He’s just a big splash out of a magazine, and frankly I had no choice. He’s on his shining red motorcycle, the sporty expensive one he’s always asking if I like and he made a key for me too but I’ll never drive the thing, and I say yes I adore the motorcycle and I crave everything about his mobile universe, how he goes where he pleases, suffers no tie-downs, and he affects people everywhere, you know, like an electric pulse or a kind of force field that surrounds him and his bike. To me it’s like if he could sing as well as he rides, then people would just start crying and hugging each other. You know. It was pretty quick—hugging his waist, wearing his helmet, zipping along the arc of time itself, he driving, me flying. And when I come down, we’re parked in the crowded lot of The Four Seasons. I am another person, different name, reddened hair quite ravishing, I catch brief reflections of myself in a hundred mirrors. We go further in, he holds my hand, it’s a dark corridor and I remember craving bright light like I just wanted people to look at me, feast their eyes; palpably, palpitatingly distracting, I wanted a crowded room, a dampening hush, and softening of light that narrows on this they can’t put a finger on what it is they desire or else we’d all be poets, like my better half, he and I; together we’re equal parts wanting to be and wanting to be inside. We wouldn’t have the same impact just half. But what they must be seeing—there’s like real veneration in their eyes, and shock, and I’m being led very gently to a back room where I don’t feel safe but I blend in while the card game gets under way and I’m talking with some other girls not as pretty as me but together we’re erotic like snakes. The major light in the room hovers over a new center stage, a ballet of men’s hands throwing cards and chips and then my boyfriend brings out a bundle of cash from his pocket and sets it amid the chips, to the sleazy mirth of everyone but us. That mirth becomes big toothy grinning. One of the girls makes a pouty face. After another losing hand, the motorcycle keys are placed on the table alone. My boyfriend doesn’t see me anymore. He’s taken to another back room while I’m firmly incentivized back to the main room to take my pick if I need a ride home. There isn’t one who won’t have me.