His hands, so clumsy and searching, stir something in her. As they dance, his eyes wander from her breasts to the floor to Edwin to the ceiling, never settling anywhere, as if looking at any one thing too long is just asking for punishment. An image comes to her, a baby boy with damp black curls and eyelashes to the horizon.

It’s then she understands. It isn’t only Edwin she wants. It is the two of them together, the power of two men so different from each other, and all eyes on her. They will dance a few minutes longer, and then she will say, “Let’s get out of here.” They will go to some deserted beach, or they will sneak into an unoccupied hotel room at Indigo Bay, or maybe they will only make it out behind Paulette’s, to the scruffy patch of sand and grass at the edge of the parking lot, hidden from view by an old junked van. Things with Edwin will reach their natural conclusion. Even as she does it, she will be telling Nika, It was pretty good. Not, like, earth-shattering or anything.

Then she will turn her attention to Clive. She will push onto her tiptoes and kiss him on the mouth. He will surprise her. She will expect him to be timid and awkward, but he won’t be. He will hold the back of her head and kiss her hard, so that the whole weight of him is contained in his kiss. He will take her ponytail and squeeze it in his fist like a rag. He will take her hand and thrust it down his pants. The more afraid she feels, the more she will want it.

He will lay her down on the ground. The stars will wheel overhead, fine and white, and in them she will see herself, years from now, looking back at her as she is in this moment, beautiful and reckless as a young woman ought to be. She will have this night forever. She will carry it like her scar, a thing she can always feel, even when she isn’t touching it. He will move over her like she isn’t precious at all, like he is barely aware of her beneath him. She will feel so small in his arms, and she will like this so much it will suck the air out of her—the way she disappears, the way she becomes nothing at all. She will finally feel like she is in this place without herself, and maybe that is all she ever wanted, for her little life to vanish right out from under her.

She will stare into the sky. The stars will rush at her across time and space like spears. They will slash her up with their cold white light.

I didn’t have sex for almost a year after she died. At first I didn’t want to. Next to Alison, the girls at college were so mind-numbing. I’d go to parties and they’d be wearing all this makeup and this perfume or fruity shampoo or whatever makes them smell like that, and while they were talking to me they would pose and giggle like it was an audition, and it made me feel dead.

Later I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I’d go back to a girl’s dorm room and she’d light a vanilla candle or something, and all of a sudden I just had to get out of there. The girl would be embarrassed and hurt and insulted. She’d say, “Did I do something wrong, Drew?” I’d pull on my pants real quick and bolt. I’d go back to my apartment, which was a real shithole I shared with these guys I’d ended up living with, and drink beer and play Mario Kart until four A.M. I haven’t kept up with any of those guys. I can’t. I thought Alison was the love of my life and she was dead and that was it for me.

But things changed. Alison changed. With time, she stopped being this guilty conscience or this barrier or whatever she was. She became a way of … opening up, I guess. I told Shannon about her after two months, in the Sheep Meadow in Central Park. I told Anjali after only two weeks, when we snuck away from a friend’s housewarming party. I’d tell the girls about Alison and they’d tell me about their mother’s drinking, or their brother’s depression, or being bullied.

I told Hayley after three months, on a road trip to her cousin’s wedding in Cleveland. After I told her, she stroked my arm and said, “You poor thing.” I drank too much at her cousin’s dumb wedding. I got loud and obnoxious with her blowhard father. I spent the rest of the night puking into the toilet at the Best Western. Hayley stayed awake all night taking care of me and the next morning she sucked apologies from me and I gave them to her, tail between my legs. I did behave badly. It would take a few more months for me to admit to myself that I hated her; I’d hated her from the moment she stroked my arm in the car like that.

With Rachel, I waited almost a year. I didn’t want her to feel like she had to compete with my murdered high school sweetheart. When we got married, Alison changed again. She became a past I was ready to leave behind. A ghost I no longer invited inside. We’re divorced now, but that was about other things. She wanted kids, I thought I did but changed my mind. “But don’t you want to see who we’d make?” she’d say, like she thought it could only end well.

Sometimes I can’t help it. Alison forces her way back in and I start litigating the whole thing all over again. She had a temper, no doubt about it. I think about how riled up she could get about things that were, I don’t know, just the world being the world. Like when Nick cheated on Becca and Alison slapped him. Or that teacher, I forget his name, but he had this policy where if you were late he shut the door, and if there was a test, tough luck, you failed, and once this kid Paul, this poor fucking fat kid everybody gave a hard time, I think he was probably gay, too, and this was before you could be, he showed up late on test day and this teacher wouldn’t let him in, and she went off on him. The star student challenging the teacher in front of the whole class. The rest of us sat there slack-jawed. She thought everything was her business, I guess is what I’m saying. I’ll think about that and wonder if maybe it got her into trouble. Maybe she stuck her nose where it didn’t belong.

But I don’t spend nearly as much time thinking about this stuff as I used to. Alison’s death is a mystery like God or Stonehenge or intelligent life in the universe—if you aren’t careful, that shit will consume you, and in the end you’ll still be no closer to solving it. I’m thirty-seven years old, and if I’ve learned anything it’s that you can live a pretty decent life without unpacking life’s mysteries.

SARA

IN HIS YEARS DRIVING A TAXI, Clive has observed that there are two kinds of passengers. First, there are those who ignore him. They spend the ride as if they are alone. They may make telephone calls about sensitive matters. A few times he has heard about the merger between two large corporations, or the resignation of the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, before the news appears in the papers; I could have been a wealthy man ten times over with all the insider knowledge I’ve overheard, if I had any money to invest to begin with, hahaha—he’s heard this joke a few times around the garage. In his presence customers have called divorce attorneys (“I want him fucked, do you understand me? I want him fucked so hard his head spins.”) and parents with dementia (“Mommy, I need you to listen to Nurse Jen, okay? Can you do that for me, Mommy?”). They may belch or pick their noses in the backseat, and they will not be surreptitious about it, for to these customers, the taxi is that rarest thing: a private enclave in the midst of the city. In his backseat he has seen grown men sob. A teenage girl hold up a small hand mirror to pop her zits and scowl hatefully at her reflection. A father slap a son across the face.

Then there are those who talk to him, seeking, he supposes, the wisdom that films and television shows have taught them to expect from taxi drivers. These passengers unburden themselves to him of their darkest shames. Affairs, addictions, a stepdaughter’s birthday forgotten. To these passengers, the taxi driver is priest, the rider penitent.