Coe Review

played endless shooting video games on her days off. The woman dizzied
your eyes the way a fingernail dragged over a chalkboard rang your ears, but,
at the same time, she was stunning for her complexity, every fashionable detail
a la mode of the revolution.
Henry had all of them on a routine for his pleasure, making appearances
at the coffee shop on certain days and times and hardly ever grazing the field
in sight or sound of the other. I knew this was true, because I had made such
a routine of the coffee shop myself that it would've been hard to miss them
within inches of interaction, a possibility that seemed to dangle over Henry
like a spider spinning silently in the dark. I sat in my chair opposite Henry and
checked the calendar for which purse would drop in front of Henry's chair:
Mondays, the Black Gucci bag, with a clumsily exposed black and silver cell
phone peeking from its depths, Tuesdays, a canvas bag with a large, circular
black-and-red anarchist patch ironed onto the front, Wednesdays, a large
red leather backpack with numerous loose papers, paper clipped and folded,
resting inside, Thursdays, a blue-and-white spaghetti strap purse rattling with
plastic make-up utensils and few neon glow sticks, and Fridays were Chloe's.
She didn't carry a bag. With the exception of Chloe, they sat and talked of
only two things, Henry and the feeling of not being with Henry, as though
their worlds were summed up by those two states of existence and all their
passion and interest in other things had been set aside as marginalia, a mere
distraction from real life, the life they found in Henry.
Chloe came by off schedule one Sunday afternoon, before Henry showed
up. I expected her to fall into Henry's seat, flustered, blow the hair from her
brow, and begin with the long, anxious speculation of his recent goings on,
but she didn't. When she came in and spotted me there, she beamed and
shuffled across the hardwood floor in foam house shoes, before bending over
to hug me, back stepping toward the other chair, and settling into it.
"Why so happy?'
"Oh, I don't know..." she purred. "Guess what?"
"What?"
"I found out about Henry's other girls!"
"What are you talking about?" I said, hoping to sound dumbfounded.
"Don't worry. I'm not gonna say anything."
"I don't know what you're talkin' about..."
"Here's the thing. I know you've had your eye on me. You don't have
to play dumb. Henry even mentioned it once."
"He did?"
"Yeah, he said he figured you had a crush on me?"
I let this run through my head several times still didn't know how to an-
54 Henry Fragmentary