Alison watched him rub his eyes and sip the tea. It was green tea, which she knew he did not prefer, but he smiled. The heat from the tea made his lips glow red against his beard. I do not know who let this arrangement occur. This is a story about a man and a woman, I should say. Alison permits Joseph into her life, and her point of view becomes his as well. At all the funerals I’ve been too, they’ve said the same about God and the men and women he affects. They intertwine and become each other. Alison sipped her tea and smiled, thinking something all too similar.
	Their earliest real discussion about something besides music came from Joseph’s wedding band. Before ever eating, he would lay it on the table to the left of his plate. He would leave it there as he ate, always properly switching the knife and fork hand, and leave it as he cleaned the plates. Most nights Alison would change in her room, unafraid of any man who’s arthritis has stopped him from playing barre chords. So, in this period, and here is the whistle, she simply slipped out of her top and jeans, and sat cross legged on the couch. She put on Caetano Veloso’s 1969 self-titled. He would always talk when Caetano sang.
	As the record played, the water refracting off the plates and pots added an element of percussion. Joseph never turned around as he cleaned, always staring into an Italian abyss of noodles and marinara. It was late, the times he’d come, and there wasn’t usually time for anything besides frozen ravioli and a fresh made salad. The meal, she imagined, was the payoff, to have someone to sit with and play etiquette.
	When he did finally turn, he did not look at the young flesh before him. He wiped his hands on paper towels, cleansing himself from the grease and soap, and he slid the wedding band onto his finger. It glided on and sunk into the shrunken skin that had formed around it. Alison needed to ask, because it had been three weeks, because they hadn’t had sex, because sometimes things need to be in the open. Lost in the Paradise began to play, where Caetano sings in fractured English about not needing the help of his brother or his girl.
	“Why the wedding ring, John?”
	He realized he had become John. Only the old men and their wives who gave him companies at faculty and alumni reunions and publishers meetings called him Joseph. His father was Joe, and he wouldn’t steal the legacy, and he hated Hendrix and when that record came out he would hear nothing but “HEY JOE!” from everyone around him.