his fist managed to only graze his adversary’s left ear, and Lloyd had swung so hard that he fell right into the arms of the very person he’d been trying to hit.

Lloyd relaxed for a split second, tempted to laugh, tempted to try and convince everyone that he had been joking. Then Scotti pushed him away, back toward the toppled linoleum table. Lloyd lost his balance yet again and fell to the floor, feeling it hit him in three places on his body at once. He started struggling to get to his feet, but Scotti stepped forward and punched him squarely in the nose. There was pain, yes, but there was more astonishment.

Lloyd eased himself back down, flat against the floor, and lie still for a moment. The sound of the party blasted back into his ears, swelling to a new level of loud. An exhilarated orgasm of shock and delight.

Then Beth stepped over him, crying and heading for the door. He watched her push through the crowd, kicking a glass ashtray that he’d knocked from the table. It slid across the filthy tiles like a hockey puck and shattered against the wall.

Lloyd looked back at his adversary and saw Scotti’s wife and a muscular, shirtless man with a long black ponytail holding Scotti back. Pressed against the refrigerator, Scotti’s eyes were bulging twice as wide as before, his lips rapidly quivering. Lloyd hauled himself up and staggered from the kitchen, leaving a trail of blood droplets from his nose.

Like a young Mick Jagger, Lloyd thought. Shit, he actually hit me. I guess I can’t come back here again. I’m bleeding. Beth is gone. Everyone is going to stare at me until I leave.

With surprising presence of mind, Lloyd grabbed his coat off the couch. The old hippy was still there, sitting with his arms crossed and shaking his head with a knowing smile. Someone asked Lloyd a question, but he couldn’t understand the words or formulate a response. No one else approached because blood was now streaming over Lloyd’s mouth, spattering his hands and shirt.

He burst out of the apartment door and nearly fell down the steep, narrow stairway to the landing. Carefully, awkwardly Lloyd descended the stairs to the bottom then hauled open the building’s heavy old wooden and glass door. Cold rushed into the stairwell, eager to make his acquaintance.

“If I had gone home, he would have kissed her…If I had gone home…,” Lloyd mumbled.

Outside, the cold grabbed him and got to work. He saw Beth walking nearly a block away and ran toward her, an odd mixture of hatred, confusion and desperation propelling his feet. He ran as hard as he could but couldn’t move fast enough. A few cars — huge, dumb, dangerous beasts — slid past him growling and bristling with eyes. Lloyd suddenly needed to spit and, as he did, a huge red glob popped out in front of him then fell backward toward his feet.

When he called out Beth’s name, Lloyd exploded … showering the cold air around him with tears, blood and spit. The tears burned grooves down his cheeks, clung to his chin, and dribbled down his neck. His nose throbbed heavily, rhythmically. When he sniffed, it felt like something was biting him.

Finally, Lloyd caught up to Beth. She glanced over at him, looking more at his nose than his eyes. She was crying, too. Lloyd grabbed her hand and squeezed — pleading. Beth held his hand for a moment then pulled it from his grasp, shuffled her feet and began to walk away.