The hangover had nearly swallowed me whole.

“No. Invite me. I love a good girls’ night.”

Once again I had no idea if he was joking or not.

“You seen Ben around today?” he asked.

“No, why?”

“Nothing. Just haven’t seen him. He usually comes up to the office to get a paper. Didn’t get one yesterday, either.”

“Maybe he’s sick,” I said, thinking about that cough he had. How he hadn’t looked all that good yesterday on the bridge.

“Yeah. You’re right,” Kevin said, and lumbered off in his Adidas shower sandals toward the ice-cave office.

Christ, I thought, is that it? Really? Kevin was just going to turn around and not check on Ben? Who might be sick?

We keep to our own, he’d said when I first met him. And he wasn’t joking.

I put my cash in my pocket and headed back over to the laundry building to grab my things from the dryer. I’d had to rewash everything because it spent that night I’d been so drunk in the washing machine, getting stinky.

Tiffany was out in front of her trailer, emptying a bucket of water in the bushes.

“Hey,” I said with a happy leap in my chest at the sight of her.

She turned and gave me a wan smile.

“Still feeling rough?” I asked.

“So rough. Oh my God, Bucket-o-Colada was a bad idea. But your hair looks fucking awesome.”

“It’s really dry,” I said, feeling the brittle edges.

“Yeah. You gotta condition the shit out of it.”

“I’ll have to get some next time I go to town.”

“Wait.” Tiffany went back inside her trailer and came out with a few foil sample packs. “Take these—”

“I can’t,” I said, thinking about Phil and her kids and how she’d said they were late on all their payments.

“Take them,” she said. “Please. It’s…it’s nice to give someone something for a change, you know?”

I nodded and took the packets, shoving them in my pocket with the money.

I was so rich all of a sudden.

“Your kids must be coming home soon.”

Her pale face lightened at the mention of her kids. “Yeah. Mom’s gonna drop them off in an hour.”

“How was the bad television marathon?” I asked.

She smiled. “I slept through it. And Bebe had to leave at two, so it was kind of anticlimactic.”

“Your sister was pretty awesome.”

“She is. She’s going to college at night and works full time, so she doesn’t get a whole lot of time to take off like that. Bebe is the best. I wouldn’t—” She stopped and shook her head, and I remembered her finger against my neck, that grief in her eyes. And I knew that place so well. Not that I ever had friends, or encouragement or help, but I remembered feeling like an open wound to the world.

“Would she help you get away from Phil?” I asked, taking a leap off the bridge right into her problems.

Her eyes narrowed at me. “It’s none of your goddamn business, but I don’t need to get away from Phil. I need him to hold down a job.”

I blinked at her tone, surprised. That night at the sink, she’d looked so broken. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Put your nose in? God, what is it with you and Joan? We’re married, we’re working shit out, and I don’t need you guys.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Whatever,” she said, and went back inside with her mop and bucket.

After a moment I turned away and got my clothes, ratty and holey. But clean.

I put my things away and caught sight through my bedroom window of Ben’s trailer. Dark. Quiet. I went into the kitchen and looked out the window at his garden. Dark. Quiet.

Shit.

What if he was really sick in there? Or worse? What if he was dying—right now—and Kevin couldn’t be bothered to check up on him?

And I was too chicken.

Gah.

I slammed my way out of my trailer and stomped past Joan’s. Inside I could hear the bass line of some heavy rock song. The closer I got to Ben’s, though, the quieter it seemed. The darker.

As I knocked on the door, I could feel my heartbeat in the palms of my hands.

I really didn’t want to have to break in there and find him sick in bed or dead on the floor or anything, really, in between.

“Ben?” I said when initially there wasn’t an answer.

I knocked again and from inside the trailer I heard a thump.

“What!” he said, wrenching open the screen door. He looked awful. Up to this moment, I’d only ever seen him in neatly pressed tee shirts, his hair tidy, his pants clean. But now, he wore dirty sweatpant cutoffs and a white tee shirt stained with dark red and black spots down the front.

“Ben!” I cried. “Are you all right?”

“Peachy. Fucking peachy. What do you—” He coughed hard into his hand, where he held a red bandana. He coughed for like a minute and then when he was done, he spit into the bandana, wadded it up in a ball, and tossed it into the sink. “What do you want, Annie?” he sighed, sounding utterly worn.

“I just…I wanted to check on you. Kevin said he hadn’t seen you today.”

“I’m under the weather.”

“I can see that…Do you need anything?”

Ben’s eyes were dark. Very dark, nearly black it seemed, and utterly unreadable. Whether he was grieving or angry or sad or scared, I couldn’t tell. They were blacked-out windows, through which I could see nothing.

“I’m fine,” he sighed. “Thank you for asking. It’s just…just a cold—” Then, right in front of my eyes, he blanched and his eyes rolled back. I jerked open the door and grabbed his shoulder with one hand and his arm with the other, and held him up as best I could.

“Ben!” Was he fainting?

“Christ, girl, I’m right here,” he whispered, pulling away from me.

“Come on.” I wouldn’t let him pull away. I put my arm around his shoulders and half-led, half-shoved him toward his settee. Once he was sitting, I started opening up cupboards, looking for water glasses.

“Where are your cups?”

“In the sink,” he said. “I’ve got one in the sink.”

I filled the cup with water and set it down in front of him. With both hands shaking, he picked it up and managed to dribble half of it down his chest. “Fuck,” he breathed, setting it down. “I feel like shit.”

“It’s just a cold?”

“Flu maybe? Who the hell knows?”

“You got anything to eat?”

He pointed over to the stove, where he’d been pouring chicken noodle soup from a Tupperware container into a saucepan.

“You want this?”

“Yeah.” I put the rest of it in the pan and then turned on a burner.

“You made homemade chicken noodle soup?”

“No. I got a lady-friend that made it.”

From outside, a woman shouted, “Hey, you old fart, I got you some meds!”

You could have knocked me over with a pin when Joan walked into the trailer like she owned it.

I turned and lifted an eyebrow at Ben. Was Joan his lady-friend?

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he muttered.

“Well, well, you guys are cozy. Is his hacking all night keeping you up too?” Joan asked, stepping over to the table. She tipped a plastic bag out, dumping all kinds of cold medicine onto the table. Daytime formulas, nighttime formulas, sinus stuff, pain reliever. There was about a hundred dollars’ worth of over-the-counter medicine on that table.

“Something here should fix you,” Joan said, and then she turned to me and crossed her arms over her chest. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Making sure he’s not dead.” I stirred the soup when it started to bubble on the stove.

“Yeah, we can’t have Ben die, can we?”

“I’m alive,” he muttered. “Now both of you go away.”

“Later!” Joan said, lifting her hands up. “And you’re welcome. For the medicine.”

“Fuck your medicine.”

“Lovely,” Joan said. “You coming?” she asked me.

“Yeah, just…” I tested the temperature of the soup and then poured it into a bowl, turned off the stove, and put the bowl down in front of Ben. “Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked him. He really looked sick, and what was the deal with the weird dried blood on his shirt?