She claimed Muskegon as her home,
insinuated relatives of Latin descent
on job applications. He’d never worked
in Human Resources, he confessed,
had lived for twenty years in a ranch house
in the Upper Peninsula. Nobody good,
he plied, ever sniffs Wisconsin’s edge.
She laughed: But I’ll bet you never cheated
your one true love by screwing someone
you couldn’t stand. Friends had set them up.
But they said nothing of her glittered skin,
how she’d slide beside him in the booth.
When the brasserie’s lights turned low,
she traced the lip of his beer glass
with a long thumbnail.
                                     They barhopped.
She switched to tortoise shell frames, said
to call her Claire. Afterwards he told her
reality was something he couldn’t get
enough of, sprawled in a king-sized bed
and watched her comb a brunette wig
from her collection. In the gathered sludge
of dawn, they trekked to breakfast
at a roadside diner. It was December.
Over coffee, he said hers was a life
composed of fugitive pieces, no way
to make them fit.
                              But she slicked
last slabs of bacon through the mess
of broken yolk on his plate, motioned
to Stephanie for a refill. On his sleeve,
curled strands of her hair, not a hint
of split ends. Then the door chime
rang. A sharp chill blew past their boots.
It added up, she said, only if he made
himself the X in their equation.