I've given my heart to the cave man. He walked into the Circle-K at the end of my shift. He bought a bundle of firewood and a gallon jug of tea. "I like your blue hair," he said to me. My hair is light brown. "I see potential," he said. "It's like seeing the future, but not a pristine view."

The cave man drives an old motorcycle. I ride in the sidecar. It's the only thing he got from his father — that and a tendency toward tendonitis and a whole lot of regret.

It's a nice cave. People have lived here before, a thousand years ago. I lie beside him on the furs that are his bed, and I look at the stars through the perfect circle on the roof of the cave, a hole that lets out the smoke and sometimes, if he forgets to cover it, lets in the rain. It's his modern addition, he says. We drink mushroom tea and listen to the frogs and the owls and the coyotes, and when I worry they are too close, he tells me to listen, that listening is medicine.

I walk the trail to his cave, picking flowers along the way to give the cave a ladylike touch, to remind him I am his. When I arrive, I see that his furs are gone, his plank table is dismantled, his clay dishes shattered. There is a note, written on good paper with a fountain pen, not with charcoal, not in the dirt. There is no point even in reading it: I know I won't see him again.


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