Staccato Girl:

The spell broke a few weeks before Christmas when I realized that girls like me carry hope around in our pockets. Hope is such a life-sucking thing; either do, or don't do, but don't bother with hope.

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I remembered Long Island and Rex stretched out on the sidewalk, head propped against the building and legs crossed.

You okay? I asked.

Just waiting, relaxing, he said.

He was drunk. Who relaxes on a cold December sidewalk after midnight?

Soon we were all back at the guys' house a few blocks from a beach abandoned in the winter, its cold sunsets as pretty as miracles. Rex cracked a beer. I watched his nose run. Inside, another friend was losing it a little on pills at the head of the table as he petted his straight, long hair and insisted we all call him Alice.

Well, hello Alice, you 25-year-old asshole, I thought. Hanging around a beat-up rental with beer cans piled against the walls and indulging in a game of hide and seek from real life. It's gonna find you worn out and broke in a few years, when us college kids graduate or get a job or move out, or die, I thought. Alice. What an ass.

We stood in the kitchen under a milky bare bulb where he presided over his stupid delusions and drunken disciple friends and I said, he's a mess.

Yup. Rex was slurring everywhere and sort of swayed, but he knew Alice was toast. If you don't call him Alice, he flips out. It's bad, he said.

A few weeks later as I drove through cold, shallow dunes and scrub pines surrounded by the scraps of summer's Rosa Rugosa, I saw a car stopped along the windy beach road that led to a seasonal bar, closed up for the winter.

Alice stood with his hands dropped at his sides and a briny, bitter Southampton sea breeze pushing his hair off his shoulders. I parked behind his car and followed frigid prints in the dusty white sand. Alice? I said.

Sun cut across the bay and skipped into my eyes.

Alice?

He turned a little. I saw hair blowing. His profile. He said nothing for a few seconds, then turned away.

I remembered Rex saying, he flips out, it's bad.

I am sure that every year, everywhere, some guy somewhere stands with his face in the wind, mind gone, and stares at a future with nothing in it.