The Circle

a day, that these mistakes should be allowed to be forgotten.
    “First day,” he said. “Well congratulations. A toast.”
    They clinked bottles and took sips. Mae held her bottle up to the moon to see how
     much was left; the liquid turned an otherworldly blue and she saw that she’d already
     swallowed half. She put the bottle down.
    “I like your voice,” he said. “Was it always that way?”
    “Low and scratchy?”
    “I would call it
seasoned
. I would call it
soulful
. You know Tatum O’Neal?”
    “My parents made me watch
Paper Moon
a hundred times. They wanted me to feel better.”
    “I love that movie,” he said.
    “They thought I’d grow up like Addie Pray, streetwise but adorable. They wanted a
     tomboy. They cut my hair like hers.”
    “I like it.”
    “You like bowl cuts.”
    “No. Your voice. So far it’s the best thing about you.”
    Mae said nothing. She felt like she’d been slapped.
    “Shit,” he said. “Did that sound weird? I was trying to give you a compliment.”
    There was a troubling pause; Mae had had a few terrible experiences with men who spoke
     too well, who leaped over any number of steps to land on inappropriate compliments.
     She turned to him, to confirm he was not what she thought he was—generous, harmless—but
     actually warped, troubled, asymmetrical. But when she looked at him, she saw the same
     smooth face, blue glasses, ancient eyes. His expression was pained.
    He looked at his bottle, as if to lay the blame there. “I just wanted to make you
     feel better about your voice. But I guess I insulted the rest of you.”
    Mae thought on that for a second, but her brain, addled with Riesling, was slow-moving,
     sticky. She gave up trying to parse his statement or his intentions. “I think you’re
     strange,” she said.
    “I don’t have parents,” he said. “Does that buy me some forgiveness?” Then, realizing
     he was revealing too much, and too desperately, he said, “You’re not drinking.”
    Mae decided to let him drop the subject of his childhood. “I’m already done,” she
     said. “I’ve gotten the full effect.”
    “I’m really sorry. I sometimes get my words in the wrong order. I’m happiest when
     I don’t talk at something like this.”
    “You are really strange,” Mae said again, and meant it. She was twenty-four, and he
     was unlike anyone she’d ever known. That was, she thought drunkenly, evidence of God,
     was it not? That she could encounter thousands of people in her life thus far, so
     many of them similar, so many of them forgettable, but then there is this person,
     new and bizarre and speaking bizarrely. Every day some scientist discovered a new
     species of frog or waterlily, and that, too, seemed to confirm some divine showman,
     some celestial inventor putting new toys before us, hidden but hidden poorly, just
     where we might happen upon them. And this Francis person, he was something entirely
     different, some new frog. Mae turned to look at him, thinking she might kiss him.
    But he was busy. With one hand, he was emptying his shoe, sand pouring from it. With
     the other he seemed to be biting off most of his fingernail.
    Her reverie ended, she thought of home and bed.
    “How will everyone get back?” she asked.
    Francis looked out at a scrum of people who seemed to be trying to form a pyramid.
     “There’s the dorms, of course. But I bet those are full already. There are always
     a few shuttles ready, too. They probably told you that.” He waved his bottle in the
     direction of the mainentrance, where Mae could make out the rooftops of the minibuses she’d seen that morning
     on her way in. “The company does cost analyses on everything. And one staffer driving
     home too tired or, in this case, too drunk to drive—well, the cost of shuttles is
     a lot cheaper in the long run. Don’t tell me you didn’t come for the shuttle buses.
     The shuttle buses are awesome. Inside they’re like yachts. Lots of compartments and
     wood.”
    “Lots of wood? Lots of wood?” Mae punched Francis in the arm, knowing she was flirting,
     knowing it was idiotic to flirt with a fellow Circler on her first night, that it
     was idiotic to drink this much on her first night. But she was doing all those things
     and was happy about it.
    A figure was gliding toward them. Mae watched with dull curiosity, realizing first
     that the figure was female. And then that this figure was Annie.
    “Is this man harassing you?” she