“Nope.”

I close my eyes and feel a wave of relief for Jane. I open them again. “You’re the best.”

“I know,” he says, and hangs up.

I dial Sam’s number. “Why aren’t you at work?”

“Look, I know you’re supposed to be saving yourself,” he says, “but I want to make sure someone’s watching over you.”

“Sam.”

“Come downstairs.”

“I need a shower.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

84

S am drives, and we’re silent.

I have the sense that we’re waiting, holding everything back until we’re sitting somewhere and can look each other in the eye. The waiting makes the car feel like a ticking clock, as if we both know that this moment, which seems so mundane, so Sam-and-me-just-driving-in-the-car, is so much more than that.

I look out the window. I tell myself not to be scared of the weight of the moment, not to jump ahead of it.

Sam turns from Clark, then onto Lincoln Avenue. The day is vivid, full of light. The more I stare out the window, the more I feel that I’m waking up and the more I realize that the fear about what’s going to happen to Sam and me is nothing compared to the fear I felt when I found Jane and then the terror of being wrongfully accused. Now that it’s over, I can see that terror from afar-like a sharp, blue light that cuts through and crystallizes everything else, leaving only the dust of memories and the force of the fear itself.

I study Sam. He’s been in the sun lately with rugby practice, and his skin looks warm and golden.

“Did you get a haircut?” I ask. “It’s shorter than when we went to North Pond.”

“Yeah. She did something different.” He points at his forehead. His hair is pushed up at a different angle than normal. “Like it?”

I keep looking at his hair. It is so miniscule, that change, but it is a change. “I like it,” I tell him.

I turn and stare out the window. Then I roll it down, letting the sounds of the city seep in, letting the breeze-balmy and invigorating-twirl its way through my hair, through me.

Chicago seems to have sprung to life since I last paid attention. Music bleeds from second-floor windows. The smokers, usually huddled outside bars bearing haunted looks, stand tall in the spring sun, talking and gesturing with their cigarettes, laughing loud. There is color everywhere-orange and red tulips dotting otherwise feeble front lawns; cherry-blossom trees sprouting pink and white; bushes bursting with yellow bulbs. The urban landscape looks as if it’s been painted by an artist, one unafraid of vivid splashes of color.

“Where are we going?” I ask Sam.

“A dive bar. Just for you.”

“Which one?”

“You’ll see.”

He keeps going on Lincoln Avenue. He passes Fullerton, then Wrightwood, then pulls over and parks at a meter. Town houses run along one side of the street, and a Mobil station sits on the other.

“Rose’s,” Sam says, and he points.

Next to the gas station is an old, brick three-flat apartment. The bottom floor has a wooden front, painted a bleak ivory color, with two high octagonal windows that are dark, revealing nothing about what’s inside. Only the Old Style On Tap sign that hangs above the door indicates it’s a bar.

“I haven’t been here in years,” Sam says. “But I thought if the press was still following you, they’d never be able to see inside.”

We get out of the car and look up and down the street. No press. They had been crawling all over my lawn, making my neighbors crazy, and so I’d escaped to my mom’s house, hoping to lose them. And now, apparently I have. Or maybe it’s more simple-maybe my part of Jane’s story is over.

We wait for a few stray cars to pass, and we cross the street.

Stepping inside Rose’s is like stepping into a bar somewhere in Wisconsin in the 1970s. The dark wood furniture is mismatched, scarred. Many of the seats of the bar stools are duct-taped. A sagging pool table is wedged next to an ancient jukebox croaking a Sinatra tune. I love it.

Two guys sit at the end of the bar. They look a bit tougher, less styled, than the usual Lincoln Park crowd. Cops, I guess. The thought sends a reactionary frisson of fear through me, but I see it and I let it loose. I have nothing to fear. At least not right now.

Sam and I sit at the bar, and a woman with gray hair, stooped with age, asks what we’d like to drink.

“Do you have Blue Moon?” Sam asks.

“No.” She shakes her head at the notion. “I have Polish beers. They’re the best.”

“I’ll try one.”

“Make it two,” I say.

She gives us beers in the bottle and dumps a few pretzels onto a white paper plate. Then she leaves us alone.

We talk about everything we haven’t talked about in months, everything except us. It feels good, in a dark bar with no indication of time or even of season, to spend these moments with Sam.

He stops, though. He’s in the middle of a story about his landlord-He’s trying to raise the rent, and I said, you can’t do this, I’ve got a two-year lease, and then he said… And Sam just stops. Just like that.

Sam looks at me. “We have to decide.”

“Decide what?”

“Us.”

“There’s a word I haven’t heard you use in a long time.”

“I know.” Sam turns on his stool to face me. “Because we’ve been so back and forth. We’re not engaged, but we haven’t broken up. We’re sort of dating, but we’re sort of not. We’re kind of together, but we’re kind of not. Let’s pick one. I need something certain, Izzy. You do, too.”

I think about what he’s said. “Actually, I’m okay with not nailing it down.”

Something about Jane’s death, and her life, has made me rethink the way I want to live. Jane had a million accomplishments, but C.J. voided them in one instant. And yet what still lives on from Jane, what she’ll be remembered for, is her passion. There’s that word again. The story of Jane and C.J.’s passion for each other and the end result of it-Lesbian Lover Scorned-has been splashed all over the papers and the news. So far nothing has come out about the scarfing. Nothing about the other affairs. I assume many will scorn Jane’s passion and the way she acted it out. But her fervor for life, for the news, for love was undeniable, and it still remains.

And what I have been thinking in my waking hours is that I want to be known for my passion, too. I don’t want to act it out like Jane. I don’t want to emulate her in any way, except that I want to get in touch with my passions, wherever they lie, and I want to feel them, to wrap my arms around them, to taste them. The thing is, I’m not sure where my passions lie-not romantically or professionally,

I’ve decided that in the interim, an uncertain life, an uncertain relationship don’t necessarily point to a bleak future or even a bleak today. And so I don’t have to put labels on Sam and me. We can ride it and see whether that passion we had is alive, whether it wants to keep living.

But Sam, apparently, doesn’t agree with me. He shakes his head, pushes away his half-empty beer. “I don’t want this anymore, Iz. Not like this. It’s too hard.”

“Relationships are always hard.”

He gives me a long, indecipherable look. “Says who?”

“Says everyone.”

“It doesn’t mean that it’s right.” He takes one of my hands. He has the smoothest skin, so familiar that it almost feels like my own. “Can you promise me it will be easier someday?”

Reflexively, I start to say yes, but then I close my mouth. I want to say the truth-to me, to him, to us. “No,” I say. “But that doesn’t mean it will be bad. In fact, we might find a lot of joy that way.”

The song on the jukebox dies. The cops leave the bar. The bartender shambles over to us, holding her back with one hand. “You want something else?”

“Yes,” Sam says, but he’s looking in my eyes. “I’m sorry, Iz, but I want something else.”