And yet, even through the delirious stages of withdrawal, he's mostly fun to be around; that has to say something. When he tells me he doesn't know for sure if he has the virus, but suspects he does, I nod and say, "Fair enough." We continue having sex. When we run out of money for condoms we abstain, until a coworker gives me a brown paper bag-full she got for free at Planned Parenthood.

The job hunt doesn't pan out. We last, for three weeks, on my part-time $9.90 an hour. I see no problem with this, I tell him. I'm not worried at all. We slowly start to tell each other "I love you."

Our only real fight, the only time I have every been truly, seriously, uncontrollably furious with him, is when he tells me, near the end of that third week: "I have to go back. Just for two weeks. I just need to get my things, I have so many things I left up there. I need to say goodbye to everyone." He puts something sweet on the sound system, Simon and Garfunkel, probably, the idiot.

I'm no fool. Back to D.C. means back to the shit; back to D.C. means all the help I've given him up a vein. Back to D.C. means like all the other men I've ever cared for he is going and promising and promising and gone. It makes me cry, in a way I don't think real life has ever made me cry, and then I change the music, to Lily Allen's "Fuck You," and I'm too angry and gratified by the crushed-in look on his beautiful face to feel humiliated by this ludicrously melodramatic little gesture. Fuck you, I tell him. Fuck you fuck you fuck you.

I still hate him, over the next few days, but in a more manageable way. He texts me to tell me he's reserving a plane ticket for September 11 (of course). When I get home he tells me that the ticket is a one-way but only, he insists, because it is so much cheaper, and he's having to borrow money from friends to get back. Only for that, he insists, but I don't believe him.

The plane ticket doesn't pan out. He finally is able to borrow enough money for an Amtrak pass. Like an asshole, I agree to drive him, on Monday, the 20 minutes to the station. A difficult weekend passes. He tries and tries to convince me that he's going to be back before I know it. I know better, but try to believe him anyway. He promises that when he gets there, he's going to get tested, at the free clinic, so we can know for sure. "You can get tested here," I tell him. "Yeah, but..." he replies.

Sunday night, we watch Harold and Maude on Netflix; I've never seen it. We awaken early the next morning. I leave him standing on an empty rail platform in the country. The place looks like it hasn't been used in years. I pray, driving back, to work, alone, that maybe it isn't used, that the routes have changed, that he'll be calling me in a few hours to ask me to come pick him up, and I'll make him wait until I'm through with work, of course, but I will. But he doesn't. I come home that night and play on repeat David Bowie's "Five Years." I'm working the next day when he calls and leaves a voicemail from a payphone in Chicago.