The Cloud of Unknowing by Mimi Lipson

is important. Any guy will fuck you if you ask. Don’t ever worry about that.”
    The milder weather came. Kitty saw Conrad around, and her other old roommates from the Westinghouse. It would have been impossible to avoid them entirely. She made a point of being friendly but she still kept away from the Student Union. She got a B on her paper for Western Mystical Philosophy, reduced to a C for lateness. That was okay—she’d cleared up the incomplete. It was a struggle, but she was keeping up with all her current classes. Thucydides and Herodotus were still giving her problems, though.
    And something else: she still had pain. It had moved upward, spread out, gotten duller. When Tylenol didn’t help, she stayed in bed with Windex and a hot water bottle. She knew she should make another appointment at the Women’s HealthCenter, but she remembered the morning at the clinic and the doctor with the port wine birthmark, and she kept putting it off.
    She was at home under her electric blanket when Jim knocked on the basement entrance. The bright April sun blinded her for a minute when she opened the door.
    â€œIt’s really dark in here,” he said. “You should change those bulbs.” The other fluorescent light tube had started to burn out, and now they were both strobing.
    â€œWhat are you doing up so early?” she asked.
    â€œI wanted to bring you some things on my way out of town.”
    Kitty’s stomach dropped.
    â€œWhere are you going?”
    â€œCalifornia. My sister said I could stay in her garage. In Mountain View.”
    â€œBut—when are you leaving?” She hoped she didn’t sound whiny.
    â€œNow,” he said. “Well, tonight. I wanted you to have this.” He gave her a thick manila envelope on which he had written, in large block letters, “Real Life in California, by Jim Frank.”
    â€œYour novel?”
    â€œAlmost.” His shoulders went back a little when he said it. “I’ll send you the rest when it’s finished. And I wanted to give you this, too, since you don’t have a radio.”
    He had brought her his boombox. She took it from him and set it down on her writing desk. “I didn’t know you were going,” she said.
    Irritation flickered across his face.
    â€œI mean, I forgot,” she added. “I forgot you said that.”
    â€œHere’s my address.” He’d written it down for her. “And my sister’s phone number. But don’t give that to anyone. And don’t show anyone my novel.”
    â€œI don’t have a phone,” she said. “Write to me, okay?”
    â€œIsn’t there one upstairs?”
    â€œNo. Well, yes, but it’s not mine. I don’t use it.” She had stopped paying her share of the phone bill. “Okay. Bye, I guess,” she said, anxious for him to leave. She felt tears coming and she didn’t want him to see them.
    She let herself cry for a while after he left. When she was done, she plugged in the boombox and played with the antenna, but the only station she could get through the thick basement walls was a sports talk show. Then she noticed a cassette in the tape player and hit play. For a moment it was just hiss and guitar feedback and thick bass notes dragging a beat. Then the voice came in: male, angry, but as naked and sad as Mary Weiss’s. Turn away, turn away from the wall. Face me now. Face me now. She took the tape out and looked at it. The label said “FLIPPER,” in Jim’s handwriting. She put it back in and hit play again. Show me, show me all your tears. Your pain, your pain makes me burn.
    She opened up the manila envelope and began reading. Someone was driving around in a van looking for someone else. She didn’t understand it, but she felt like she was being shown something almost unbearably intimate. She realized she was shivering.
    I saw you, I saw you shine .
    When the tape ended,