"You're asking me does Mike bowl?"

Starbuck's mouth kind of twisted itself shut.  After a second he started to say more: "About five, six months ago…"

But then I guess he changed his mind, 'cause he broke off. We just stood there quiet, and I wondered should I stick my hand out, tell Starbuck, See you Monday. I don't know why I didn't, exactly, except somehow I knew he wasn't through with me yet.

"You ever hear the one about Ray Corliss and the doctor?" Starbuck asked after a long while.  "Doctor come out to see him. You know what Ray ask him, first thing. Doctor, Ray says, you got anything to drink? Doctor says, Cancer patients aren't supposed to drink, Mr. Corliss. And Ray Corliss says, It ain't my liver, doc, it's my pancreas."

Jarvis laughed, too loud. I smiled, 'cause it's Starbuck told the story, and I knew I'd better. Still I was shamed of myself, smiling.

"It's too bad," I said. "It's too bad about Mike's dad." Meaning, Ray's cancer, but Starbuck just shook his head:

"No, it isn't," he said. "What's too bad is, she couldn't leave him until he was too sick to chase after her. That's what's too bad."

She. As in, Mike's momma. And so I come to understand why nobody'd ever fired Mike Corliss before then: nobody'd ever felt mean enough to try it. And now Starbuck pointed with his chin crossed the bar: "What I'm saying is, the apple never falls too far from the tree."

And I turned, figuring I'd see Mike tangled up with the roughnecks. But that isn't what I saw. Mike was standing over at May's table. May had her arms folded over her chest. That look on her face, like when she's trying not to smile.

***

Seems to me there isn't much mystery to it. Either a woman likes you or she doesn't. You come to her, pulled by the same nothing that'll make a compass point north. You talk to her, and what you say doesn't have to make any sense. You tip your mouth close to her ear. You say, Seen any swamp rabbits lately? And she tries not to smile. She tells you, You're crazy. You're just out of your mind, Mike.

That's how a man and a woman come nearer, nearer to each other. Like the beasts of the field. Forget about the pool game, the Clay County boys you were fixing to tussle with. Forget Laughton Starbuck up at the bar. Forget about your best friend, sitting over at the table with his date.

"You're crazy," she kept saying.

"I'm crazy?" I told her. "You're the swamp rabbit."

I don't know what to say about it. Some things are so simple, it doesn't do any good trying to explain them. After a while we went out to Syrena's car and necked some. I knew she wanted it, but being honest with you I didn't know how to get things started.

I said, "Okay, well."

"Well what?"

My ex has a strange kind of laugh, a sound like bells: too high-pitched, the sort of laugh you hear on TV, so that somehow you got the feeling she didn't want to laugh in the first place. I kissed her on the mouth and tried not to think about it too much when she rammed her tongue between my teeth. This whole time she's just flopping and flapping under me like something at the bottom of a canoe. Arms and legs a-going. An octopus, I thought, and I remembered Mike telling me a giant squid's mouth is in its stomach.

I get her undressed and before long things are up and running and I'm shuddering and shimmying and feeding myself into her.

"Don't you gunk in me," she said, giving my arm a little bite. "Don't you even think about it."

I won't, I told her, but I did. And then I didn't know what to say.

"Okay, well."

"Okay well what."

I didn't know what. I tried to think what time it must be, and it seemed like it was probably pretty late. The Go-Go would close soon. And I flashed on them all gathered round the windows and laughing and whoo-ee, boy, Starbuck and Jarvis and Mike Corliss and I don't know who all, everybody just gray shadows in the light off the bug lamps, blob-faces pressed up against the car windows.

Excerpted from Wyoming by JP Gritton. Copyright © 2019 by JP Gritton. Excerpted by permission of Tin House Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.