Gloria, Gloria. I never had glory days. Some salad, some halcyon, but not a shred of glory, he says.

You’re looking for glory? Gloria says.

Who’s not? he says.

Maybe for a transformation into an elite weapon for the U.S. military? she says.

I don’t think you’d want to fire this weapon, I say.

Hey, he says.

Can I bum a cigarette? I say.

I don’t have any, he says.

Then let’s get some.

I pull him away. I just walked up and I just can’t listen to him with Gloria. He’s laying it on thick and she doesn’t know he’s flirting–with her. With an idea, she thinks. She thinks he’s interested in improving himself. But I know where that conversation would go. I’ve heard it a thousand times. Red’s not interested in improvement. In fact, he doesn’t know how self-improvement became such a force in the literary world. He really says that. He thinks no one should be made to feel like they should improve. Especially you.

That’s his line.

Especially you.

He works himself all the way down off his self-improvement high horse to say in a low voice, especially you. 

Blush or an eyeroll usually comes next. If eyeroll, she has no interest in sleeping with him. If blush, she’s blushing for him and not because of him. And she has no interest in sleeping with him.

However, if there’s a blush and an eyeroll, which has never happened, then she definitely wants to sleep with him.

Like Gaston, he always says.

Belle didn’t want to sleep with Gaston, we always say. She rolled her eyes at him because she thought he was dumb as hell. And illiterate.

You’d rather she was into the rapist beast?

The story has a lot of flaws.

The leaves are golden and brown because it’s late September. Red is walking gingerly, funny, like he’s been injured.

You all right? I say.

You came too soon, wing man. She was into me.

She’s like a server. She wants your tips.

There was no tip jar, that’s absurd.

She wants you to enlist, I say.

Who knows my destiny? he says.

U.S. military recruitment is the ultimate self-improvement racket, I say.

Don’t get me started on self-improvement, he says.

Are you hungry?

Not really.

Shame, I was going to the Union.

I’ll sit with you, he says.

I’m not hungry, either, I say.

Then why are you going to the Union?

To see B and them.

We turn one-eighty and head toward the Union. I wasn’t really headed there, but something about seeing Red made me want to be among other people. He’s still walking funny and I’m about to ask him if there’s something wrong with his leg when he says, they’re so incredible, he says.

I’m seeing colors I’ve never seen before, he says.

And he’s really moving like it, like he hasn’t seen the sun before and all it illuminates. Like he’s come out of a cave naked. Then a wind takes his hair and he looks like Oscar Wilde.

***

There are two girls who like to sit on the south stoop of the Union in winter and watch people slip on ice. I imagine their expectant mouths now watching Red pull on his hair amazed with his head poked through the clouds, about to slip on all that’s leafy and wet and beautiful about the world below. But the girls aren’t there. Not because it’s fall and there’s no snow. They’re usually there year round between classes. In the fall they play a game called Poo Buck. One of them wipes a little shit on a dollar and sets it in the square and they watch who picks it up.

***

Just the man for whom I was looking, B says.

He talks like that when he’s correcting my grammar. Then he tells me:

I’m correcting your grammar. You’re tiring people out making them read whether or not, two words extra, when whether will do.

Just whether, I say.

Just whether, he says. Also, what’s your problem with movies? he says.

It was a shitty Bruckheimer, I say. There was a spinning bullet POV, for Jesus’ sake.

Watch another movie, then, he says.

I don’t have the money, I say.

I can’t print a negative review every Thursday, he says. I’ll lose all our readers.

Show me the readers you have now, I say.

You’re a reader.

I read my reviews.

You’re such a narcissist.

Sometimes they change, I say.

Read more, he says.

I don’t have the money, I say.

Still not smoking? he says.

Totally quit, I say.

Let’s go to the roof.

***

There are five of us in the Women’s room in the stall at the north wall. Waiting to use the toilet seat to spring our dumb asses to the only window in the room. The window to the roof. It’s right at roof height, the sill is, like one plane, like you’re right on it when you’re inside and you’re outside, no drop. Snow and ice seal it shut in the winter and you have no roof access then. You wonder how they don’t have leaks.

These old buildings, Red says.

He’s looking at a scratch in one of the mirrors. It occurs to me he might be on something.

I watch Cheyenne squeeze through into the autumn light and I’m wondering, too, how Red’s going to fit. Cheyenne’s largest features are her grapefruit tits and doorknob knees, no real ass or head to speak of. Easy squeeze. Red, meanwhile, has that soft ass of Oscar Wilde and his exact height of six foot three inches and Absalom’s hair on a head that looks animated and exaggerated.

I haven’t had a smoke in two days and I’m starting to anticipate one.

***

Through my smoke rings, B has been talking to Cheyenne. He’s advising her always to do the opposite of her advisor’s advice.

Journalism, he says.

No, she says.

Yep, he says. You know how much time I spend moving around dipshit’s punctuation over here?

He means me.

He uses the breath comma like he’s panic breathing in a paper bag, he says. You know what else? He doesn’t incorporate my copy edits. I do. He has no interest in getting better. You’re the only writer on staff who does.

No one reads your notes? she says.

I just print my own suggestions. That’s how much they’re worth, he says. Red, you want to come write for me? he says.

Silence.

I don’t think he can hear you.

He can hear me.

He can hear you.

He’s scanning treetops like he’s the wind. He’s looking over the world below. There was a time we’d all be worried about him jumping. But he’s only thinking about it now.

Is he okay? Cheyenne says.

He’s okay, B says.

You can tell because he’s crying. If you’re not crying, you’re not okay.

***

Down at what Red’s looking at. So many people but not that many. They’re shuffling, not careful of the wet leaves so many colors. They want to smile, a lot of them, you can tell. They deserve to. It’s Career Day, but no one’s talking to anyone at the tables. Just looking. No one’s talking to Gloria the Marine. Just looking.