THEY STOPPED FOR HER eyes. Hanna had trouble with them, how they looked in the morning, so Curtis had pulled into this strip lot and parked, watched her disappear into the drugstore’s automatic doors, the sign above, 2 for 1 Easter Eggs—Easter having passed, what, a couple of months ago. He could use the chocolate right now, the sugar for his blood. He imagined Hanna grabbing some of the chocolates on a whim. She was good that way. Glancing down the aisle, tucking a few into her purse. Paying for something else, something small—a pack of gum, a tabloid, a wedding anniversary card—when she reached the counter.

He waited outside in the car. In the lot. She would take her time. It didn’t seem to matter what all she actually needed. Time slowed, sped up, passed. Himself, he hadn’t stolen yet. But he’d borrowed a lot, he’d never gotten back to people, sure. He watched a car with a Student Driver sign on its tail roam gracelessly about the lot. As if the transmission had been accidentally left in neutral and the car were moving of its own agency, rudderless, threatening in relentless slow motion anything in its path.

After the carnival they might drive back to the city, or they might stop by the motel. The motel was free if you didn’t mind the dank, the outside chill breathing through broken windows. The electricity gone, its circuit breaker broken and glazed with years of rust. He’d checked the box. He’d broken into the utility room. She’d be out any minute now. Only a couple of shops left here in this strip—a Chinese take-out, a Salvation Army drop off, this drug store. White paper, red lettering FOR LEASE repeating along all the windows, as if saying it once along the low block of yellow brick and tinted glass wasn’t sufficient. As if one banner didn’t express enough how blown open this town was.

What did you make, teaching people how to drive? Could you live on it? What if someone you were teaching how to drive recognized you? What if a student driver said, Don’t I know you? Weren’t you famous once? In that band?

He and Hanna were on their own short tour. The go-lower tour. He wanted to leave this one. Wanted out. He had no idea how. You got the cheaper drugs out of town. Then you drove the hour back. You might stop at the abandoned motel along the way, but it didn’t have a television. She called it The Bates. Let’s just go to The Bates. Tall grass coming up through the cracks in the asphalt, orange spray painted DEMO 9 where there used to be a front office. The rooms had water stains on the walls and a smell. But the price was right: any room had vacancy where the door could be kicked in—should the traveler need a place to stop and hit, to nod off a bit before returning to the city. The pool’s tarp sagged, sunken beneath eons of green rain. Someone had driven a gleaming shopping cart into the water, a television’s shell around a shattered cathode tube. One night they walked past the pool and found a family of possums bathing.

But no electricity. She liked the television on. Increasingly, she needed the sounds. Well, always now. Often they hit up a little in the car, just to get them through the hour or so back to their apartment in the city, for the voices on the television. It made him crazy sometimes. The louder the television, the more frantic the voices sounded, the more empty the apartment felt.

He had left the engine off here in the lot. But the car was getting hot now and his breath felt thick. He made out two silhouettes inside the Driver’s Ed car. The car kept stopping, then lurching forward, wandering around the lot like a stunned insect. She’d be out in a minute now. He glanced into the rearview. There was some saliva running down his chin.

No, he hadn’t stolen yet. Yes, he owed a few people. Mostly in LA, but there everyone owed a few people. You either owned or owed. His owning anything belonged to the past, just like LA did, just like New York. The shows and the audiences had long ago fallen off. He’d missed a couple of shows, well, several, many. He’d gotten flak. Promoters were less inclined to take a chance on him. He and Hanna had burned through the publishing advances he’d gotten for his songs. It wasn’t her fault; they’d both been foolish. There was the greeting card jingle—that money too was gone. Still, occasionally, you saw a comeback. He’d been teaching Hanna guitar until he had to sell off all of his gear.

It parallel parked again, the Driver’s Ed car. You’d have to just let go. Just let yourself go if you were sitting there in the passenger seat, teaching this sort of thing to some frightened kid. The car drove over to the parking spots reserved for the defunct muffler shop that faced the main road. Another FOR LEASE sign. On the way into town they’d passed a McDonald’s that had gone out of business. When did you ever see that? Curtis felt the drug hangover pull just then: as if the sound of the word McDonald’s had sent a windup inside his head, the small seizing, the snap-back in his brain from the heroin the night before. The flash of sickness like a gnat or a mosquito knitting the space closer and closer to his ear. His head flinched and he heard a little gasp and it was his own gasp. Then silence. The sun etched light into the dash. The student driver blew another parallel parking job. Tried again, screwed too far to the right, tried again. Better, now. That sort of a job you’d really have to let yourself go.

The Driver’s Education drama made Hanna’s exodus from the automatic doors of the drug store seem epic, an angel entering the morning light. She had her purse and her shearling puff, no shopping bag. It was too warm for the coat but she was always cold now. He turned on the ignition and let the warm breath of the air conditioning start to cool. She was fine, doing fine. Walking more or less steady, not too fast. That slight lurch, as if stepping in heels even when she wasn’t. They both had that now. He saw it in the windows they passed.

Behind Hanna, the automatic doors opened again. An employee, some kid in a blue shop smock, the little white lettering of the logo, was following her. A rushed skip to his step. Curtis tapped the horn toot toot, might want to pick it up a little, Hanna. Hanna reached the car door and opened it just as the stock boy, this kid, reached out and grabbed at her shoulder. Curtis said, just get in, will you? but this stock kid had tugged off a bit of Hanna’s once-expensive shearling puff and there was her stained silk blouse now where her thin and still-beautiful shoulder arched forward, blouse tugged, the smooth skin over her collarbone, cream camisole strap. She called the stock kid something cruel and her hand reached back, swatted, whip-scratched his youthful minimum-wage mill town face and she tumbled into the passenger seat and slammed the door on the kid’s hand, his fingerbones jacking audibly in the cleft. The stock kid screamed like a cowboy, a scrappy howling falsetto. Hanna opened the door again, just briefly enough to slam it this time up at his wrist. Slammed and opened the door and freed this tenacious hand reaching in.

—Employee of the Fucking Month, she said.

But the stock kid’s other hand slapped down on the front windshield, palmed the glass, as if trying to reach around the girth of the car and give them a big hug.

—What the fuck did you get in there?

—Just shut up, she said: Drive? And Curtis pulled the car away slowly, this kid still there holding on, chasing alongside. Curtis continued easy, letting this kid canter beside them. Slapping the windshield with his good hand, holding fast above Hanna’s door with his other. On the hand pressed against the glass, something written in a pen, a note to himself, a to-do list. Curtis gunned a little and the kid started running, the one good hand with the palm scrawled in pen remaining there on the front, as if still gently guiding the car to a place where he could read Hanna her rights. Curtis let him hold, kept creeping along through the lot. He braked then turned a bit, the speedometer at a rolling 0. The kid tripped a little, regained his hold. A lamprey. The kid was panting.

—Jesus, You grab the fucking till? Curtis asked. Hanna, cackling; it was all her voice could do anymore, these mornings, when she expressed something other than the verbs of basic need. The cackle troubled Curtis and the longer the kid ran beside the car, the more he hated this kid for the sound coming from beside him. And the more he hated this kid the slower he drove so as not to lose him, so as not to let his little flimsy tentacle detach its suckers from the front windshield, so as not to lose the savor of this feeling. Of any feeling.

And just then, Curtis recognized the kid. As if staring back at himself as he was many years ago—the chin the same, the hair the same color, though a different cut, a different style. The eyes, the shape of them: They were Curtis’s eyes, the whites still white, the retinas as yet unfaded. This kid could be a little brother, a nephew.

—What did you take?—and she, Shut up, he’s a boy scout: some fucking mascara, fingernail clippers. Hanna’s long legs and bulimic fucking waist, she looked like hell on a stick right now. But Curtis could remember a time seeing her sleeping beside him when she was beautiful, waking up to her when they were both beautiful and possibly kind. When they had every reason to believe they were good. Curtis suddenly wanted to hit the kid, the kid’s mouth now open in another howl of rage.

Suddenly the kid’s hand peeled from the windshield and his body dropped back and away from the car. He stopped in his tracks. He was looking forward. Curtis turned to look ahead too and slammed into the Driver’s Ed car, T-Boned the passenger side. He paused, registered the silhouettes, the grand-matron instructor in the passenger side, thrown back, barely tall enough to peer over the window, slammed back by the car’s air bags, burst open. He jammed the transmission, backed away. Then, another slap on glass there by Hanna, and Curtis thought, are you kidding? Kid hugging the car, pounding his fist, teeth bared in silent outrage beyond the window. He shifted into Drive. Hanna turned on the radio, some Classic Hits station out in the middle of the dial. The kid infuriated by the sound of music. There, Curtis felt the world pull away from the window, draw back from this kid, from himself. A stock boy who looked like an old high school photograph of Curtis back when, this spitting image cut out of some lost yearbook and stuck to the window. Curtis gunned the car, peeling the fucking kid off, pulling away down the lot toward the exit now. The car bottomed out sharp and hard on the turn down onto the cross-street, left. The car sounded okay. He hoped the people in the Drivers Ed car were okay. Some mascara, fingernail clippers. From a cost-benefit angle the morning was off to a bad start. The car filled with the banjo outro of the Eagles on the radio. Hanna, sitting there, as if nothing had just happened. How? From there to here—to now? She was once gracious, soft spoken. She did things for people. We used to be attractive. Her eyes, those eyes. Now depthless, blank. The makeup from last night, stale, flaking on the bruise-like circles beneath. All of this morning devoted to a little glass tube of black smudge she trusted might, this time, give her eyes back to her, make her beautiful again. To draw a last light from them. Eyes that once stunned—a hazel like some exotic polished stone that gave off light. The art directors knew this, the photographers did, the magazines. But look at her.

They caught the yellow, then red stoplight with a corner church and another giant crucifix, another Christ stretched out in agony, the cross seemingly larger than the church itself. You could tell how destitute a town was by the number of churches. Everyone praying for something to change. Here there were many churches. Most, small and plain, shacks with a little marquis sign out front with pressed lettering announcing an upcoming social, or with a funny quote, or something batshit crazy, or perhaps just Welcome! But this one, another they’d passed this morning already with so large a cross, so large an effigy hanging from it. The third. Curtis had a numerologist’s interest in three—everything good and bad happened in threes. Past the third of anything you entered the unknown: of curses and wishes, of fable. If it took three match-strokes to light a spoon of heroin, Curtis would toss the match, strike a new one, even if they were low on matches. He’d had three songs that charted—three hits on the radio, the royalty checks long ago having dwindled to pennies a month. The payments, he assumed, continued to gather at the lower Manhattan PO Box thousands of miles away. He’d long ago lost the key. And he’d had three publishing deals, his advances shot to fuck all, burned up, pissed away, each deal for less money and worse terms than the one before. The last advance had the finality of a mob loan. But you need to eat, and sometimes you need a little more.

The traffic light seemed frozen on red.

—Oh god look, Hanna said. The church doors opened and now a wedding spilled onto the sidewalk like a rush of water from a gate.

And three managers, each of which, when he was high, he blamed for destroying his career. When he was high, the burden, the fault was all theirs.

—Oh, she’s beautiful! she said. Overdosed, he had, three times, though he’d probably come close a few others. Was it really Saturday? Sunday? The charm of three, he’d used it up. Sober, he saw this. But when he was high, the moment he peaked, he could believe that anywhere past the three of anything you were just a fucking pioneer. The light changed and again Hanna coached:— Green—but his foot was already on the gas. She said:

—I’m not hungry.

—Let’s just get a little something. I don’t want that carnival food.

—Did you hear the sound?

—What sound?

—His hand—the door.

It was the space behind her eyes that had changed. Her soul. She couldn’t get to that space anymore. It was dream memory. Her soul had been replaced just as her laughter had changed to a cackle. But the memory of that laughter kept coming around, flitting off before you could grab hold of it. They passed a vast concrete lot surrounded by high chain link fence.

—Are we lost?

—No, we’re just going. They sounded married, he thought: He sounded married. Some rusted truck trailers scattered about the lot, dead shells, in the distance a large brick conglomeration of buildings, long abandoned, sprawling outward. She could get it back. The soft laugh, her looks, the good space behind her eyes. The decency. He knew they both could. Part of it all, at least. Already now she’d peeled away at the package, torn it open. The sun visor down, another little dirty mirror. Already she had that little wand on her eyes.

—I was just trying to get away.

—I know.

—From that kid.

—I’m not hungry.

—I know. You said. Neither am I. Is that all you got in the store?

—Oh, also. She stopped dabbing, fished around in her bag:

—And this. She took out two boxes of Robitussin Daytime.

—I hope they’re okay.

—It’s cough medicine. What’s not to—

—No, the student driver. Them. The other stuff had to match the skin tone of the rest of her face. She put it on a little thick, mornings. Under her eyes, the circles. She did a better job when she was straight or at least not waking, shaking off something. She had always known her makeup. He turned up the radio. Remember them? Jesus. Used to love this song. What it was like to be a teenager. Butterflies before the parties. Thirteen, fourteen years old. You didn’t need anything, just your young, beating heart. At the light he cracked open a Robitussin. Drank it down in a pull. Thirteen, fourteen years old. That feeling in the gut, the butterflies. Just showing up at someone’s house and calling it a party. Bunch of other little kids like him, no alcohol or drugs. Not yet. Just the anticipation of something. Maybe you’d kiss a girl by the end of the night. Maybe you’d just live the next few hours like a thirteen-year-old—to whatever conclusion the youngness of your hours chose for you. God, the bounce in his heart, the light in his gut. The light was green.

—The light, she said. Where are you, my space man? He pressed the gas. She’d been thirteen once. He hadn’t known her then. It felt so romantic to wonder about. Her, then.

—Thirteen, he said.

—What? They’d gotten the last of the morphine the night before. Enough for the night, just a little in the morning. Old Mike had said he was tapped out. It would be a couple of days before any more came in. Curtis and Hanna had come back to their apartment, this worn studio flat out by the docks. The television was on. Some show about Ireland as a vacation destination. Some travelogue. The television was emitting a lot of green into the dark room. The green came off the screen iridescent. It seemed impossible to believe a place could be so beautiful. Sometimes she asked him to take the belt and slap it over her ass. He didn’t care for the treatment, but he never said anything. He remembered the Irish travelogue, because, last night this is what he did once they were high. He slapped her with the belt while on the television a fucking pan flute danced along with the sound of the belt on her ass, this announcer talking about Egyptians migrating to Ireland some ancient time ago: He slapped her with the belt until she nodded off. And then he just sat there in the flickering light, the colors of the television playing off the room’s windows. An outdoor festival, now, a beer garden party on the screen, an Irish fiddle and a squeezebox knitting the space behind his eyes. Green, a ghastly television blue scoring the walls, his face, her nudity turned on its side. Old Mike said he’d call ahead, the carnival, the forty-five minute drive out of town. Her ribs in the television light. Light flickering over the thin bones of her arms, the rise of her shoulder blades as she stirred, then turned onto her stomach. The ribs, the curve of her body now. Like a bat, sleeping—and he winced. She used to put on a wedding ring. It was meant to turn men away. She was good in her heart, he knew this. Her heart could still turn you on. He couldn’t remember if she had sold it. The ring. It would have been worth something.

The next light changed to green. Another church, another bright red door. Will you marry me? He’d asked her a couple of times. Maybe three times. They were high, but he meant it. Being high just loosened his tongue enough to say it. He thought about it a lot. Sometimes the thought of asking her to marry him was like the impulse he had once or twice to buy a handgun. It gave him the same butterflies. Three times, yes, will you marry me. He didn’t remember her answer. Had she asked other men to use the belt, to slap her ass? Oh Jesus. You did whatever you needed to do. She was thirteen once. Drove, spanked her, proposed, shot up. The carnival dope, his expectations weren’t much—low-grade tar. But it would do.

Over there, the place they’d seen on the way out. A former Big Boy’s. The new owners had left the sign there like the old days: the giant cartoon boy holding a tray, racing forward with an eager smile, eager eyes. The sign looked like it might topple on you as you passed beneath it. Beneath that sign another placard that said AZARS New Mgmnt. Curtis squared into a space and recalled the air bags bursting open a few minutes ago. Flinched reflexively, as if it had just now happened.

They got out, both with a hitch in their step, like they were about to come apart. They passed the glass wall outside. It reflected back two shapes, a glass Curtis and Hanna, looking like people you recall but whose names always escape you. Their reflection, they looked like that. Each, a mental block, blue-ish in the morning shade of the overhung sign above them. The glass man staring back at Curtis had straw colored hair, combed back, lightly oiled, thinning. An older faded version of himself, the image he held in his mind. Here, his lined skin flushed red, maybe tanned, it was hard to tell in the glance of shadow. The reflection cinematic, de-saturated—bleached in shadow. This faded couple walking into the AZARS under new management in a town with many churches.

Inside, a long row of vacant booths. It was early, too early for a lunch crowd, too early for anyone. They ordered at the counter, sat themselves at a booth, and waited. You always waited. Wherever, they made you wait. Even back in New York, six AM, all the junkies lined up along 3rd Street. Between C and D. I walk down the aisle, like some foolish bride. Like a song he remembered. You stood outside, waiting like all the others. At six the line started inching forward, like an egg passing down the throat of a snake. A peristalsis of addicts processing along the sidewalk.

He and Hanna had left New York to get away from all of that. They’d kicked for a time, a spell at the rehab in Minneapolis, then come out west. 6 AM you got up to the heavy red door and the eyeslot slid open, then the transaction, cash first, the little jewelry baggie passing through the opening. They made you wait. Six AM. You could trust the dope, though. For as long as he could remember they made you wait and you could trust the dope.