This was not Angela Tomaso. She smiled into my eyes and then turned. Hand had returned – where were the drinks? He'd forgotten the drinks – and now she was on Hand and things were much less polite. She seemed to genuinely like him. She preferred him to me. Even in a transaction like this, she got to choose. He was grinning like mad. Every act of charity has choice at its core. My head was still talking to her.

– I think you do have love for Hand.

– It's impossible to fake this all the time.

She was straddling him, her hand between his thighs, her other hand in his hair.

– Olga I agree. You can't fake it all.

– There's no way to pretend. I have an irregular and bursting heart and that's why I'm here. It erupts so many times every night and I can't help it. I know this is a strange way to express it but I feel real love for your friend, and for you. For you it's more general, it's my love surveying you from above, approving, you as part of a landscape I love, a human one, while with your friend it's more specific. It's his smell, his thick neck -

– Fine. Enough.

Hand was trying to get something – what? Oh, money – from his sock. I was looking at her dimpled and thong-bisected rear as it rose and descended on his crotch.

– But see how we are the same? You and I, Will? We both see strangers and we react. We don't like to walk by people without nodding. We're broken when people are rude. We're broken when people can't meet us halfway. We can't accept the limits of normal human relations – chilly, clothed, circumscribed. Our hearts pull against their leashes, Will!

But as suddenly as she'd come to us, she was back to the dance-floor and engaged in more spinning around the gold glimmering pole. Maybe someone else was liking the pole. Maybe I was missing something. I looked around, at the other patrons, half-expecting to find some guy grinning and clapping, going nuts for the pole. No such men were here.

When she was done dancing, she came over again, asked to sit down, suggested Hand buy her a drink, he did, and now she was sitting next to him, her long fingers moving like spider legs, slowly, in the low thicket between his neck and skull.

A new woman was dancing. White-blonde, heavier, curvier. I sat up. I watched her for a while, wondering what we were doing here, if I was expected to leave Hand and Olga alone. Her nose was buried in Hand's neck. She pulled back to face him.

"You smell like…" she said, gesturing, as if making wind.

"What?" he said.

"Like outside," she said, and began chewing on his ear.

This new woman dancing was not a happy dancer. She threw a horrific fake smile my way; she appeared to be missing her bottom teeth, if that was possible. Hand and Olga were talking about Estonian television.

"Last night," she said, "I see on TV where bears and dogs fight."

Hand tilted his head. "How do you mean, like a nature show? In the wild?"

"No, they fight in a stage. Like circus. A show. The bear is chain, like police. [She made a gesture, her wrists pulling away from each other, to indicate handcuffs.} The dogs jump on him."

"What? Really? The bear?" Hand wanted details.

"Oh yes! On the bear!"

"Why doesn't the bear just bite the dogs or stick his claws in them or something? A bear would kill a dog."

"No, no. They take the teeth out of bear. And claws."

"They what?" Hand was outraged.

I was sure I'd seen this, in woodcuts. And I remembered where. "They did this in medieval England," I offered, though I'm not sure they knew I'd been listening. "I saw something about it somewhere. Woodcuts of it. Bearbaiting."

Hand looked at me blankly. He turned to Olga.

"They take the teeth out? Really?"

Olga was now teary. Talking about the bear fighting had upset her. She ordered another drink.

"That is horrible," said Hand. "And this is some kind of national sport?"

She nodded gravely. They talked about this much longer than I could stay interested, and longer than anyone but Hand, who had recently crashed an epidemiology convention in Indianapolis, would be interested. Now there was no dancing. A big screen TV was activated, and on it a movie featuring crazy sharks with huge brains eating scientists and LL Cool J.

Finally another woman, in a business suit, came over and asked if either one of us would like a massage or private dance from Olga. Olga nodded for herself and Hand. Hand stood -

"Just for a sec. You okay?"

"I'm good," I said.

– and left with her. Another woman, who a minute ago was bartending, took the stage and began rubbing her backside against the golden pole. There was a payphone near the bar so I called my mom.

"You're where?" she said. "I can't hear anything."

I pressed my finger into my free ear.

"I'm at a bar in Estonia. What time is it there?"

"Three. I'm staining a footstool."

"You're what?"

"A footstool."

"You're aiming it? At what?"

"Staining. Staining."

"In the garage?"

"I'm outside -"

"Make sure it's ventil – Oh."

There was a delay in our connection and it made us tentative. We waited to speak and then spoke at the same time.

The dancer had two fingers in her mouth. Now her ankles held the pole, and she was upside down. The link between the acrobatics and anything erotic was tenuous and slipping. I turned to face the phone, to concentrate.

"You're where again?" she said, almost yelling.

"Estonia. Tallinn."

I situated it for her. No one knows where Tallinn is.

"Hey honey," she said, not caring about Tallinn anymore, "you would tell me if you'd broken something here, wouldn't you?"

"Broke something? Like what?"

"A plate, a glass, anything."

"I don't get it."

"You know I walk barefoot sometimes."

"Right. But did you step on some glass? What are you talking about?"

"You would tell me, wouldn't you?"

"Of course. But I haven't been there in months, Mom."

– Jesus, Mom. What is going on?

"I just wanted to make sure you'd tell me. I woke up this morning and was afraid to walk in there – I was sure it was covered in glass. And you know how hard it is to see that glass, Will."

"Okay."

"I can't have the glass everywhere, hon. I can't have the broken glass underfoot."

– Not now. Wait. Please. Give me five years.

"Okay," I said.

"So why Estonia?"

"I don't know. They didn't need a visa."

"I almost went to Denmark once."

"When?"

"With your father of course. We wanted to honeymoon there. All the tulips."

"Oh." I hated it when she mentioned him without malice.

"Get away!" she yelled.

"What?"

"The dog next door. He's brushing up against my stool."

– Mom. Bring it together.

"Honey."

"What?"

"I should let you go."

"I have time."

"I don't."

"You should see this place. They've got these tall fishtanks full of fake fish, and they're bubbling up to the top, flying up there. Like embers from a campfire. Or like when you try to burn newspaper in the fire, and it gets so light and starts floating around, when it all goes up around your head."

"Will."

"Or the embers go up too. Remember that? The one time on the Wolf River, remember that, when you took us for my birthday? And there was that fake open grave along the path, with the shroud on it? With the bloodstain in the middle -"

"I have to go. Have a nice strip bar."

She was the one who'd wanted to go to Great America. This was only three years ago, in the middle of a June everyone was marveling about – so blue and clear, the heavy May rains giving the greens unknown depths, underwater hues – and so many were home for a wedding – Teddy, from high school, was marrying a woman seven years older and twenty pounds heavier, and there was much talk, before and during, especially when she chain-smoked through the reception and its many speeches – and my mom wanted to go to Great America, and Jack and Hand and I with her. We were twenty-four or -five, Jack, Hand and I, and we all followed my mom – oh shit, Pilar was there too, for some reason – all day, letting my mom pay for things, letting her choose the rides. This was the day they rode the Demon – I wouldn't ride anything that brought me upside-down, and the smell of the bar across my chest brought memories of bike accidents, so I waited and watched – and afterward I watched the three of them, arm in arm in arm, legs almost linked, walking toward me. It was stupid and embarrassing and funny and stupid. This was the day Hand announced, while eating fries and mayonnaise for lunch, that in his opinion, a great shit was better than bad sex, a view that was seconded by my mom, which just about killed Jack. On this day Jack mentioned that he wouldn't mind staying at his current job, in his current position, for "twenty or thirty more years." He was content. When he finished enumerating the pleasures of his work, we were quiet. This day ended when we left at six, but began again when in the parking lot we learned that Mom had left her lights on. It was foggy in the morning and her lights were on then and now the car was dead and we had to start over.