“Are you kidding me?” I say, thinking about the eight dollars, tip included, I just spent for nothing. The alt-looking girl offers me a quiet look of sympathy.

I look back at Aisha. “He just poured our drinks out and is now ignoring me,” I say, loud enough so that everyone will know. The orange sweat-suited women either pretend not to hear, or they don’t. The football-talking guys are oblivious, as football-talking guys tend to be.

Aisha motions for me to come to her.

“What’s his problem?” I say.

“Long story,” she answers. “Just ignore him. Or better yet, when he goes in the back, get the girl to make us some new drinks. She’ll do it, I’m pretty sure.”

“Hmm,” I say, still talking loudly. “That’s really weird and possibly illegal.”

“Pick your battles,” Aisha replies, and I sit down next to her, latteless.

Conversation comes less easily today. Possibly it’s because I just charged drinks to Mommy’s credit card and I didn’t get them and that makes me feel like a wimp. But it’s also because Aisha called me, and I don’t know why. I mean, can’t she do better? I think she can.

“The Alamo,” I say, after a lengthy silence.

“What?”

I shrug. “You said, ‘Pick your battles.’ ”

She rolls her eyes, and I imagine permanently sewing my lips shut, because clearly she was at her dorky humor limit the other day at the zoo.

“The Bulge,” she says back, and I look down at my crotch without thinking about it.

She raises one eyebrow. “Mm-hmm,” she says. “I don’t know what you’re thinking. Me, I was picking a battle. I should have said, ‘Of the Bulge.’ Sorry.”

I crack up, relieved yet embarrassed to have so quickly brought the focus to my dick.

“So, Billings. Why?” she asks, and I’m happy to have the topic changed.

“Well, you know. It was South Beach or the French Riviera or here, so” — I cock my head and motion around us — “obviously we made the right choice. For me, anyway.”

“Obviously,” she says. “That’s what brought us here too, my family. Well, that and the huge black population.”

We look around the café. Fifteen or so people, all white except Aisha. Not a brownish hue to be seen. Not even a tanned person, really.

“So it’s massive,” I say.

She nods. “There are a hundred thousand people in this city and almost five hundred of us are black, so that’s … something.”

I laugh. She does not laugh. “Oh. You’re serious.”

She goes back to nodding, but this time really slowly.

“Oh my God. There are like five hundred black people at my school.”

“Take me with you,” she says.

I get a semi hard-on. “Um. Okay.”

“My dad was the offensive line coach for the Indoor Football League team here. Got the job and moved us here from Lincoln, Nebraska, when I was in ninth grade. Two years later, the team folded, and guess what? Still here! He coaches at Rocky Mountain College now.”

“Billings has a pro football team?”

“Had. The Billings Outlaws. Raised the black population of the city about ten percent.”

I do the math and realize that she is potentially not exaggerating. I don’t know whether to laugh or what, so I open my eyes wide to show her I know that’s crazy and sad and all of that. She accepts my reaction with a similar eye widening.

I hear a “psst” behind me. It’s the alternative barista girl. She has two steaming lattes on the counter. The barista guy is not in sight. I jump up and grab the coffees. The nice barista has sketched a pretty heart in the foam on our lattes.

“Isn’t that sweet?” I ask, handing Aisha one of the mugs.

Aisha looks down at her drink. “I love foam art,” she says.

“You do?”

“My favorite thing in the entire world.”

“Is this more misinformation? Should I assume that a lot of what you say isn’t true?”

She nods twice.

“Well, it’s my favorite thing too. It’s modern cave art. Years from now, anthropologists will study foam art formations and make sweeping generalizations about our lost coffee culture.”

“Most probably,” Aisha says, sipping her latte, thereby smudging her coffee heart. Now it looks like a cursive L.

She tells me she just graduated from high school and she’s looking for work, although obviously not too hard, since we’re sitting in a coffee shop in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon. I explain the basic facts about coming to visit my dad, leaving out the parts about him dying and my not having seen him in fourteen years. There are some things you don’t tell a girl on your first date.

And yeah. This is definitely a date. The eye contact. Way crazy eye contact.

“So tell me a long story,” I say. “Why did that asshole pour our drinks out?”

She bites her lip. “I may have dumped the contents of a lunch tray on his head once.”

I laugh. “Ooh! Sounds like a good long story. Why’d you do it?”

She seems nervous, maybe. Her eyes keep darting around instead of staying focused on me, as they have been for the better part of ten minutes.

“I wouldn’t have come here if I knew he worked here.”

“What did he do?”

“He was being nasty to someone I care about,” she says.

“A friend?”

“Well …” She pauses, glancing back at me. “Me, actually.”

“Well, good for you,” I say, like someone would say to a child who has just painted a stick-figure portrait of his family. I cringe when I hear it. “I mean, that is — sticking up for yourself and all. Not to jump to conclusions, but, racial stuff?”

“Something like that,” she says, looking away again. I follow her glance and notice that the skinhead barista guy is back and now mopping the floor in front of the football guys. He looks kind of funny in an apron, and I hope he feels embarrassed.

“Maybe we should go someplace else?” she says.

This time I get fully hard. I’m about to invite Aisha home, which may or may not be okay with my parents, but I don’t care. I have a basement, and the stairs are right off the back door. If they have to know, I’ll make it okay with them. This is really happening. Aisha. Me. Really. Happening.

“Uh, sure,” I say, and Aisha is standing now and I’m really not in a good position to stand, so I stay seated and cross my legs.

The barista comes over to our area with his mop, and I feel my chest tighten. A part of me wants to hurt this guy, even though he’s bigger than me. As he mops around the table between us, he mumbles, “How do you like living on the streets, dyke sauce?”

“Piss off, Colt,” she mumbles back.

“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer man-girl,” he whispers.

“You say one more thing and I’ll stab you in the fucking neck. Don’t think I won’t.”

He blows her a kiss and moves on. I look at Aisha, who glances at me and then turns away.

I stare down at my feet as I try to figure out what just happened. I feel as if someone stole the air from my chest. Like a second ago I was pumped full of all these possibilities, and now they’re gone, and the air around us is thick and troubled.

I look back at Aisha. She is still not looking at me. I want her to tell me that I misheard. That this didn’t just happen. That this asshole barista guy didn’t just imply that she lives on the street, and she is, what, a lesbian?

And then Aisha just leaves. Walks to the door and leaves. I jump up and follow her.

“I’m sorry,” I say once we’re outside, but I don’t really know what I’m sorry for.

“You’re sorry?” she says, not nasty exactly, but maybe a bit bewildered. “What for? Because some asshole called me a name? Because I’m a dyke? Because my dad found out and kicked me out and I’m sleeping in the fucking zoo? I’m at the end of my rope here, and you’re sorry? What exactly are you sorry about?”

I really don’t know what to do. So I do something I don’t do. I put my arms around her and gently hug. She smells lightly of sweat and something I can’t place, almost like olive oil. Her thick hair wraps around my ear and envelops it, and she hugs me back a little. I want to memorize the feeling of her body against mine. When she whimpers in my ear, I pull her closer.