My Brother Said I Was Your Dog

One morning after a big argument with Elena I was kneeling with my head between her legs and she was very silent, hardly breathing, when apropos of nothing she mentioned we should take a drive outside the city in search of a place to swim. It was high summer; already I could hear the wind and feel a broad, dull heat beating its chant against the bedroom blind, and the thought of finding a secluded spot for cooling off stimulated my illusions, even if a miserly part of me suspected this was just another of Elena’s ploys to hurt and undermine me.

I was a little sweaty. I paused and asked her if she’d like me to continue with my ministrations but was met with silence; I couldn’t even tell if she had heard me. Suddenly I was paralysed; I didn’t know if I should keep giving Elena head or get up and get moving. She often said how my irresolution bothered her, and while I knew that further hesitation on my part would be damning, I hovered above her undecidedly, her juices drying on my face.

Elena closed her eyes and told me of a place in the Dandenongs she’d been to twenty years ago or so, when she was still at uni, a secret place where a bush track led you to a clear, deep pool. I pictured the long, overgrown track, the hanging branches, the ferns and grasses at its edges somehow dripping verdantly, even though we’d not had rain for weeks. I pictured the cold, crystal water as it gushed and splashed over the rocks. The wind seemed to die down, or at least I no longer heard it. I pictured going nude, if the vibe was right; Elena and I used to love swimming naked, every chance we got.

My hard-on softened, horniness giving way to lust of a different kind, a lust for life! How good it would be, I thought, to get out of the city with Elena, to get out of the routines which made us so unhappy. How the long walk in the heat would be challenging, but the effort might just coalesce into a kind of unity, a new togetherness. Our relief once we had plunged into the freezing pool, and how it might be possible to enjoy each other as we used to.

‘Yes,’ she stated, ‘I think I remember how to get there.’

So without bringing her to orgasm I got up and began dressing, putting our swimming things into my canvas bag. It felt good to get organised, and more than that, to have a common goal.

I packed a bluetooth speaker, towels, my book and her book. Soon I became aware of her attention and it started feeling really hostile. I could tell she was about to criticise me and my body responded in the way it always did: the familiar knotting in my shoulders, a tightening of the sphincter, a sense of chaos in the gut.

Lately, I was scared around Elena. At the same time, I never wanted her to know just how deranged she made me, so in moments like these I became unresponsive and obtuse. I hunched my shoulders and let my face go slack; I looked a little dim. I couldn’t help picturing myself as Gerard Depardieu. It was oafish, I knew, but so far I hadn’t landed on a better invocation.

‘Is that it?’ she asked, staring at me like a cat.

‘What?’ I sniped.

She exhaled loudly.

I busied myself with packing. There was a half-drunk bottle of gin on my dresser that we’d started on the night before and I toyed with the idea of taking it along so that, if nothing else, we could get a little buzzed. I put it in the bag. Elena repeated her question, which I ignored for want of something meaningful to say.

‘Right.’ She stood up. ‘Of course.’

I didn’t know what she was getting at, exactly, but I suspected it was some attempt to guilt-trip me for not giving her an orgasm, even though I thought she’d intimated we should get going, or maybe because I’d hesitated and she had found this unmanly: proof of some essential weakness and/or proof I didn’t love slash even like her; proof of my selfishness, which, paradoxically, I knew she would put down to my being a man.

Then again, I could be overanalysing – as Elena often pointed out, I was always getting in my head.

She stalked out of the bedroom, and I heard the shower run. Outside, the wind was picking up. I hunted for my sunnies and just as I was putting them into the bag, I remembered the mushroom caps my friend Andy had given me in lieu of payment when I re-hung his door.

Andy was – and still is as far as I know, although we’re no longer in touch – a purveyor of quality mind-altering substances: little caps, coloured pills and cardboard squares designed to induce anything from the chillest micro-dose to the fullest mind-bending trip. He’d told me these were on the mild side; I could safely expect a few visuals, a heightened receptivity to external stimuli, without becoming an arm or conversant with the afterlife or having it last for twelve unfathomable hours.

Even with this guarantee from Andy I’d been hesitant to try them. I liked partying and taking drugs but I preferred amphetamines. Weed made me paranoid and I was fairly certain I did not do well on psychedelics, one because I imagined they would only increase my horror at the world I lived in, a horror produced by looming visions of apocalypse as well as the acute and harrowing spectacle of state-sanctioned genocide; a horror compounded by the hastening deterioration of my relationship which had, these last few months, degenerated even further than I thought was possible, and yet I still had not the courage or even the desire to break free. So no – mushies were not going to agree with me.

I put them in the bag.

Elena reappeared in the doorway. ‘What’s that,’ she asked, ‘drugs?’

‘Yes, actually,’ I said with affected formality. ‘It is a bag of drugs.’

‘What kind?’

‘Mushy caps. Andy gave them to me.’

‘Andy,’ Elena scoffed. ‘Let me see’.

I handed the baggy to Elena and she tipped one of the caps into her palm. ‘Are you sure these are mushrooms?’ she asked.

‘Yes, that’s what Andy said.’

‘Looks like MDMA…or meth.’

I didn’t think it looked like either of those things, the caps being full of brownish dust rather than crystals, but I said nothing and waited for whatever devastating blow she planned on delivering next. But Elena simply handed back the baggy.

I attempted to sound casual. ‘We don’t have to take them.’

‘I don’t really care,’ she said, pulling on a singlet top.

For a few minutes we busied ourselves separately. I was beginning to feel okay again, like the outing might be fun. I gave Elena a playful pat on the bum and she flashed me a smile that was definitely not a grimace.

‘I guess it’s kind of funny,’ she said after a while.

For a second I thought this meant she was keen to take the mushrooms. I reckoned that if we dropped a half or quarter of a cap at the beginning of our walk, by the time we reached the pool we’d be ensconced in a pleasant high; we could then swim for a few hours, read, listen to music, make love or whatever, the high wearing off by the time we wanted to drive home.

‘We could just take a little microdose,’ I suggested.

Elena had her hand on the doorknob. ‘Yeah… I guess I find it funny that spending the day together makes you think you need to be on drugs.’

There was no point getting into it. We went out to the car.

—

The wind was really crazy; a mad, hot bushfire wind. The entrance to the track was overgrown but dry. Everything was either brown or yellow, fraying, brittle, the earth compact and dusty underfoot. Tall, spindly mountain ash rose up on either side. We argued for a while about directions and then started up the track, Elena in the lead and me trailing behind her like her stupid dog.

‘My brother said I was your dog,’ I told the back of her, wanting a reaction.

‘Ha. Such a good dog though. You’re like a Great Dane or something. Big, loyal…a bit clingy.’

‘Ha!’ I laughed bitterly. ‘And you’re a bitch.’

It was inelegant of me, a low blow. The wind blew dust into my eyes. I didn’t need to see her face to tell that she was smirking.

We walked in the heat. I took my shirt off and felt foolish, like I was peacocking or something. Elena turned around, looked me up and down and smiled. ‘You look hot,’ she said, and I couldn’t tell if she was joking.

For a long time we were silent. Every so often, a cockatoo cried in the canopy. With a particularly huge gust of wind, I heard a noise like fireworks and jumped. It happened a couple more times before I realised it was the sound of dead branches splitting from the tree trunks.

Imagine if one fell on us, I thought. Depending on how heavy and what kind of branch it was, we’d either be mildly surprised or totally, completely fucked.

I looked up at the foliage either side of the path and was freshly cognisant of every dead limb. Some of the trunks were even cracked as though they had been struck by lightning, or split by some giant’s undiscerning axe.

‘These trees look quite unstable. What are the chances a branch will fall on us, do you think?’ I called out.

‘Don’t be dramatic,’ Elena called back.

I stopped short on the path, feeling spooked. Elena doubled back and stood in front of me, her hands on her hips. She was surprisingly athletic for someone with a figure I’d call Rubenesque: round shoulders, full breasts. Another man might call her chubby, but I wasn’t allowed to say that. I liked her strength. I liked the stretch marks she had gained from growing, changing, having children. I liked her name, the sound of it like valleys, warm evenings, a man with a guitar. I liked her dark hair streaked with silver. She seemed so vital. Middle age agreed with her, whereas for me it just confirmed my growing sense of disaffection and unease.

There was another loud crack just near us. Elena asked for the water bottle. We’d been walking for almost an hour and I realised my mouth was also dry. She took a long draught, until the bottle was almost empty.

‘Thanks for leaving some for me,’ I said.

‘I thought you were drinking gin,’ she countered.

‘Why on earth would I drink gin?’ I asked.

‘I saw it in your bag.’

‘You always think the worst of me,’ I said. Then I removed the gin from my bag and took a fat slug anyway. It burned my throat but tasted fresh and spicy. I offered some to Elena and she scowled but took the bottle. Then she pulled me in and kissed me, the gin still on her tongue.

God, she was exciting.

The heat on our backs was biting. I asked how long she reckoned it would be until we reached the pool and she guessed about twenty minutes.

‘Now,’ she swigged again. ‘About those drugs.’

—

Three years earlier I was busted for growing dope. Gillian and I had finally split and I was living on the farm, sometimes with our son Rennie, who stayed with me every other week, and sometimes with my new girlfriend, a woman named Joanna. When they weren’t there my hours were attended by a wide, nebulous sense of freedom. At first I liked that I could work, swim and masturbate freely, subsisting on tea, whisky and toast. But after a while it felt a little strange.

It wasn’t that Gillian and I had been unsuited. In fact, for almost fifteen years we had it pretty easy. Gillian’s dad had died when Rennie was a baby, so we used her inheritance to buy the farm. For years it was a good arrangement. A good arrangement, but it somehow felt ignoble. All the building and repairing, the way Gillian spent money, the mess and shit and snot, having to pick up shifts at the Bait & Tackle when the inheritance ran out. Our kids were cool and I liked being on the farm but felt as though some bigger thing was missing, some higher calling or romance. Gillian didn’t get it. ‘What do you want?’ she kept asking me.

By the end my answer was, ‘Just not this same old shit.’

Suppose that’s why I started growing dope. I told Gillian it was because I needed money, but I was actually hoping it would change my life.

Joanna had a cousin in the Rebels who sold me the equipment. By my own logic, I had the space and privacy to do it. I was sick of working at the Bait & Tackle. I had contacts who could sell it on to bigger dealers down in Melbourne. And I was not much of a stoner, which seemed like an advantage vis-à-vis the marijuana; there was no danger of my getting high off my own supply. I didn’t really even try to hide it from the kids. My daughter, eager to be nearer to her mates, stayed in town with Gillian and almost never visited. When it was my turn to have Rennie I just told him not to go out to the shed.

It felt important to persuade him that he should keep living with me half the time. Even though I’d always advocated a mode of childrearing I referred to as ‘benign neglect’, I didn’t want to become one of those dads who never saw his family. And I didn’t think Gillian should have him full time anyway; he was twelve and she was going to have to learn to let him be a bit more independent.

I liked the crop-growing aspect lots. It was a pleasure tending to the plants and thinking about the money I would make. I even enjoyed the tedious rituals of hanging, drying, cutting and packaging, which I’d look forward to each harvest as though they offered kinds of spiritual purification, and those who tried it said my stuff was good. Other aspects I did not take to so easily. I guess I was a skilled horticulturalist but never a good drug lord. I kept getting excited at the pool or drunk in town and telling everyone about my massive crop.

My kelpie heard the police before I did. We were out chopping firewood near the river when she pricked her ears and started yelping. She was a neurotic dog and first I thought she was just being dramatic. ‘Peggy,’ I remember barking. ‘Would you shut the fuck up.’

Luckily, Rennie was at school. The response team raided the house, the bungalow, the shed, both utes, the woodpile and the tractor. Of course they found the set-up. Peggy ran around nipping their heels, yelling and whimpering. She pissed on the floor. I said nothing and fidgeted. I walked around combing my hair.

One of the officers was a regular in the fast lane at the YMCA. We sometimes did that awkward thing where one of you catches up in freestyle and touches the other one’s toes. If it was me touching his toes, I made sure to really go for it. I suppose I wanted to ruffle him, knowing he was a cop.

When he walked out of my bedroom carrying my burner phone, he looked apologetic. ‘Sorry about this,’ he said.

‘It’s your job,’ I shrugged. ‘How’s your swimming?’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘um, it’s good.’

‘Did you get a chance to look at that training program I mentioned?’

‘Ah, no. Not really. My wife’s been sick, so with the kids and everything I haven’t actually been down.’

‘Ah. That’s no good,’ I said.

‘She’ll be fine, it’s only tonsillitis.’ He looked guiltily at the phone in his hands. ‘You know, you could have been more careful.’

‘It’s not in my nature to be prudent.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, sounding thoughtful. ‘I could see that from your stroke. You’re stronger than me, which makes you faster, but your style is rushed and cramped. It would be much less effort if you slowed down for a second to extend your arms.’

‘Very nice, Jerry,’ I said, ‘thanks. Now, if you have everything you need, I’d like you to get the fuck out.’

They found sixty-five plants and charged me with cultivating a traffickable quantity of marijuana, but they never found the cash, which I had stashed I won’t say where, a stroke of genius that ended up helping me get off. I represented myself in court and cleared my name, but nonetheless the whole ordeal was stressful; my hair turned completely grey. In the middle of everything, I met Elena.

We started chatting online. She was affectionate and clever, smarter than Joanna and a lot more interesting than Gillian. I’d spent years feeling stifled, but with her there was this sense of finally being able to express the intelligent parts of myself I had been keeping under wraps.

Following my final court appearance, we went out for a drink. I can’t remember much about that conversation – I imagine I was telling her about my late ordeal, acting vulnerable. I remember us laughing. I kept catching her eyes and feeling this shiver of excitement at how closely she was watching me. At some point during the conversation, she told me that she hated dogs. ‘It’s not because they’re dirty or smelly or anything. I just can’t stand to have them follow me around.’

When I got back to the farm next day, I went to check on Peggy in the dog run. She jumped all over me and licked my face, but when I let her out she bolted past the house and through the bottom paddock, disappearing through the bush. She sometimes did this – I don’t know why. It was always a big saga to find her and bring her back. She was essentially a stupid dog and had no chance of lasting in the wild. I went to call her back but something stopped me. Let her go, I thought. She was a nuisance anyway.

Peggy did not return that night or any other. I refused to think of what had happened to her, even when my sleep was punctuated by the calls of wild dogs. When I next went down to Melbourne, where I met up with Elena, she asked about my animals. I told her I farmed sheep and that I had some half-wild cats.

‘No sheep dogs?’ she teased.

I said I had this kelpie but she died.

—

Things were awesome for about a year. Perhaps because we started with my court case, I felt like there was no need to have secrets. We talked a lot. I told her everything about my childhood, my parents, their affairs and indiscretions, some indiscretions of my own. I confessed that I’d cheated on Gillian more times than was normal; I told her I thought seeking sex outside of marriage made me feel as though I was exerting some control over my life.

‘That makes sense,’ agreed Elena. ‘It’s a question of agency. I’ve also struggled with it, but in different ways. My mother was controlling, always giving love and taking it away, and if I’m honest I can see myself repeating this with all my partners and my children. But I’m getting better at recognising it,’ she stated. ‘I don’t want it to control me.’

I’d never experienced such honesty. We agreed that although they looked quite different, our traumas were compatible. ‘That’s important,’ Elena often said thereafter. ‘It’s good our baggage is aligned.’

Before long, I was spending every second week in Melbourne. One evening after getting ramen, we walked back to her house as every single streetlamp went out one by one. Standing at the door in total darkness, Elena drew my hand beneath her shirt and placed it just above her heart.

‘I think you’re my person,’ she said.

‘I think you’re my big fuck-off love.’

‘BFOL,’ she joked.

‘BFOL. That can be our special word.’

Soon after, lockdown hit. We did a lot of yoga. Elena always criticised my technique, although she said that it was nice to have a partner who would do the things she liked. I drove back and forth from the farm to Melbourne, homeschooling Rennie. We talked about me moving in. When we were finally let out, Elena invited me to the pub to meet her friends. There was a woman there called Lisa, a lovely woman with a tattoo of a dolphin on her arm. ‘What’s the story there?’ I asked her.

‘It’s because she’s bisexual,’ said Elena. ‘Isn’t that right, Lisa?’

Lisa laughed. ‘I just like dolphins. You know, they’re one of the few mammal species besides humans who have sex for pleasure.’

I guess you could say what happened later was my fault – I take responsibility for that – although I was under the impression that Elena had encouraged it. ‘I can see you two together,’ she had been saying at the bar. ‘Lisa, can’t you tell he gives great head?’

As it happened, Lisa said I was the best she’d ever had.

There were other slip-ups, nothing serious, but it was around then that the machinations really started. Elena said that infidelity was a bourgeois fucking concept and we should be free to explore other people. She said that I could tell her anything, and when I confessed my dalliances she received this information lightly, only punishing me for it later on. I felt at once completely liberated and incredibly confused. One time, she even suggested that I’d been with Andy, the one who gave me the mushroom caps.

‘Why the hell would I get with Andy?’

 ‘You told me you liked sucking cock.’

I’d done it a few times, yeah, and I liked it, yeah. But that didn’t mean I had a thing for Andy.

‘He’s not my type,’ I pleaded.

‘Everyone’s your fucking type.’

—

Rennie didn’t trust her. He was so sick of me talking about the relationship that he stopped wanting to live with me at the farm. He said that he’d prefer to live with Gillian full time and sometimes see me on the weekends. When I asked him what he didn’t trust about Elena, he said she was a vampire. ‘She feeds off your insecurities,’ he said.

Tears sprung to my eyes. Rennie was so wise, even at the age of twelve. ‘If she’s so horrible,’ I asked him, ‘why do you think I like her?’

 Rennie shrugged. ‘You’re the type who needs a lot of reassurance. That’s why you told everyone you were growing pot.’

I tried to disguise how much this hurt me. ‘How did you know about that?’ I asked.

But Rennie wasn’t listening, he was playing on his phone.

—

One day after Rennie had moved into town I went for a swim in the river and then drove through the back paddock in the nude. Feeling horny, I parked near the old windmill and took a photo of my flaccid penis. Then I stroked my penis until it was hard and standing like a redgum. Before going further, I took another photo. After coming I took another. I used an app to arrange them like a triptych. Before, during, after. It looked quite artistic. I sent it to Elena.

Who was this meant for? she texted back.

For you!, I replied

She was silent for a few minutes. What is wrong with you? She finally wrote. Don’t bother coming down on Friday, I’ll be going out with someone else.

I put my phone away, wiped the sperm off with my towel and heaved. My gut was in tangles.

Back at home, I called my brother. ‘Rennie has moved back in with Gillian,’ I told him.

‘Oh really? That’s a shame.’

‘I guess I’m free to move down to the city. Elena asked me to live with her, but I just don’t know if I can take it.’

I wanted to tell my brother that despite how bad I made it sound, I knew I had to see how it played out. There was something crucial I was going to discover if I stayed until the end. But I didn’t think he would get it.

‘I don’t want to sound like an arsehole,’ he said, ‘but I’m sick of hearing about your dramas with Elena.’

When I moved into her house, Elena invited me to make myself at home and make the space mine too. I put my special objects on her dresser – my rock, some things the kids had made, my knife with the brass handle. Two days later I found that she had moved them to a box and left it in the laundry. I picked each object up and held it. Then I put the lid back on the box.

That night we caught a train into the city for a show.

She put her arms around me as we were waiting on the platform. ‘I hope you don’t mind about your things,’ she said. ‘I felt they were cluttering up the space.’

She stepped back to look at me, and for the briefest moment, I imagined her misjudging the distance, falling backwards through the empty space and landing on the tracks.

‘You’re not upset?’ she asked.

I reassured her I was happy.

She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. ‘BFOL,’ she said.

‘BFOL,’ I replied.

—

By the time we reached the pool, the half-cap we had taken was having an effect. I was getting visuals for sure. Looking at the foliage around me, it seemed like it was growing.

The pool was exactly as I’d pictured. Being shirtless already and feeling pretty loose due to my burgeoning high, I removed the rest of my clothes and marvelled at my skin. My sweat seemed to be glittering. I thought of the phrase sun-soaked and literally felt wet. Elena was already naked. She looked like a water nymph or something. This was deeply unoriginal and I feared that saying it out loud would provoke her ridicule; even so, I found myself enthusing, ‘You look like an amazing nymph or something.’

To my surprise she smiled and kissed me. ‘You look like a merman.’

‘That’s really beautiful,’ I said.

We slid into the pool. I grazed my ankle but did not experience it as painful. The water was freezing and I gasped. We paddled around for a bit with our asylum smiles, each of us moving our hands through the water like a pair of idiots from 1969, maybe our parents if they hadn’t been conservative and busy raising children. Then Elena shimmied over, wrapping herself in my arms.

‘I’m getting visuals,’ she said.

‘Me too.’

‘It seems that you have tentacles.’

‘Oh, should I stop touching you, is it disturbing?’

‘No, it feels nice. Your tentacles are kind of sexual.’

We ran our hands over one another’s bodies. She had goosebumps. She reached for my penis but it had shrunk to the size of a mushroom. I didn’t mind. We kissed for a good, long time; slow meandering kisses with a lot of spit and tongue. When it was too chilly to continue being in the water, we dragged ourselves onto the rocks and let ourselves be thawed. I felt really, really happy. I pictured us as old dogs lying in our patch of sun. A Great Dane and a breeder’s bitch, grown placid from her litters. I laughed stupidly. We drank most of the gin.

The sun was getting lower in the sky and we were lying with our backs against the rock. Elena traced circles on my arm, which felt exquisite. My high had peaked and I was starting to enjoy the gentle comedown; I no longer had visuals, but I was suffused with an intense wellbeing.

‘Andy is a wizard,’ I remarked giddily and we laughed. After a moment’s silence, Elena rolled over so that she was facing me and giggled.

‘Andy is a wizard,’ she said cryptically.

I held her hand.

 ‘You know after that party, the one where I said you’d sucked him off? Well, it was actually me who fucked Andy. He went down on me in the bathroom. He was good at it. You’d think that he’d be lazy because he’s such a stoner, but he had excellent tongue-work. I came twice.’

My calm was shattered. I wasn’t angry but I felt confused. The argument over Andy had been one of those really bad ones; I ended up leaving her house in the middle of the night and wandering till dawn. I didn’t know why she did these things to me, even less so why I always slunk back to her afterward and lay my head in her lap. My big head! My big, oafish, dog-like, Gerard Depardieu head! At the same time I became convinced this conversation was a bad part of my trip, the drug fucking with my sense of reality, so although it felt serious I didn’t know if it was actually just a manifestation of my chronic victimhood and paranoia. I felt that I was blinking rapidly and it was freakish but I couldn’t stop.

‘What do you mean?’ I pleaded. ‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

‘Oh, don’t look so bewildered,’ said Elena. ‘You can be so manipulative sometimes. You make me feel like a monster.’

I said, ‘I’ve been completely honest with you.’

Just then a loud crack split the air above where we were lying. I looked up and saw a branch break from a Mountain Ash. The branch was big enough to kill us. Elena, who was watching me, didn’t notice.

I thought: one of us will die.

Then things really slowed down. In the times that I’ve looked back on it since then, it seems that in the second it took for the branch to disengage, I could see into the future. I saw how it would rend itself from the trunk and begin its descent; the foliage it would take on its way down. Calculating the angle, which I was somehow able to do, I realised that I’d be safe but that Elena would be felled. I pictured her funeral. If the landlord approved, I could take over her lease. I saw myself driving hysterically, tears blurring my vision. I pictured telling everyone she had been my BFOL, my BIG FUCK-OFF LOVE. I thought of saying, ‘Elena,’ but the thought lacked urgency and I dismissed it. It was clear that I should either warn or throw her from the path of danger yet I vacillated, thinking it was funny because Elena always criticised my indecision.

The branch came down.

At the last moment, Elena saw and dived into the pool.

The granite clanged. I felt a tremor run beneath me.

In the seconds after, everything was silent. The stream, the leaves. Even the wind.

Elena surfaced trembling. We locked eyes. Then she started shrieking, ‘Oh my God, oh my God.’

—

In the car on the way home, I felt completely sober. Elena was pale and from time to time I noticed she was shaking. ‘It’s fucking cold in here,’ she snapped, turning off the aircon.

After a while she asked me if I’d seen the branch.

‘It all happened so fast,’ I said vaguely, sounding to myself like someone from a movie.

‘Why didn’t you warn me?’

I said I didn’t know.

‘I could have died.’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘No… I didn’t,’ said Elena, speaking very slowly.

We stared out at our separate vistas for a while. It was getting dark but I could still see heat lines warp over the road. We didn’t speak again until we turned into her street. As we pulled up I said, ‘I think I’m going to get more of those caps from Andy.’

Elena didn’t answer.

I said next time, we’d plan it better. We’d make sure it was a safe environment and no one had to drive and we would take a more controlled dose. I was still talking when Elena placed her hand on my leg so very softly and said, ‘Hey, look at that.’

She had inclined her face towards the streetlamps, which all came on at once.