When I open the door, James screams and wraps me tight in his muscle-bound arms, almost suffocating me. "Girl, why in the hell did you quit?"

"Because I hated it!" My voice is muffled in the hollow of his shoulder, where he's got me pinned. I try to lean my head back so I can see his face, but he's hugging me too tight. "What are you doing here?"

"You quit your job! I had to see you! And I've got a meeting here with a bunch of insurance types tomorrow.

"That'll do. Now, get your ass in the house, Boy!" I wriggled out of his grip, trying to drag him inside by his elbow.

"Girl, I gotta get the wine and smokes out of the car!"

James and I have been friends since we were twelve, but our friendship didn't gel until we were old enough to get stinking drunk on cheap white zinfandel while chain-smoking Camels.

"You'd best have at least a magnum in that bag!" I called over the railing of the deck. "And it better not be any of that fancy, expensive shit, either!"

James brings out the worst in me, and I just love it. He makes me drink more, smoke more, eat more, talk louder, and say more than I do on my own, which is no small feat. But he's always been like that. When we were in high school, he got the quietest girl on the debate team to admit that she routinely utilized cucumbers in ways most of us hadn't imagined when we were fifteen. Of course, in order to get her to confess James had to admit to a five-time-a-day jack-off habit. But somehow, it didn't seem so embarrassing when James admitted such activities.

"Only the best for my sissy-girl!" he said, taking the stairs two at a time. "I spent fifteen whole dollars!"

"Well, then, you've got enough money to buy dinner."

"You're not going to cook for me?"

"Hell no!" we stepped into the kitchen. "If I wanted to cook, I wouldn't have quit my damn job!"

So we ordered pasta. By the time the delivery guy arrived we were halfway through the magnum, and James had went to the store for more.

There's something about the tartness, slightly sweet but sharp, of the white zin that blends with the velvet warmth of cigarettes. They melt into each other. I love the way my voice sounds when I'm under their spell - deep, raspy, and soft. I can purr when I'm like this. This voice fits my body better than my normal voice, which is a tad too high to match the rest of me. The smoke and wine voice is that of a great big woman, a force.

"Thalia, you'll never guess who I saw playing his guitar in the City Market in KC last week."

"Who?" I was lying on my belly on the floor, propped on my elbows, feet in the air, brain fuzzy from wine. From this angle my cleavage pushed out the top of my shirt, an untouched pillow of smooth alabaster, with one loopy black curl trailing over my shoulder into the valley between my breasts. One more drink and I might turn into a full-blown diva and burst into song. We've got Aretha howling from the stereo, and I want to sing along, even though that always makes the neighbors complain.

"Jet!" He was singing that song he wrote about you."

"Oh, Lord!" I crowed, rolling onto my back, spread eagle. "Is he singing the good lyrics or the bad lyrics?"

"Girl, you know he's still singing the bad ones!"

My mom summed it up best when she said, "Thalia, you do realize that every mother's worst nightmare is a forty-year-old musician named Jet, don't you?" I was barely twenty-two at the time, and I'd just lost my virginity. It's amazing what that did for my confidence level, knowing that a twenty-year-old frat boy deemed me worthy, despite my wide hips, pendulous breasts, and poochy belly, to futilely fuck. He didn't have any more experience than me, so I spent the six weeks of our courtship thinking, "You mean that's what all the fuss was about?"

Then Jet came along. I was standing at the counter at Lakota, waiting for my cappuccino, when he came up to me and just started talking, followed my back to my table, still talking, then followed me out the door, begging for my phone number. Stunned at his interest in me, his endless flow of questions, I gave him my number. Within days, Frat Boy was out of the picture.

I'd mentioned to Jet my stupidest, schlockiest wish - I'd always wanted someone to serenade me with Van Morrison's "Brown-Eyed Girl". Doesn't matter that my eyes are blue. That's not the point. The point is, I'd never had a taste of that classic form of romance, the shit that we see in movies that makes us all gushy. When I told him this, I was holding a Gloria Steinem book in my hand, entrenched in essays about how women need to look within themselves to gain their esteem and power. And I believed that. Still do, more than ever. But I just wanted to see what it felt like to be on a pedestal that might turn into a prison.

Later that week I slipped into the back of the bar where Jet was playing. I wanted him to know I was there, but I wanted him to find me on his own. Three songs into his set, his eyes locked on me, through the haze of smoke."

"Hey, where did we go? Days when the rains came. Down in the hollows Playing a new game"

I bit my lower lip, not knowing whether I wanted to giggle or cry. Clutching my beer bottle by its neck, I slid off my barstool, making my way towards the low platform where he played. I was testing him to see if he'd change the lyrics, if he'd been paying close attention to the details."

"In the misty morning fog, Oh, our hearts are thumpin' And you, my brown-eyed girl"

I smirked, folded my arms across my chest, eyes bearing into him, slowly and deliberately shaking my head.

"Green?"

I continued to shake my head.

"Blue?"

"Bingo!"

The next morning I was groggily making my coffee when I noticed the envelope taped to my kitchen window. It was the first, and only, love letter I've ever received. Jet wanted to woo me, he'd written. I inspired him to create songs of passionate, intelligent raven-haired sirens.

I don't know if I came alive or died a little when I read his words. Maybe I did a little of both.

"What in the world did you do to him?" James asked.

I remained on my back, looking at James upside-down. "I never told you about that?"

"Nope. Did you just use him and leave his old ass high and dry?"

I laughed, "Yeah, how'd you guess?"

"That's pretty much what he says in the song. You've heard it, right?"

"Can't say that I have. I haven't seen him since I ditched him."

I went to Jet's room the night after I got his letter, just to hear the song he'd written for me. Sitting in his boarding house room, he quietly strummed his guitar, humming where lyrics didn't exist. I browsed his bookshelf, full of ragged texts of Plato, Shakespeare, Sartre. When he put the guitar aside, his hands found their way to my back, strong callused hands erasing the tiny knots in my muscles. I moaned and softly purred, leaning against, the warmth of his erection pressing into the small of my back. I tilted my head, our mouths locking.

That penis pressing into my back had fathered a child who was almost as old as me. That mouth had been expressing such passion before I was conceived. The calluses that were caressing me had been wrought during years I could not know.

I pulled away, standing up, heading for the door. He asked what was wrong. All I could say was that I just didn't feel right.

But that was the problem - I did feel right. Jet made me dizzy. He made me liquid. He was old enough to be my dad, streaks of beautiful silver kissing his black hair, soft folds of skin around his smoky gray eyes. And this shouldn't make me feel right. Twenty-two years old young women have no business getting involved with forty-year-old men. And not just any forty-year-old - a forty-year-old musician who lives in a rooming house, doesn't care about getting ahead, doesn't believe in marriage, and charges that the entire problem with our society is that most people are mall-nourished, unable to handle anything that doesn't look good under tract lighting.

In other words, I was too immature to know that listening to my gut is a much better way to design my future, instead of going along with everyone else's rules. When Jet called me, I brushed him off until he just quit calling.

"Have you told your parents yet?" James asked. I blinked, staring at the ceiling.

"Are you kidding? You've met my folks."

"Yeah, they're understanding people. Surely they'll be supportive."

"You don't understand." I sat up, taking a deep drag on my cigarette. "Work is the one things they take seriously. When I've talked about the possibility of quitting, they've always pointed out the flaws in my logic."

"But it was killing you."

"James, my dad works sixty hours a week in a job he hates. He's had four heart attacks in two years. They've not going to have much sympathy for me quitting because my boss hurt my feelings a few times."

"Okay. I can't say that I blame you. What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to have another glass of wine." I grinned as I stood up, head reeling while I walked to the kitchen for a refill.

"I mean, what are you going to do with your life?"

"Beats the hell out of me. Hang around schoolyards and ask kids what they want to be when they grow up, so I can get some ideas." I drained the bottle into James' glass. "I know I've gotta get a job. How's work been for you lately?"

"Oh, Thalia!" James covered his face with his hands. "I hate it! It's just numbers and people who like numbers!"

"Imagine that - actuaries who are obsessed with numbers! Whoever heard of such a thing?"

"Oh, shut up, Thalia," he chuckled.

I gave him a shove. "No! You shut up!"

"How old are we?"

"Hmmm …" I pretended to ponder. "Twelve?"

"Oh, I remember when we were twelve," he sighed. I lit another cigarette. "What did we want to do when we were twelve?"

"I wanted to make out with you, but you didn't like girls," I giggled.

"And I was afraid of you," he laughed. "Seriously, though. What did we want back then?"

I thought as best I could through the sheath of alcohol around my brain. "I kind of wanted to be an artist, but then I took an art class and made C's on all my projects. You wanted to be an actor. I remember that. Anna wanted to be a lawyer."

"What's she been up to lately?"

"Doing publicity for a bar and ditching her fiancée."

"No way!"

"Yeah. She always swore she'd never get married, and all I've heard for the past six months is how shocked she is to finally be doing something before I do it."

"You've never ditched a fiancée. She's ahead of you on that one."

"Hell, I wouldn't want a fiancée, anyway. What the hell do I need with extra people hanging around me?"

"You could get a rich hubby so you wouldn't have to get a job."

"Bite your goddamn tongue!" I squealed, shoving him again. "I'd just as soon get paid to shave my head bald and run naked through the shopping mall every day for the rest of my life!"

"No! Hey, that reminds me - I do know of a job, if you're interested."

"I hate to hear what it is, if you were just reminded of it."

"It just popped into my head, Silly. I could talk to Glenn at Contacts about you tending bar."

"Do I have to run around naked?"

"Only if you want to make really good tips."

I'd taken bartending classes in college, and I knew enough to fill in at weddings.

"Okay, sure. James?"

"Yeah?"

I started sinking back to the floor, the room swirling around me. "I think I need to go to sleep right now."

He took my cigarette from my hand as I half fell asleep, half passed out in a heap on the floor.