midnight. They are lonely, lost, or lying. Occ

textbook, lost A man in a rain jacket eating lemon cake as if it owed him money, lonely. And Tunde, propp

Zee's has its own weather: low lamps, the tick of the cooling grinder, the smell of burnt sugar and rain on wool. I love it. It is also, for a person who counts exits, a very exposed way to live. I knew whe

"Ife's boyfriend delivers dry

re about th

obody's picking it up. Nobody has seen Idris in two months, and I w

un

s mouth, held it for four full second

years not caring about the Okafors. It was a full-time job and I had become very good at it. I ne

as wiping down the counter when so

xact note I had spent three year

my face, which is how I knew it was bad, because Tun

dare," he s

going to d

nt the color

bove the d

e, memorably, at the DMV. In every version I was cool as stone and said something devastat

ng off him like it belonged to a bigger man. There were shadows under his eyes dark as thumbprints, and beneath his brown ski

there were lines. Black and branching, fine as ro

student woke up.

For you, with love. Sir, the l

planted himself beside me with his arms folded and

id quietly. "It's

e-you me. I will end

I said. "

s not

o the

eyes and then at Idris's, and withdrew exactly eleven feet, to the pass-th

closed,

says open

ign is

He didn

true one is that three years of hating someone becomes its own kind of intimacy, a

you wan

ody, "Is this a threat or a stat

e a coin I had forg

ask you to forg

s a short co

her, as if he had been using it very little. "I came beca

as not a man who joked. He had a sense of humor the way some p

ot funny,

agreed. "

like a man who expected to b

st seen being dragged across a white shirt, and from there they had spread. Across his chest. Around

re I had felt the tearing three yea

, around three in the morning, I had wanted it to hurt him. I

st, then the rest." He did up the buttons with fingers that weren't q

r than I meant. "You don't

o," he said. "I

em shake. My mother's ring pressed into my thumb. In the c

w l

e. A man who had

he Refusal finishes. You'll be free of me, completel

r. I thought of two hundred and eleven people holding one breath. I thought:

grinder ticke

ething," I said, "you're three year

ly. "I made a choice for you once without asking. I won't do that agai

m that family had ever said to me, and I

ee days,"

ed in his face, almost a smi

I count things when

t for three years, had not st