Note: Craig Finn is my favorite songwriter, and this song is directly inspired by him. This is my first time to write a Finn style song and I have done my best. I am not trying to imitate Finn exactly, or pretend that I can write exactly as he does. What I have tried to borrow from him is something more essential: his attention to people on the edges of the night, his gift for compressed narrative, his affection for damaged characters, his understanding that bars and diners contain entire moral universes, and above all his ability to make a song feel simultaneously funny, sad, dangerous, and deeply humane. If this song is any good it is because of Mr. Finn.

She came stepping out the club in her heels
She was problematic to the max
She had someone else’s cigarettes
And someone else’s jacket on her back
She said, “Don’t start asking questions
You ain’t gonna like the facts”
Then she laughed and checked her lipstick
In the window of a Cadillac

There were boys outside the pizza place
Trying hard to look relaxed
There were girls discussing exes
And all the ways they’d get them back
There was someone crying by the cash machine
Someone calling for a cab
She said, “Everyone wants forgiveness
No one wants to give it back”

And I said:

Baby, we can leave right now
Let’s just stop playing games
There’s a place that pours till morning
And the barkeep knows my name

We’ll stumble out at sunrise
See the bums shaking their cans
With the smoke still in our eyes
And the popo in their vans

She said she’d recently been seeing
A guy who worked in stocks
At first it felt quite freeing
But she was looking at the clock
He kept talking ’bout the markets
While she stared into her drink
She said, “A man can make a million
And still not know a fuckin’ thing”

We walked east along the river
Past the churches and the cranes
She said everybody loves you
Til they learn your middle name
Then she took my hand and said
Like she’d suddenly recalled
Though we were very good in bed
We weren’t having fun at all

And she said:

Honey, don’t get sentimental
That’s how everyone gets hurt
First you say you understand me
Then you start discussing worth

I’ve been good and I’ve been awful
Mostly somewhere in between
And I’m sick of getting judged
By the folks behind their screens

At four we found a diner
With the chairs turned upside down
The waitress poured us coffee
While I tried not to check her out
She said, “You two look exhausted”
We said, “That’s probably correct”
Then my friend began explaining
Why exhaustion gets respect

She said:

No one trusts in happy people
They assume they’ve missed a trick
Everything was going fine
Til she said “baby you’re a prick”

So I keep a couple bruises
And some stories in the back
Just in case somebody doubts me
When I say it’s been like that

The morning started leaking
Through the alleys by the tracks
She had kicked away her heels
And slipped into her slingbacks
There were punters there were pigeons
There were handbills in the street
There were people dreading Sunday
There were people starting weeks

At the corner she got quiet
Then she kissed me on the cheek
Said, “Don’t make this into something
When it’s barely been a week”
Then she climbed into a taxi
And she never once looked back

She came stepping out the club in her heels.
She was problematic to the max