After the execs leave, Antonio and I look out the windows of the Ebasco executive dining room. A thick fog obscures Lower Manhattan, as the last gasps of the Arctic is strangled by a spring breeze from the south. We have finished with lunch and wipe the silverware clean. The Spanish waiter surprises me with a small ball of black tar.

“Opium?”

“You ever try it?”

“Never.”

Lots of punks used heroin. I hadn’t tried that too.

“It’s not a killer like smack.”

“I don’t know.”

I had first smoked weed with Tommy Jordan and John Gilmor, driving back from Nantasket Beach. It did nothing for me, but two weeks later with Thomas Welby some Acapulco Gold blew my mind. Basically it was the last time I got high, since every time after that I was chasing an unattainable high.

“Thanks for the opium.”

I wrapped the small ball in paper.

If I was doing it, I was doing it with one person.

Ann.”

LATER

On the Staten Island ferry.

The fog follows its wake.

This is the first time I’ve left Manhattan since returning from Boston.

I can’t see anything of that island.

Only fog swallowing our wake.

The harbor air is fresh, smelling of the sea beyond the Verranzano Bridge.

The grey water is darker than the grey air.

The world a maze of opaque sameness.

The ferry approaches St. George.

We disembark and get on the same ferry to Manhattan.

A horn sounds our departure.

The wooden dock is enveloped by grey.

Fifteen seconds later we are lost in it.

After reaching Battery Park I called Ann, “Are you going to me for dinner?”

“Are you alright?” Se didn’t want to make a scene in front of her father.

“Yes. Are you mad at me?”

“I was last night. Not now.”

I attempted to explain last night, but it was futile over the phone and we agreed to meet at 7:30.

At dinner before her father arrives, she says that she isn’t really interested in my writing, “Everything is in that journal. Secrets. Not for anyone to read. None of it is finished.”

The way she said that sounds like she has read it, but she is right.

My journals have no purpose.

“I’m sorry if I’m jealous.” We both were, but most of all
to