I was wearing my blue sweatpants, frayed at the bottom. They weren’t purchased at the Women’s Exchange. I’d had them before I left Chicago more than four years ago. They had been among the clothes I had thrown together and into two suitcases, suitcases I dropped into the trunk of my car, which I then got into and drove heading south, moving away as far as highways would take me from the death of my wife in a hit-and-run accident.

She had been thirty-five. She had been a prosecuting attorney in the Cook County District Attorney’s Office. I had been an investigator. Her name was Catherine. Until a year ago I couldn’t speak her name aloud. I had driven till my car gave out in the driveway of a Dairy Queen on 301 Washington Street, in Sarasota. I had been vaguely on my way to Key West.

There had been a FOR RENT sign on the cracked-concrete two-story office building at the back of the parking lot. The metal outdoor railing of the building was rusting. The offices, dingy white doors in need of paint, faced onto the narrow landing.

I rented the two-room office, moved into it with my two suitcases, sold the car for two hundred dollars, and never got to Key West, at least not yet, probably never.

When the money began to run out, I drew on whatever remaining willpower I had and with references in hand got a process server’s license and called on some law firms within walking distance.

I made enough to live on, to buy videotapes, eat at the DQ or Gwen’s diner on the corner or the Crisp Dollar Bill, a bar across the street where it was always dark and the music was unpredictable.

If nirvana came up and held out its hand, I’d shake it and say I had been waiting for him or it or her. Until then I wanted to husband my grief, savor my depression. I had a right to it. Misery is not reserved for the righteous alone.