“Sure.”

She said, “My place or yours?” then laughed too loudly.

I said, “I’ll come to you.”

I drove to Venice as if in a dream. Parked in back of the storefront on Pacific, impervious to the graffiti and the trash smells, the shadows and sounds that filled the alley.

By the time I reached the front door she had it open. Dim lights touched upon the hulls of heavy machinery. Wood-sweetness and lacquer-bite floated forth from the workshop, mixing with her perfume- one I’d never smelled before. It made me feel jealous and antsy and thrilled.

She had on a gray-and-black floor-length kimono, the bottom hems flecked with sawdust. Curves through silk. Slender wrists. Bare feet.

Her auburn curls were lustrous and loose, tumbling around her shoulders. Fresh makeup, age lines I’d never seen. The heart-shaped face I’d woken up to so many mornings. Still beautiful- as familiar as morning. But some region of it new, uncharted. Journeys she’d taken alone. It made me sad.

Her dark eyes burned with shame and longing. She forced herself to look into mine.

Her lip trembled and she shrugged.

I took her in my arms, felt her wrap around me and adhere, a second skin. Found her mouth and her heat, lifted her in my arms, and carried her up to the loft.

The first thing I felt the next morning was confusion- a desolate bafflement, throbbing like a hangover, though we hadn’t drunk. The first thing I heard was a slow rhythmic rasp- a leisurely samba-beat from down below.

Empty bed beside me. Some things never change.

Sitting up, I looked over the loft rail and saw her working. Hand-sanding the rosewood back of a guitar clamped to a padded vise. Hunched at her bench, wearing denim overalls, safety goggles, and a surgical mask, her hair tied up in a curly knot, bittersweet-chocolate curls of wood collecting at her feet.

I watched her for a while, then got dressed and went downstairs. She didn’t hear me, kept working, and I had to step directly in front of her to catch her attention. Even then there was a delay before our eyes met; her focus, narrowed and intense, was aimed on the richly patterned wood.

Finally she stopped, placing the file on the bench top and pulling down the mask. The goggles were filmed with pinkish dust, making her eyes look bloodshot.

“This is it- the one for Joni,” she said, cranking open the vise, lifting the instrument, and rotating it to give me a frontal view. “Your basic carved belly, but instead of maple she wants rosewood for the back and sides with only a minimal arch- should be interesting to hear it.”

I said, “Good morning.”

“Good morning.” She put the guitar back in the vise, kept her glance lowered even after the instrument was secured. Her fingers grazed the file. “Sleep well?”

“Great. How about you?”

“Great, too.”

“Feel like breakfast?”

“Not really,” she said. “There’s plenty in the fridge-mi fridge es su fridge. Feel free.”

I said, “I’m not hungry either.”

Her fingernails drummed the file. “Sorry.”

“For what?”

“Not wanting breakfast.”

“Major felony,” I said. “You’re busted.”

She smiled, looked down at the bench again, then back at me. “You know how it is- the momentum. I woke up early- five-fifteen. Because I really didn’t sleep well. Not because of- I was just restless, thinking about this.” Caressing the guitar’s convex back and tapping it. “Still trying to figure out exactly how I was going to get into the grain. This is Brazilian, quarter sawn- can you imagine how much I paid for a piece this thick? And how long I had to look to find one this wide? She wants a one-piece back, so I can’t afford to mess it up. Knowing that jams me up- it’s been slow going. But this morning I got into it pretty easily. So I kept going- I guess it just swept me along. What time is it?”

“Seven-ten.”

“You’re kidding,” she said, flexing her fingers. “Can’t believe I’ve been working for almost two hours.” Flexing again.

I said, “Sore?”

“No, I feel great. Been doing these hand exercises to ward off the cramps and it’s really working.”

She touched the file again.

I said, “You’re on a roll, kiddo. Don’t stop now.”

I kissed the top of her head. She took hold of my wrist with one hand, used the other to push the goggles up on her brow. Her eyes really were bloodshot. Poor goggle fit or tears?

“Alex, I-”

I placed a finger over her lips and kissed her left cheek. Remnants of the perfume, now familiar, tickled my nose. Mixed with wood dust and sweat- a cocktail that brought back too many memories.

I freed my wrist. She grabbed it, pressed it to her cheek. Our pulses merged.

“Alex,” she said, looking up at me, blinking hard. “I didn’t set it up to happen this way- please believe me. What I said about friendship was true.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for.”

“Somehow I feel there is.”

I said nothing.

“Alex, what’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know.”

She lowered my hand, pulled away, and faced the workbench.

“What about her?” she said. “The teacher.”

The teacher. I’d told her Linda was a school principal.

Demotion in service of the ego.

I said, “She’s in Texas. Indefinitely- sick father.”

“Oh. Sorry to hear that. Anything serious?”

“Heart problems. He’s not doing too well.”

She turned, faced me, blinked hard again. Memories of her own father’s sludged arteries? Or maybe it was the dust.

“Alex,” she said, “I don’t want to- I know I have no right to ask this, but what’s your… understanding with her?”

I moved to the foot of the bench, leaned on it with both hands, and stared up at the corrugations on the steel ceiling.

“There is no understanding,” I said. “We’re friends.”

“Would this hurt her?”

“I don’t imagine it would make her whoop for joy, but I’m not planning on submitting a written report.”

The anger in my voice was strong enough to make her clutch the bench top.

I said, “Listen, I’m sorry. This is just a lot to deal with and I’m feeling… jammed up, myself. Not because of her- maybe that’s part of it. But most of it is us. Being together, all of a sudden. The way it was last night… Shit, how long’s it been? Two years?”

“Twenty-five months,” she said. “But who’s counting.” She put her head on my chest, touched my ear, touched my neck.

“It could have been twenty-five hours,” I said. “Or twenty-five years.”

She inhaled deeply. “We fit,” she said. “I forgot how well.”

She came to me, reached up and held my shoulders. “Alex, what we had- it’s like a tattoo. You’ve got to cut deeply to remove it.”

“I was thinking in terms of fishhooks. Yanking them out.”

She flinched and touched her arm.

I said, “Choose your analogy. Either way it’s major pain.”

We stared at each other, tried to temper the silence with smiles, and failed.

She said, “There could be something again, Alex- why shouldn’t there be?”

Answers flooded my head, a babel of replies, contradictory jabber. Before I could pick a reason, she said, “Let’s at least think about it. What can we lose by thinking about it?”

I said, “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t not think about it. You own too much of me.”

Her eyes got wet. “I’ll take what I can get.”

I said, “Happy carving,” and turned to leave.

She called out my name.

I stopped and looked back. She had her hands on her hips and her face was contorted in that little-girl scrunch that women never seem to outgrow. Prelude to tears- probably carried on the X chromosome. Before the valves opened full-force she yanked down her goggles, picked up her file, turned her back on me, and began to scrape.