I was thinking about Max, since I was pretty much always thinking about Max. Ever since he fucked up my order at the little café down the street, I’d been totally smitten. He made feel…I don’t know, like I’d figured it out. Talking to guys had always been a struggle when I was younger. The middle school best friend I’d been in love with once told me that I had a weird energy, and too much of it. But in recent years, I really felt like I’d learned to lean in just the right amount, in just the right way, and Max was proof.  

            It only took a few weeks for him to ask me out, a real triumph of timing and poise on my part. And I liked him. I loved the way he told stories, even the drunken exploits carried out while, across the country, I’d been struggling to make decent grades and scrape together rent at the same time.  I was into his music, played for the first time for my ears in the backseat of his SUV. And I liked his smell, too, but I tried not to be too weird about that one. In fact, as I prepared to have him over for the first time, I looked forward to that cologne lingering in my hallway.

            I was chopping vegetables in my kitchen when I heard a gasp, then Jesus Christ, then Molly collapse into nervous giggles as she remerged from the hall.

            “I thought there was someone in your office,” she said as she walked up to the kitchen counter.

            I shrugged. “Just Kenny.”

            Molly rolled her eyes. “You two get up to a lot up down here in the crawlspace?” She used to like my apartment, until she broke her ankle on the concrete stairs leading down to it. It’s been the crawlspace ever since.

I set down my kitchen knife. “We take care of each other,” I joked, and looked down at the dinner I was getting ready for Molly’s departure and Max’s arrival. The veins in the fake stone counter tinged purple as the beets bled off the cutting board. I scooped them onto a baking sheet and slid it into the oven.

            The crawlspace was set up for company. It had all the candles and fairy lights that made people feel welcome, and the paraphernalia that didn’t was strategically put away. Fewer dead things, less nudity, and the snake was in the office with Kenny.

Apparently, Molly was not impressed. She gave the living room a dubious look-around and said, “It looks a little…toned down.

I tried not to bristle. “I’m creating an ambience.”

            “If I knew you were going to doll the place up, I’d have brought you some potted plants.” She looked around the room again. “Where’s your altar? Does this guy even know you’re into that—”

“Are you here to help me? Or to pick everything apart?” I didn’t mean to be so sharp, but Molly had no idea. Molly never got excited about the wrong subject. She never came in with the wrong vibe. She’d never heard through the grapevine that the Satan talk was a little much.  

            I showed her out a little later, and she tried one more time. “Look, look, it’s just – do you want him to like you, or a version of you?”

            “Thanks always for your help,” I sang and shut her out.

            Max would be there any minute. Dinner was hanging out in the oven, so I did a final run through, just to make sure the tone was whatever the fuck I wanted it to be. I caught the barest outline of a man’s face when I passed the office, got a little jolt, and cursed when I remembered half a second later that it was Kenny. I slammed the door, plunging him into darkness and me into the white, overhead light of the hallway.

            When Max did finally get there, things were perfect. Perfect energy. Perfect vibe. We ate, we watched true crime, we were surely going to fool around any time now. He loved the crawlspace. It suited me so well, he said. Never mind its lack of altars or of potted plants. He asked me for directions to the bathroom, and while I waited I patted myself on the back for a job appropriately done.

            That was when I heard it. The oh my fucking god what the fuck is that?

            The door on the left, not the right. I ran back into the hall and there was Max standing in the office, not the bathroom, face to face with Kenny and all of him lit up by that garish hallway light.

            “Why the fuck do you have that?” Max demanded.

            “It’s just a print.”

            But he shook his head. “Why would you want to look at something like that? That’s so…it’s weird.” When it finally got through to him that he was making me upset, he got it together. “Sorry, sorry, it’s just – it’s a lot to just walk in on that. No, no, it’s fine. It just scared me. It’s fine.”

            But it wasn’t fine. It was like I’d betrayed him somehow. He kept looking at me like he was half amused and half unsettled, and the mood never recovered. It’s not like I didn’t try. I kept up my end of the conversation, on my best behavior, and I knew he was still down to sleep with me. If I could just get him into bed, I figured, I could definitely turn things around.

            At one point, he made another attempt at the bathroom. I was checking myself in the window’s reflection when I got a text.

Yll never fucking believe wht was in this girls room

            I guess he caught himself before he accidently sent me the picture of my own office. I’m not going to say it didn’t hurt. I asked him to leave. He tried to apologize again, but it was over for me. I shut him out of the crawlspace for good. And I might be alone, but at least I wasn’t alone with an asshole. But I was still alone.

            I poured a single glass of wine with the intention of spending the next twenty hours or so in bed, but I stopped by the office first. I turned on the light. Ken Currie’s Hiroshima Smile looked not at me, but to the side. I remember the first time I saw him. His pallid skin glowed between the dark background and the cold lighting. He expressed either dignity or exhausted resignation. Whichever one I thought depended on my own mood. I remember when the print came in the mail, and I saw his one eye and bottom lip and little else up close for the first time, and thought there’s a place for you here.

            The night still stung. I’d already started to cry about it, but before I left I raised a glass to Kenny.

            “Thanks for looking out.”