Amy Inspired by Bethany Pierce

abruptly to keep from rambling.
    “Not a boyfriend?”
    “Oh—no, definitely not a boyfriend.”
    There was an uncomfortable pause. I considered his empty hands. Loops drawn with pen in tightly winding patterns stained the length of his fingers.
    “Where are your things?” I asked.
    From the screen door we considered the large duffel bag he’d abandoned on the driveway between his van and the porch. He eyed the bag menacingly as if it were a misbehaving pet awaiting punishment. He insisted I not let it in the house; he was burning it as soon as he’d rewashed all his clothes.
    He wanted to know where he could find a laundromat so he could treat his clothes before bringing them into our apartment. Bedbugs and their eggs traveled in suitcases. I could have given him directions and kept the rest of the afternoon to myself, but my mother had forever ingrained in me the utmost importance of being the gracious host. I was inclined to help.
    “You’re sure?” he asked. “You really don’t have to.”
    “They’re not in there, are they?”
    “They’re in the bag if anything,” he said. “But I want to wash the sheets for eggs.”
    He emptied the duffel bag of clothes directly onto the frozen driveway. Together we stuffed them all back into trash bags. His socks were worn at the soles, his jeans frayed, the fringe of each pant leg clotted with dirt. One by one I sifted through T-shirts that smelled of incense and turpentine. I also found a napkin on which someone had scribbled a phone number; a clipping torn from the newspaper in the shape of a heart; a Tupperware of buckeye nuts sporting drawn-on cartoon faces; and a tiny velvet string-pull bag that held two engraved silver rings.
    “Are these important?” I held up the little cloth bag.
    He tucked the jewelry in his back pocket, noticed the colorcoordinated piles I’d been making. “You don’t have to separate them.
    Just throw them in the bag.”
    “They’ll bleed.”
    “The bugs?”
    “The colors.”
    He shook his head. “We’re not washing them. We want heat— just heat.”
    I held up a black T-shirt that had been starched to the point of rigor mortis. “Not even fabric softener,” I stated.
    “Not even fabric softener,” he repeated. He crawled on his knees to grab the farthest of my piles, cramming it into the trash bag. “You know we’ll have to be best friends forever now.”
    “We will?”
    “You’ve touched all my underwear,” he said.
    That I blushed embarrassed me so much I blushed again.
    At the laundromat he pulled an old Mason jar full of coins from his knapsack. When the last load had been stuffed into the dryer, he took the shirt off his back and threw it in for good measure. The undershirt he wore underneath was his cleanest article of clothing. The white cotton blazed bright against his dark complexion. He was tall with the lean but strong arms of a young athlete. A tattoo covered his right arm, the intricate pattern cascading from his right shoulder to his elbow.
    We sat side by side on conjoined plastic chairs that lined the front window. To make conversation I asked about bedbugs. Companionably, he lifted his shirt to show me the damage. Red bumps rose in circles across his stomach and chest; some welts were large as quarters, others tiny as fleabites.
    “They say you know it’s bedbugs if they bite in a circle.” He pointed to one particularly irritating ring. “Breakfast, lunch, dinner,” he explained, pointing to spot one, two, and three. Beneath the raw rings of irritated skin, his stomach was flat and strong. A single black line of hair trickled down his chest and pooled around his belly button.
    “Do they ooze?” I asked.
    “No.” He lowered his shirt. “Just itch to drive you crazy.”
    He caught me examining his tattoo. “You disapprove?”
    I snapped my eyes away from his arm. “Why would you say that?”
    “Zoë told me you come from a really religious background.”
    I found this an unfair