M. got laid off and wanted to take me to the Indian casino overnight. Like nothing, out of nowhere: in the spirit of spontaneity, that word we batted around when we made our first date last year as winter's feral freeze spied distantly upon torpid August. In a burst I imagined us marching arm in arm, aglow, down the turquoise and lavender carpet between rows and rows of roulette tables and blackjack and pai-gow. We'd laugh the impervious, giddy laugh of losers with nothing to lose.

Maybe catch a show.

Drink, gamble, inhale the heady, judiciously modulated atmosphere of pure oxygen and chlorine. And awake to our senses, we'd retire for two or three hours of fucking, the intensity and erotic thrill of which I am not likely to ever experience again in all my dwindling days.

"I can't make it," I said. "I have to work."