Billy had been sitting on the sofa all this time, but stood up again and walked over to the window. "Look at those people over there, coming from the restaurant. It's what you do all day. You move from place to place, from person to person, from thing to thing. That's what I've always done. And after I got fired, I still did that. But I started thinking more. Why did I get fired? What was it about me that made me lose that job?"
"It's a God damn recession Billy. You have nothing to do with it."
"That's not why I lost my job. I hated that fucking job, that's why I lost that job. I hated most of the people I worked with, I hated acting as though I didn't hate them. It was me, the boss fired me because since he had to lay people off, he thought he might get rid of a real headache in the process, which was me."
"You know that's not true."
"The hell I do. Billy, there's something wrong with me, you know that. What have I become? I'm almost 40, Billy. What have I become?"
And when I left that night, I had stopped thinking about Billy. Instead, I was asking myself that same question, and I couldn't stop, wondering whether that little man slept soundly inside me and what would happen, how low would I go, if he were to awake.
We knock on Billy's door again. And then we hear sniffling. It doesn't sound like Billy. Besides, his style would be to stare up at the ceiling.
We repeat ourselves. "Can we come in?"
Then we hear some conversation. "Yeah. Come on in."
Inside sits Billy, in his desk chair. He doesn't have that ratty old blue tee-shirt but a short-sleeve button-up plaid shirt. He has shaved, both his face and his head. His face is ruddy and his glasses on. On the bed is Susan, Billy's housemate. She has her hands up at her face, wiping her eyes gingerly with a tissue. She has her sandy colored hair up in a little bun, and because of that, we can see her face well. Two black eyes so black they looked purple and blue. Someone hit her. Her nose looks blue too and the beating shut her left eye. We look at Billy, who looks back at us, and then she starts crying, probably not for the first time.
"Do you guys know Susan?" She says hi without looking at us, muffling her crying a bit. "They just came by to say hi, but they're leaving."
"Oh no, they don't have to go."
"Oh yes they do. Don't you boys?"
Billy asks if everything was okay.
Billy replies Susan had a rough afternoon, but that she will be fine. Nothing that a little heart to heart wouldn't help.
"My boyfriend hit me. He beat me up. Right in the bedroom over there. He went crazy, just crazy. He gave me a black eye."
"Two," Billy says. I stick him in the ribs with an elbow, a sight not seen by Susan's open eye as she looked at the wall.
"He's not a terrible person. He has a temper problem."
"I'm talking to Susan here about her options, telling her that no matter how bad it seems, or how much you think Duane is sorry, there are lots of options for someone in her situation."
I speak up. "Billy, we've got to be somewhere. We're meeting Rachel and Sarah over at Soda Bar. I'd ask you guys to come with us, but it looks like you're busy, so we'll just say our good-byes. Susan, I hope you feel better. Billy here's a real rock in difficult situations so I would take what he has to say to heart."
I can't believe I say that. About Billy. And yet, I feel good about it also, besides the disbelief. Billy will counsel her nicely.
We leave them talking in Billy's room, and I feel better than I have all day. I stop thinking about the trash, and I tell Billy I want to walk home. He says he would actually like to get a beer over at Soda. So I tell him to ride on over and I'd meet him there. I wanted to walk back down Franklin.
"I want to think some. Wrap my mind around Billy the Counselor to Victims of Domestic Violence, the latest incarnation of our good friend Billy."
"You know Billy could change any second. Just because he's okay now doesn't mean..."
"Squat. It doesn't mean squat. But that's okay, for now."