He wants to introduce himself to her. She’s tall. Athletic. But he doesn’t. Because her hands are dry. And he can’t trust a person like that.

And that’s the last time I got stoned, he says, and then he says, Abe Vigoda, and then she calls him a liar. And then he feigns indignation.

And we realized we were all miserable if in different ways. I drank my bourbon. You read books, my friend said accusingly. I didn’t deny it.

This walk is a bad idea, he tells her. And so she walks faster still. Your walking faster doesn’t make it better, he says. And then he dies.