He charged up the block—resolved only to return to his house. The image of Emma’s knuckle grazing his on the table at the restaurant the day before flashed vividly across his mind. But he had seen the ring prior to that. Michael was precisely the sort of person who would map out every contour of a beautiful woman’s face and fail to notice she was conspicuously betrothed to another man. Being an artist did not make him more observant, only impaired with a peculiar form of nearsightedness.

Emma’s virtue had been rescued from his overactive imagination, but only at the price of being locked away; and nothing could make him love a woman more than knowing she could never be his. It was less reckless to pine after a woman who was unattainable than one who was merely promiscuous. He would not be required to agonize over her sullied virtue, only to pat himself on the back in not asking her to forsake a higher principle on his behalf. Yet where was the higher principle in failing to mention she was engaged?

As always, his dented ego was of two minds on interpreting a woman’s actions. Seeing Emma's unstinting enthusiasm for his company, he could only conclude she was either the most heartless, ignoble woman he had ever met, or, having formed an attachment for him, she was delaying her revelation in order to cement their new bond and place it beyond all amendment or repeal. Either way, she had been pulling him along by a grappling hook from the very beginning, and on nonnegotiable terms he would be the last to know.

Michael’s overstretched brain had been systematically shutting down over the course of the trying day, taking with it motor strength and even short-term memory. Still, he was not so preoccupied that he failed to notice the street was darker going back than coming. Quite unconsciously, he was blearily drawing in on an old Cadillac ambulance parked up the block past his house—not because of its emergency lights but because of dimmed face jack-o-lanterns peering out its rear window. Michael walked by the spectacle, already waist-high in a plot, and looked around late on hearing feet kick up in dead leaves. A glowing orb of orange appeared below the limbs of a naked tree; dark figures were shuffling on and off porches with more stolen lanterns. Masked, their muffled laugher and hoots betrayed youth.

They were frat boys.

The accidental spectator had slowed on completing the puzzle, yet quickly gathered it was a bad idea to show any reaction. One of the pranksters was standing in a yard across the street and had him dead in sights. His frightening mask did more than hide his identity—it drew out some primal predator stare. Michael quickened his stride, and seeing he was not going to be accosted took it as a sign to turn the corner.

One prominent jack-o-lantern was seen from the bottom of the hill: the one shining through Emma’s apartment window. Backlit against it, two figures were on her porch, although it was impossible to say whether they were leaving or just arrived. The bedraggled suitor plodded up the steps to where the resident was talking to her visitor and recognized the fellow as Tanner, the artist friend from the coffeehouse. The appearance of the older man so abruptly at the foot of the dripping porch ended whatever conversation had been in progress, leaving the stone-faced photographer looking down without comment.

Tanner studied the painter for a moment, as well as Emma’s complex reaction to him. “Well,” he began awkwardly, “I guess I should be going.”

She acknowledged his leave-taking with a tight but passable smile.

As he descended the steps, and she watched in silence, Michael used the interlude to take stock of her hard day. The sunny dress from the morning was gone, and in its place was a drab mossy frock buried under his cardigan; the sweater’s raggedness matched her ill-tended makeup. Once Tanner was planted on the sidewalk below, Emma turned brusquely to enter her apartment. Michael tarried in the doorway where the pumpkin on the end table illuminated several packing boxes in the floor. Alarmed, he slunk back to the darker bedroom to find her wrestling with a large suitcase on the bed.

On hearing his footsteps, she made an announcement. “I’m leaving school, Michael.”

His script (if he ever had one) was out the window. “Why?”

The girl glanced back, raising an eyebrow at his show of feeling. “Why…? Because I didn’t bargain for this.” She resumed stuffing more things into her case.

“Jacques is gone,” he countered. “He will no longer bother you. He will soon be forgotten.”

(He had not taken her meaning.) Emma turned to sit on the dim bed. The ring on her finger was more visible in shadow than it had ever been in daylight. “I’m engaged,” she finally said. “I’m engaged to be married. That’s what I wanted to tell you in my studio, and again this morning.”

Though he expected to hear the words, they nonetheless pushed down into his veins like poison.

“Evan is his name,” she went on. “That was him I was talking to last night on phone.”

The man listed in the doorway.

“It’s as well it ends here,” she continued coolly. “I thought we would be friends. But it’s clear we can’t be friends.”

Michael looked over to see all her beautiful gowns removed from the large walk-in closet, needing to answer—needing a cri de cœur. “But I don’t have friends,” he peeped.

She crackled. “The way you cleared out of here this morning, it doesn’t surprise me.”

“No,” he mumbled. (She had not taken his meaning.)

Emma stood up and closed the lid on the suitcase. “It’s been a rough day. Please leave.”

Howling instantly erupted from beyond the drizzling windowsill; someone was running across the backyard; the frat boy raiders were assaulting another block of houses.

“Leave,” she repeated forcefully.

Creaking, intrusive footsteps were behind where the man teetered on the precipice—footsteps surely drawn onto the porch by the lantern glow in the window. “I have no friends,” he again intoned.

“Goodbye, Michael.”

The candlelight wavered at his back. The front door was left unlocked. With any retreat barred, the roused draft nudged him forward over the threshold. “You don’t understand,” he said.

“What’s to understand?”

The only light in the house snuck away on tiptoe, and the blackness placed him urgently at her elbow. He seized the zipper on the piece of luggage, and, undoing the flap, began flinging gowns to the floor. His voice was stronger. “You don’t understand!” Something had been unleashed in him—something barely started. “You don’t understand!” he cried.

Emma, astounded, dropped to the edge of the mattress to watch him against the dim window.

At the end of his outburst the suitcase was empty and tears were pouring freely down his cheeks. He was dull and keen at the same time, somewhere between her warm body and the cold dark that engulfed them. He wanted to apologize, but was too incapacitated to speak. Gravity pulled him to the floor, where the dresses were now arrayed at her feet. His arms, of their own accord, encircled her waist as a final fixed point. He chanted the words once more. “You don’t understand…”

Emma eased only slowly, like a stack of wobbly cups and saucers struggling to stay aligned. Then, when she had completely exhaled, her body yielded to accept the embrace. “I do understand, Michael.” Her voice broke with a quiet sniffle. “I don’t want you to be my friend, either.” She turned a tuft of his hair, and only after a minute or two spoke again. “Go close the front door,” she whispered. “You left it open.”

Michael rose as an emptied vessel to re-enter the front of the unlit apartment. The exterior door squeaked on its hinges in the chilled air, but the pumpkin and its extinguished candle were still on the end table.

He locked the door and retraced the darkness back to Emma’s side.