She meets up with her friend, the one she thinks is gay. He suggests dinner and she wonders if he’ll be generous and pay, even though this is not a date. But he’s older, by fifteen years at least, and he knows she’s a broke college student. She meets up with him at his apartment, finding herself in the East Village where the nightlife tumbles out of doorways and Avenue D looms dark as crime. A is for alive, B is for breathing, C is for comatose, and D is for dead.

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