Rubbing her chin, raising her glinting Zippo to her Camel Light: "You never even told her, did you?"
"Told her? Told her what?"
"That you loved her, you worm."
He tried to smile, succeeded only in showing some dental work. "Well, once, on her couch, in her dorm room, at school? I, I, I, I– "
Chloe snapped the lighter shut, blew smoke at Matt's nakedness, spun a hand in the air.
" I almost told her."
"Oh. You almost told her. That’s great."
"But, but – "
"No buts about it, you wet noodle. What did she look like?"
"What'd she look like?"
"What did she look like?”
"I don’t know. Short. Blonde. Curvy."
He stopped abruptly. Realized he’d just described Chloe.
She narrowed her eyes, blew more smoke through her lips, which were pursed so tightly now it could only be to keep from grinning. "Well that’s interesting, isn't it?"
Matt, wide-eyed, said nothing.
"So tell me, Matt my buddy. Just how good of friends are you and Fitz?"
"I...don’t know."
"Mmm, I see, I see.” A strand of hair fell over her left eye. “And what about me, Matt? Am I your friend?"
"I think you’re the devil."
Chloe threw her head back, loosed a Satanic laugh. Matt stood there, a jerk.
"Let me give you some advice, buddy," she finally said, picking her navel under her T shirt. "You might want to get dressed, fast, ’cause your friend just pulled into the driveway."
Matt scrambled for his clothes, grabbing one article after another, sticking this limb into that hole, unbuttoning this thing and re-zipping that, getting his jeans on inside-out, his shirt on backwards, finally hitting the couch, holding Nietzsche up to his face, upside-down, just as Fitz, with the neighbors' one-eyed, malnourished, highly noxious cat following at his heels, came through the kitchen door, announcing, "Today was another defeat!" The cat trailed him into the living room, where it jumped gracelessly onto the coffee table and, as Matt, Chloe, and Fitz watched horrified, delivered up, after some violent torso spasms and hacking, a slick, steaming hairball – or maybe a half-digested mouse. Then he/she/it bolted, hurling through the storm door in the kitchen, leaving a tattered cat-shaped hole in the screen.
"What," queried Fitz, "should we have for dinner?"
