Don't You Forget About Me

(Bucciarati)

"He's being ridiculous," Leone told me, crumpling up Risotto's note and adding it to the crumbs on his plate. "As usual."

We were at the private backroom table at my favorite restaurant. Leone cradled a glass of red wine in one elegant hand. I was finishing the last slice of bruschetta.

"What does it mean?" I asked, pushing the plate away. "What, is it in code?"

Leone sighed. "Nothing so elaborate. It's just a format. Not twenty-five; two out of five tasks completed. That's how they write status updates, his squad. And he's demanding payment before he proceeds: Paella. That's his sister. I promised to help locate her, in return for his assistance."

"That sounds like a whole job." I topped up both our glasses. "Do you realistically think you can manage that, on top of Polpo's work for us and, you know, the project?"

"Somehow. I'll have to. It was the only thing I could offer him."

I gave him an eloquent look over my wine. Even fully clothed, Leone has quite a bit to offer.

"Stop," he said. "Whatever you're about to say, don't say it."

"I just don't like you promising him things. Meeting up with him. That can't be healthy."

"Bruno, I promise you, that's all over. There's no cause to be jealous."

I laughed. I couldn't help it. "Me? Jealous? That's a good one. Leone, can't you tell when I'm worried for you?"

"Karma's Curse effect is holding, as far as I can tell."

"Even if I thought that was enough to keep you safe – he messes with your head, doesn't he? I can always tell when you've been thinking about him. You get this haunted look, like he gives you ghosts."

"He does, among other things I'd rather not have." Leone took out his best knife, the butterfly knife, and played with it left-handed without setting down his wine. Double-bladed and double-hinged, it sliced iridescent circles in the air.

"You're hypnotic," I whispered, watching his fingers dance.

"Love you too, but I'm going to keep you waiting tonight. I have to track down a lead on Risotto's sister before we end up with more debts we can't pay."

"Want me along for backup?"

"I've got my own back," Leone said, closing the knife with a final snick and pocketing it. "But thanks all the same. Don't get too lonely, okay?"
"Oh, I wasn't planning to," I said, draining my wine and standing up. "Shall we?"

Unaccountably, Leone was frowning as I held the door for him. Where did that storm blow in from? I turned my collar up against the damp wind. "Leone? Tell me, what's wrong?"

He shook his head, but I caught him by the shoulder.

"Tell me."

"Bruno, I don't like your sleeping around! I thought you'd run from it, when you didn't need it to pay your patron anymore, but if anything, you're in other people's beds more than ever!"

"Leone… You said you don't have time for me tonight, and you said you don't want me to come with you! What more do you want from me?"

He leaned his forehead against mine, slid his fingers down my arms. The sweet shivers that followed his touch had nothing to do with the cold.

"I'm trying so hard not to be possessive of you," he said, "but if I'm honest, I just want you to be mine."

"I'm yours whenever you want me," I said, leaning in for a kiss. He looped his arms around my waist just where I liked them best, and we stood that way for a moment, just being perfect together. "But when you don't want me, I'm not going to sit around at home knitting socks. That's all. Okay?"

Leone stiffened and jerked away, as bad as if I'd hit him.

"Leone!"

Without a word, he turned and strode off into the night. I called after him again, but he didn't even pause. Like I'd dropped out of existence. I knew better by now than to follow him, simpering like a lost puppy only to be met with his silence. If I did, I'd only get hurt and angry, and then I'd hurt him back. As much as his mysterious moods chafed me, he didn't deserve the kinds of words I'd throw at him if I took that route.

Better to let him go. Have my own fun tonight, as planned. In the morning, we'd find each other over coffee and croissants, and we'd be back to perfect in a heartbeat.

I smiled and flipped open my phone. I had a couple numbers I hadn't tried, and a few more I hadn't had cause to delete yet. Plenty of potential. I pressed dial.

(Abbacchio)

Damn it. I tried to remind myself he had no way of knowing, but it stung just the same. As bad as if he'd slapped me.

Of all the quips he could have chosen – Bruno didn't know my partner used to knit, when I'd crash at his house after our late shifts, while I read crossword clues to him and we drank vermouth and we listened to the early morning radio. I'd never mentioned it, had I? I didn't talk about the before times, when I had a normal life and a future and a healthy relationship and parents who didn't have to know, instead of a stand and a vendetta and a fucked-up orphan lover and a fucked-up abusive ex. Parents who could never, ever know who I'd become.

I'd lost the scarf he knit for me, too. Left it in the emergency room once during the Risotto era. It was secretly rainbow colored, but in sober tones like you'd have for a tie or a sweater so I could wear it to work or to visit my mother. It was soft, warm, and endless. I used to wear it well into May just to have it against my cheek. The wind curled around my neck now like the memory of merciless hands. I gave that grief to Blues, too. I'd promised myself not to shed one more tear over Zo. It was my fault I'd ended up in his hands anyway. My choices that bled out all the warmth and color from my life in the first place.

Bruno had no way of knowing since I'd told him so little and it wasn't fair of me, but my feet were carrying me away from him so fast. Socks. Socks! Of all the windows onto my past life, he had to open that one. The wind was so damn cold.

Just as well. I had to find the courier who'd spirited away Zo's sister twelve years ago and I couldn't have Bruno trailing me. The man was locally famous for aggressive Vespa driving; Neapolitans called him the Silver Wasp, but his cocaine dealer had told me he went by Zeta among friends. According to his bartender, he had grown up on the streets in Naples, dabbling in car theft and mafia odd-jobs as a teen. He'd disappeared for some years and everyone assumed he was in prison, but he'd come home a few years ago dripping foreign currency and big talk.

Tonight I was headed for his favorite lounge – the sort of place where slinky dancers led patrons into private rooms and you ignored a dusting of white powders on the tables. Passione collected protection money from the owner and bribed the police to keep the place open. Not a place where Bruno could keep his temper. I went alone.

Blues impersonated one of the regulars and escorted me in, to the amusement of an inebriated bouncer. In the dim light, I dropped my stand and my coy impression, stalking straight to the corner table where so-called Zeta did his business.

The set of his smirk and the bulk of his arms crossed behind his head sent a muscle memory ringing through Blues. I'd found my man.

"The fuck do you want, asshole?" he asked, resting a foot on the table to balance his chair back on two legs.

"Job for you, Zeta." I leaned forward, fists on the table, counting on the spread of my long jacket to curtain us from the room at my back.

His eyes flicked to Moody Blues, which hovered at my shoulder to watch the room. "Who sent you?"

He passed me a notecard and a stubby pencil, raising an eyebrow.

"No one. I send myself." But I took the notecard and wrote the name Risotto Nero, then spun it for him to see.

"Sounds like a historically inspired entrée," Zeta said. "Don't waste my time."

I flashed my Passione ring and he landed his chair.

"Okay. Talk. But like I said, don't waste my time."

I dropped Zo's locket on the table, flicking it open. "Twelve years ago, you did a bodyguard gig. Caesarea to the airport, I believe. Do you remember her?"

His face registered shock, then the brazen mask returned. He snatched up the pencil and card, scribbling quickly before shoving them back at me.

"I don't talk to cops," he declared loudly, and a dozen pairs of eyes riveted to my back. "If you have an ounce of sense, you'll get the fuck out and let hardworking people enjoy their leisure."

I tucked the card and locket safely in my pocket and backed away, empty hands spread wide. "Alright, buddy. Alright. Just a little proposition. No need to spread our personal business around."

"Get the fuck out!" Zeta roared.

The patrons snickered and returned to their private pursuits. Zeta gave me a tiger's grin as I turned my back and walked quickly out of the dive.

As I passed under the sparse streetlights, I turned his notecard in my hands. First I realized it was a speeding ticket repurposed for stationary. Turning it over, I saw he'd written me two street names. An intersection, quite nearby. I turned and walked there.

My hands were in my pockets, all six throwing knives fitted between my fingers. Blues ranged out loosely over a one-block radius. I honed in on every hostile gesture in my stand's range, discovering several cases of domestic violence but no ambush. As I neared the intersection, I heard the roar of a two-cylinder engine with no muffler and Blues fell in half-a-second behind the Silver Wasp himself, rounding the corner on his muscular silver Vespa.

He swerved to a rumbling halt in front of me and rounded on his double, riding tandem on his seat. Of course, Blues in turn rounded on the empty air behind it.

"I think you're getting ahead of yourself," Zeta said, grinning at my stand.

"No, clearly you're behind yourself," I said, dismissing my stand and stepping forward. "Now can we talk?"

"Climb on." He revved the engine, producing a sound more like a yowling cat than a howling beast. I raised my eyebrows and he looked a bit sheepish.

Enough. I swung my leg over the pleather seat of his motor scooter and wrapped my arms around his waist. Why the hell not? Like all Neapolitans, I was well aware of the Silver Wasp's habits of jumping the curbs and grinding on the guard rails. Blues offered me no defense if I fell.

With a gut-wrenching lunge, we were off. Have I mentioned the motion sickness? My stand's time sense trailing meters behind me in a moving frame of reference gives me awful motion sickness. I swallowed hard and leaned forward to yell over the wind.

"So? What do you remember about her?"

He didn't answer for a moment. I was about to repeat myself when he said instead, "So you're working for Passione now?"

I bit my tongue as his tires squealed through a U-turn. "The fuck do you mean, now? You don't know me, jackass."

"Sure I do, cadet." He revved, then sent his Vespa lunging up a retaining wall. "You're from Florence."

My heart lurched into my throat. When we levelled out on the narrow highway heading out of town, I snarled into the wind, "How the fuck would you know that?"

Zeta laughed. "You pulled me over for speeding! Yeah, four, five years ago. I was gonna do you a high-speed chase, maybe get you killed, then I saw in the rearview who you were working with and I let it roll. Ticket from Coriandolo and his rookie, that's a feather in my cap!"

Through the wind and the chorus of auto horns as he wove between cars and freight trucks at high speed, I wasn't certain I was hearing him correctly, but that was certainly my partner's name in this bastard's mouth.

In an instant, I had a knife against his throat. "Talk."

"Easy there, scissor-hands. I was paying the man a compliment. Put that down before someone gets hurt."

"Drive straight and start talking, and you've got nothing to worry about."

"No can do. If I drive straight, I'm gonna rear-end someone."

"It's called brakes, you asshat!"

Zeta shook his head, leaning away from my knife. "Wheel of Fortune has one speed and it's damn fast. All I do is hang on and steer. Now will you put that away? You're gonna get us both killed."

"This scooter is a stand?"

He laughed over the wind. "Yeah, you fucked up. Your little stunt-double number has nothing on my Wheel of Fortune. But put the knife away. I'm ready to sing. Coriandolo was a good man and I can take a few risks in his name."

We were speeding along the mountain road north of Naples now, swerving around curves with a sheer drop on our left. I felt as cold and empty as that gulf of night air, but I pocketed the knife and clung tighter. "I'm listening."

"You wanna know about the girl," he said, leaping his Vespa across a gap of several meters to pass a truck on a curve. "Can't tell you much. That brat wasn't being kidnapped, though. Whole bike gang of bitches with AK-47s came up on me while I was driving her to the airport. No idea what she was running from, but it was big trouble and it was American trouble. Tell you that."

"American? How do you know?"

He shrugged under my hands. "How many blondes do you see around here? Guns like that, cheap leather jackets, and they were swearing at me in good English. American, bet my last hundred lira on it."

"Who did you hand her over to?"

He shook his head. "Dropped her off at terminal A, found a big case full of Swiss gold bars in my backseat. You don't know the trouble it was to fence those! Kid like me turning up with a haul like that? I didn't think ahead. That's why I had to leave Italy in the first place."

"Backseat?"

"Oh, yeah. Wheel of Fortune was bigger and bolder in those days. We've learned a few lessons since then."

Only a few, apparently. I tucked in my toes and knees as Zeta hauled the Vespa almost horizontal to take a hairpin turn at full speed.

"So that's it? You want me to believe no one else was involved in that gig?"

"Whoever hired me sent me those spooky newspaper collage notes. There was no one with her at pickup or drop-off. Just the lesbian bike gang who wanted her dead. Swiss ingots. That's all I've got, capisce?"

I didn't want to, but I believed him. People make up nice, well-rounded stories when they want you off their backs. Not a bizarre, half-baked thing like that.

"Alright. Now tell me the other thing."

Zeta laughed freely and I wanted to strangle him, but I didn't. "Yeah, you were something special to him, weren't you? I knew it when I spat your name at him once. He went dead still and then he told me, in this real calm voice, not to bring you into it. It was like that whisper of steel against a car's tires and you know. You just know. He wasn't a man to cross, Coriandolo. Real copper nobility."

My head was spinning and it wasn't just the cliffs flashing by. It was impossible to imagine my adorable partner staring down a dangerous man like Zeta – a car thief, a smuggler, quite possibly a murderer. We didn't handle anything like that back in Florence. We gave speeding tickets and locked up rowdy drunks. We visited businesses with overdue license fees. He wasn't a detective, my partner. We were just beat cops. Or so I'd thought?

"Why the hell were you talking to him?" I shouted over the wind.

"Because he was talking to me! The hell do you want? He wanted to know who was trashing his town – you know, bringing in the drug trade, picking off street kids, adding hookers to the gambling joints and paying off the higher-ups to turn a blind eye."

That was a sickeningly familiar tune. "Don't tell me…"

"The Old Family, up in Florence – he'd send me to drop a note to their butler now and then. That's all I know. Of course, after what happened to their son, that wasn't an option anymore. The weather changed. I didn't see him for a few months and then it came out in the papers."

"Don't say it."

"Did you talk to his killer?"

The words gutted me. Had I talked to my partner's killer? Of course I had. Wasn't that my first mistake? Wasn't that how I'd gotten him killed? Wasn't I the real killer?

"You know he didn't spend even a day in jail? You know why, don't you?"

"Goddamn corrupt system," I muttered, overwhelmed.

"Leone Abbacchio, if you're wearing that ring, there are some specifics you'll want to know. Pay him a visit. He's fond of the street hookers – damn cheapskate – so you'll know where to find him."

Of fucking course I would. Memory tore through me. My inner violence was such that I didn't even notice that Zeta knew my name.

"And you must have visited his widow."

His ex-wife. She'd been at the funeral, grieving gracefully. I'd kept my distance, silence my only grace. My superiors offered her plentiful condolences and let her former husband's killer walk while they took the perp's testimony to bring me up on misconduct charges. In hindsight, the miscarriage of justice was striking.

Zeta must have noticed my silence despite the raucous wind. "You should. She received all his personal effects, you know."

I did know. I was keenly aware.

"There's a certain photo album he kept. You have to ask for it. If you want to know, that is. Fuck if I care – I'm just a common criminal, just some asshole who likes to drive fast. I just don't like how they do. I don't like the pressure to join. I like my independence. The old families had a place for people like me. And for honorable men like him. That's all I'm saying."

The wind was unbearably cold on my wet cheeks. I wanted to wipe them dry, but I couldn't risk releasing my grip on this daredevil driver.

Just as I thought about it, he jumped the guardrail and skidded sideways down the scrubby slope – vaulting off boulders and slaloming around the crabbed trees until we reached the rocky beach below. At last, the Vespa came to a stop, heaving like a panting animal.

"Hop off," Zeta said.

Outside the beam of the Vespa's headlight, the waves crashed against a rocky shore in blind darkness. I cast Blues outward over our whole range, still wary of an ambush. No one for a couple kilometers at least. I squinted into the dark.

"Go on. This is Miseno beach. It's a tourist trap. There's a train station in town. You can sleep on a bench, catch the first train back to Naples in the morning. I can't arrive back in town with a Passione traitor on my back, can I?"

"I'm loyal," I muttered, dazed with nausea and the sudden darkness.

"Then you weren't listening. Now fuck off."

Nothing made sense, but nothing mattered without him. I slid off the possessed Vespa and Zeta tore off into the night.

There were too many stars. Where had they all come from? It wasn't right, the way they filled all the dark spaces in the sky. I stared at a cloud that didn't move until finally I realized it was the Milky Way, which I'd always thought was a myth peasant people believed in. I shivered and missed the streetlights. I started walking.

The shingled beach eased out of the darkness as the glare of headlights faded from my eyes. I picked my way along on numb feet, using Blues to follow the ghosts of tourists back toward what I assumed would be a parking lot and somewhere, a road.

The sea was calm, the tide full. The cliffs stood glimmering and vast in the starlight. I listened to the grating roar of pebbles under the waves, a turbid ebb and flow not unlike my thoughts.

I'd known he had personal projects. He never talked about them and I assumed it was on the order of finding missing cats. Why didn't he bring me in on it? He knew how badly I wanted the good fight. It might even have saved his life, if I'd fed my faith on some greater purpose. Why hadn't he trusted me with the real substance of his life?

The truth ripped at my soul: I wasn't trustworthy. He was dead because, on a fundamental level, I couldn't keep faith with our cause. Blues hummed a wordless reminder in my head, some sparkling silver question emerging from Zeta's story, but I refused to be distracted from my misery.

I swatted Blues away. Obstinate, my stand coalesced behind me, insistently keeping me company. I knew whose form it took. I knew if I turned around, he would evaporate; Blues couldn't sustain his image under my self-scrutiny.

I stopped walking. He caught up to me and laid gentle hands on my shoulders. I shocked under the touch of his memory – and I remembered.

I stood facing the window, furious tears blurring my vision of the Florence streets beyond. My hands were fists, my words burned my throat. My younger self had never felt anything so strongly before and to me, it seemed like the end of the world. Or maybe the beginning.

"It's just the system," Coriandolo repeated. I knew he was watching me with kind eyes, but I refused to turn and see. "The judges are bought out, but now that he's been brought to justice, he'll pay his due to the Family. Or he won't, and he'll turn up in the river later. This is justice in Firenze. It's been so for generations, my love. Don't fret so."

"He should be in prison!" I snarled. "His debt is to the people, and he should pay it with years of his life according to the law. The law represents the will of the people and it's our duty to uphold it!"

"Why should the people pay for his daily bread while he sits in prison, finding new accomplices and plotting his next crime? The law is handed down by the parliament of Italy, love, and they are bought by the same people who buy our judges. Here in Firenze, the people place their trust in a family older than this pantomime of democracy."

"I can't accept it," I fumed. His hands on my shoulders did nothing to cool my temper. I whipped around, intending to stalk out of the apartment and walk until the storm inside me was spent – but his gentle face chased all those righteous thoughts from my mind. In the clarity of his eyes, I suddenly realized the thesis of my life was not justice but love.

I turned around, but it was only Moody Blues glowing faintly in the dark plain of the deserted beach.

"He gave me the truth," I murmured. "I was too young to hear it."

Blues hummed, the eternal note of sadness.

"I let myself think my love for him could be enough." Tears curdled my voice. "If I'd just held onto my principles, he would still be alive today."

Something in Blues snapped. I felt it, but I didn't know why. My stand roared at me. Before I could react, it landed a punch to my sternum and I stumbled backward, falling on the jagged rocks. My will was slack. I drew breath to yell at my stand, but I was winded; all I drew was a croak.

Blues threw itself after me and I knew that my rogue stand could kill me if it chose to. I didn't bother to shield my worthless self. But when Blues dropped on top of me, it wasn't with violence. My stand planted its fists on my chest and sang – beautiful, haunting, wordless song. Silver mystery. Sparks of truth as undeniable as the stars and just out of reach. Tantalizing song.

I reached for Blues, but my stand drifted away from me like a ghost… searching. I reached after the song in my mind and I grasped words. He didn't spend even a day in jail. You know why. A certain photo album. If you want to know.

I'm loyal – Then you weren't listening.

Blues whistled, cutting through my thoughts. I pushed myself to my feet and jogged after my stand.

Moody Blues stood chest-deep in the icy sea, buffeted by incoming and receding waves. The cold sank into my bones though I stood above the tide line. Like a hound, Blues had scented out a memory – some salient event that had touched these waters years ago. My stand was poised, waiting for my order.

I nodded. Blues launched into the waves.

Its form was of a young man, about Bruno's age. A competent swimmer, he pulled himself through the water with a desperate strength. Every few strokes, he glanced behind him and he did not like what he saw. He was headed away from the beach – toward what? He lifted his head and hope broke over his face. He yelled out. A name. Not one I'd heard before. Blues etched the syllables in my mind.

A voice yelled back: "Come on, you'll make it! Reach!"

Blues located the speaker and switched roles. This man was just a little older, with a cynical look of self-certainty. Apparently standing on a boat, he leaned far out to reach down his hand. Why did he not throw a rope?

"With speed! They're closing on you – come on!"

A yelp from the swimmer. Blues briefly switched back to reveal a wound on the young man's foot, bleeding freely. He redoubled his efforts.

His strokes were uneven. Why? Blues reported a pressure in his right hand, something clenched tight in his fist. He gripped something precious in his palm, something he refused to drop even with his life in peril.

Then a sickening jolt ran through me from my stand. It reminded me of the jumps Zeta took on his motor scooter tonight, or the pitch of an airplane in turbulence. A gulf, a landing. The swimmer had advanced by two meters in an instant and a sizzling attack passed by him in the water, the angle wide to his right thanks to his uneven swimming.

"Yes!" Solido – the man he'd out called to – closed his hand around the swimmer's and lifted it triumphantly from the water. Too quickly. Too easily. He raised his fist to admire whatever he held in the moonlight.

From the water below, the scream of a man rent in two – first terror, then a long gurgling acknowledgment of defeat. Blues paused in the instant before the young man succumbed. Icy water bathed his trailing intestines. Shorn nerves screamed, ringing his torso. Bitten, I was certain, not singed. Shock overwhelmed his brain; he felt nauseous, he felt suspended, he felt euphoric. His lips shaped a word.

"Play," I told Blues, bracing for the moment of death.

Without breath, without sound, the young man died with the name Solido Naso on his lips. A curse or a final devotion, the world would never know.

Our cold-blooded friend Solido Naso aimed a pistol across the water and fired three shots. Two enemies cried out and splashed into the water. Satisfied, he stowed his weapon and his newly claimed treasure. He turned and steered his boat away from shore.

Blues followed him all the way out of our range, but the man didn't speak another word. He angled north.

"The enemies," I said.

Blues showed me two stylish young men. Their skin was a medium bronze, their hair dark and wavy; perhaps Greek? No obvious tokens of the Greek gang Logos, though. They must have been stand users, one with a large bite and one with a ranged energy attack.

Blues ran through their dialogue on rewind, but they were speaking in English; and I'd been very much distracted in my high school English class because a certain someone sat two rows in front of me. The only words I caught were go, call, and speed. To follow them further backward I would need a boat and someone competent to steer it. Maybe if I got a chance, I could return with Bruno. His English was also much more practiced, from his years with Tagliatelle and Pericolo's smuggling team.

"The object."

Blues dipped into the replay at the moment where we had noticed the object digging into the young man's palm. We focused on this. It was hard smooth metal, shaped with some kind of raised design, large and flat in the man's hand. The edges were sharp and it came to a point. Heart shaped. A token of love? Blues identified twin points where there should have been lobes. No. We had seen an object like this before, in someone else's keeping. An arrowhead.

A man called Solido Naso had claimed a shaftless arrowhead from a young devotee and then slain his English-speaking pursuers, at Miseno beach in the moonlight seven years ago.

I graduated high school and began police academy that year. Bruno was recruited into Passione that year, with the fraudulent attack on his father.

What did the ownership of the arrow signify for either of us? Was it the same arrow that Polpo guarded – or another one? Who was Solido Naso? Where should I turn next?

A shiver from Blues warned me of a dark intuition. Naso watched a devoted young man die gasping his name, when he could as easily have saved him. This was not a name to pass around lightly. It was hardly a name at all. Solid Nose? It wasn't even a proper nickname. It mocked the entire concept of names. I hated the man already. No, those syllables were not my next lead.

Blues thrummed a low note and cast the image of the young swimmer in my mind. Yes – who had he been? How had he come to this beach?

I was glad now that I had been dropped here at midnight, since following people who are walking in rewind generally attracts attention. He had waited on the beach, apparently expecting a rendezvous by land, until both Naso and the enemies came into sight by water. That's when he had sprung into the waves, fully clothed, arrow in hand.

He came to the beach from town, as it turned out. And he came to the town by train. I waited for the first train of the morning, pacing to keep warm and staring numbly at the collection of new facts in my head.

As the sky lightened from midnight to sea blue, my train ran parallel to his train's rewind. Blues went invisible, but I watched out my window the patch of air that my stand occupied, seated backward as it glided above the empty rails. Just before we reached Naples, the tracks forked. His train had come from the east and I lost my lead without ever learning his name.

At the train station in Naples, I waited in line with the morning commuters for two cups of mediocre espresso. I gulped the first and cradled the second throughout an hour-long ride on the metro before deciding it had cooled too much. So I drank that on the bus and picked up Bruno's favorite cappuccino at the café around the corner before walking into an empty house.

So I drank that, too, sitting across from his empty seat in our kitchen. Then I took a shower and went to wait for him at his favorite restaurant where his absence was less abrasive. I felt less unwanted thinking that he was running late than thinking about how he'd spent the night.