Amelio often said he loved me, and I liked him very much. He had a sweet spirit, and as much of a fuck-up as he was, he had a certain bravery. Even when we were in the early stages of opiate withdrawal he managed to stay cheerful, but I began to see less of him when it became apparent that outside of his van, which was a good place to fix, he was as much of a liability as an asset. He never had any money. I told him I was going to have sex with a local drygoods merchant, in the neighborhood where we went to buy drugs, on an exchange basis. I was still well enough then that I could consider the arrangement. “If you do that I will tell everyone that you are a slut,” he said regretfully. Who was “everyone,” I wondered; who did he know that knew me outside of one or two passing junkies with whom our exchanges were limited to “you know what’s open?” and “they’ll be back in five minutes they said.”

Amelio, feeling flush, once brought me some flowers which we put in a can of water on the dashboard of his van, and after that I didn’t see him for a while.

The next time I heard from him was when the wife of a friend of his called me saying he’d given the friend my number as a possible source of bail. My boyfriend, who was ready to kick me out of his apartment, hovered ragefully over my shoulder as I took the call. He knew what was up. My parents knew what was up. Money was missing everywhere, and they wouldn’t let me in the house. I didn’t want to stay on the street, having no skill for it. I was considering suicide, but I wanted to die happy, and that would take drug money, which, in turn, would take time and effort to come by. In other words, it was a normal day. “Sorry, can’t help you today.”

He called a week later while my boyfriend was out. I was in a better mood, having obtained what I needed to want to live a little longer and having injected it into a vein in my wrist about ten minutes earlier. “Why are you in jail?” “Well, you know. I was driving the wrong car at the wrong time. Listen,” he went on, “sometimes some of the girls send us stuffin here. A pair of your panties, a ribbon from your hair, whatever.” I told him I’d see what I could do. I rarely wore underwear and my hair was too short for ribbons. Women only wore ribbons in their hair in old songs, anyway. The poor man, to have only me for his idea of a woman out there. “Don’t call me again, though,” I said. “I’ll write to you. My boyfriend gets angry.” “I thought you said he didn’t mind?” which was something I’d told him once when I was expecting him to call with some dope, to bypass all the bullshit.

Things were getting a little more desperate in my corner. My boyfriend was certainly going to kick me out any minute if I couldn’t think of any more excuses about missing objects and pawn tickets. The phone rang during one of our morning conversations.

“It’s Amelio. Listen, sweetheart, I have to tell you something.”

“Amelio,” I said, with one eye on my boyfriend who was pointing to the door he wanted me to walk out of with $1.15 in my pocket and a January sleet-storm spattering the street, “I told you not to call me.”

“Okay,” he said, with perfect equanimity, and hung up.

Do you have to be a brilliant plot-predictor to guess what it was Amelio had to tell me, and how he thought I should know and go get the test? No you do not, and in hindsight there’s not a doubt in my mind what news Amelio had to share. What he was trying to do was the decent thing. Now, eight years later, where is Amelio? You might as well ask me a question on quantum physics. He had no girlfriend, no mother, no father, no friends who could come and see him. He may have died there, he may have died soon after, he may still be alive, spending his life shuttling between methadone and medical clinics. I’m living in the love of my family and the bosom of my world. I live within the warm, firelit circle of privilege, under a whispering midwestern sky that blushes down on the snow-crushed streets these January mornings.