A Map of Tulsa by Benjamin Lytal

early. I was quick at breakfast, silent, going over what I would say about that day’s artist. Overall I loved it. After years of staring at downtown, my perspective revolved in. Adrienne pulled the city inside out for me: she chose the most built-up streets for our morning walks—for a block or two we existed in an urban canyon; had we gone the opposite way, the horizon would have emptied out, the skyscrapers would have given out on limp downtempo parking lots and strip malls. But for a block, I at least could imagine that we had been born in a bigger city. I loved to talk about that, alternate destinies and fate. I liked to pretend it was very strange to have been born in a place like Tulsa.
    I tried to be open; I tried to tell Adrienne about the things I liked. That on First Street in the mornings the concrete turns to gray putty. That in a state of grace you could imagine the concrete lines going on straight forever. But of course the skyscrapers crest, Tulsa buckles, the cross streets slope up; they have to span over the tracks.
    Adrienne introduced me to the eight a.m. rush hour that fleetingly brings downtown to life: she wore heelsmainly out of respect for her family—to look decent in the Booker Petroleum elevator but also out of respect for the brief daily flowering of downtown Tulsa. That there were people in suits, people who parked and got out of their cars and massed at the crosswalks as people in a big-city movie might. It lasted all of ten minutes, commencing at eightish and then again at five. But seeing it did more for my sense of downtown than twenty years of downtown church had.
    Of course, Adrienne wasn’t preoccupied by such things. We passed by the Episcopal church, and she merely said, “It’s nice.” We passed by the Performing Arts Center, and she said, “It’s an eyesore.” The ingrained culture war, the knee-jerk resentment that most kids have for the conservative town, didn’t seem to worry her. She never had any problem going to Wal-Mart, she simply loved that she could buy things, and ran circles around her cronies. “That flag,” I said, pointing to one in the sporting goods section that had slipped partway off the wall, “they’re supposed to burn it. That’s what you’re technically supposed to do, when they touch the ground. Burning flags is actually extremely patriotic.” Adrienne didn’t care.
    And she never swore. “Downtown is so fucking lively,” I said, and immediately noticed how crass it sounded—I got frustrated sometimes. Sometimes I wanted to throw my old life against Adrienne. There was a man with a jeep who was always parallel-parking between Second and Third, I recognized him through his windshield two days in a row. “I think that guy was my Sunday school teacher,” I told Adrienne.
    I kept mentioning Sunday school and church. Adriennehad been in choir at First Presbyterian and had liked it. “But you didn’t have to go,” I said, “every seventh morning of adolescence—they asked us to sign a pledge card once, pledging never to have premarital sex. They told us that people regret premarital sex for the rest of their lives.”
    “Maybe it’s true.”
    “They actually said, ‘When you get married you will stand at the altar with your bride and, in, like, a nightmare, see all the other women you’ve ever slept with, all lined up, holding hands with your bride, grinning at you.’ It was obscene.”
    “Don’t act outraged,” she said. “You’re not convincing as an outraged person.”
    “What do you think he thinks of us though? In the jeep. Surely he doesn’t look at us and say, There go two young coworkers, on their way to the office.”
    “Do you care? I thought you hated Sunday school.”
    “No,” I stressed. “Him—I crave his respect.”
    One morning, when the man from the jeep was about to pass, I stopped him. “Mr. Bangs?”
    He was heavier than I remembered, his face flecked with salmon, blurred. I introduced myself. “Jim