*****

I didn’t press her anymore as we drove, but Paige did begin volunteering information. “Why are men such assholes?” it started.

“You got me,” I told her, “I’ve been one for nearly thirty-eight years and I still don’t know.”

“A man or an asshole,” I heard her grin as she said it.

“You choose,” I smiled back. “Besides, women aren’t much better.”

“You’re right there.” So, I now knew she was having boyfriend trouble. I also knew now it was because of another woman, possibly one she was acquainted with. “Where are we going?” she asked, a sudden tone that sounded close to panic in her voice.

“Just this bar downtown I heard about,” I told her. “I figure it's more your scene than mine, but you’re the one that needs cheering up.” She said the name of a place that I’d heard a bunch of my students mention. “That’s the one.”

“Oh, God, Caleb,” she was suddenly pleading with me, “we can’t go there. My apartment is right above it.”

“Oh shit! Really?”

“Anywhere but there, please.”

“I haven’t had time to get downtown that much since I moved here,” I told her, “I don’t know anywhere else.”

“Well, can we just go to your place?” she implored me.

If I brought Paige back to the homestead I knew it wouldn’t sit well with Helena. Bring girls back for sex was okay, but to help them with their feelings? That would be much too personal. “My place is all the way out in Boerne,” I told her. Then I had a thought. “I rented a studio around here, just in case I felt the urge to create. I haven’t used it yet but it’s furnished and all my gear is there.”

“Whatever,” replied Paige. I could see she just didn’t want to be there.

“I’m sorry,” I said after we’d driven a little further.

“It’s not your fault,” she replied absently. “How could you have known where I lived. I just escaped from there before you found me. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go but the campus.” She turned her head to look at me. “I’m sorry I missed your class, though. I just didn’t feel up to it.”

“I guess I can let it go,” I said, feigning a stern attitude, “just this one time.”

I pulled in behind the unit. It was a converted studio apartment, appropriately, on top of a slightly grubby-looking taco place, set up with plenty of sinks, power outlets, a bright white room great for staging indoor shoots, a light-tight room perfect for developing film, and even a shower and a cot, in case I found myself working into the night. Like there was any chance of that. Still, at least having it ready meant I couldn’t let ‘not having anywhere to work’ be an excuse.

I showed Paige up and turned on the fluorescent overhead lights, just to really emphasize the peeling paint and squalor, but she smiled as she looked around going over to some of my more famous prints and studying them. “Yeah, you got me,” I said as I reached into the desk drawer for the bottle of scotch I kept in it, “I do keep those hanging there to remind me that I was once an artist.”

“From what I hear,” she accepted the dirty coffee cup I’d filled with whisky for her, “a lot of people, not least impressionable college girls, still think you are.”

I laughed and sat on the small cot bed that faced the studio. “Do you count yourselves among them?”

She laughed in return. “To tell the truth I had no idea who you were until I Googled you the other day,” she told me. I mimed the pain that caused me. “My friend Julie is a huge fan, though,” she added.

“Tell Julie my career, such as it is, thanks her.”

A moment passed. Paige stopped looking at my pictures, turned, and walked back over to where I was sitting on the little bed. She sat next to me and clinked our cups together.

“And, I guess, thank you,” she smiled.

“For what?”

“For coming to my rescue,” she told me. “I needed someone. And I’m sorry, you weren’t in the top three people I didn’t want to see. Just the last person I expected.”

I nodded gratefully and we sat in companionable silence for another moment. “I feel like I should apologize to you, as well. I shouldn’t have shown that picture of you when I realized you were in the class,” I said.

“Maybe,” she mused. “On the one hand, you had no right. On the other, you did make me feel special. What you said, about someone I care about making me doubt myself, boy, was that true.”

Then she told me. It took whatever three refills of our whisky cups is in hours, but she told me everything. Her insecurity about her fiancée Adam, the way he was making her feel about herself, the reason they went to the Wrecker’s Ball, what happened there, what she was thinking when I spoke to her, and what happened that very afternoon, when she discovered her boyfriend and her best friend were having an affair. A couple of time she cried, sometimes I held her hand, but we got there.

“I don’t know about you,” I said when she was done, “but I think I need a taco, now.”

“Wow, I hadn’t realized I was so hungry.”

“So it’s agreed,” I got up and headed for the door. “And Paige,” she turned to look at me, “don’t worry about going home for a while. You can stay here for as long as you need.”

“Thanks, Caleb” she smiled.