Excerpt from the book The Man Back There and Other Stories

After all the noise and mad action––after the thrown drink, the knocked over chair as Sweets jumped to his feet and ducked his head, after Sharon’s near-fall too as he almost pushed her out the door––they stood on the sidewalk without speaking.

Sweets took off his coat and wrapped it around her shoulders. It had grown cold––they could see their breath––and he wanted to comfort her, but he didn’t want to hold her.

She jammed her hands down into the broken-buttoned pockets of the jacket and looked back at the door. She was probably expecting it to open, and for the man to charge out and then up the stone steps, his face wet from Sharon's White Russian. But Sweets guessed he was probably not even off the floor; and even if he was, he was probably just talking to his friends, twisting the story around as fast as he could, making it his own. Did you see them hightail it out of here? Must have been her time of the month. Crazy People. This town is full of crazy people.

As he looked across the road at the fire-scarred mill building, Sweets imagined the river the building obscured, moving past his life on its way from the White Mountains to the Atlantic. The moon was full and it had rained lightly about an hour ago and people were coming outside just to take a look around.

The bar was packed anyway, which was probably part of the reason what had happened had happened—too many people bumping shoulders. Rationalization, Sweets knew, but who really cared, right? “We should get out of here,” he said, but they didn’t move except to step closer together.