Visitors

I was 30. I had a good career. I was living in a loft apartment in the coolest neighborhood I could imagine. You might imagine a different neighborhood. Feel free.

Two years earlier, my younger brother had died of a heroin overdose. Don’t ask.

His old girlfriend called. “If I visit, could you put me up?”

“Sure.”

“Can I bring a friend?”

“Sure.”

Their second night. I was headed to bed. They were to share my fold out couch. It was 90 degrees. I lived in New York City. I had a window air conditioner in my bedroom but nothing in the living room. Out there, it was sweltering. Humid, hot, sweaty. In my bedroom it was cold.

We had gone out for drinks. My brother had been a Deadhead with a Grateful Dead skull tattooed on his arm. The tattoo had made my mom cry. RIP. His old girlfriend had been psychiatrically hospitalized after Kurt Cobain had died, and then again after the **** of Jerry Garcia. The friend, who kept eyeing me in a weird but flattering sort of way, was a buxom, dissolute 18 year old,

I went to bed but felt guilty. They were sweating on a fold out couch.

In a cut off pair off shorts, and no shirt, I went out to the living room,

“Girls. I feel bad. I have a queen sized bed that is blisteringly chilled, and y’all are all out here in a steamy hot couch. Come back and spend the night with me. I think all three of us would be more comfortable.”