On the trip to the airport to pick up Angela, Novak nearly wrecks his rental car.  This he considers a bad sign.  He's in the passing lane and he hasn't remember how quickly the turnoff from 240 comes up, and when he tries to cut in the line of cars to his right a damn semi damn near takes him out.  He takes the exit in a blare of horns and actually has to pull off on the access road and stop.  He sits there shaking, the car's engine idling in petulance, like a horse ready to run.  He's not:  he just wants to sit a minute and contemplate the awfulness of what's not happened.  He rolls down the window.  The air is October crisp.

Novak reaches above the visor for his little cigars but draws back:  he's trying like hell to quit; he understands the suicidal underpinnings the habit has for him now.

Kill himself while contemplating his fate.  This fucking airport has a fated quality to it anyway.  He's come home after three years away, back to Oklahoma City.  Will Rogers Airport, named for a guy who died in a plane crash.  And Tulsa isn't any better:  that's one's Wiley Post, named for the poor bastard who was illfated enough to be piloting Will's plane.   Fate as a concept is haunting Novak's every thought right now.  Small wonder he can't keep his mind on something as mundane as driving.  He is here, meaning here at this airport, to meet Angela, with whom he has had a three year relationship.  For the past six months, he and Angela, at his suggestion, have been undergoing a sort of test.  This eventuality was not fated:  it came about because Novak, who had taught film and video for many years at Oklahoma City University, took a job in Tennessee.  He went there after half a professional lifetime in the same job at Oklahoma City University.  Half a professional lifetime.  Well, he's fifty-five now, and he's afraid.

He didn't ask Angela to come with him, although she might have.  He told himself--but not her--that, down the road, the time would surely be right for her to join him.  Novak was newly divorced then, and he had found Angela in the depth of his loneliness and his dread.  She was working for a video production company then, and their paths had crossed during a college recruitment shoot.  Novak sees her now as she was then:  her dark hair shoulder length and loose; the thin little glasses he knows that she still wears while she's working perched on her equally thin, straight nose.  Tank top and wheat jeans.  Denim shirt.  Sandals then, because it was June.  Just a shade over five-two and just exactly one hundred pounds.  God, she was lovely.  She is lovely.  And Novak was and is in love.  This he does not doubt.

They had made no commitments, of course.  They were far too wise and worldly for that.  She's been married too, and she loved her freedom, loved her professional world.  Loved nothing better than spending half the night in some editing bay, up to her beautiful ass in half inches and Betas, a forgotten, half-finished sandwich on the control board beside her, her feet hooked at the base of a swivel chair, her glasses, also forgotten, perched atop her head.  It had been after just such as session that Novak had first found his way into her bed, in a little apartment near downtown so crammed with books and videotape itself that there was barely room for the candles. 

It was after he had gone to Tennessee that she had taken the job in Dallas.  It was a smart move:  Colimas, where she is now, gets a lot of pickup work for independent features.  She is right there in the complex now, in the center of something life real film work, and he knows that she loves it.  Last summer she met Francis Ford Coppola, in the flesh.  Pretty fleshy flesh, too, according to her description.  He had called her Angie and had told her to call him about a job when he got back from Europe this fall.  Until this Labor Day she has called Novak, or he has called her, every night since he left and usually during the day because Angela has a tollfree number.  And of course they are on email:  who isn't?  She's been good about telling Novak the events of her busy life in ways that seem to include him, even though he is far away.  Novak has appreciated this:  even without the commitment, he has wanted to seem special to her  She is only thirty-three but is so skilled with his feelings that she seems much older, older even than he is in ways that count.  Even on Labor Day, Novak could not fault her presentation.  It was a model of how to do such a thing.

He's feeling steadier now.  He engages the rental car and drives, with adequate authority toward the airport.  He is early by an hour.  Her flight isn't due until 5:20.  It's a forty-five minute trip from Dallas, so she's probably just boarding.  Nearing the airport, Novak decides to light one of his little cigars, his cancer sticks.  He'd been down to two a day, but now it's more like a full tin of the things.  He has to stop that, but doesn't feel that he can right now.  But maybe after this trip.  He'll get through this first.

Novak could have just gone to see her in Dallas.  But when this conference came up Angela suggested they meet in Oklahoma City.  Neither of them has mentioned it, but Novak knows and he feels that Angela knows that this is because of Danny.  Danny is the thirty-year-old AD that Angela has been sleeping with several nights a week since Labor Day.  Angela had called Novak twice on that day, the first time around ten in the morning to tell him Hi:  the university was closed and Novak had been still in bed.  The second time was just before five, and Novak had been out jogging.  She'd left a message saying she'd been working all day and thought she'd go downtown and get some dinner, maybe hang around the jazzfest over in Dealy Plaza.  Said she loved him, and she'd call later.  But she didn't, not until the next day.  Then she told him what had happened the night before with Danny.  She'd said she'd been working with him for a month, and had thought for weeks it might happen.  She'd told Novak that she and Danny would probably have what she called a Physical Relationship for awhile.

Novak tries not to imagine Danny and especially not Danny and Angela together.  But when he inevitably gets such an unbidden picture, he sees Danny looking a lot like on of the young history professors on his campus, a guy named Sowards, who comes for Winnipeg.  He is single and Novak knows that female students are intrigued by him.  Sowards has sandy hair, worn anachronistically long.  He dresses in jeans, worn with a herringbone sport coat and usually a crew neck.  Novak does not know why he equates Sowards and Danny.  Maybe it's something generic.

Novak parks in the outside lot:  he could have pulled into the underground one, which it nearer the baggage claim, but he hates those subterranean caverns.  For a moment he cannot figure how to get the keys out of the ignition.  The car is one of the kind where you have to push a button behind the switch, and Novak, in his distracted states, misses that at first. Only when he gets out does he even note the make of the rental car:  a Taurus.  It is white and Novak wishes immediately for another color.  This one looks too institutional.

Angela is coming, she has told Novak, because she wants to show him that what they have is a separate thing.  She has always signed her emails "Your Angela."  On the day after Labor Day, she had written one immediately after their phone call and this one she had signed:  "Still Your Angela."  This touched Novak beyond what he could have imagined.  Still Your Angela.  She knows how to do these things, what to say.  He has feared for days that she is coming t tell him goodbye, and this fear is turning him inside out.  Even though he has made no commitment to her, Novak feels bonded to Angela.  He thinks of them as a couple.

He has not been completely true to her, if truth be told.  This also tortures him, though why is not clear.  Perhaps because his brief couplings, with a woman his age who owns a catering business in his new town, have not resonated with the incipient sense of excitement that Novak hears in Angela's voice when she says Physical Relationship.  To Novak, the term implies superb sex.  He has only had something close to that with Angela.  He knows this too well, and maybe this is what really tortures him.

The day has turned very cold.  Novak hurries into the terminal, turning up his jacket collar against the raw Oklahoma wind.  It is a relatively small airport, but it has a large bar.  Novak still has forty-five minutes.  Since the bombing of the Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City two years ago last spring, airport security will not allow passengers to be met at the gate.  Novak parks himself on a barstool facing the open part of the concourse.  He could spot her from here, but he doesn't want her to see him waiting in the bar.  She'll think he's drowning his sorrows, won't she?  So Novak orders an Asbolut Rocks and tosses it down quickly, failing to drown any sorrows  He can feel the alcohol in his veins:  vodka seems to get there faster.  He decides against another:  he'll have to ride this buzz.

For the next fifteen minutes Novak haunts the newsstand.  He finds a copy of Playboy that isn't in its plastic and reads The Playboy Advisor.  One letter writer claims his girlfriend wants too much sex.  He says he's exhausted.  Novak fleetingly wonders if this could be Danny, writing about Angela.  Novak never knew her to want too much sex.

He wanders.  People in airports have always depressed him, nor moreso than ever.  He averts his eyes from them, especially those with small children.  But really it is all of them.  He does not want to speculate on their stories.  His own sorrow has swallowed him whole.

A planeload of people straggles through the security area.  Angela is not among them.  Wrong plane.  Another ten minutes.  Will she even come?  What will Danny do all weekend?  Novak's brain is playing some desperate pingpong match.  Another planeload.  And there, at last, she is.

He has not seen her for over two months and Yes, she does seem changed, even at this distance.  Her hair is longer, for one thing.  It's in a lovely tousle now, as if she'd showered just before she left and then taken a quick swipe with a blow dryer.  Novak has seen her do that; get ready to go in five minutes.  She wears Levis and a lightweight leather jacket Novak knows well.  Her backpack, all she ever travels with, is slung over her right shoulder.  And something else:  she's wearing cowboy boots.  What the fuck is this?  He knows this is a Texas thing, but he wonders if it doesn't have more to do with some sinister metamorphosis at the hands of Danny, that shadowy buckaroo.  But there's more:  Angela has someone in tow.  It is a squat black woman, clad in the bright yellow and red colors Novak associates with tribal Africa. Indeed, she wears a turban of the same pattern.  She is moving slowly, and Angela has an arm hooked into hers, clearly lending support.  They make a strange pair.

Novak is sure, on the visible evidence, that Angela has taken in another stray, although how she managed this entanglement during the half hour on the plane it took to get here is remarkable even for her.  In this time with and without her, when they were together and throughout their shared telephone and e-mail life, Novak has personally known or heard about an endless procession of lost or at least wandering souls that Angela has taken pity upon.  Humans run a close race with cats:  at one time she had six of those under her roof.  There had also been more than one human at a time, though: the temp whose boyfriend had blackened her eye who Angela took in for nearly three weeks, and at the same time the janitor in her building, let go after he showed up for work drunk too many times.  Angela handed him money almost every payday and made the old fart promise not to spend it on booze, which of course he did.  And others, as they say, too numerous to mention.  Novak is certain the black woman is yet another such interlude, and he prays that it will be a brief one.  He wants to touch her taut, small breasts and smell the fresh soap in her hair.  He wants her naked  Reduced to elementals, surely she will realize--realize what?  That she was supposed to remain cloistered, waiting for him, maybe forever?

She sees him and guides her charge in his direction.  The squat woman seems difficult to guide, moving reluctantly.  He covers the distance to them and reaches out for Angela, who accepts his embrace but who kisses him, it seems to Novak, too lightly.  

"Hi," he says.

"Hi," she tells him.  "This is Ama."  She presents the black woman, who, up close, looks tentative and frightened.  Novak now begins to wonder whether Angela, rather than picking her up on the plane, has dragged the woman from some international exchange program in Dallas.  Is Novak to spring for another hotel room?  Will they all be bunking up together?  Novak's hopes, such as they were, begin to dwindle.          

He keeps his arm around Angela's shoulders, who makes no move to disengage herself but also none toward greater intimacy.  "Ama is from Tanzania," she explains.  "She has come all the way here to go to a church conference  I thought maybe we could save her taxi fare."

"Yes.  Church conference," Ama now clarifies.  Her voice is a sandpaper croak, a crone's rasp.  Novak sees not that her skin has a mulatto tinge, mottled with clusters of broken pigmentation.  "Church conference.  Baptist church," she insists, and Novak can tell that she is used to buttressing her limited English skills with outright stridency.  He doesn't like her at all.  But what he tells Angela is:

"Sure.  I rented a car.  Where's Ama going?"

"Baptist church," Ama insists.

"Quite a few of those around," Novak observes.  It doesn't come out right.

"This is the one downtown," Angela says.  "On Robinson, over by where Michael had his studio?"

Michael is a tall and gangly gaunt still photographer that Novak used to be certain Angela wanted to ball.  Thankfully, Michael had ultimately moved to Phoenix to work for a television station.  Novak reflects fleetingly on all the time he has spent wondering about all the people who might want to fuck Angela, or all the people Angela might wish to fuck.  This has never been what he wanted to do, but he has also never been able to keep from it, only control it.  Looking at her now, standing beatifically beside the obstinate Ama, Novak knows how much he loves her.  Angela's hair indeed is unbrushed, hanging in uncontemplated bangs above her brown eyes.  The unfortunate thought that maybe the tousled Angela has just come from an afternoon Boff with Good Old Danny now takes residence in Novak's turbulent mind.  But it doesn't dislodge his love her:  that stays, like the hard center of a diamond.

"OK," he says.  "I know where that church is.  It's where my scout troop used to meet, a hundred years ago.  Sure, First Baptist."

Angela takes this personal history in stride, but Ama doesn't.  Novak has blundered into some Tanzanian referential trap, because the woman now shakes her chunky head, insisting:  "No Scout.  No Scout.  Baptist church."

"We're taking you there, Ama," Angela assures her, deftly extracting herself from Novak's grasp and putting her own arm around Ama.  "We're driving you."

"She got luggage?" Novak now asks, realizing he shouldn't talk past the woman like that, but feeling petulant.

"Yes," Ama says.  "Luggage.  I have."

Novak moves the two women toward the escalator.  "It's down this way," he says.  And to Angela:  "If she has a lot, I can bring the car around."

They ride single file on the escalator, Ama first, then Angela, then Novak.  A child pushes past them, a boy of perhaps ten with a brilliant shock of reddish hair.  Above them, his mother calls after him reproachfully:  "Wait, Danny!  Wait!"  Novak can see Angela in profile, and she shows no reaction to this coincidence of nomenclature.  Can the name be not yet fully burned upon her soul?

When they arrive at the baggage carousel, Ama seems immediately perturbed that the bags have not yet been dispensed.  She huffs a little and actually removes her scuffed shoes.  They sit like small, tired boats in harbor beside her stern brown feet.  Her ankles are very thick.

"How many bags, Ama?" Angela asks her.

"One.  One luggage."  The conveyer belt is turning now.  By this point Novak is certain that Ama's bag will go missing.  That would fit the day so far just fine.  But after only one revolution of the belt, Ama beelines toward an oversized suitcase, leaving her shoes behind.  Angela gives Novak an apologetic shrug and puts picks up the shoes.  They follow Ama, who, Novak reflects, is probably far better conditioned to heft the bag than he is.  But she waits for Novak to pick it up.  It is miserably heavy.

 "Did you pack bricks?" Novak wants to know, trying not to struggle with the thing.

Ama actually laughs.  She understands this joke.  "No bricks," she says, showing him a small cavern of yellowed teeth.  Angela hands Ama her shoes, which she shrugs into by propping herself with one hand against Angela's shoulder.  And then they are off, Novak feeling like Sisyphus.

"So," Angela says once they are outside.  "Maybe you should pull the car around."

Novak knows he'll have to drive completely around the exit gate to do that.  "It's close," he says.  "Let's hoof it."

Angela looks skeptical.  " know that's heavy," she says.  Danny could probably hoist it one-handed, Novak speculates, although nothing in his knowledge of Angela has ever indicated that she dotes on male physicality.  But then, Danny is a Physical Relationship.  Maybe she's changed.  He's damn sure never seen her wearing cowboy boots.

Ama seems to be leading the way, although she can't have any idea where she is going.  She walks with stout purpose, and Novak tries to shout directions.  He changes hands with the bag:  a mistake.  His left arm, definitely his weaker one, can barely support it.  He switches back, nearly tripping.  He knows that Angela is aware of this.  Mercifully, they arrive at the Taurus.  Novak sets the bag down and gropes for the keys.  He opens the passenger side and for a moment he fears that Ama is going to park herself in the front seat.  But he gets her situated in the back and then somehow gets that suitcase into the trunk.  Angela sits primly in the front when he returns, her backpack on the rear seat next to Ama, who has placed what Novak regards as a possessive hand upon it.

He starts the car, badly wanting one of his small cigars.  He has always suspected that Angela considers them an affectation, which of course they are.  He wouldn't light one anyway:  that would blow Ama's Baptist mind.

"It's cold here," Angela observes.  She shrugs into herself a little, as if debating whether she should have come at all, given the weather.

"You forget that Oklahoma wind after you've been gone awhile," Novak says.  He wants to take her hand, knows this isn't a good idea but doesn't know why it isn't.  He catches the 240 loop and drives toward downtown.  He has forgotten the endless level ground of his native state, a depressing flatness like atonal music.  The city's indifferent skyline looms before them.

"Big city!" Ama exclaims.

"Not even a million," Novak tells her.  "But they're mostly Baptist."

"All Baptist?" Ama demands.  This joke she doesn't get.

"No," he explains.  "But a lot of them."  This happens to be true.  He takes the downtown exit, which is now routed differently than in his days here.  Angela should notice this as well, although she makes no comment.  She's incredibly placid, the way she gets on the rare occasions that she smokes pot.  Did she also board the plane with a snootful of Danny's stash, Novak wonders, his paranoia rising like sap.

They pick up Robinson at Main.  Novak knows they'll go right by the bombing scene:  in high school he worked at the YMCA, which is pretty much across the street from there.  He doesn't want to go through all this with Ama and he hopes Angela will do it, but once they care there the sheer fated weight of the tragedy silences all three of them.  It is not that there is a great deal to see:  the chain link fence, its sad tributes fluttering in the wind, creates a mournfully formidable barrier.  It is the knowledge of what happened there; the realization that children died here.  And adults.  And adults.  But children, trustingly off to day care.

"This bomb place?" Ama finally asks.

"Yes," Angela tells her.,  "Yes, it is."  She has misted up a little, and this wrenches Novak's heart.  Now he really wants to take her hand.  But still he doesn't.  It's this place that keeps him from it now.  Unlike the Kennedy assassination, Novak knows, people in this town don't much like to talk about where they were and what they were doing at that moment, on that morning.  At first they swapped stories, but not now.  Novak has a brother who lives here, although they are not close.  Novak's brother is a journeyman carpenter, and he had been working a mile away that morning, outside.  He told Novak that his first thought had been that this was the end of the world.  Remembering that, Novak looks at beautiful Angela.  She is still in thoughtful repose.  His angst about her is briefly dwarfed by these memories of the bombing.  Then Novak's sense of loss and futility returns.

They are at the church, a red brick monstrosity old and unkempt.  This section of town is generally rundown, given over mostly to Vietnamese now.  The church is silent and forlorn on a Friday night:  even Baptists have other things to do.  Who could be expecting Ama here?  Has she misunderstood?

Novak parks in the lot across the street from the church.  He looks at Angela and says, too shortly, "What now?"

Angela is unruffled.  "Let's see," she says, disengaging her seatbelt and opening the car door.  "Come on, Ama."

Novak watches the two of them move across the deserted street.  Mostly he watches Angela.  He loves her.  He knows this with hopeless certainty now, in the way that only the errant in love can know.  He watches them confer at the double doors of the church.  Then they move off toward the old Victorian that stands beside the church.  Evidently they believe this may be the parsonage.

Novak frets:  he badly wants to be done with Ama.  His heart knows how selfish this is, but he doesn't give a damn.  He flips the radio dial, finds KOMA, the 50,000-watt top 40 blaster of his youth in this town.  Now it's Country.  Ah, shit.

After an interval which seems to Novak approximately the running time of Long Day's Journey Into Night, Angela emerges.  As if in homage to that play, dusk has even descended on this shambling mess of a city.  Angela appears to be conversing with someone out of sight behind the door--Ama?  The minister?  Novak can't see.  He considers getting out and joining her, but he feels too nascent.  Just as well:  she's said her goodbyes.  Novak does get out to open the door for her:  he feels a little renewed, as if their time together can start now.

But he blows it.  "Hands across the water all done?" he asks as she approaches.  The words spill on the pavement in front of him like the undigested bile they are.  Nothing he can say seems to come out right.

"She's fine," Angela says.  "I gave her our hotel.  We're still at Holiday, right?"

"Yeah, downtown."  Novak waits until she is seated and then shuts her door.  It locks automatically.  He sees that she is putting on her seatbelt and allows himself a flutter of captor's smugness, but he knows he hasn't really got her. She's just visiting, perhaps even on loan.  

They don't talk that much on the way downtown, and at the desk, once Angela gets her key, she starts ahead to the elevator.  Since he hasn't finished checking them in, Novak is prepared to get pissed at her.  But then Angela gives him a squeeze on the butt and says:  "Hurry, willya?"  This is husky Angela, the one who turns Novak's guts to molten lava.  He grins.  The damn desk clerk grins.  Angela is gone.

By himself on the ride up, Novak ponders the condom issue.  Right before their parting, in some permissive postcoital bliss, they had promised each other that, if there were other partners, rubbers would be the order of the night.  Or day.  Maybe Angela and Danny fucked during the day, on break.  Probably did.  Should Novak ask about this pledge?  It would sound silly and even patronizing, but dammit he doesn't want Danny's fucking miserable Texas germs.  Doesn't want Angela to have them either, although that's her fucking lookout.   No:  he can't feel that way.  He's not that spiteful, even at his worst.  And the rubber thing is a moot point anyway:  he doesn't have any, and it's not the sort of item you call room service for.  Not at the fucking Holiday Inn in downtown Oklahoma City, anyway.  Maybe in Dallas.  Danny probably has an account.

In room number 633, he finds Angela waiting for him.  No more cowboy boots.  She's sitting on the bed reading the room service menu, probably starving as usual.  He loves the fact that she eats, always has.  Your Always Hungry Girl, she once signed an e-mail to him.  He loved that.  Novak desperately watches his weight, and Angela doesn't have to.  He even loves that.  He just stands and looks at her.  The t-shirt she's changed into says Texas Rangers.  A, hell.  This depresses Novak even further. if such a thing is possible.  He can't remember Angela ever acknowledging the existence of the sport.  But she looks fantastic.  Her toes, like her fingernails, are pale pink.  And what the fuck is this??  She's wearing a thin gold ankle bracelet.  Right there, around her heartbreakingly beautiful right ankle.  Novak doesn't remember any mother fucking ankle bracelets.  First the boots, and now an ankle bracelet.  Texas:  a land unto itself.

Angela looks up from her culinary study.  "Hiya," she says.  She gives her hair a shake in that way that drives Novak to utter distraction.  He drops her backpack on the floor along with his own bag, and goes to her.  Novak can't help it;  He is as in love with her now as he knew he was the moment he first saw her.  All the cliches about love are true; all the rationality in the world can't ruffle even one of them.

Angela opens her arms to him and they sink back on the bed together.  Novak kisser her, first her mouth, which is open and wet. and then her throat, especially at the hollow, and her neck and her ears and her eyes.  His hands are in her hair.  She cries out a little, as she always has, half a moan and half a sigh.          Novak runs his right hand up under t-shirt, along her back.  She makes a more urgent sound, one that Novak also knows well.  Danny is in here with the, but he seems to have retreated to the closet to brand a steer or something.  Novak removes his right hand from under Angela's shirt and replaces it with his left.  She arches her back, letting this happen, enjoying it.  Novak's right hand goes to Angela's crotch which, through her panties, is already soaking fucking wet.  This is familiar to Novak as well.  Angela really does like fucking.  It's a form of communication for her in ways that elude most people.  Novak has always known that Angela had a lot to teach him about making love--has done so, in fact.  And she is so skilled that she can do it passively, as now, writhing under his touch.  Ah, God, he loves her.  Both his hands find the waist of her panties and he drags them down.  Angela lies back.  Her own hands clutch the headboard of the bed.

At her ankles, Novak stops clutching the wet panties in his hand and pulls them taut against her skin.  He looks at the pale pink toes and then at the gleaming ankle bracelet.  Like Dorothy's shoes, it seems impervious to his touch.  This golden token of submission actually exudes superiority, even control.  Novak can't really grasp this concept and so he lets it go, along with the panties.  They slide past Angela's heels and off her arched feet.  She opens her legs.

Novak is just about as hard as a Great Sequoyah.  Angela's eyes are hooded with passion but open, and she is smiling.  Hands leaving the headboard, she reaches out to help him with the belt.  "I want you," she says.  Me, Novak's brain rejoices.  Not the cowboy; me.

The fucking phone rings.  Just like in a fucking bad movie.  This is a bad movie.  Only Angela, radiant, ready, and more beautiful than ten stars of the silver screen, is miscast.  She deserves something better.  Better dialogue than anything Novak can move up with, for starters.

"Don't answer it,"  he predictably says, already withering on the vine.

ut Angela has already recovered from whatever ecstacy she was experiencing and far too fast, it seems to Novak.  "Got to," she says.  What the hell does that mean?

Novak, just as predictably, fumes.  "Why?" he demands.  Surely she hasn't given What's His Ass this number.  The phone keeps ringing.

"Because it might be Ama," she says.  "She wasn't very settled when I left her."  She snags the receiver.

"Ah Jesus," Novak exclaims, now in open revolt.

Angela makes a shushing motion, her naked arm punctuating his loss.  "Hello?" she says.  She waits.  Then:  "Oh, Good Lord.  How did it happen?"

Novak is sitting on the edge of the bed, his Levis still half off.  He is miserable.

"I'm on my way over," Angela says, and hangs up.

"What the fuck," Novak demands.

Angela is pulling on her own jeans.  No underwear.  "Ama had some kind of attack.  She couldn't breathe.  That pastor took her over to Mercy Emergency."

Novak asks the question, even though he already knows the answer.  "Why do you have to go?  They'll take care of her."

"Because she asked for me," Angela says.  She is pulling on socks, white ones.  The sight of them also exacerbates Novak's frustrated desire, since he loves this look.  He stands impotently, watching the ankle bracelet disappear into a cotton cuff. She doesn't bother to change her Texas Rangers t-shirt.

Novak is standing now, pulling up his pants.  "I'm pretty damn tired of this, Angela," he says.

"Tired of what?" She has produced tennis shoes.  At least the boots are off the menu.

"Tired of the whole fucking thing.  This is our time.  I know goddam good and well you have somebody to go back to.  And now you're making me share this time, too."

Angela is shrugging into her jacket.  "Look, Novak," she says.  Novak.  She only calls him by his last name when she's really pissed.  "You made the rules here.  Don't cry foul over your own game.  And Ama's a stranger in a strange land.  She has nobody here.  What would you do in my place?"  

Novak says nothing.

She opens the door.  "You can go with me if you want to," she says.

He stands there.  She leaves.

Novak contemplates the shut door awhile, then turns to the window.  They're up pretty high, and he can see a lot of lights.  Second biggest fucking city in area in the fucking world.  Only fucking Tehran is bigger.  Not even a million people, thought.  He feels really bad, unmoored.  He slumps into the desk chair and lights one of his cigars.  The sign on the desk says Thank You For Not Smoking.  Shit, they've got them in a nonsmoking room.  What next?  Oh God, never ask What Next. You'll find out.  You'll always find out.

Three long inhales later, he realizes he has to go after her.  He tries to raise a window so the damn smoke alarm won't go off, but it's fastened shut.  Fuck it, he thinks, and pulls on his own jacket.  Place can burn down for all he cares at this point.

Mercy Hospital is just five blocks away.  Novak walks through the full dark, conversing morosely with himself.  Why didn't he just keep his mouth shut; be Supportive?  Isn't that what love is all about?  Support, especially in tough times?  And he does love her; God he loves her.  He loves her body and her soul and her essence and her pale pink toenails and her white socks and her tennis shoes, which Thank God weren't Nike, and even her ankle bracelet which, in his mind, binds her to someone else.  His rational mind comprehends all this, but his guts still churn away.

OK the tension was already there, but he should have broken it by giving instead of trying to take.  He wants to make it up, even if it makes him look weak.  He's already fucked up; what has he got to lose?

The emergency waiting room, even at eight o'clock, is already a miserable collection of wounded souls.  A welfare mother clutches a wheezing baby to her chest outsized chest.  A fat man sits with a towel oozing blood over his nose, neck craned back, eyes on the ceiling.  Jesus, could a nosebleed be that bad?  And there's a little black kid with what looks like a fishing line hanging out of his pants, even though the zipper is up.  Has he somehow snared himself in his pitiful little dick?  His mother sits beside him, fretting.  Probably has.

Regarding all this misery, Novak knows that he has not only done wrong, but is getting ready to compound the injury.  Not because he came here:  that would be all right if he could put his heart into it.  But he knows his speech will betray him; he's gone too far on this.  He is considering leaving when he sees Angela, far down the hall.  Her back is to him and she is talking with a doctor, a young man who looks to Novak to be about twelve.  They all do these days and, of course, Novak can tell from the look on his baby's breath of a face that he is already captivated by Angela as well.  He says something and Novak sees Angela nod.  Then she is turning his way.

He panics.  This won't work.  He's next to a door that says Pastoral Care, and on ragged impulse he grabs the knob.  It turns.  He goes in, letting the door close behind him.  Not the worst of places:  maybe something is around to hear his confession or grant him absolution or something.

Nobody is.  The room is dark, no windows.  As Novak's eyes adjust to the murk, he sees that he is in one room which apparently leads to another and that there is some source of illumination in there.  He peers around the corner and sees a crucifix on the wall, dimly lit by some hidden bulb.  He feels he's been cruelly transported from a bad movie into a bad Ingmar Bergman movie.  The crucifix offends him mightily:  What do Jews do in a place like this?  Or Muslims?  At least Ama will be a home here if her condition warrants some kind of unction:  she's a Christian.

He returns to the entrance, planning to sneak a surreptitious peek into the hall.  He has behaved in a ridiculous manner, but Hell:  he felt squeezed by circumstance.  He can get out of this blunder, he tells himself.  Surely he can.  In fact, now that he thinks about it clearly, he feels very calm, ready to greet Angela heartily and take charge, be what he is supposed to be, a caring human being instead of a rabid skunk.  His self-loathing now fades a little in a ray of hope that shines about as brightly as the pitiful crucifix around the corner:  Novak knows that he is ready for good behavior.  He turns the knob.  The damn thing won't open.

He tries again.  Is it stuck?  Ah shit, this too?  When he asked What Next, he meant it rhetorically, for fucking Christ's sake.  He rattles the knob.  No go.  He's locked in.

What kind of a day do you have to have to end up locked in a preacher's study in the bowels of a hospital in Oklahoma City?  He considers his options, none of them good.  He could bang on the door.  But what is Angela is standing outside?  How the hell is he even going to begin to explain this?  It's not even farce; it's burlesque, for God's sake.  Unbidden, a memory from Novak's film history reading surfaces:  Fred Karno, Chaplin's teacher back when young Charlie was a knockabout stage clown, saying to his seltzer-squirting, pratfalling brood:  Keep It Wistful, gentlemen.  Keep It Wistful.  This isn't Wistful.  This is just plain awful.  God, what to do?

He gropes around awhile and finds a desk.  Yes, there's a telephone on it.  He thumbs his lighter--the Zippo that Angela gave him so long ago--and he sees the thing for what it is:  a miserable black obelisk.  Not even the hospital's number is emblazoned on its base.  Nothing.  Just a fucking phone. What is it, a direct like to The Almighty?  He picks the motherfucker up.  Dial tone.

So maybe he can call Information and get the hospital number.  Call security; he doesn't know.  He's miserable.  He wants a cigar.  What's he going to say once he gets the switchboard?  He can't walk himself through the embarrassment to come.

He dials Nine.  Another dial tone.  Good move.  What now?  He hangs up and thinks, after a fashion.  He picks up the phone again, dials Nine, and then calls the number of his carpenter brother.  Yes, Yes, he and Duane and not close, and this is a monumental effort.  But at least he knows the number.  Duane and his wife Karen had moved into the house Novak and his brother had grown up in after their mother had died five years ago.  The telephone number is the same.

Duane answers on the third ring.  He's one of those people who always makes Hello sound like Yellow.  Novak can see him:  thin and rustic with his full reddish beard.  He stands six-five, half a foot taller than Novak.  Where the hell did those genes come from?  Novak feels ashamed because he hasn't even bothered to tell his brother he's in town.  He ponders hanging up, but realizes that he's committed now; stuck.

"Hi," he says.  "It's me."

"Hey," Duane says.  The distance between them is a few short miles, but it might as well be light years.

"I'm in town," Novak says.  He is sweating.  A lot.

"Gonna come by?' Duane asks.  He sound like he might as well be talking about the impending arrival of an Amway salesman.

"Well, that's the problem.  I'm at Mercy."

"Mercy Hospital?"  Duane's voice registers about the amount of alarm he would display over a treed cat, but at least he's interested.  Laconic by nature, but interested.  "You hurt?" he inquires.

"No.  I...."

Duane waits.  Maybe he's catching the end of something he was watching on television. 

"I got myself locked into the Pastor's Study here and I can't get out."

Duane laughs out loud.

"It's wasn't easy," Novak says lamely.

"You're shitting me, of course," Duane says.    

"No.  I really did it."

Duane,  a linear thinker, considers.  "Well," he concludes.  "You've got a phone.  Call the hospital and tell them to let you out."

"Look, Duane.  I can't really explain this, but that's just what I don't want to do." Novak can't explain it because he's not even making sense to himself.  "The door seems to open from the outside," he goes on hopelessly.  "I thought maybe you could come over and let me out."

"Jesus, man," Duane says.  "You do get into some shit."  The gravity of his tone calls up endless miles of Shit Of Yore, the kind that Duane never wreaked upon anyone, especially their Mom and Dad.  Ah.  Their Mom and Dad.  Another cross--a double one--for Novak's black sheep misdeeds to bear. 

Even so, eternal guilt trip that Novak's on, Duane's declaration irritates him, though he would have thought more irritation impossible.  "Can you just do it?" he says.

"Not really," Duane replies, clammily self-possessed.  "Karen's at PTA and I was just waiting for Molly to call.  She's at Hallelujah."

Molly is their seven-year-old.  Novak take Hallelujah to be a church group.  And here he is locked up with somebody's sourly glowing crucifix.  What is this, Theology Night?

"What time will that be?"  Novak says desperately.

"What time will what be?" Duane replies innocently.

"When Molly calls."  Trying to keep the mania out of his voice, he adds:  "I'd love to see her."

But Novak's reputation as a half-hearted uncle precedes him:  Duane dismisses without comment this tag line for what it is.  "Half an hour or so.  Then I could come."

"Please do," Novak says.  "It's on the first floor, near the emergency room."  Actually a little frightened at his circumstances, he appends:  "Hurry as much as you can."

"You sure do get yourself...."

"In some shit," Novak finishes for his brother, his brother lost to him now.  "Yeah, I know."  Novak hangs up.

Well, here he is.  What the shit?  Novak stares at the barely visible phone--all he has in crucifix light--and wonders what to do now.  He could rattle the knob some more.  Or he could thumb his lighter till he used it up, looking for--What?

Novak now realizes he is sitting in what must be the Pastor's chair.  It is serviceable, a desk chair with arms, and Novak leans back on those now.  The chair is too damn low:  Novak wants to turn it upside down and adjust the thing--he knows how to do it--but it's just too fucking dark.  He sits.

A lot to think about.  Angela, certainly.  Angela last summer when they had gone to New York and spent the afternoon down in the East Village during just the best rainstorm.  Or Angela their first winter, her hair a little shorter, his hand right at the nape of her neck, right beneath the touch like fingers of the silken strands of her hair.  About his brother, too.  A lot there, some of it pretty good.  But mostly just about Angela.

Around nine, Duane arrives.  Novak has evidently fucked up the door in some way so that it's locked from the outside now, and Duane has to summon Security.  The dour guard actually makes Novak wait while he cases the room to make sure Novak hasn't pilfered in Bibles or Holy Water.  Presently he releases Novak to his brother' custody.

Passing the emergency desk, Novak stops and inquires about Ama, which is hard, because he doesn't know her full name.  But the young woman at the desk, who appears to be Native American, remembers the case and tells him that Ama felt better immediately and, breath restored, she has been dismissed.  She and a young woman, very pretty, departed in a taxi.