The Next Time You See Me by Holly Goddard Jones

Light. He took a long swallow, appreciating its chill, and then followed with another draft.
    “Chug that sonofabitch,” Gene said, and Wyatt thought, What the hell. He finished the beer a moment later, belched loudly, and leaned forward to pitch the can out of Gene’s window. The boys laughed and clapped Wyatt on the shoulder, and then they were all climbing out of Sam’s truck, Wyatt a little flushed but otherwise fine. All of this was silly, yes, but not the end of the world. He would convince Sam to let him drive home once the guys had gotten their partying over with, and if Sam refused, he’d slip out and call a cab. Nobody would notice, anyhow. In the meantime, he’d have a couple of beers, listen to the band, and watch the rest of the bunch get shitfaced. They were gathering together now, seven men from three different trucks, none of them except for Wyatt a year older than thirty: Sam the best looking of the bunch (and knowing it, too) with his blond hair and blue eyes and his slim waist, cinched in even tighter by a set of light-washed Levi’s; Daniel Stone nearly as pretty with his black hair and suntan, but lacking the charisma to make the sale the way Sam could. The rest were passably attractive in the way that men who could attach themselves to more attractive men sometimes were. Wyatt hadn’t even been that lucky. At Sam’s age he’d been five foot ten, his current height, and about twenty pounds overweight (lean years compared to now); he’d worn his hair, already thinning, long in the front to hide his white bulb of a forehead. And what few friends he’d made in highschool he lost upon dropping out, because he was too busy, always too busy, for anything but work and his mother, and when she died he was thirty-eight and already past the point, he’d believed, of being anyone different than he was already.
    Wyatt watched, silent, as the other men chided one another, finished beers, checked their reflections in the windows of their vehicles and patted flyaway hairs into place. Vain as women.
    “All right, fellas,” Sam said, clapping his hands at the group as though they were a pack of rowdy dogs. “Let’s get in there.”
    The bouncer at the door was checking IDs. Wyatt, at the back of the group, watched as Sam pulled his wallet smoothly from his back pants pocket, flipping the ID sleeve over with the conviction of a clergyman, and the guy barely glanced at it before giving Sam a nod and stamping his hand. Wyatt wondered if the fake had just been that good or if Sam had just been that good. Probably the latter. When Wyatt’s turn came, the bouncer wanted to see nothing from him except his five dollars.
    He smelled Nancy’s before he could see it well enough to move forward. Cigarette smoke hung thickly in the doorway, and a set of multicolored lights behind the band flashed red and blue against the fog, turning it into something that seemed almost solid in the otherwise dim room. Behind the smoke he could sense the heavy, sticky edge of old frying grease; beneath that, the tang of body odor. It was almost hot despite the building’s size and the time of year, and as Wyatt pressed ahead through the crowd, following the white glow of Daniel Stone’s polo shirt, he could see an oily sheen on most of the bodies around him. He tripped a little and found himself almost kissing-distance to the face of a woman about his own age. The too-pale powder on her upper lip bubbled with hot sweat, reminding Wyatt unpleasantly of the sight of flour and sausage fat in his cast-iron skillet on the mornings when he took the time to make a little milk gravy.
    “Excuse me,” he said, backing up, but she seemed not to notice.
    The men from work had gathered against the corner of the bar, each trying to claim the nearest bartender’s attention, and so Wyatt lookedaround for an empty table, a place to sit and observe. At first there was nothing. The stools at the bar were all occupied, the tables laden with empty