It took a broken heart before Lev was able to talk to his mother about something real again. She had just broken up with her boyfriend of seven years. Seven was her number. She was born on the seventh day of the seventh month and Lev had been born after seven hours of labor. She derived a great sense of security from the number seven. Lev on the other hand had just broken up with his girlfriend after three months. Three was not necessarily his number. Three meant very little to him at all.

There was nothing particularly extraordinary about the relationship that had lasted three months. They had met each other. Lev had liked her and she had liked him and for three months they flirted with the possibility that they were meant for each other. Unfortunately, they came to different conclusions. When she told him what conclusion she’d come to it was just as straightforward as if she’d been talking about how she liked bananas: “I like them in bread but I don’t like them in pancakes.” Unfortunately for Leonard, she was pancakes. He grabbed her hand and said, “I don’t want to lose you. You’re the most important person I’ve ever met in my life.”

“Oh,” she said, slipping her hand out from under his. “You’re very important to me too.”

She didn’t understand, so he wrote a story about her. He wrote it with the intention that anyone who read it would instantly burst into tears, and it was good, and some people even said so, but even after it had been published and he had shown it to her and said, “Here. This is you,” she still didn’t take him back. So it was for nothing.

Lev talked to his mother at night, sitting in the darkness; in streams of rambling self-pity that sometimes went on for hours he would detail the sadness of his heart; sometimes he even cried. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d said so much to his mother at once and she listened patiently and consoled him like he was still a little child who’d just woken up from a nightmare. In the wake of their respective heartbreaks it was important for them to reestablish these maternal bonds from his childhood, and that was good; that was one good thing that had come from the sadness.

Lev and the girl he loved who didn’t love him back still made a point to see each other from time to time (her name was Esther). Because Lev was still in love with her, he didn’t particularly care if she only agreed to see him because she felt guilty, just so long as he saw her. One night after they had met at a bar, after he had drunk more than he should and she had resisted his advice that she drink more, he was riding his bicycle home when he thought to race the car driving alongside him, missed the pedal with his foot and crashed head over handlebars, breaking the fall with his chin.

Ouch was the first thing he thought, and it was the only thing he thought at first. He could tell he was hurt by the tameness of his response; a stubbed toe would elicit a “Motherfuck!” while from a gunshot merely a meek lowercase “oh.” He untangled his legs from under the bicycle and dragged himself off the road onto the sidewalk. His chest hurt, he was having trouble breathing, and he wondered if he hadn’t possibly broken a rib. He stood up and looked at his reflection in the window of the Rexall Drugs. Something was hanging from the bottom of his chin and he reached up to pull it off and screamed. It was a flap of skin hanging from his chin, a wattle to make any turkey proud.

“Hey, are you alright? Did someone hit you?” Lev turned around and saw a young couple standing next to their car staring at him. “Jesus,” said the man, backing up a step as he caught sight of Lev’s face. “Are you okay? You don’t look so good.”

“I think I might have broken a rib,” said Lev. “It kind of hurts to breathe.”

“Jesus,” repeated the man. “Part of your face is falling off your face.”

“Billy!” cried the young woman. “Do you need a ride home or something, sweetie?” She couldn’t have been more than two or three years older than Lev but she was calling him sweetie.

“No,” Lev shook his head. “I can ride home.”

“You’re in no condition,” said Billy. “Besides, look at that. Your wheel’s bent.”

Lev sat down on the curb and watched the blood drip onto the road. “Okay,” he said.

Billy and Jan were from North Carolina, “but Raleigh,” said Jan, “so we don’t have the accent.” When they found out Lev didn’t have any hydrogen peroxide or bandages at home they decided they’d bring him to their own apartment first to clean him up. “We have a big dog,” she warned him, “but don’t be frightened. Her name’s Bella and she’s a real sweetheart. Here, sweetie,” she said. “Here’s a towel. You’re dripping.”

He sat in their bathroom for what seemed like hours while they did their best to pick the gravel out of his chin. “It looks like it’s all the way to the bone,” said Billy. “You might want to think about going to a hospital.”

“I can’t go to the hospital,” said Lev. “I don’t have any insurance.”

“At least consider calling someone to keep you company,” he said. “You might have a concussion. It’s best if you don’t fall asleep too soon.”

“Okay,” said Lev. “Thank you. Really, I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Here, sweetie,” Jan handed him a glass of orange juice. “This will help raise your blood sugar. I think you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

When they finally drove him back to his apartment, Jan helped him up the stairs while Billy carried his bike. Lev stopped at the door. He didn’t want them to see the place that in the last several weeks had begun to show visible signs of his loneliness, thought it best to restrict their opinion of him to just his physical state of ruin. Billy leaned the bike up against the railing and said, “You have someone to call, right? We’re not leaving you alone, are we?”

Lev shook his head. “I know someone,” he said. “A girl. A friend. She’s a good friend. I can call her and she’ll come over.”

“That’s good,” Billy nodded. “But it’s still going to need stitches. You’re a handsome guy, Lev. I’d hate to see you lose that because of a couple hundred dollars.”

“Thanks,” Lev said to Billy, and then “Thanks,” he said to Jan, and then he said it once more to the both of them, “Thank you,” and after they’d gone he went inside and picked up the telephone. If she was displeased at all to hear from him it was disguised at first by her surprise to hear from him so late and after they had just seen each other. “Lev,” she said. “What’s up? What’s wrong?”

“They said I shouldn’t fall asleep,” he said. “They said I might have a concussion and I shouldn’t fall asleep and I should call someone so I don’t fall asleep and you were the only person I could think to call.”

“What happened? What’s wrong?”

“I crashed my bicycle. I think I might have a concussion.”

He expected her to scream when she saw his wounds, but she didn’t; she put her hand over her mouth and emitted this soft little cry and said, “Oh, Lev. That looks pretty bad.”

“I know,” he said. “You should have felt it.”

They sat on his bed as he told her about Billy and Jan from Raleigh, North Carolina, about their big dog named Bella who hadn’t been frightening at all and about the sight of his own blood and bone which had nearly brought him to his knees, and he thought to himself how nice this was as he planned the next accident that would bring her to his door, as she cradled his head in her lap and said, “Don’t fall asleep.”

“Can I look at it?” she asked. “Can I see what it looks like?”

“Sure,” he said. The bandage was already soaked through and he warned her as he gently peeled it off. “It looks pretty bad,” he said. “You might want to prepare yourself.”

It looked worse than before inasmuch as it looked less human, like silicone movie skin, only there was no skin beneath this skin. He could stick his finger underneath the flesh and move it around, as if he’d just gained an enormous amount of weight and then lost it all in a day. She said, “There’s a hole in your face.”

“I know,” he grinned in spite of himself. “Crazy, huh?”

“It’s going to need stitches. You have to go to the hospital.”

“I can’t go to the hospital. I don’t have insurance. I figured I’d wait until it stopped bleeding and then maybe superglue it back together.”

“Lev, you’re chin’s not a teacup,” she said. “You have to go the hospital.”

“I can’t go to the hospital.”

“You have to go to the hospital.”

“Your girlfriend here was very smart to have you come in,” said the doctor, and Lev looked at her and smiled; he smiled because she was very smart, and because the doctor had called her his girlfriend. He smiled to beg her forgiveness for the doctor’s assumption and he smiled to beg her not to say anything to correct him. He smiled because the doctor had assumed she was his girlfriend, which was more than he could say anymore for either of them.

They had been sitting in the waiting room for three hours before someone finally came to get them and bring them back to this smaller room where they’d waited another thirty minutes for the nurse. “Maybe I should have cracked my skull,” said Lev. “Then maybe they would have seen us a little faster.”

The waiting room was nearly empty. An old black man was sleeping on the other side and next to him sat a woman watching an infomercial on one of the television screens. “Have you filed for bankruptcy?” asked the man on the television. “Has your car been repossessed? Do you want to buy that fancy new truck but find your bad credit won’t get you a loan?” Therein followed a series of testimonials. “I went to another dealers and they said no,” said an old Mexican man in a wooden voice. “I came to here and they was someone who would help me, and I not just get one, I get two trucks.” Over and over repeated the infomercial, breaking every twenty minutes for a run of commercials and then back again.

When the nurse finally came into the smaller room she directed Lev to strip, change into a thin paper gown and climb up on the exam table. Another thirty minutes. It was the first time Lev had been naked in front of Esther in months. He didn’t mind the setting because if it hadn’t been for the setting it never would have happened at all. She sat in the chair next to him and held his hand and stifled a yawn. It was nearly three-thirty in the morning. “Are you tired?” he asked.

“A little,” she smiled.

At four o’clock the doctor walked in with a brusqueness that was entirely unapologetic and almost made Lev apologize himself for having inconvenienced the doctor. “You’re my third hit-and-run tonight,” the doctor said. “You all have some kind of meeting and decide to jump in front of cars the same evening?”

“I wasn’t hit by a car,” said Lev. “I just fell.”

The doctor nodded. “From the looks of it you fell pretty hard,” he said. “Look at that, you can even see the bone. Do you want to take a look at this?” he asked Esther, who came to hover just over the doctor’s shoulder. “See that? There’s the bone right there.”

“Oh, I see it!” exclaimed Esther. “I can see white!”

The doctor gave a smugly satisfied smile. “You did a real good job there, Lev. You split it like a real pro.”

“Thanks,” said Lev.

“That’s all right. The first thing we’re going to do is a high-pressure wash to get all the dirt and gravel out of there. We don’t want to sew you up with pavement in your face, do we? Then we’re just going to stitch you up and have you on your way home.”

“Will it hurt?”

“I imagine it might sting a little,” said the doctor. “But nothing you haven’t been through already, right? If you don’t think you can handle it and you promise not to fall again anytime soon, maybe we’ll give you a shot.” The doctor smirked. Esther giggled. “Do you promise?”

“I promise,” mumbled Lev and Esther smiled and touched his arm, and then suddenly there was an audience standing over him. Esther watched enraptured as the doctor stuck the needle in the base of his chin and then fit it with a large suction cup attached to a hose attached to a water pump. “Now you might feel a little pressure here,” said the doctor, “but just hold her hand and it’ll all be over in a second.”

Lev gripped Esther’s hand. It was not over in a second. He based the amount of pain he should be feeling according to the distorted expressions on Esther’s face. “Oh wow,” she said, “that’s gross,” and he gripped her hand even tighter. When it came time for the stitches, the doctor and the nurse bet how many it’d take to close up the wound. Thirty, bet the doctor. Forty, bet the nurse. The doctor won; it was thirty-three.

“That’s pretty impressive,” he said. “That’s going to make a nice battle scar. The ladies like a man with scars, you know. It makes you look more rugged. The Marlboro man, right? Do you smoke, Lev?”

Lev nodded.

“You should quit.”

The doctor filled out a prescription for Vicodin while Lev slipped behind the paper curtain to put his clothes back on. This time Esther gave him his privacy. “You’re probably going to want to stick to yogurt and juice for the next couple weeks,” said the doctor. “And don’t forget your promise. No more falls, remember? We don’t want to end up looking like Frankenstein, do we?”

Neither Esther nor Lev spoke as she drove him back to his apartment. It was almost five-thirty and the only cars on the road were trucks and cops and early risers looking to get a jump on the commute. They passed the bar where they’d been drinking earlier that evening and he asked her how she felt.

“Tired,” she said. “How do you feel?”

“Sore,” he said, but the truth was all he really felt was gratitude for Esther, gratitude like he’d never felt before. She’d been there, she’d held his hand and hadn’t even blushed when he’d stood naked before her, bruised and bloody and broken. “How did it look?” he asked.

“It looked fine,” she said. “You’re going to be fine.”

When she dropped him off at his apartment he smiled and asked if she wanted to come up, but of course she didn’t. She was tired and wanted to go home to catch whatever sleep she could before she had to wake up again. “Thanks,” he said, and the word seemed so woefully inadequate he could have taken it back and not said anything at all and it would have meant more.

“Don’t mention it,” she smiled sleepily, and then she yawned and he closed the door and she drove away and all he felt was gratitude, gratitude and a searing, quaking pain because whatever anaesthetic they’d given him was beginning to wear off.

Lev was lying on his bed. He was staring at the ceiling and he was talking on the phone, cradling the receiver between the pillow and his chin. “I’m looking for the word that’ll make her come back,” he said. “But I just can’t find it.”

“I know,” said his mother. “Believe me, I understand. Have you tried Abracadabra?”