"I asked him about it—straight out. Showed him the motel receipts I found in his coat pocket."

Patty sits on my couch surrounded by huge mounds of clean laundry. Her lips are raw and bulging, one eye is swollen shut—the skin around it colored in magenta and turquoise. She holds my huge flannel shirt high in the air and shakes it out and then puts the two sleeves together and folds.

"Whose shirt is this?" Patty asks. She is wearing Gene’s white undershirt and a pair of jeans that are too big. Her arms, like shards of glass swirled in blue and purple, poke out from the short sleeves of his undershirt.

"Mine," I say. I try to grab her eyes with mine, but I cannot touch them. Her eyes are dead and unfocused. "I sleep in it."

Patty bends down to where she has laid the shirt on the floor and strokes it with the back of her hand. "It’s soft," she says. "Gene would never let me wear that. You’ve seen the things he buys me."

I nod. See-through nightgowns, the nylon kind that are hot as hell. "The advantages of sleeping alone," I say.

She doesn’t join my smile, but continues to stroke the shirt.

I want to go to her, to hold her, to make it all stop. But I don’t go.

I pick up the stacks of towels and sheets and nest them in the empty laundry basket. "Jesus, Patty," I say, " Why? Why do you want to stay—when he does this?" 

Patty straightens up again then hunkers back on the couch and draws up her knees, resting her head on them. She crinkles her nose, winces, then cuts me a glance.

"Look," Patty says, " I know how this is gonna sound, so let me say it all." She turns her head to me but doesn’t meet my eyes. " He did it because he loves me."

I fidget in my chair; this time it’s me who looks away. My jaws clench.

"He hasn’t hit me in five years," Patty says. " He did this so I’d leave him." She gets up off the couch, walks to the front window and looks out. "But I won’t. If he didn’t love me, he’d just leave. Nope. I’m sticking."

"And if he does this again?"

"Then he does it again," she says. Her shoulders sag.

*****

I sit in my huge flannel shirt, cross-legged on the couch. It is the dark belly of night and the candles on the table dance shadows on the wall. Time in a Bottle prowls through the room and rubs up against me. I like the way the light feels against my thoughts—the way it mingles with the music.

It’s late when the phone rings. I let it ring a long time before I set my coffee on the table and pick it up.

"I have to talk to you. It’s important." Patty says. Her voice comes in a hard whisper as though she’s pressed her whole body around her words. The hair on my arm bristles.

"Did you hear me? Hello? I have to see you, please?"

Her words scrape against my thoughts. The light dances with a draft.

"Sure," I say, "if you want."

*****

We sit in the candlelight. Patty sits across from me; her eyes are red and puffy. We sit silently for a long while, not looking at each other. The flames on the candles are still. The tape on the stereo ended and there is an electric sound coming from the speakers, but I don’t get up to turn it off.

"Look," she says finally, "we’ve been friends for a long time. I want you to tell me the truth." She wrings a tissue in her hands, her cheeks are wet. "Are you the other woman?"

My stomach cramps and my face burns hot. The words and emotion tangle in my throat. 

Patty cowers on the couch like a beaten child, her eyes turned inward, her cheeks wetter than before.

I try to think of a way to soften the words, to somehow make the pain of it easier to bear. But everything I think of seems phony, dishonest, a further betrayal of her friendship. Finally, I say the only words I know to say.

"Yes, I..."

"Shit!" Patty says.

I go to her, try to take her hand, but she pushes me away.

"Everyone tried to tell me, but I wouldn’t listen. I feel like such a fool—such a damn fool." Patty draws her knees to her chest and buries her head in them and sobs.

I get up and turn off the stereo and turn on the lamp.

"I didn’t mean for this to happen," I say. "I fought it for a long time." I move about the room blowing out the candles. The smoke lingers in the air and mingles with the smell of warm candle wax. "But every time I needed someone or something he was there. One day I looked up and he was inside my life." I look into her eyes hoping for some understanding, but I find none. Her eyes are hard and full of hurt.

We are silent for a long time. I go into the kitchen and pour water into the electric coffee maker and light a cigarette. I slip the paper filter into the container and add coffee, then turn the coffee maker on.

I hear Patty in the bathroom. The toilet flushes. Then I hear my front door slam behind her.

I sit in my red flannel shirt, alone now in the kitchen, cross-legged in the scoop chair, sipping coffee and watching the smoke from cigarette spiral upward.