Monique took the forecast seriously from the jump � snowfall projected in Metro Atlanta and Buckhead. Only a couple inches, but still. She�d hated snow since college, and her childhood in hurricane-prone Miami had taught her to treat meteorology like prophecy, so she spent most of Monday afternoon navigating a motorized scooter through the narrow aisles of her closest Publix to stock up on groceries. The store�s inventory was too big for its space, so even a moderate crowd reminded her of the frenzy of her childhood�s coming storms, Mom pulling her by the hand.

Monique was only forty-five, but with her left foot in a cast, the supermarket aged her by thirty years. Before the roller-rink debacle that had sent her to the ER a month ago � her punishment for showing off her old South Beach moves for her nephew � Monique had never noticed how many of her favorite brands were so high on the shelf, or how difficult it was to inspect packages of meat from a scooter. She�d never faced the indignity of bumping against aisle displays and knocking items to the floor, or noticed the frustrated huffs from shoppers who wanted her to move out of sight. To disappear. Eyes flitted away in a race not to look at her, to render her invisible.

Who wanted to see a middle-aged woman in a baggy sweatsuit riding a handicapped scooter with her foot in a cast? She�d long ago stopped going out to clubs where she had to impress bouncers on the rope line, but even in LA, she�d never been as invisible as she was now. Two more weeks, and she would join the ranks of the visible again. She would not just walk, she would strut everywhere. A six-week taste of infirmity, and then she would never take her own two feet for granted. She would stand upright as long as she could.

The man behind her in line chuckled at the case of bottled water in her basket. He was in his seventies like her father, but his back and neck were straight, and he didn�t use a cane. She regularly envied mobile strangers now.

�People here act like they�ve never seen snow,� he said. �It�s not gonna kill nobody.�

He felt the warmth on the side of his face. It spread down his neck and across his arms, then ran through his torso and legs. Sweet, enveloping warmth, like death should feel if it truly is a herald of a brighter realm. And then the dog bit Finney�s hand, and he realized he was not ascending but lying facedown on a marble bathroom floor.

The dog scampered away, collar jingling. It was small but had drawn blood from the meat of Finney�s left hand. He sat up, realized he was naked, realized the marble floor was heated, and realized he didn�t know where he was.

And then he threw up.

After he�d rid himself of the bile and foam, he flushed the toilet and lay back on the floor. The quiet hum of the overhead lights made his nerves twitch, and the warm tiles were no match for the cold sweat and chills that came over him.

He had work to do, a flight to catch. He knew the flight was at 3 o�clock. Oscar always scheduled Finney�s runs for Fridays at 3, supposedly the busiest time on the busiest day at the busiest airport in the world: Atlanta�s Hartsfield-Jackson. Finney had made four of these trips so far. This was his last, a $10,000 payment the reward. The way it worked, he dressed as a businessman, checked in for his flight to New York, and took a wheeled carry-on duffel bag through security. Oscar provided Finney with an extra phone for each trip, to be destroyed afterward. When Finney reached his departure concourse, he�d use the phone to text a number that had already been entered. That number went to an airline employee with security access, also on Oscar�s payroll. The employee would text Finney the location of a men�s room inside the concourse where Finney would wait in a specified stall for another text. When it came in, he�d slide the carry-on under the stall door and receive an identical but heavier case in return. Oscar never told him what was inside, but Finney knew it was guns.

Firearms had always been Oscar�s moneymaker. MAC-10s, SKs, nine millimeters. They were cheap and easy in Georgia, not so much in New York. The gun laws were that different. Finney boarded his flight with the bag and wedged it in the overhead compartment beside laptop cases and overstuffed duffels. Nobody had a clue. His next stop was a parking lot near LaGuardia where he met up with Oscar�s partners and handed off the case. Doing the numbers in his head, he figured Oscar was marking up some of the weapons four to five times above what he was paying for them.

He tried to breathe and take hold of the moment. He couldn�t remember if it was supposed to be a three count in and six count out, the other way around, or something completely different. Finally, he stood and went to the sink. He washed the dog bite, splashed his face, and slicked back his hair.

The bathroom opened onto a large bedroom in grays and whites. Light pierced the burlap curtains and hurt Finney�s eyes. A naked woman lay facedown on pale sheets, blond hair tumbling onto her small shoulders, a skinny arm hanging off the side of the bed. She snored loudly.

Finney found his clothes draped over a chair. He pulled his phone from the suit jacket�s pocket. He�d missed three calls from Oscar, and it was 12:28.

�Fuck.�

He couldn�t find the second phone, the one he would need at the airport. Then he remembered leaving it in the trunk of his car with the dummy suitcase after picking up both at Oscar�s office. The problem was, he couldn�t remember where he�d left the car. He had a vague memory of riding with the woman in an SUV the night before. Point A to point B, but he didn�t know where either of those points lay.

He called Alana instead of Oscar.

�Where are you?� she asked. �Oscar is pissed.�

�I�m not sure.�

�What do you mean?�

�I mean, I don�t know where I am.�

He�d noticed the snoring had stopped. And then he heard the woman�s voice, slow and hoarse: �Johns Creek.� She was sitting up, snorting coke out of her pineapple keychain pendant. He remembered the pineapple.

�What�s Johns Creek?� he asked.

�It�s where you are.� And then she shrugged. �I mean, unless you were asking in a more existential way.�

Alana heard the conversation through the phone. �Jesus, Finney. You�re in Alpharetta. Traffic is shit out there. It�s going to take you at least an hour to get to the airport. You need to leave right now.�

He pulled back the blinds. A man in khaki coveralls was walking the front yard, spraying chemicals on the grass. The driveway was empty except for a black Porsche SUV.

�I don�t think I have my car with me.�

�You rode home with me,� the woman said.

�Call Oscar,� Alana said. �Tell him everything is fine, that you overslept. Then find your fucking car and get to the airport.�

The woman walked to the bathroom and closed the door. Finney let the curtain fall shut. He sat down in a chair; a dull pain had settled behind his eyes.

�I�m moving after I get paid.�

Alana sighed. �Moving where?�

He�d thought of a few places recently, but not a damn one of them would come to mind in the moment. �I don�t know. I�m just taking my talents elsewhere.�

�You don�t need another fuck-up,� she said. �This kind of thing never happened before. Now, it�s every week.�

He couldn�t deny it. His long run of dependability had reached a horizon, and he�d found nothing beyond that intersection of caring and wanting except a comfortable ditch. Alana could have made a list of his fuck-ups, all similar and rooted in a need to move far away from his current life. The worst to date was almost missing the previous month�s flight to New York. That time, he�d awakened in a hotel room with a gash on his forehead and his wallet, phone, and car keys missing. Oscar had not been happy. And it didn�t matter how long they had known each other � Oscar didn�t tolerate multiple fuck-ups. Finney knew that missing today�s flight was not an option.

The woman walked out of the bathroom, still naked.

�Talk to me,� Alana said. �Where�s your mind right now?�

Finney ended the call, and the woman asked if everything was okay.

�I need to get to the airport.�

She offered to call a car service, but he told her he had to find his own car first. She pulled on a pair of yoga pants and grabbed a sports bra and white sweater from the dresser. �I can drive you back to your car.�

Finney put on his pants and shirt. �I don�t remember where I left it.�

She walked over, picked up his suit jacket, and checked the label on the inside pocket. �Tom Ford,� she said. �Looks like I brought home a two-thousand-dollar suit with short-term memory loss.�

The suit had belonged to Oscar � last year�s collection and no more use to him. He�d given it to Finney to wear on the plane trips, filling out the businessman look he felt was required. Finney didn�t see how it mattered but had gone to Oscar�s tailor to have it fitted. He was glad he�d done it. That suit could carry half the load in a conversation.

�Where did we meet?� Finney asked.

She ran her fingers through her hair and shook her head. Her hair fell perfectly straight at her shoulders.

�Lenox Square,� she said. �But I have no idea where you parked.�

Lenox Square shopping mall: a parking lot the size of a war zone. He wouldn�t know where to start looking.

Over the woman�s shoulder, a framed photograph on the dresser caught his eye � the woman standing beside a smiling man wearing glasses and a leather jacket.

�Is that Usher?�

She glanced back. �I sold him a house.�

Finney felt the blow of a missed opportunity. �I almost worked with him once.�

He told her he�d briefly run a recording studio in town. She was sitting on the side of the bed, tying an orange pair of Nikes. �You mentioned your short music career last night.�

It was short, for damn sure. The studio had been owned by Oscar, a throw-in on one of his land deals. Oscar liked to think of himself as a real estate mogul, not a gun trafficker. He put Finney in charge of the studio, and Finney took some online audio-engineering classes and turned out to be a quick learner on Pro Tools and also pretty good at making trap beats on the studio�s old 808. The place was making money and Usher�s producer had booked some time, but Oscar shut the place down and sold the building and equipment to put a down payment on a condo that supposedly had the largest balcony in Buckhead. Finney took the 808 home with him, an unspoken fuck you to Oscar (as if fucking Oscar�s girlfriend Alana wasn�t already enough). It was also then that Finney started thinking about taking his talents elsewhere.

Finney�s headache wouldn�t back off, and his hand was throbbing from the dog bite. He asked the woman if she had any Tylenol in the house. She told him she didn�t.

�Has your dog had his shots?�

She looked at him strangely. �I don�t have a dog.�

He offered his hand as evidence. �What�s this?�

�You dropped a fifty-dollar bottle of George T. Stagg bourbon in my kitchen last night. You cut your hand, and then you said, Put it on my bill.�

He gave the hand a closer inspection. It was a jagged cut, nothing like teeth marks. �Jesus. I thought I saw a fucking dog in your bathroom.�

�Don�t take this the wrong way,� she said, �but have you ever had a brain scan?� She offered a weary smile, which loosened a few memories from the night before. The expression might have been unspectacular, but it was genuine and as warm as her marble bathroom floor, and it made him recognize why he had wanted to talk to her in the first place.

They�d met at a bar inside the mall. He remembered her telling him about her divorce, two daughters who lived with her ex-husband in Charlotte, about her own mother who�d died last year in a small south Georgia house, surrounded by garbage she couldn�t let go of but no visible signs of a family. It took the county�s public administrator six months to find Monica and tell her about her mother�s death. That was her name, Monica. He remembered that. He remembered all those things she�d told him, but he still couldn�t remember where he�d parked the car.

On his morning jog through the neighborhood � his first as a free man after eleven years behind bars � Payne saw a Lexus SUV with a broken side window, glass shards littering the pavement like spilled beads.

He slowed for a beat, and in one measured glance he had absorbed all of the details. Smash-and-grab, the news called them these days. A crew of teenage boys surely responsible. The Lexus, a Georgia Tech sticker on the bumper, was parked in the driveway of a restored Craftsman bungalow, soft light glowing through the windows at the predawn hour. The no doubt clueless residents were going to be unpleasantly surprised when they came out to go to work. They would feel safe no longer, if they ever had, and why should they? The boys who�d done this were going to strike again. They always did.

Big hands tightening into fists, Payne resumed his pace.

Out of the joint for less than a week, and already he�d been present at the scene of a crime. Would that qualify as recidivism? Did he need to notify his parole officer?

He cracked a smile as the cold October air skirled down Cherokee Avenue, chilling his skin through his sweatshirt and tearing leaves from old elms that towered over equally old homes, Victorians and Craftsmans in various stages of repair. Streetlamps still glowed, and Zoo Atlanta lay to the east, shuttered and dark, but it required little for Payne to imagine all those animals locked in cages, living out the balance of their lives in captivity. He�d been one of them not long ago.

He saw a jogger heading in the opposite direction on the other side of the street. A young blond woman clad in a neon-green jacket and black leggings. She glanced his way but only smiled blandly, unconcerned at the sight of a tall, muscular, bald-headed black man running in her neighborhood. She might have even waved.

Damn, it felt good to be in the outside world again.

He attacked the last leg of his run with renewed vigor. At Sydney Street, he hung a left. He didn�t slow until he neared his brother�s home.

When I pulled into my driveway near midnight, just off my shift at the Earl, a person was standing at the mailbox. Creeped me out. The street was a sleepy one usually, composed of tidy, two-bedroom brick ranches built in the fifties. Most of the neighbors were elderly. Crime reports, which clustered around streets farther south or closer to the Village, had lately spiked with muggings, carjackings, a pattern of ambushes as people arrived home. But on our street, nothing like that, nothing worse than a stolen lawn mower now and then, the stray kick-in when people were away. If a decoration disappeared off a porch or mail went missing, it was probably only Miss Joy.

The carport security lights came on as I parked and looked back. The person, who seemed alone and not large or furtive, remained in place. I didn�t see a waiting vehicle, as in the other ambushes reported on the listserv. Getting out with caution, I heard a hoarsely feminine sobbing, a gasping for breath. �Help me,� she wailed, but didn�t step into the driveway, as if an invisible fence blocked the property line. �Call the police. There�s a man. He�s at my house. He�s gonna kill me!�

�Okay,� I called back, moving up the walk as fast as I could, just wanting to get inside. Had to be Miss Joy, though she didn�t ordinarily speak, not in sentences with words in them. Next door, her house lay in darkness, no car in her drive, no person visible. �I�ll call them. Right away.�

�Promise!� she shouted. �Oh, please.� So many words, arranged in civilized patterns, with real fear in her voice � why shouldn�t there be a man? Had she run up to me, I might have considered bringing her inside for her safety.

Fern, asleep in front of the TV, woke when I hit the mute button. On the phone with the 911 operator, I repeated my neighbor�s story, though by the time I reached a person I was wondering why I bothered. �I�m sure she�s off her medication,� I said. �Y�all know her. Joy Markham. You�re over here arresting her every other week. She�s probably hallucinating.�

Fern rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes. �Demons! Maybe she got one in a trap.� She giggled, then shouted toward the receiver in my hand, �Tell �em to bring a straightjacket!�

To the operator I said, �She asked me to call, so it�s possible she�s looking for a ride to the psych ward. She doesn�t usually like the police.�

�A man!� Fern said once I�d hung up, thrilled with anything Miss Joy did. Fern was one of those slim, boobless girls who could rock a super-short haircut, big round eyes and delicate skin always dewy and flushed as if she were near tears. But Fern was not a crier. �Maybe he�ll knock her in the head and make her sane.�

I�d felt slightly less freaked out by Miss Joy ever since Fern moved in. She made monitoring the whole crazy situation next door a little more like entertainment. I peered out through the tiniest crack I could make in the blind. At first I didn�t see her anywhere and expected her warped, haggard face to pop into the window. Ten minutes later when I looked again, I thought I spotted her trudging up her own driveway in her usual flatfooted waddle, head down, as if only returning from her day�s wanderings.

�I think she went home. Guess he wasn�t too scary.�

She worked the iron around the faded orange flowers in the middle of the doily, trying to avoid the cheap bedspread beneath. The childhood gift from her mother was now spotted with age, but she held to the ritual of washing it before leaving one house and pressing it at the next.

Setting the iron beside her boxes to cool, she put the doily on the bedside table with the lamp on top. There was nothing attractive about the room, shown to her earlier that evening by the old woman�s nephew, a bulky man who�d tiptoed delicately down the corridor ahead of her.

�I�m sure you�re anxious to see it,� he�d whispered as he led her to the caregiver�s room. That�s what he�d called it, the caregiver�s room. The smallest of the three bedrooms, at the back of the house.

A smell of mothballs had assaulted her from the doorway. The short, square woman had walked in, back erect, instantly disliking the drapes and bedspread. The room�s only window looked onto the neighbor�s wall and, as soon as the taxi driver had deposited her boxes and left, she�d pulled the curtains, creating a lavender tomb.

Dollops of rain had hit the window a few minutes later, turning the room a deeper shade of purple. Apropos, she�d thought.

She�d been hoping it would hold off. At least for today. Humming the birthday song that morning, she�d fried an egg in her apartment kitchen and eaten it standing at the window, looking at the looming clouds with the wisp of a hope that someone, a cousin, her brother, someone would remember her.

�It�s my birthday,� she�d announced that afternoon to the taxi driver after he�d piled her boxes and suitcases into his SUV.

��Appy buthday,� he�d grunted as he wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. Then they fell into silence.

Birthdays hadn�t always treated Veronica Williamson well. On the day she was born her face had been squeezed by the doctor�s forceps, leaving her with sunken cheeks and a boxer�s nose. A plastic surgeon hadn�t been able to help; the thoughtless nickname of Mash-face in school hadn�t either. The damage to the child�s face had changed the trajectory of her life from what it would have otherwise been, leaving her shy and solitary, her only comfort being that her light complexion and family status placed her high on the ladder of Jamaican society. She�d come to believe that class always trumped looks, the belief of a heart that had also been damaged.

The nephew came to the door just when she started unpacking. �I took Aunt Jessie her tea, so she�s fine for the night. Can I get you some supper?�

As soon as they sat down in the dining room, the questions started: �Where in Jamaica are you from? My wife and I went there once.�

�Kingston,� she answered and took a silent sip of soup. She didn�t want to appear too ravenous.

�We went to Kingston � to visit the Bob Marley Museum. We didn�t like it much.� He swept his hand over the table, frowning, suddenly irritated. �All the rich people living up in the hills and the poor crowded together in ghettoes.�

Veronica nodded, recalling the view from her home�s veranda looking down on the harbor and the poor.

�What did your family do there?� he asked.

She sat up and ran a hand over her neat, gray hair. �My father was a solicitor, with one of the largest practices in Kingston. My mother didn�t work.�

He picked up his toast. �You said you went to college there.�

�Yes, the University of the West Indies, MA in history.�

�Great.� His eyes flickered around, unsure of what to light on next.

She could tell by the lowering of the eyebrows, the narrowing of the eyes, that he was puzzled about her descent from graduate school to caregiver, but he knew not to ask. She�d liked him from their first meeting at the Starbucks in Little Five Points and spotted the wedding ring when he put out his hand. There was something genteel about him � an architect, he�d said he was, a man with breeding. He�d tried not to stare at her nose.

�When did you come to the States?� he asked while he washed up the dishes, his back to her.

�Thirteen years ago.�

He�d asked fewer questions during the brief interview, waving a cup of chai tea while he talked about his aunt, an invalid who was childless and widowed. Her last live-in had just returned to Guatemala and he�d had no luck finding a substitute.

The ad in the Journal-Constitution had been equally brief: Virginia-Highlands. Live-in companion needed for elderly woman. Room and board and stipend.

�A hospice nurse comes in three days a week to bathe Auntie, and we have a lady who cooks and cleans every day except weekends,� he�d told her in the coffee shop. �We just need a responsible person there � in case of anything.�

�I have lots of experience,� she�d assured him. �I took care of my mother before she died. I had to be up with her at night and go to work the next day.� They�d chuckled as if it were a joke, and he�d seemed relieved when she accepted the position. Later she�d thought him a very nice man � but too trusting. He should have asked for references. Anyone could put a pillow over an invalid�s face or disappear with the valuables.

He was more measured this evening, taking his time washing up. �Are you a... a citizen?�

The corners of her lips twitched. Ah, there it was. He�d forgotten to ask if she was legal during the interview and his wife had reminded him after.

�I�m a permanent resident,� she answered. �I have a green card.� His big shoulders relaxed. She wouldn�t mention her birthday; he�d try to find out how old she was.

Before he left, he handed her a sheet with instructions for his aunt�s care from morning to night, starting with, Change diaper. Below that every meal, every medication, every bath was listed. There was nothing about talking or reading, nothing about being a companion.

�Should I supervise the woman who comes in the day?� she inquired.

�Yes, please, and pitch in when necessary, if you don�t mind. You can call us in an emergency.�

As he escaped through the front door, the new caregiver wondered if pitching in meant changing diapers. Shuddering, she returned to her room, tiptoeing past the ninety-seven-year-old.

�I know you�ll both become friends,� he�d commented at the end of the interview, and she�d smiled and said nothing.

There was little chance of becoming friends with his aunt. It would have been out of character for Veronica, who�d never trusted women and only occasionally men. It wasn�t that she was mean-spirited. Just the opposite. She�d worked for thirty-five years with a Jamaican nonprofit that housed and fed the poor. But when it came to intimate relationships, she was most comfortable in the well of her own thoughts, preferring a safe distance between herself and others.

Returning to her unpacking, Veronica placed her cosmetics bag on the dresser. She couldn�t leave it in the bathroom since there was only one. The house was smaller than she�d been expecting, but it didn�t matter, because she�d just escaped eviction from her former apartment, the best birthday gift she could have given herself. Even better, she�d escaped to live in the city, and not just any part of the city, but in Virginia-Highlands. Trendy, gentrified, quietly classy, the neighborhood had enthralled her from the first day she�d seen it a few years earlier. The boutiques and restaurants at the intersection of Virginia and Highland, the tall old trees, the updated bungalows with their compact gardens had made her hanker to live there, to live among people who didn�t spit and throw litter out the car window, who didn�t shout curses in the middle of the night, who knew how to behave.

She slid the closet door back and hung up the black Alfani, pausing for a second to straighten its plastic bag. Her mother would have loved this suit. She�d always loved beautiful clothes. There�d been that day � she�d been around thirteen � when her mother had tried on a black cocktail dress.

�Like it, ma�am?� the hovering dressmaker had asked.

Her mother, never a diplomat, had been looking in the mirror. �I hope they don�t mistake me for a maid,� she�d said, laughing, ignoring the wounded seamstress�s face.

The cream Chanel was hung next in the closet, followed by a dozen more designer suits and dresses. The underwear came next, Veronica layering them carefully in the drawers, then her jewelry box, which went on the dresser in front of the photographs. After sliding the empty suitcases under the bed, she attended to her boxes (sent from Jamaica by a cousin several years before), most still sealed with the original tape. She opened the smallest of the boxes, the one with her family photos, another ritual never neglected. Removing the bubble wrap from the first, she placed it on the dresser. She was sitting on her father�s knee, his handsome brown face looking into the camera as if he were posing alone. It was followed by a photo of her holding hands with her older brother Ralph, her parents� favorite and now a neurologist. With her sleeve, she wiped the glass over another: she was a baby in the arms of Nanny Brown. Tall and black in a starched white uniform, the woman�s prim smile hid the tongue that was forever quick to judge and slow to forgive.

�Bitch,� Veronica muttered as she set the picture beside the others.

Her heart pumped with guilty pleasure at the comment. Normally tight-lipped, comfortable with deception, she�d been having a recent urge to speak hard truths. Not unlike the crude remarks she�d abhorred in her recent neighborhoods � ugly names that had started leaping from her lips like unruly children. She�d murmured the word slut in reference to a neighbor the week before, loud enough to be heard and cursed out, and a creditor with an Indian accent she�d called a coolie. She was starting to get accustomed to her new habit, even a little proud. At seventy, she reasoned, she�d earned the right.

A cry came from the room next door � or was it her imagination? Rubbing a stab of arthritis in her knee, Veronica tiptoed to the old lady�s door. Only a soft wheezing emerged from the darkness and she returned to her room.

Ripping open another of her boxes, she removed a photo album. About to place it in its designated drawer, she sat on the bed and opened it to the pictures of her European trip, the high point of what had been up to then a monotonous life. Financed by her inheritance after her mother�s death, the trip thirteen years before had taken her first to London where she�d stayed with Ralph and his British wife. She�d moved on after two weeks, taking the Chunnel train to France. As she turned the pages to the Eiffel Tower, followed by the Colosseum and the Acropolis, she remembered how wildly courageous it had felt to travel alone, to be free. She touched a snapshot of Christos, a shoemaker in Athens who�d made love to her twice, who knew just enough English to say she looked Greek.

The skyscrapers of New York sprang from the next page, sprang with the same energy that had rippled up from its sidewalks into her feet. How she�d loved the city when she arrived from Heathrow! No one had stared, no one had judged. They were too busy living their lives. She�d planned to spend a week there before returning to Jamaica but kept extending her stay, living first in the Waldorf Astoria (a rash decision, even she had to admit), then in a small hotel in Brooklyn, visiting museums and parks, once the site of the World Trade Center attack.

One morning she�d awakened to a thought. With her parents gone and the family home sold, her job handed over to her assistant, she had nothing to go back to in Jamaica. There were few jobs to be had, especially at her age, and even if she found work, there�d be no safety net when she retired. After her money was gone, where would she be without her parents to fall back on? Everyone in New York seemed to be working, and in retirement they had an infrastructure: Social Security and Medicare. The brash courage she�d had in Europe would pull her through. She would stay in America � on her visitor�s visa.

The idea was na�ve rather than courageous, made by a person with little experience operating outside of her island bubble, no one to advise her that she was about to step on to a path that would spiral � ever so slowly and ever so surely � downward.

With her inheritance dwindling, Veronica�s decision to work had started her descent. At the suggestion of a Trinidadian dry-cleaning clerk, a younger, single man who flirted with her, she�d started giving evening classes to West Indian children � quiet, sporadic work that didn�t feel illegal. Her clients were blue collar, the apartments smelling of garlic and curry, but she�d swallowed her pride and arrived punctually at their doors.

Shortly before her six-month visa was to expire, an African woman on a bus had asked her where Flatbush Avenue was. �My husband need a coat,� the woman had explained, indicating the much older man beside her. An unfortunate arranged marriage, Veronica had decided � or maybe a convenient one. That night another idea had blossomed and she�d invited her dry-cleaning friend to dinner. When he appeared in the restaurant, his shiny suit and pointed-toed shoes had alarmed her but she�d soldiered on with her mission.

�My visa is running out,� she�d announced while he was attacking a chicken bone.

�So you going illegal?� the man had countered. �You sure you want to do that? I is a citizen, but I know how it go. This ain�t no easy country and you all by yourself. People who grow up soft like you don�t know how to survive here. Next thing, they throw you in jail and deport you.� He�d shaken his head. �You come like a one-eye man in a four-eye country.�

She�d screwed up her courage, her stomach already in a knot. �That�s why I want to get a green card. I was wondering � would you consider... I could marry you.�

�What kind of money you talking?� he�d asked eventually, examining his long pinky nail. Two thousand dollars later she�d moved into his filthy apartment, spending her first week cleaning, relieved he was rarely home.

In for penny, in for pound, she�d told herself. Wearing the Chanel suit for the city hall ceremony, she�d promised to love, honor, and cherish Allan for as long as they both should live. She told her brother she�d married on an impulse. It had felt like lying to her parents, disagreeable but necessary. There were no photographs of the wedding, the celibate marriage, or the husband who�d disgusted her.

�My mother want me to come down to Atlanta,� he�d told her after he lost his job. �She have a friend can give me a work.� With the last interview yet to come, Veronica had gone south with him on a Greyhound bus, vowing to shake off his poverty as soon as she had her card.

Betty, Allan�s mother, only a few years older than Veronica, hadn�t seemed perturbed that her son had married for money. It was she who�d suggested that her daughter-in-law apply to Macy�s.

�Like how you dignified,� she�d told her. �You going to look good in black.� Macy�s had been delighted to hire Veronica, now the owner of a work permit. She was just the kind of person we like in the Macy�s family, according to the HR woman.

The last immigration interview had gone well, Veronica telling the Atlanta officer it was love at first sight. A few months and a green card later, she�d moved into her own apartment, having decided to stay in Atlanta because it was cheaper than New York, the weather warmer � and she had a job. The album started filling again with photographs she�d taken from her new Nissan: the CNN building, the Coca-Cola Museum, Martin Luther King Jr.�s birthplace, some sent to her brother to let him know she was fine, despite her divorce.

Pulling a nightgown out of a drawer, Veronica rubbed the scar on her spine where she�d had back surgery two years before. She�d been forced to quit her job to have it, the HR woman telling her, sorry, she was really only a part-time worker. After her recovery, it had been nearly impossible to get work. Macy�s wasn�t hiring; the public schools didn�t want her. The only job she�d found was sorting clothes in a thrift store, but her back had started acting up again and she�d had to leave.

The words of a colleague at Macy�s came back as Veronica headed for the bathroom. �Backache is just about stress,� the makeup artist had said.

There�d been stress all right, beginning with the medical bills from the surgery, even with Medicare. She�d added them to the credit card invoices that listed the temptations America had thrown at her. The creditors� calls were the most stressful, though. Arrogant young people who addressed her on the phone as if she were a criminal, especially the IRS man who sounded like he was wearing a suit but was probably in shirtsleeves in a cubicle. They had no feelings, saying they�d take her to court. She, whose father had been a lawyer!

Ralph had advised her to invest her inheritance: �You don�t want to end up in the poor house.�

His wife had added with her all-knowing smile, �And you wouldn�t want to depend on anyone, would you?�

Financial advice was now too little, too late for a woman who�d spent almost six decades living rent-free in her family home, one maid to cook her meals and another to launder her clothes.

�Why waste your money on an apartment when we have lots of space?� her father had argued, a lawyer used to winning.

Her low salary had been spent on books, her car, and a few trips to relatives in Canada and Miami. She�d seen no reason to save, having been well trained by parents who�d embedded the message that women didn�t need to handle the finances. That was the man�s job.

�How come you never married?� her mother had asked when Veronica was about to turn fifty. They�d been drinking tea on the veranda and her mother had lowered her voice after the maid left.

�I never wanted to get married,� she�d retorted. �And no one asked me.�

She was lying on both counts. Other women�s engagement rings had released bile in her stomach; wedding receptions made her feel sick. Two men had actually proposed to her but she�d rejected them both. One had been too dark, the other unable to pronounce an H (her parents would have been horrified). She�d never invited them home and had told herself they�d only proposed because of her class and color.

Veronica clicked on the bathroom light and placed her cosmetics bag on the top of the toilet tank. The room was a cramped, dark closet and there were signs of mold around the tub, the house cleaner obviously unsupervised. Leaning into the mirror above the sink, the aging woman stroked the dark spots on her cheeks. She�d have to wear a hat when she went outside.

After her ablutions, she returned to her room and rubbed ointment into her joints. Tomorrow she�d go for a walk, she decided as she turned off the lamp, take a look at the azaleas and dogwoods in bloom, and if she could get away on Sunday, she�d go to the church on the corner that she�d seen from the taxi.

She was sure of one outing: as soon as the day worker came on Monday, she�d find a library to check the online dating site where she had her profile. She�d posted a better photograph of herself recently, one with her head tilted up, a glamour shot she�d had done in a mall. Someone might have written her by now. The world was full of desperate people. There might yet be an old man somewhere who needed taking care of � who might leave her a house and some cash when he died. She�d tell him she loved him and clamp her lips shut to keep the insults inside. Oh well, if wishes were horses, all beggars would ride, her father used to say.

She wriggled around on the mattress, trying to get comfortable with the truth. The vultures would find her again, they always did. They�d demand their pound of flesh, their $183,000. It helped that her cell phone had been cancelled but they�d still find her, and when they did, she�d tell them the truth.

I don�t have a dollar to my name, she�d say, do with me what you will. Maybe that would hold them off. One never heard of debtors going to jail in America; the country seemed to thrive on debt.

�There�s always bankruptcy,� one creditor had advised. �If you filed as a��

�Are you out of your mind?� she�d interjected. Bankrupt? If her brother ever heard of it, if family friends back home ever knew!

Acid spurted into the woman�s throat and she swallowed hard once, twice, pushing down the inevitable truth, threatening since that first interview with the nephew. One day, one day not too far in the future, the old lady was going to die � and then where would she be? She�d be homeless, that�s where, her Social Security check unable to cover a cheap apartment in the suburbs. Bankruptcy wouldn�t matter. All her suits would have to go to a consignment shop, her jewelry to a pawnbroker, and her books to a secondhand bookstore. There�d be nothing left of her. Nothing.

Her heart pounded with the image of her hand searching the treasure trove of medication in the old lady�s room, pushing a bottle of sleeping tablets deep into her Aigner boots. Just in case.

�God help me,� she whispered to the ceiling, more intention than actual prayer. I will survive. I will not end up in the gutter. I am strong.

She took a deep, shaky breath to calm herself. Yes, she�d imagine instead the family�s beach house in Ocho Rios, where she�d spent all her summers growing up. She could hear the waves rolling in and out, feel the sand under her bare feet and the sun hot on her arms. Her brother was calling her from the water. Her parents and their friends were sitting in lounge chairs on the veranda, chatting and laughing. A maid was handing them drinks. She was warm and safe.

I�m still warm and safe, she reminded herself, taking another breath. I�m living in Virginia-Highlands, and I have a roof over my head and food in the kitchen.

She rolled onto her side, shrugging off the threatening shroud with one last intention-prayer. Sleep came in fits and starts, the dreams tiring. Toward morning she found herself in the maze at Hope Gardens in Kingston and she was little again, running between the box hedges, trying to find a way out.

She was still asleep when a voice pierced through her fog � a shrill, ghostly voice�

�Girl!� the voice called again, more insistent now.

The immigrant�s eyes popped open. She struggled to sit up in the purple gloom, the nylon bedspread sliding to one side.

�Yes ma�am,� she heard herself answer � the truth at last.

I can hear sounds I�ve never heard before. The creaking of the floorboards, the footsteps on the stairs, the aching grind of the door hinge � these are common music in this century-old house. The sudden ping of acorns striking the roof, the groan of the giant water oaks and the fluttering shadows they cast from the streetlight playing through the rooms, the scramble of the roof rats in the attic, the possum�s hissing growl as she makes her midnight track � these noises I delight in; the more vigorous, the greater my delight. But it is the voice. The sweet, babbling voice of the child that gives me all the more pleasure. What is she saying? Nevermore or Evermore? You don�t hear it?�� yes, you hear it too. Long � long � long � many minutes, many hours, many days, you and I shall hear it. Evermore! Her little voice gives all the more certainty that I am the instrument of the Most High and the vengeances I exact are pure and justified. Selah.

Was it only a week ago? Six? No. Seven days. Perhaps only five, the first cool evening of autumn after the long, too long, Indian summer. I am a gentle man by all accounts, and so when I stepped out of the front of the house and saw a pair of pine beetles crouching to spring across the threshold, I stomped my feet, rather than crushing them, and sent them scurrying into the beehive of dried leaves that had accumulated on the porch. I was gleeful in spite of the dull, dark, damp, and soundless day. The low-hanging clouds seemed to lift rather than oppress my spirits. I felt the kind of giddiness one gets from a toke � just a toke, mind you � of weed, as that�s all I manage these days. Skipping over the rotten plank on the steps, and through the iron gate � just the gate, the fence having long rusted away � and into Druid Street, named for the oaks which tunnel over it; the street�s name has nothing to do with priests!�� I heard a squirrel bark. I recall that barking and the scratching the rodent made as it ran around eaves of the turret with its one vacant eye-like window. One would think a witch lives there, but no, it is only a nest to rodents. Night and day, I�ve heard their kits peeping. My philosophy is to live and let live, so a squirrel in the attic is nothing to me. I do not fight against nature. But people: that�s a different story. Though I should say, not all people.

Forty, fifty years ago, my neighbors were wonderful people. Just like me. It was when the neighborhood was in decline � decline!�� according to the tour guides who glide through on their Segways � simply robotics � simple robots! Declined! they say, from its Gilded Age glory to a hippieville � the grand Greek revivals and Queen Annes given over to tenements and flophouses � and to hippies � they say. Now, it has been rescued. Rescued! This is the language they use. On the brochures. On the websites. The gentrifiers! I�ve heard them cluck. Cluck. Cluck. At my house. It needs painting, they say. The windows need repair. It could be lovely, if only... Ha! Remodelers. Relandscapers. New Yorkers and Californians! Saws and leaf blowers all day long. And their self-congratulatory tour of homes and festivals. So-called arts festivals � T-shirts and earrings! What do they know of art? They�ve Home Depot-ed everything � everything except the sidewalks! The hundred-year-old tiles, beautifully buckled by water oak roots, cracked, crushed, missing. That�s art! May they break their damn ankles on it. Selah.

But that day, nothing bothered me. I strode up Euclid Avenue, past the colorful Queen Annes and Craftsman bungalows, reveling in the change of season. The cool air. The billow of storm clouds glowing in sunset. Bats, like phantoms, looping through the sky and the barn owl�s who-whooing. I passed the woods at Springvale Park, where the owls live and where the Wiccans still hold their lunar rites among the silver-barked beeches. On a spur of the moment, I decided to go to the Porter. I liked sitting in the very back of the narrow dungeon of a club and drinking an ale. Perhaps I�d even eat a brat and sauerkraut.

Then I noticed the child. I was passing the hill at the Sibley Park, an ostentatious collection of contraptions of Scandinavian design meant to entertain the spawn of said gentrifiers � oh, such precious urchins! God forbid they play on a swing � when the ephemeral look of the girl startled me. I peered hard, but no, she was a child of this world, six or seven in age, naked except for a ragged, oversized T-shirt that draped her like a tunic.

I see the homeless all the time. In the old days � those hippieville days � they squatted in the old mansions, abandoned by commerce and condemned by the state. Now they haunt the periphery of the district. They wander Ponce, and camp at Little Five Points, but would be hustled along by the IPP if they ventured into this purlieu! Private police. The �I-pee-pee,� I call them.

�Where is your mama, little girl?� I asked, my tone conveying my caring nature. I was concerned that a chill would catch her. Already, her bare arms were pimpled with goose bumps. �Where do you live?� She was of indeterminate race � light-skinned black? Mediterranean? A mix of some kind. A tangle of sandy hair matted her head. I came closer, resisting the urge to reach out. As I said, I am a compassionate man. In a sudden burst, she fled, running like a Hiawatha to the playhouse � a structure for the gentrified children to �play� house � ha! �The melancholy House of Usher� � as if any one of them expected to clean and cook as adults.

I followed the child, not chasing, but approaching cautiously. Two souls crossed in front of me, walking the path toward the train station � a double murder from two decades ago. Inside the square little playhouse, among a scatter of toy pots and sand buckets, was the girl holding tightly to another figure � girlish too, and only slightly larger. The larger, older one was perhaps in her midtwenties, her youth though was blanched, and her face, yellow and negroid, was blooming with purple and pink bruises. A cut on the lip.

We stared a moment and when my breath came back to me, I whispered, �Are you all right?�

The older one � the woman � drew herself smaller, wrapping herself around the child. They were cold. I had only a light jacket, and immediately stripped it off and held it out to her. With a quivering hand, she took it, and nodded slightly to show gratitude, and true to her maternity, she fitted it on the child, whose frame it swallowed up.

If ever there was a need for the police, I thought, it was now. I broached the subject carefully, as I myself have a well-cultivated distrust of the law. The woman�s reaction was blank, but the bruises spoke loudly. I stepped from the playhouse, took a deep breath, and surveyed the park as it fell into a miasmic darkness, a thin fog seeping from the ground. Streetlamps, ringed with prismatic halos, illuminated the marble steps of long ago � razed mansions which led up the hill to nowhere. I flipped open the phone and dialed 9-1-1. And waited.

After several rings, far more than any dying soul would have lasted through, a voice asked me to leave a message. I am as patient as I am compassionate, but I have little patience for such sloppiness. I resolved at that moment that I would be the hero; I would help the poor woman; I! Not the Atlanta police, and certainly not the I-pee-pee. They were but functionaries, paid help. They helped without compassion, but I am called to it by the Highest Power, the power of God, or the power of gods. Whichever. Selah.

I raced down the hill toward the street, toward home. The damp grass clumped between the sole of my sandals and my toes. Some hand, grasping my ankle, nearly tripped me up. But soon I was on the sidewalk, walking swiftly home, my mind listing, relisting what I must do to save the child, the mother. Suddenly a light, blue and holy, burst around me. I tasted the contents of my stomach at the back of my throat. Such excitement is not good for the heart. Then out of the light came a figure, burly and haloed. My knees weakened.

�Hey, pard-na! Where you going so fast?�

Hardly an epiphanic salutation! It was a damn cop. True to calling, they come when you least need them.

�Officer,� I intoned, appropriately obsequious. It is the best strategy, especially around the black ones, and this one was not only burly but as black as a moonless night. And yet, in the foggy streetlamp, he glowed somehow, the bulge of eyes and round jowls, a monstrous chest under his shirt and his massive arms, swollen in his sleeves which acted upon the veins like a tourniquet. Anabolic steroids � mum�s the word; dumb�s the word. �I was just running to call you for assistance,� I explained, and he, fiddling with gadgets pinned here and thither on his person, talked in a gibberish of codes to which a crackled and popping voice replied.

Whatever they had to settle was settled, and reluctantly the cop, hefting his big frame up the hill, followed me. He shone his flashlight inside the playhouse like he was chasing down a fly. Finally it rested on the Piet�, cowering in the corner by the play cook stove. Through blunt and gruff questioning, he ascertained the obvious: they were homeless. If they ever had a home, they had been driven out of it.

�What do you want to do?� he asked the mother, and to her credit, she didn�t answer him. He turned the question to me: �What do you want to do?�

�What can I do?�

�Do you want to go to the Pine Street shelter, ma�am?� he blurted.

Her response shocked me. No. She wouldn�t. She�d been there. She said that it wasn�t safe. It was crowded and filthy and she would rather make her bed where she was.

The forecast called for cold and the child�s nose was snotty.

�If she don�t want to go,� the cop said, �I could arrest her for trespassing � in jail, she be out of the cold.�

The cruelty of his suggestion, his arrogance, nearly sent my hand against his fat head. I looked to the sky. A half-moon slid behind the skyline, diffusely ablaze as if shining behind theatrical scrim. It was God speaking and I knew the mission. �I will take her!�

�Take her where?� the buffarilla asked. Did he suspect misconduct from me?

�To shelter! I will find succor for them or succor them myself.�

The cop pursed his lips and asked the woman if she wanted to go with me. I�ll have you know, she hesitated. Help on the way, and she hesitated! Then he said she�d have to come with him. Was it such a Morton�s fork? Jail or me? The gods led her to the right choice, and quickly. She took the child in her arms and followed me home through the roaming mists.

Before there was city here � either gilded ghetto or hippieville � this was a battleground of the War Between the States. Thousands of boys lined up, blasting musket balls in one another�s faces. Look out any moonlit night into the mists that gather in the hollows of Freedom Park, or the grove at Delta, and you will see them. Regiments and squadrons at a time. They are not so invisible. And why should it be strange? Lives have been lived in this place since the time of the unfortunate Creeks, some of whom clung to these very oaks to save themselves from the Trail of Tears. You scoff? Your arrogance will be the end of you. Life piles on life. Hurt on hurt. That is why I, by the grace of the Almighty, am merciful.

Several times during the short walk, the woman trailing me disappeared in the fog. I waited until she was in sight, only to lose her again. There is the tale of the apparition that trails and vanishes, and reappears on one�s own back. Thinking this, I was beginning to feel some regret about my bravado, as I watched them descend, ragamuffin and ragamitten, from Euclid Avenue down the hill on Druid Street.

�You live here?� the little mother asked. It was the first time she seemed to have looked at me, her rheumy eyes catching the porch light. �It�s such a big house.�

�But?� An impatient flash heated my face. Next she would say it needed paint or repair.

�You live here all by yourself?� There was a pleading in her tone that I caught but did not fully understand.

�Wait here. I�ll run into the yard and get the car.�

�But we�re tired. We tired and hungry, sir.�

�I�ll fix you a sandwich. Peanut butter? Egg salad?�

�Maybe we could just rest awhile. Just a couple of days.�

My imagination sprang. What an idea! A lovely young Negress in the house. To cook and clean and who knows what. She was quite a little spinner. The gentrifiers would talk and talk about that one. And the child? As light-skinned as the child was, we�d be thought to be a little family. How we could roam the neighborhood, the graying, balding, long-haired Ichabod and his darling little girls!

Just then an owl hooted and a door slammed. I jolted out of my reverie. �Impossible!� I went into the yard and brought around the Beetle.

On the day before Thanksgiving, Angie bought a skimpy strand of lights and strung it over the front door, asking why everything had to be so goddamn pitiful all the goddamn time. In my opinion, the lights with the lazy on-and-off only made the place more dreary and actually gave me a headache.

Last week a fight broke out in the lobby, so I grabbed a magazine and sheltered myself behind the desk. When I came up for air, the lights weren�t working anymore and I just let them hang there, dead. No one complained. This job isn�t a Secret Santa type of establishment. When Angie brought up the possibility, I cut her off: �The secret is that there�s no Santa.� Like everyone who doesn�t have family, I hate Christmas like the devil hates holy water on the rocks.

All this took place at the LPF, a motel right off I-285, between Campbellton Road and the airport. When I was coming up it was called the Mark 6, but now it has new management, a new name, and a new sign out front with LPF tricked out in cursive like a rich lady�s monogram. It�s an inside joke that there are three types of hotels � tourist hotels, business hotels, and LPFs � which stands for Local People Fucking. The LPF isn�t an hourly place because the blue laws in the state of Georgia don�t permit that, just like they don�t permit you to buy alcohol on Sundays, though they can�t stop you from drinking it on the Lord�s day. Underneath the monogram, the sign promises $49 a night because we know that nobody will stay here longer than a couple hours and that makes it a fair deal for everyone. It�s a good business. I should know. The same room can be rented out three times in one day, adding up to $150 a night, same as the Peachtree Plaza downtown.

I�ve been here too long. For two years I�ve sat behind bulletproof glass, handling stolen credit cards and sticky dollar bills. But I always say working behind the counter of an LPF sure beats working on your back in one of the grimy rooms.

Not that I�m judging the horizontal occupation. Angie, the one with all the holiday spirit, earns her money like that and we are best friends. She and I were Mutt and Jeff when we were little and stayed with the same foster mother way out in Jonesboro. She gave me a nickname, Bluebuttons, because of my winter coat. We lost touch after my mother Regina got her act together, sprung me from the suburbs, and carried me back to our small cozy apartment where the sheets were always clean.

Fifteen years later, Angie tripped into the �lobby� of the LPF, pulled in by a white dude who swore up and down that America could be great again. Her back was to me as he handed over a pair of limp twenties and a ten. All I could see was her wig, a riot of curls the color of strawberry jelly. As he led her to the staircase, I saw her profile and recognized her instantly. The hair was new, but her face was the same as the little girl who let me share the bottom bunk because the other one smelled like pee.

�Angie?� I blurted.

�Of course it�s me. Who else could it be?�

After that, my old friend became a regular and I tried to keep room 106 free for her.

We never really talk about what she does for a living. She calls the guys her boyfriends, and I go along with that, even when I see money exchange hands right there in the lobby. Being a friend means not asking too many questions. For her part, Angie never asks what became of Regina.

The morning is cold and dark, and my father has brought me to the mountain to see the comet. This is February 1986, a Sunday. This is Georgia. People have gathered at the base of Stone Mountain, jacketed and hatted, mittened and earmuffed. They stand in line for bathrooms, for concessions, for tickets to the cable car. The cable car isn�t a car, but a big blue box that pulls people through the air on wires and up the mountain�s side. The cable car travels in minutes a distance that will take us an hour to cover on foot. My father doesn�t have money for the ride. He tells me it�s an honor to walk, that I won�t get this chance again for seventy-six years. By then, he says, my kneecaps will be gravel and he�ll be dead, so we might as well make the most of it. My father calls himself a realist, which I�ve learned means a person who sometimes doesn�t know what�s not okay to say in front of your ten-year-old son.

�C�mon, buddy,� he says, and I trot to keep up.

My father is not like other fathers, not like the fathers of my friends or the fathers who come to school on Dad Day and talk about their jobs. Those fathers are doctors and plumbers and lawyers. My father has no job. Other fathers dress in suits. They wear watches and ties. They carry briefcases with silver dials that spin and click when they lock. My father wears jean shorts and tank tops. He wears an Atlanta Braves baseball cap. He smokes, which Miss Gillespie says will give him lung cancer. My father says I�m too young to worry about cancer and that I can tell Miss Gillespie to mind her own goddamned business, which I can�t because that word�s not allowed in fourth grade.

Everyone at the bottom of the mountain has come prepared. They carry thermoses and water bottles. Binoculars hang from their necks. Telescopes hang in bags from their shoulders. Nothing hangs from us and we have nothing to drink. My Hawks sweatshirt is the kangaroo kind, and I hide my hands in the pouch to keep warm. I wish I had a hat. I wish I had gloves. When the sun rises, we�ll be warm, but the goal is to get up the mountain before the sun is up, to see the comet in the jet-black sky.

Miss Gillespie says we�re a lucky generation, that we�re young enough to see Halley�s twice if we don�t die from lung cancer first. (Miss Gillespie is also a realist.) Her mother died over winter break, which is why she�s all the time talking about death. My mother died two and a half years ago when a man ran his car into her car. She was wearing a seat belt, only sometimes seat belts don�t save lives. Sometimes the other car�s just going too fast. The man driving the other car died on impact. On impact was how the officer put it to my father on the phone. I know because I picked up the upstairs phone to listen in. I don�t do that anymore.

My mother did not die on impact. At the hospital, a man in a white coat told us she�d pull through before he told us she hadn�t.

Not long after this, my father started smoking. Then came the first tattoo. Later came the layoffs at work, the second tattoo, and the man in the jean jacket. Then came the women.

Each woman hangs around a week, maybe two, then we never see her again. My father thinks I don�t know what they�re in his room doing, but I know. Aunt Susan calls them the Rockettes. As in, she�ll call the house and ask, �Are the Rockettes in town?� and I�m supposed to tell her whether a woman�s staying with us that week or not. Some weeks, I tell Aunt Susan the truth. Some weeks, I don�t. Aunt Susan was Mom�s sister, so she takes her job seriously. Her job, as she sees it, is to see that I don�t turn into my dad.

Starting up the mountain, my father takes my hand, then drops it. Sometimes he forgets I�m ten, that I can make my own cereal, tie my own shoes, wait for the bus on our street by myself. Mornings, he�ll pour us bowls of Lucky Charms. He�ll put in more milk than I like, then ask, at the end, why I don�t drink the milk, which by then is electric blue because of all the marshmallows and the food coloring, which Miss Gillespie says causes cancer too, but which I don�t tell my father about because I like to keep my mornings quiet. So I�ll drink the milk, and my father�s arms will be huge with tattoos � dragons, knives, a snake encircling a skull � and my father will stub out his cigarette in an ashtray already full, and I�ll try not to cough so he won�t feel bad for how much the smoke burns my throat, my eyes, and I�ll ask him to maybe next time let me pour the milk, knowing next time he�ll forget. Mom never forgot.

We walk, and I�m cold. The mountain is quiet and dark, and the people on it walk in dark and quiet ways. It�s like we�re on our way to church, but it�s too early for church, for church bells or for birds, plus Dad and I haven�t been to church since Mom died. There�s no moon in the sky, which Miss Gillespie calls the new moon, which I say makes no sense. My father says the new moon will make it easier to see the comet. I tell him he should have brought a flashlight. There are few lights on the mountain. My shins hit rocks. My sneakers catch on roots. He tells me to pick up my feet when I walk, another expression I say makes no sense.

I look up, and Halley�s is a smudge, a thumbprint caught in wet paint. I think this, then feel smart for thinking it. Figurative language, Miss Gillespie calls it. It�s a metaphor, or else it�s a simile. I can�t remember which uses like or as.

It�s not a school night. Even if it were, my father would have brought me here. He says school is for people who think the answers to life�s questions can be found in books. When I ask him where he finds the answers to life�s questions, he takes me in his arms and says, �You.�

The trail narrows, and we migrate in a herd. It�s not our first time up the mountain, Dad and me. When you live in Atlanta, the mountain is a tradition, a landmark.

Stone Mountain, if you don�t know it, is a big, big rock. It�s rounded on top like the dome of an egg, and there�s a picture carved into its side. In the picture, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, and Robert E. Lee ride into battle. The carving�s bigger than Mount Rushmore. Most people don�t know that. Most people don�t know it�s the biggest carving in the world. Some people don�t like the mountain on account of its history, how before it was a park the mountain was owned by a man in the Klan. It�s here the KKK burned their first cross. My father says that was a long time ago. Miss Gillespie says 1915 was practically yesterday. She says people who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. She says the park and its laser light show celebrate hate.

Except, if the mountain is a place of hate, it�s also a place families gather in love.

Stone Mountain, for me, is more than its light show or the cure for a long summer day. It�s the place my father proposed to my mom. It�s where I�m told I took my first steps. It�s where my mother brought us to watch fireworks the night before she died.

Stone Mountain is the place my father takes me to fish and swim. I�ll swim, and my father will sit on a towel and smoke. He rolls his own cigarettes. He thinks I don�t notice when he pulls from the second baggie, the one the tobacco�s not in. And maybe a year ago I didn�t notice. Or maybe a year ago he wasn�t yet smoking weed and the man in the jean jacket wasn�t always at our door.

We climb. On the trail, a girl whimpers. She wears one shoe. Her mother throws up her arms, cursing. A minute later, we pass a dad, red-faced and sweating. �Trevor,� he yells, �you just went to the bathroom!� The boy named Trevor lowers himself to the ground and cries into his mittens. My father puts his hand on my back and pushes me past Trevor, past the girl, up the mountain, and ahead of him.

One good thing about my father is that, though he yells, he almost never yells at me. He used to. Before Mom died, Dad had a temper. I�d forget to wash my dinner plate or make my bed, and he would be in my room, screaming. After the accident, Dad was different. These days, dinner comes in Styrofoam containers, and neither of us make our beds. These days, Dad saves his shouting for the things he says matter, like who should be president or what gets taught in school. Instead of shouts, I get smoke and dust, ash in the ashtrays and garbage begging to be carried out. Twice a month, Aunt Susan drives down from Nashville with a bottle of Windex and a mop. She makes me shower, even if I showered the night before, then watches while I brush my teeth. The weekends Aunt Susan�s here, Dad doesn�t bring women home.

Halfway up the mountain stands a shelter with picnic tables and benches, a lamppost, boulders smoothed by centuries of butts. My father finds a boulder, and we sit. This morning, he�s not dressed the way he�s usually dressed. He wears jeans and cowboy boots, a green jacket with brass buttons and what he calls fruit salad on the front. He looks like a soldier from a war from before I was born. I don�t know who the jacket belonged to, whether it was handed down or whether my father found it at Goodwill.

From his jacket pocket, he removes his rolling papers and tobacco pouch. At home, he lets me roll cigarettes for him, or at least lick the paper, but not here, not when other grown-ups are around. Dad says I roll a mean cigarillo. By mean, he means good. Miss Gillespie calls this a Janus word, how a word can mean its opposite, the way in Hawaii they say Aloha both coming and going.

Dad licks his cigarette. I ask if I can hold the lighter. He looks around, gives the Zippo wheel a spin, and the dark between our faces turns to flame. He hands me the lighter, which I hold while he touches one end of the cigarette to the wick.

�Nice work,� he says, and I flip the lighter closed.

A woman on a bench watches us. She gives me a look. It�s a look I�m used to getting these past couple of years, a look that asks, Honey, are you okay? And I want to tell her to go away. I want to tell the woman on the bench to leave us alone, that yes, my father smokes too much, that he curses, but he doesn�t curse at me, that yes, his teeth are yellow, his hair greasy beneath his baseball cap, that his clothes are dirty, yes, but that he always makes sure I�m clean and have clean clothes. That while he may look like the father in movies with bad fathers in them, my father hugs me, feeds me, listens, never hits. That he lets me play his records. That he takes me to the zoo to see Willie B. That at night he reads me the funny pages, and when I ask, he tells me stories about Mom. And so what if he reads with a cigarette in his hand. So what if there�s a halo of white around his nose. So what if some nights his eyes go watery, and he�ll rise, midsentence, and walk out of the room. Or if some nights he�ll keep me out too late. Or if last winter I got sick because Dad forgot a bill and for a week we had no heat.

But mostly I want to tell the woman on the bench that this is my father. I am his son. Where she sees danger, worry, I see love.

Of course, I can�t say any of this, so I stick out my tongue.

The woman�s eyes widen. If I thought I could give her the finger without my father noticing, I would.

Then the woman is up and coming toward us. She�s standing at our feet. She�s tall. Her jacket is blue and puffy. On the front, in block letters, the jacket�s stamped, Land�s End.

�Sir,� she says, addressing my father.

My father takes his time addressing her. He sucks on his cigarette, exhales, and sets the cigarette, still smoldering, on the rock beside him. He runs his palms the length of his pant legs, then looks up.

�Sir,� the woman in the Land�s End jacket says, �is this your son?�

My father looks me up and down like he can�t make up his mind. �I reckon I�ll claim him,� he says.

The woman isn�t sure what to make of this. She�s lost the swagger she walked over with. Her hands leave her hips and cross her chest, and standing like that, she looks like the man in the jean jacket, how he stands in our doorway, arms crossed, and shouts. My boy�s home, my father will say, and most nights this stops the shouting. One night, the man in the jean jacket did not stop shouting. The next day, when I got home from school, my father�s arm was in a sling.

�Your son�� the woman says, and it�s like she�s so angry she can�t find the words. I�ve seen this too. I see it every other weekend when my aunt walks through the door. It�s the face of my mother, except that the face is otherworldly in its anger, furious in a way my mother never was in life. Each time I see it, I wish my aunt didn�t look so much like Mom.

The woman in the Land�s End jacket is all but shaking. �Your son stuck his� � and here her voice drops to a whisper � �he stuck his tongue out at me.�

My father�s eyebrows lift in what looks like genuine befuddlement. �Well,� he says to the woman, �what on earth did you do to deserve that?�

At this, the woman�s eyes roll in their sockets. Her arms uncross then recross her chest. My father plucks his cigarette from the rock beside him and brings it to his lips.

�You, sir,� the woman says, �you ought to have your son taken away from you.�

�I�m going to stop you right there,� my father says. He stands, and he and the woman are eye and eye. And my father doesn�t have to say anything more. The woman�s eyes narrow, but soon she about-faces and marches back to her bench where she takes the hand of a boy about my age. The boy wears a jacket that matches his mom�s, and his hair is hair-sprayed into place. His pant cuffs are tucked into his socks, and his Nikes look new.

I watch the mother pull the boy up the mountain away from us, and I wonder, not for the first time since the accident, what it would be like to be a boy like that, to have a mother like that. My mother would have been a mother like that.

The women Dad brings home are nothing like my mom. They wear too much makeup or no makeup at all. They use words I�ve only ever heard men say. Some of the women are nice to me. One took me out for ice cream. She bought me chocolate, which I don�t like, but I ate the ice cream anyway. I didn�t want to hurt her feelings. Her name was Claire, and my father talked about her like she might be my new mom. She had a pretty smile and smelled like maple syrup. She didn�t stick around for long. The nice ones never do.

My father sits. He puts his cigarette out on the rock. �The heck was that?� he says, but I can see he�s trying not to smile. �You can�t make faces at people, buddy. You know that. Not at grown-ups, anyway. Save your faces for school. And, I don�t know, respect your elders.�

Sometimes when my father�s parenting, he says things he thinks he�s supposed to say, echoing truths I�m not sure he believes.

�Sorry,� I say.

�Don�t be sorry. Just, you know, be nice.�

My father stands, and in the lamplight he casts a massive shadow. He is not massive. He used to be bigger, like my uncles, like me. Husky, my mother called it, that word parents use for fat when they�re trying not to hurt your self-esteem. But my father�s no longer husky. He�s thin. He�s, like, really, really thin these past few months.

�You know,� he says, �I didn�t think to bring binoculars.�

�That�s okay,� I say. And it is, it�s okay, though this is an exchange we have a lot, my father forgetting something important � essential, even � the kind of thing a normal parent would never forget, and me assuring him that I don�t want a normal parent, I want him.

Up the mountain, walking, walking. The higher we climb, the steeper the trail gets, and wider too. The people spread out, and there is room enough to stretch my arms, though I keep my hands snug in the pocket of my shirt.

My father whistles. He�s an expert whistler. He loves music, the radio dial at home frozen to 96 Rock. There�s no song he can�t whistle, but he�ll whistle without music too, making a melody up as he goes. I like when he does this, and he does it now. A few heads turn, but that�s never stopped my father. He fills up the mountainside with song.

We�re close to the top when he asks to stop again and rest. I know what it is he�s wanting, so I walk far enough away that he can do what he needs to do.

I stand beside a pine tree. I pull off black shingles of bark. I catch a branch and pull the needles from it, green and whisker-thin. On a rock, my father sprinkles powder on the back of his hand. He lowers his head. When his hand leaves his face, the powder�s gone. I don�t know the name for this, I only know it�s what makes my father thin. And I know enough not to ask. Not my father, and not Miss Gillespie or Aunt Susan, who don�t need another reason to be hard on him.

My aunt likes to scold my father about money. �That settlement could have lasted you ten years,� Aunt Susan said late one night. She and my father sat at the table in the kitchen she�d just cleaned. They thought I was asleep, but children are never asleep when parents think they are. In this way, from the quiet of our beds, we learn our parents� lives.

�Ten years,� Aunt Susan said, �and it�s lasted you two.�

My father didn�t say a word. He�s grateful to her, for what she does for us, for me.

�Some people,� he�ll tell me, �you just have to let them talk.�

I imagine my father would let Aunt Susan say anything to him. The man in the jean jacket too. He gets to say whatever he wants. But that�s something else. My father calls it respect, but I know my father. When the man in the jean jacket speaks, my father is afraid.

That night, though, the night in the kitchen, the night my aunt went on about the money that came to us after the accident, she said too much. �You know,� she said, �my sister would be ashamed of you, of what you�re doing to her son.� My father didn�t say a word. There was only the squeak of his chair on linoleum, the front door chain pulled free. The door opened and shut. I thought he had walked outside, but then he was there at the foot of my bed. I shut my eyes. Outside, my aunt�s car started. When I opened my eyes, my father had left the room. In the morning, he told me that my uncle had the flu, that she had to get back to Nashville to make him soup and sing to him, the way she had the winter before when I�d been sick. We watched each other, then, across the breakfast table. We both knew I�d been awake, but it was as though we�d agreed, right there, over our bowls of Lucky Charms with too much milk, to pretend otherwise. �The flu,� I said, a Janus word for why my aunt had gone.

When the limb in my hand is free of its needles, I return to my father. I chew on a single green pine needle. It tastes the way Christmas smells.

Dad stands. His head tips back. He watches the night awhile, black sky, no moon, white comet, bright stars. �I thought it would be bigger,� he says.

I nod. I�d thought so too. Then my father is kneeling. His face is close to mine, so close our noses almost touch, and I see he�s been crying. Tears don�t run down his face. It�s more like he�d tipped his head back to keep the tears in. His eyes swim in bright water.

�You know I love you, right?� my father says. �That I�ll always love you?�

But before I can answer, he has my hand. He�s pulling me, dragging me, walking fast, too fast, up the mountain. I pick my feet up, and I�m jogging, running, and then I�m flying. My father is big again, and strong. He lifts me onto his shoulders, the way he hasn�t done in years, and my hands leave my pockets, I reach out my arms, and soar.

But only for a minute. And then we reach the top.

Hundreds have gathered, women and men and children in the dark. They stand in groups and watch the sky. Telescopes are everywhere on tripods short and tall. Above us, Halley�s Comet is fuzzy, as though no matter how close we get, the comet will remain a thumbprint caught in paint, a cosmic smudge. Miss Gillespie says this is because every comet has a coma, a halo of gas and dust that makes it hard to see.

My father and I stand beside the mountaintop control tower, a small gray building two people, maybe three, could fit inside. From here, the big blue gondola goes up and down. The box arrives, swaying. Ten people in hats and jackets step off, and ten people take their places. My father pulls back the sleeve of his jacket. He�s wearing a watch I�ve never seen.

�C�mon,� he says, �we�ve got some time.�

So we walk into the crowd. And we spend an hour that way. We borrow binoculars and look through other families� telescopes. We see the woman in the blue jacket and her son, and when my father�s not looking, I stick my tongue out again. My father smokes three cigarettes, and I play tag with a girl in pink gloves.

And then my father motions for me to join him, and we sit. The rock is cold, and I can feel the granite through my pants.

�What do you think, buddy?� he says. �Cool asteroid?�

I nod. I don�t correct him, though I know from school that comets aren�t asteroids. A comet is an iceberg caught in space. Halley�s is ice and rock and dust squeezed in God�s fist and let go, an intergalactic fastball doomed to forever circle our sun. The halo around Halley�s is sixty thousand miles wide and its tail is six million miles long. It travels at speeds of forty miles a second, which Miss Gillespie says is faster than the human mind can comprehend. But I can comprehend it. How some things take less than a second. How a life can go out like a light.

And I�m thinking how I should maybe be nicer to Miss Gillespie, how on Monday I should take her hand and tell her that I know how she feels, that my mother�s dead too. Maybe she won�t believe me, or maybe the second I say it, she�ll know. Maybe there�s a current that runs between people who share the same vast grief.

My hands are back in my pockets, and my father pulls me close to keep me warm. He checks his watch again, and then he�s standing.

�What now?� I say, but he doesn�t have words for what comes next. We walk in the direction of the control tower. In the distance, a glow, and I know the sun will soon be up. Around us, people are collapsing tripods and packing up their things. One family has put down a blanket and eats breakfast on the rock.

We join the line for the cable car. �We don�t have tickets,� I say, but my father won�t look at me. The box arrives. Ten people step off, ten more step on, and the box rides cables down the mountainside. The line moves forward. I count, and my father and I are nine and ten. I wait for the next ride.

The cable car returns, and it�s a long time emptying because one of the passengers doesn�t want to get off. I wonder what this means, whether I�ll ride down with my father or wait for the next car. But I don�t have to wonder long. My father hugs me. �Son,� he says, but the rest is lost to wind and sunrise, to the groan of the swaying cable car, and to my father�s eyes, which are wide and wet and hungry and wild, like no eyes I hope to see again.

He turns me away from the cable car and points. And there is my mother. She holds one hand to her mouth. With her other hand she waves, and I lose my balance. I have to sit. When I turn, my father is in the cable car and the door is closed. His back is to me. And maybe I only imagine it, but I swear, the man in the jean jacket is there beside him, a hand on his shoulder, and they�re all wrapped up, enclosed in a cloud of something like light. Then the car pulls away.

I stand. I want to cry out, but there is a hand at my back. I turn, and it is not my mother beside me. It is my aunt. She stands very still, and I cry into her coat.

Then she walks me away from the cables, past the control tower, past children playing and parents shedding coats, to an outcropping of rock where my uncle is setting up a telescope that I will peer through, looking to see what�s been, and what�s to come.

Paused at the corner of McDaniel and Abernathy streets one hot, muggy summer night, I encountered the hypnotizing melody of a songbird. It was a sweet, soothing tune, a child�s lullaby � light and majestic, smooth and easy like a trickling brook. My windows were down because the AC was out. That, plus a grueling day at the post office, left me longing for an amaretto sour and a cold shower. When I heard the voice, I searched desperately, left and right, but saw only a church � the Perfect Church � on one corner and a hoodied young man on the other. He was rail-thin and tall, like a young oak sapling. His hoodie matched the nighttime sky and draped his shoulders like an oversized curtain. I knew he was dealing; I saw the look in his beady eyes. He couldn�t have been more than twenty, but his aura showed older, as if somehow he�d grown tired of living. Every few seconds he glanced about, anxious, it seemed, for something he couldn�t find. When our eyes met, we seemed to study each other�s desperation, wondering what had forced our meeting in the wee hours of the morning. His brows rose suddenly, though slightly, inquiring of my need. I blinked and turned away. He did likewise, but kept his hands in his pouch. That�s where Death lay, I supposed, waiting to devour the last remnants of a dejected people. I shook my head, but didn�t judge the youngster. I�d been lost most of my life too.

Some had hoped this part of town might evolve into a thriving minimetropolis, being only minutes from downtown, but it never happened. It was a war zone, really. Old, dilapidated shotgun shacks still characterized the neighborhood, and the one new apartment complex, built alongside train tracks on McDaniel, was so gated as to feel militaristic. I lived in one of the newly built town homes farther down Abernathy, which used to be Gordon Road, walking distance from the Braves� stadium. Months after settling in, I considered flipping the property, but then heard rumor the city meant to demolish the stadium and rebuild it � twenty miles north. Damn.

My wife, a second grade teacher, was never seen after sundown. She hated our neighborhood, she said, overrun with goons and crackheads, and she hated she�d ever married me. She simply couldn�t believe I�d brought her here, she emphasized, flailing frustrated arms in every direction. If she needed something from the car at night, she either begged me to retrieve it or simply waited until morning. When news broadcasts reported a murder or theft in our area � Mechanicsville � she�d murmur, �I must be the biggest fool in America. Mama warned me against this.�

Last thing I needed that scorching summer night was her negative belligerence, so I lingered at the light as the distant melody pacified my fatigue. Trying to catch every note, I listened closely, narrowing eyes as if somehow that might intensify my hearing. The voice was so beautiful I almost cried. Straining frantically, I turned my left ear to the wind, hoping to catch more clearly a melody I�d heard only once before. When the light turned green, I didn�t go. No cars lingered behind me, so I sat spellbound, determined to discover the source of the sound. Suddenly, with squinted eyes, I saw her. She sat in an abandoned lot with her back against a deteriorated brick structure that should�ve been demolished. Her face was turned away from me as if she were watching something pass by, so I guessed she didn�t see me. She was nearer than I�d supposed, singing a faint, sweet soprano that reignited something within me. Only by reading her lips did I discern the lyrics: I sing because I�m happy, I sing because I�m free...

Her slender eyes glistened topaz beneath a full moon. She knew something; she understood something; she believed something. Confidence shone all about her. Her head shook like one who finally comprehended a difficult thing. I couldn�t move. A tan SUV approached from the rear, blaring its horn. In a flash, it pulled around me and sped away. I engaged my hazards and continued listening and reading her lips: His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me...

She repeated the final line as her voice tumbled into an alto abyss. I had closed my eyes, but now I opened them and stared out into the night. She was looking at me. It wasn�t a gaze of shame or desperation, but of curiosity, wonder, and hope. She wasn�t despondent as I thought she would be, as I assumed she should be. Rather, her eyes, questioning and wandering, assaulted me. They asked who I was, why I had stopped, what I wanted. I had no answers. I think I was offended. Who was she to question me? I was the privileged one. I lived in a legitimate home, with real, store-bought food and paid utilities. What did she have?

After turning off my hazards, I crept away. The woman�s stealth and poise had unsettled me, while her voice, like falling rain, drummed steadily in my head. Why should I feel discouraged? she�d asked, as though once guilty of ingratitude. I chuckled. She had every right to be discouraged, it seemed to me. The lot in which she dwelled held trash, broken bottles, discarded tires, and dirty weeds. A scenic foretelling of the apocalypse. A breeding ground for disease and dismay. The fragile shack at her back threatened to collapse at any moment. There were no windows, no doors, no soul. Just a brick shell abandoned like a forlorn lover. But more than that, it bore a painful emptiness I couldn�t forget. The burnt-out structure exuded disgrace and shame, as if naked and on display. Perhaps it would be rebuilt one day and acquire newfound meaning and purpose. One day.

This seemed the hope of Mechanicsville itself. Poor, silent residents shuffled about, waiting for someone to recognize their humanity. Or for the world to end. Most looked sullen and gloomy, shrouded with grief. Unemployment had done its work, and crack was more accessible than food. The closest grocer, miles down Abernathy, was too far to walk to and yet too close for a cab � if a cab would ever come. Even the mailman sensed danger, slinging letters and notices onto front steps instead of placing them into proper boxes. I�d noticed him looking over his shoulder every few minutes, as if running from something unseen. Still, as with the hoodied boy, I didn�t blame him either.

Yet the singing woman wasn�t like the others. Streetlight had illuminated a baby-smooth complexion and dark, glowing skin. There were no wrinkles, no crow�s-feet, no signs of aging. Only worn, tired eyes. She looked to be in her forties but she was probably older. Her mouth twisted and trembled as she sang, as though tasting each note on her tongue. She was petite � frail, really � with small breasts that hardly bulged. Yet she reeked of femininity, bearing hoop earrings and a ragged head wrap like rural women of Africa. Something about her demeanor suggested dignity, even nobility, and that�s what disturbed me most. I�d wanted to think of her as impoverished, as pitifully indigent, yet her spirit wouldn�t allow this. It insisted that I see her, that I honor her, that I recognize her survival.

So did her voice. It wasn�t of this world. It shimmied bold like morning dew and echoed in my head with the clear, precise pitch of a thrush bird. There was no rasp, no guttural growl, no shrill, harsh tone. Only elegance and grace. It sounded trained and polished, as if she�d studied vocal technique, although I knew she hadn�t. Her runs, unlike those of many singers, were controlled and tempered, rippling through the air like eternal life, dancing in the ether like newborn freedom. I�d never been so taken. Halfway home, I thought to return to the desolate corner and hear more from this poor cherub, but instead I pulled into my driveway, silenced the car, and closed my eyes. There it was again, her voice, tumbling through my consciousness. It evoked tears I hadn�t felt in years. So much pain unspoken, so much hurt ignored. But now her voice massaged my weary soul and unleashed immeasurable anxiety. Why should my heart be lonely, and long for heaven and home? I hadn�t cried like that since I was a kid. About anything. My wife said I�d become someone � no, she said something � unrecognizable, unfeeling, uncaring. But it wasn�t true. I simply didn�t share my heart with her because what I felt was no one�s business � including hers.

Still, I took a chance and told her about the singing woman. She said, �That�s nice!� smiling the smile of tolerance. I escaped to the den and played Nancy Wilson�s �Guess Who I Saw Today?� The song made me pensive, reflective, and that�s what I wanted � to relive the encounter and be consumed, once again, in the homeless woman�s mercy. I poured a cocktail and reclined in the leather rocker. I�d thought I�d wanted a divorce last year, and had even asked for it, but after weeks of tortuous therapy, I acquiesced and stayed. Patricia was a decent woman. She had no drive, though, no ambition outside of me, which of course I despised, but who else would tolerate, without complaint, a middle-aged, half-bald man of moderate income, one who had brought her to hell and decided to stay? It just wasn�t worth the fight, I decided. We knew how to be miserable together. No need learning a new thing.

Despite the strange wet, hot, stifling air of an atypical Georgia spring night, Emma shivered as she drove her golf cart to her best friend Maddie�s house on Lake Peachtree. Not that it was much of a lake that night. For years the residents who�d paid a million dollars for lakefront property had been stuck staring out at a mud pit or dying grasslands as the county and city battled over who would pay the millions for the repairs to the dam and the dredging that was needed. For decades the shining symbol of Peachtree City�s beauty, grace, and opulence hid a problem. Under that calm water families picnicked near and canoed over was a mess of neglect, poor planning, and denial no one wanted to take the blame for.

But at long last, the next morning, the status quo would return to Peachtree City. The fixed lake would return to its natural glory and all would be right in the bubble once more. Which was why if Emma and Maddie were actually going through with their plan, it had to be this night.

Emma passed an elderly couple also on their golf cart, and all parties nodded and smiled. It�s just what you did in the town. Emma once visited New York City with her family for a week and was shocked at how nobody there smiled at one another. They never asked how their days were or even held doors. A person would probably be arrested for not holding the door in Peachtree City. The cops were so bored they jumped on any infraction, including crimes against civility.

Even that night, even with what they were planning, Emma glanced around the dark forest nervously for any signs of the ATVs the police drove along the forested paths. Curfew was fifteen minutes before, and the police had been out in force during the whole of spring break. Not that her parents would care or even know if she were arrested for any crime. Emma�s mother was passed out on her usual cocktail of wine and Ativan after a busy day of exercising, gossiping, and attending her pottery class in Newnan, while her father was, as always, on a business trip. Maddie�s parents were divorced � her father lived in Atlanta, but her mother and stepfather were on a cruise around the Mediterranean to recover from their couples� trip to a golf resort in California. Maddie didn�t mind. Her sister supposed to be watching her spent all her time in Little Five Points with her boyfriend, helping him set up his craft beer business. For the whole of spring break, Maddie had the house to herself. A fifteen-year-old�s paradise. Emma and their friends spent most days and nights since middle school there getting stoned, watching Netflix, fooling around, and raiding the wine rack. But that night, like the rest of the week, was just for the two of them. The ultimate thrill. An act to bond them for life. Emma shivered again.

She turned off the cart path onto Maddie�s quiet street, past the Lexuses and SUVs tucked away behind their gates. Most houses were dark inside. It was ten o�clock. The city died around nine. Shops closed and adults lay in their beds watching television after putting the children down. The adults always commented about what a great place it was to live, how it was named one of the top one hundred cities in America by several magazines, how safe it was to raise children. It truly was a bubble, an oasis in the urban sprawl. Great for some, death for teenagers, especially ones without driver�s licenses. The golf cart paths only went around the city, and there are only so many trips to the shopping center, The Avenue, a teen could make. There were only so many shows to binge watch or parties to attend with the same people they�d all known since kindergarten, talking about the same gossip. Maddie often commented it was as if their life forces were slowly being drained by the boredom, the sameness. How something had to be done to save their minds and spirits. And it would be done that night.

�I was beginning to think you weren�t coming,� Maddie said after opening her front door.

She was a beautiful girl, they both were, but it was Maddie who made heads turn, especially since she added purple and pink in her long shiny brown hair. That night her long limbs and thin frame were dressed in all black, as was Emma per Maddie�s strict instructions. All part of the plan.

�Sorry. Mom took forever to pass out,� Emma said, walking inside the three-story Georgian with all her bags.

�You got everything?� Maddie asked.

Emma set down the bags on the marble vestibule floor right below the crystal chandelier. �Yeah. They had everything at, like, Kmart.�

�Eww, you went to Kmart?� Maddie asked with a sneer as she checked the bags. �Did you have to take, like, seven showers after?�

�Totally.�

�And you paid in cash, right?�

�Of course!�

�Good.� Maddie picked up some of the bags. �Then let�s get this shit to the boathouse already. He just e-mailed the Craigslist account. He�ll be here in ten,� she said in singsong.

Ten, Emma thought, another chill running down her spine. If Maddie noticed the quick expression of sheer terror on her best friend�s face, she didn�t let on. Or she didn�t care. Maddie never seemed to care. Since they were children, Emma always wished she could be as self-assured, as strong, as cool and collected as Maddie, but felt she never came close. Well, that night, she�d finally prove herself to Maddie, prove she was worthy of being the best friend, the sometimes lover, and true BAE to a goddess like Madeline Whitlock. Emma picked up the rest of the bags and trailed behind her goddess.

The rare times her parents were home, Maddie commandeered the boathouse for her social gatherings. Before her grandmother died, the Whitlocks converted it into a small apartment. The only thing that kept Maddie from making it her private residence full time was the size. It was barely bigger than her mother�s master bedroom. That night it appeared larger than normal, with only a couch and chair in the living room. Earlier in the day the girls had moved everything into the bedroom so they could lay the plastic sheeting on the floor. Maddie even made sure they bought plastic covers for the chair and couch.

She thinks of everything, Emma thought with awe. Emma�s father often chided her about forgetting the basics, like not wiping off the counter right after use and rolling the toothpaste incorrectly, never mind about her grades. Maddie of course got all A�s while Emma worked hard for her B�s. One day her father�s constant berating, his constant pressure proved too much for Emma, and she actually broke down crying in class after getting a C on a calculus test. But Maddie knew how to make it all better. She made sure Mrs. Adler found the texts on Mr. Adler�s phone from his mistress. For months Mr. Adler was too busy trying to keep his marriage from falling apart to pay any attention to Emma. No matter how many second or eightieth thoughts Emma had that night, they didn�t matter. She owed Maddie for that act alone.

�Want something to drink?� Maddie asked as she poured two tumblers of whiskey.

�Should we be drinking? Don�t we, like, need our brains at maximum?�

Maddie sauntered over to Emma as she so often did, as if she owned the room and the rest of the world, and handed the glass to Emma. �One won�t hurt. We need to toast, anyway.� She held up her glass and Emma did the same. �To us. The baddest, hottest bitches in the PTC. And to the experience of a lifetime.�

Both chugged their alcohol, but only Emma shuddered. She hated whiskey. �What if he doesn�t, like, show up or something?� she asked, silently praying for that exact thing.

Maddie chuckled. �Yeah, right. Like, who doesn�t show for a threesome with two gorgeous teenage girls?�

�What if he tells someone where he�s going? You told him not to, but what if he does?�

�Emma, he�s like, thirty. He�s hardly going to tell anyone he�s about to commit statch. Plus, he promised to bring us cocaine. He�d be in like way more trouble than us if he did tell anyone. It�s all fleek, I promise.�

When Maddie said it, Emma believed it. A week of planning. Of conspiring. Of researching, of setting up false Craigslist and Facebook accounts, of trolling for the perfect guy, of talking out every angle and contingency. And Maddie listened. She actually listened to Emma�s suggestions and seemed impressed. It had been the best week of Emma�s life. Just her and Maddie in their own private bubble. She just never thought it would get this far.

Emma had to look away from Maddie�s studying gaze.

�What?� Maddie asked. �You want to wuss out, don�t you?�

�No! No, I don�t! I just...�

Maddie took a step toward Emma, even throwing her arms over Emma�s shoulders. �I know you�re nervous. I am too. This is, like, a huge deal. But we can do this. We need to do this. Not only will it totally bond us for life, we�re doing the world a massive favor.�

�We are?�

�Uh, totally. This guy was like trolling the Internet for little girls! When we told him we were only seventeen, he totally didn�t care! He�s probably molested tons of girls. We�re like avenging them. We�re heroes.�

�I guess.�

�You can do this,� Maddie said with a sweet smile before lightly kissing Emma�s lips. �I�ll bet you even enjoy it.�

�And if we get caught? The police��

�We are not going to get caught,� Maddie interrupted with utter certainty. �We�re like totally smarter than the police. We�ve got everything covered. No one�s even probably going to like report this guy missing. And if by some chance we do get caught, then your dad will get us off. We�ll just say we were two stupid girls who got in over their heads and when this big, black, ghetto asshole tried to rape us, we defended ourselves. Who do you think the jury will believe? Plus, they�d probably even, like, make a Lifetime movie about it. Gigi Hadid can play me and Victoria Justice can totally play you. But we�re not going to get caught.� She pecked Emma�s lips again. �You trust me, right?�

�More than anyone and anything,� Emma said.

�And I trust you. That�s what this is about, right? Bonding for life. No matter how far away life takes us, we�ll always have this. Tonight. Like a tattoo you can�t laser off. And there�s no one else I�d rather be tied to for life than my best friend. And like, of course you�re nervous. So am I. This is like a huge deal. But I was right about you punching your V card with Braeden, and like that night I�ll be right here with you. I so won�t let anything happen to you. Just like... enjoy this transcendent experience.� Maddie took Emma�s hand, entwining their fingers together. �With me.� She leaned in once more and tenderly kissed Emma. As always the act made Emma�s body sing, just as it left her desolate when Maddie ended the kiss. �We can do this. Now come on, we gotta get ready.�

The chills, the doubt all but faded away with Maddie�s words. With that last kiss. Emma smiled and nodded. She may have been nervous, she may have been sick to her very core, but there was no way she wouldn�t go through with it. She just had to try and enjoy the experience like Maddie said. She�d enjoyed the planning. The talking to various men online trying to lure in the perfect guy, or avatar of transcendence as Maddie called him. Because that�s why Maddie wanted to do this. To transcend their boring, predictable lives. To prove they were more than what their parents, their friends, the school said they should or could be. It was to save their spirits. From a life of mediocrity and sameness. Emma almost believed her friend when she gave that little speech the day before. Almost. Still, Emma stood in that boathouse grinding up her mother�s tranquilizers and mixing them in a glass as Maddie set the stage.

�You know, it�s too bad we can�t fuck him before we do it,� Maddie said as she hid the baseball bat behind the bar. �He kind of looks like Kanye. And I�ve never had a black guy.�

�African American,� Emma corrected automatically.

Maddie rolled her blue eyes. �Whatever, PC Principal.� Her phone chirped and she removed it from her black hoodie. �Oh shit! He�s here! He�s here!� Maddie cried out as if she�d just woken up on Christmas morning to find a new puppy. �OMG, this is like totally happening!�

Bile rose up in Emma�s mouth.

�He just e-mailed he�s parked down the street just like I told him to do. See? All going like steampunk. Okay, you finish taking care of things here. I�ll go get him.� Maddie began walking toward the door. �Tonight is gonna be fucking epic!�

When the door shut, Emma could finally let herself crumple onto the plastic-covered couch. She let out shaking, weighted breaths as the adrenaline coursed through her every cell. I can do this, she thought as she rocked back and forth a little. Nothing mattered but Maddie. After a few seconds for herself, Emma forced herself to stand and return to the bar for the final preparations. They could leave nothing to chance. Their very lives depended on the details. She slipped on her new gloves and checked that everything was in its proper hiding place. She was just tucking the knife in the side of the couch when the door opened again.

When he stepped in.

Maddie was right � what else was new � he did resemble Kanye West, at least around the eyes. He certainly didn�t look like a child molester. In fact, he looked like a nice man. Early thirties, over six feet, full lips, muscular under his Atlanta Braves T-shirt and blue jeans, with braids down to his shoulders. He was just... a guy.

�Victoria, he�s here,� Maddie said in singsong as she walked in behind the guy. �Jordan, this is Victoria.�

�What�s up?� Jordan said with a nod.

�Nice to... meet you,� Emma muttered as she turned her eyes to the ground. She just wouldn�t look at him unless she had to. It would help.

�Told you she was prettier than the chick in the pictures we sent you. Victoria, Jordan was a little pissed we didn�t send him our real pics. I just hope you�re as big as the dick shots you sent us,� Maddie said with a smirk. �But we�ll, like, find out soon enough. Vicki, get Jordan a drink, huh? He has to catch up.�

�Uh, right,� Emma said as she rose from the couch. �What would you like?�

�Rum and Coke?�

�Okay.� With her gaze still down to the floor, Emma moved toward the bar again. She mixed the drink with the tranquilizers as Maddie maneuvered Jordan to the couch. Just don�t look at him.

�What�s with the plastic shit everywhere?� Jordan asked.

�We�re like painting the whole place tomorrow,� Maddie said without missing a beat. �I thought it needed a change. I�m totes bored with it.�

�Why? This is nice. Didn�t know people even had boathouses and shit.�

Emma returned to the couch, her trembling hand holding out the laced drink to Jordan. �H-here,� she whispered.

�You okay?� Jordan asked.

�She�s fine,� Maddie said. �Her hands are just a little fucked up. That�s why she�s wearing the gloves. Plus, we already had two of those while we were waiting for you. You gotta catch up.�

Emma sat in the armchair beside the couch, her whole body a coil that not even her jittering leg could help loosen.

Jordan drank his alcohol but grimaced after one sip. �This tastes weird,� he said.

Maddie took the glass and pretended to take a sip. �Tastes fine to me. Maybe you�re just like not used to imported rum. My stepdad has the stuff shipped in from, like Cuba or somewhere. That�s like fifty bucks of rum. You totally gotta finish it.� She handed it back to Jordan. �We�re pretty fucked up already. I mean, just look at her,� she said, gesturing to Emma. �It�s not rape if we�re all fucked up, right, Victoria? Her dad�s a lawyer, she�d know.�

�Yeah, th-that�s right,� Emma replied quietly.

�So finish it or leave,� Maddie said.

Jordan glanced at Maddie, then Emma, then back to Maddie, who just raised an eyebrow. Emma silently prayed he�d get up and walk out. Just walk out. Please...

But of course he didn�t. He downed the drink in one gulp. �Shit,� he muttered.

�Vicki, get him another.� Like an automaton, Emma stood up, took the glass from Jordan, and returned to the bar in a daze. This time the drink was straight rum and coke. With that big a dose of Ativan combined with the alcohol, he�d be woozy in minutes. Plenty of time for Maddie to play with her food. �So, did you bring the coke like we asked?�

Jordan pulled a tiny baggie out of his pocket. �Yeah.�

Maddie took it from him. �Hope it didn�t, like, cost you too much. I�ll totally pay you back before you leave. You ever done it before?�

�Once or twice. It ain�t my favorite,� Jordan answered.

�We�ve never done it before. We�re totally about the new experiences, right, Victoria?�

�R-right,� Emma replied. She handed Jordan his glass and sat down in the lounge chair again.

�Like you being here. We�ve had threesomes before, but never with someone over twenty or��

�Black?� Jordan cut in.

�Yeah. B-but not because we�re like racist or anything,� Emma said. �We just, there aren�t that many African Americans in Peachtree City.�

�Yeah, it�s like literally 90 percent white,� Maddie said, rolling her eyes. �It totally sucks. That�s why I totally can�t wait to move to New York City. This town is so fucking boring, you know? Nothing ever changes. Nothing ever happens.�

�I don�t know. Seems pretty nice, quiet, you know what I�m saying?� Jordan said, drinking his alcohol without protest this time. �You guys got the golf carts and shit. That�s cool.�

Maddie smirked. �Try living here. You want anything remotely interesting to happen, you totally have to make it happen yourself. Like we did tonight,� she said with a seductive smirk. �Insanity is like doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, right? No wonder most people around here are on antidepressants. You can�t grow, you can�t transcend without like trying new things, you know?� She shifted in the couch to face Jordan, even putting her hand on his thigh. �What about you? Is tonight a new experience for you? Being with two girls at the same time?�

�Uh, yeah,� he responded nervously, sipping his drink.

�Well, don�t worry. We�ve done this before.�

�Are you two together or bi or...�

�Well, I�m pan,� Maddie said proudly, �and Vicki claims she is too, but I totally think she�s demi.�

�What?�

�Demisexual? She only likes fucking people she�s in love with, whereas I,� Maddie said, moving closer to Jordan, �like fucking anything and anyone. Everyone has such hang-ups about sex, it�s like pathetic, you know? We are just, like, totally animals after all, evolved monkeys. I�m all for giving in to my primal instincts.�

Jordan shifted uncomfortably on the couch.

Maddie frowned. �Oh, you�re like probably Christian or whatever. Victoria is too. Most people around here are.�

�Wait. You don�t believe in God?� Emma asked.

�Of course not. There have been like thousands of gods and the dude on the cloud with the beard is the only real one?� Maddie rolled her eyes. �We learned about Karl Marx in school. Religion�s an opium for the masses to keep us in line.�

�What about heaven? Hell?� Emma asked.

�It�s just a story to keep us from killing each other, duh! Like all the stupid societal conventions they expect us to follow. Well, fuck that! Rules are totally meant to be broken. Bitch, there is just the here and now. Just us and the moment. Why do you think we�re doing this?�

Emma shut her mouth. There was never any arguing with Maddie. Even Jordan seemed to realize this as he just continued nursing his drink without a word of dissention. But Maddie smiled at her friend to reassure her. �Isn�t my best friend just like totally fucking beautiful, Jordan? I love looking at her, don�t you?�

�Uh, yeah,� he said, staring down at the floor, his eyes obviously growing heavy.

Maddie rose from the couch and sat in Emma�s lap, throwing her arms around Emma�s shoulders. �I, like, love her more than anything and anyone in this whole universe. We�d totally do anything for each other.� She caressed Emma�s cheek, and a shiver of lust ran through Emma. Even a light touch like that could garner a strong, wild, pulse-pounding, goose bumps � rising response. And when Maddie�s lips touched Emma�s, all was right in the universe. They kissed for several seconds, passionately, deeply, tongues exploring each other as they had a hundred times before, and Emma almost forgot about their guest, at least until Maddie broke the kiss and whispered, �Get into position. It�s time.�

Be it the always-expert kisses or the weight of those words, but Emma couldn�t breathe for a second. It was as if she drifted out of her body and just watched as the person resembling her stood up and moved toward the bar to turn up the music. It was loud enough to wake the dead, but she could barely hear it. Maddie returned to the couch, all smiles for the slow-blinking Jordan. Drink. Music. The baseball bat.

When Emma bought the bat that afternoon, it was heavy in her hands; now she couldn�t sense its weight. She was a ghost. Insubstantial. A robot with no emotions or free will. She thanked God for that.

�Are you okay, Jordan?� Maddie asked with her patented smirk.

�I don�t... I...� the guy said quietly.

Emma�s ghost walked toward the back of the couch. She couldn�t see his face. She was glad.

�Feeling sick? Yeah, that�s because of the drugs we slipped in your drink, you fucking pervert,� Maddie said.

�What...?� the man slurred.

Emma stood right behind him, bat in hand. She couldn�t lift it. She just stared at her joyous friend, who practically glowed with excitement. Like she was a vampire feeding off her prey�s fear and confusion.

�The drugs were Emma�s idea, so you couldn�t fight back. I kind of wanted you to fight back a little. But this is still...� Maddie shivered. �You�re about to fucking die, Jordan. We�re going to kill you and bury your body in the hole we dug today in the lake.�

I can do this, Emma thought. I can do this...

�No one is ever going to find you. Ever,� Maddie said with glee. �But we�ll know.�

I can�t do this, Emma thought as part of her soul returned to her body, as tears filled her eyes. What the hell am I doing? I can�t do this.

�You�re dying, and we�re killing you,� Maddie said, almost breathless in anticipation. �And there�s nothing you can do about it. Nothing. You�re powerless.�

�Fuck you,� Jordan slurred.

�Emma, do it now,� Maddie ordered, never taking her eyes off Jordan.

I can�t do this. I can�t do this. I can�t do this...

�Now!�

I can�t do this. I can�t...

Maddie�s gaze whipped up toward Emma, determined, cold blue eyes connecting with the petrified green ones. Emma knew Maddie saw her terror, her reluctance, her weakness. A flash of disgust tinged those blue orbs, and in that moment Emma knew with absolute certainty that if she didn�t obey, she�d lose Maddie forever. Nothing was worse than that. Not hell, not prison, nothing.

Emma swung the bat.

A sickening crack not even the music could drown out filled the room as the bat connected with the back of Jordan�s head. He cried out in pain and doubled over on the couch.

�Again!� Maddie shrieked.

Emma swung again.

Jordan collapsed onto the floor, clutching his bloody, broken head and babbling, �Why? Why?� between his cries of pain. The moment he fell, Maddie retrieved the knife Emma had hidden between the armrest and cushion. Panting like she�d just run a marathon, Maddie fell to her knees beside Jordan, knife in hand. �Why? Why?� he kept asking, pleading.

Maddie stared down at him, eyes wild with bloodlust, with joy, with madness. �Because, why not?� She shrugged. �We can.�

Maddie plunged the knife into his chest. Once, twice, Emma didn�t know because she had to turn away. Had to drop the bat and cover her ears to muffle his screams. They seemed to last forever, but only really for ten seconds. Somehow the silence was worse. It wasn�t until someone touched her arm that Emma opened her eyes and gasped. Maddie�s beautiful face was spattered with blood, her clothes soaked. But she didn�t seem to notice. She smiled bright enough to rival the sun before kissing Emma like a drowning woman. Emma let her, even tried to reciprocate the passion, but for once couldn�t.

Maddie pulled away, smile still present. �I love you. I fucking love you forever and always. Thank you for doing this with me. I couldn�t have done it without you, Emma. I really couldn�t. Thank you. Thank you. I love you. I love you.�

Emma almost believed her. She almost believed Maddie believed it. �I love you too.�

Maddie held onto both sides of Emma�s face, hands still warm and wet from the blood. �I so want you right now, so fucking bad, but we need to keep with the plan. We�re so not done yet, right? You get the bleach, I�ll start wrapping him up.�

�Okay.�

After another long, lingering kiss, Maddie went to work. So calm. So collected. If they hadn�t planned every step out the week before, Emma would have just stood there as Maddie did everything. But Emma found herself opening a plastic trash bag and collecting everything used that night. The knife, the bloody clothes Maddie shed revealing her flawless body, the drug-laced glass, the wallet, cell phone, and car keys Maddie removed from Jordan�s pants. There wasn�t a detail they hadn�t discussed or overlooked that night. They covered the body in bleach before rolling him up in the plastic while wearing gloves. Everything, including their clothes and his wallet and cell phone, went into a trash bag Maddie tossed in a dumpster on her way to pick up Emma in the golf cart at Luther Glass Park after Emma had left his car at a nearby shopping center parking lot. Emma felt nothing, not even when she found a picture in the car of Jordan holding a little boy. She felt nothing.

It wasn�t until they stood under Maddie�s dock, across the filled-in grave, when Maddie smiled at Emma, truly smiled at her partner in crime, that Emma experienced a wave of elation. It was done. She�d helped kill an innocent man. And he was innocent. She had no illusions about that. She wasn�t as stupid as Maddie thought. As gullible. She knew the true reason Maddie had wanted to kill the man. She was just bored. She wanted to prove to herself that she could. To prove to herself that she could get Emma to do anything for her. Poor insecure, pliable Emma, who worshipped the ground her goddess walked on. But what Maddie didn�t understand was... Emma didn�t care what the reason was. All that mattered was Maddie could never leave her now. Because Emma knew Maddie far better than Maddie knew Emma. Just the mention of prison, the thought of her loss of freedom � Maddie would do anything to avoid that. She could never leave Emma now. So it was just the two of them, only them, until the day they died. Alone. Together. Trapped in their own little bubble. What was the life of one stranger compared to her own lifetime of happiness? She was entitled to it. She deserved to be happy.

Emma held out her hand across that grave to her best friend, now her soul mate, and they walked back to the boathouse and didn�t leave until it was time to watch the lake rise, toasting with rum and Cokes as the water hid away all their sins.

�To us,� Maddie said.

�The baddest bitches in the PTC,� Emma finished before clinking glasses with her BAE. �Together. Forever.�

The girl who sold him five dollars� worth of pot lived upstairs; she would sell him any amount, really, provided she was holding, but he thought of her as the five-dollar dealer because she was willing to give him just that little, wrapped in plastic and stuffed into a paper sack. Sometimes five bucks was all he could scrape together. She left the bag at her door for him to pick up since she was not at home, and he shoved the money into her mail slot, a wilted bill he had picked up while bussing tables a couple of blocks away at the Little Five Points Pub. She was a rock star in the Netherlands. Sort of a rock star, she said. She had a band named Pony Pony, all women, and they sang alternative rock songs while wearing bright makeup and shaking their hair and sometimes jumping up and down. One of their singles got airplay in Holland, though nobody called it Holland over there. The name of the single was �Purple Night,� and tomorrow she was traveling to the Netherlands with the band to play at a music festival. What a trip, she said, it was a trip to think about flying out of a country where nobody knew her, really, except in a few clubs around Atlanta, and then to land at an airport where the band would probably have fans, actual fans, to greet them, with signs that said, We Love Pony Pony, or maybe something more original than that. She hoped for something more original. But he got what she was saying, right?

She was telling him all this after she got home from work at the feminist bookstore; she had come down the stairs to his apartment for a visit and was pacing back and forth in front of the sofa he had found on the curb just down the street. The sofa was covered in orange velvety something-or-other with a brown stain along the front, but it smelled all right and was otherwise in good shape. She had brought a joint so he was relieved about that and happy to see her, because they were smoking her pot and not his tiny five-dollar stash. Which would have to last him till she came back from being a rock star in Holland, when he could buy more. She was walking up and down his living room and talking without stopping, Life is such a, a, wow, a thing, she said, with a gesture like she was trying to grab it, life, with both hands. So cool to think about the two of us in your ratty little apartment, you know what I mean, right? And one day I could be, like, this big rock star and you could be, like, this famous actor. I mean, there�s nothing wrong with your apartment but these are all ratty little rooms in this house.

Here they were, talking like this and smoking, and over there in the Netherlands people were playing her record and listening to her sing that song about a night turned purple and hazy, and he wondered briefly why haze was always purple in songs but gray and dull in real life.

He had lived in the house on Sinclair Avenue for only a couple of weeks and he knew that the rooms were not especially nice, but he hardly cared to have her say so. He had been buying pot from Molly for a lot longer than two weeks, and when she told him there was an apartment downstairs that he could rent if he wanted � they had become chums by then, not exactly friends � he talked to the landlady and moved in as soon as he could pack all three boxes of his belongings. Molly�s friend Winona, who also lived in the building, borrowed her boyfriend�s Toyota truck to help with the move, which took about ten minutes of loading and about the same of unloading, including the boxes and his clothes. He had been hoping Winona�s boyfriend would help them too, but he was at Georgia State modeling for an art class; Winona mentioned this at least three times, because she was proud to have a boyfriend who was so good-looking he could model for artists, though she didn�t say that part so bluntly, of course. She was something of a dumpling herself � short, her body shaped a bit like a yeast roll and basically the same color, unbaked, pale. She had cheeks so plump a person wanted to pinch them � John James wanted to pinch them, certainly, and it was all he could do to keep from doing so to both Molly and Winona, they had such similar chubby cheeks. But they were helping him move into the new apartment so he refrained.

Later, they all smoked a joint out of Molly�s stash, though Winona puffed it in short bursts as if she were trying to blow smoke rings, and coughed in a prissy way, laying her palm flat across her bosom to indicate that drugs were a struggle for her.

Now, after two weeks in the new place, with his boxes unpacked, he was watching Molly pace from one corner to the other, long strides ending with a little bounce. She was walking the length of the apartment, one corner to the other, including the room with no windows where he had put his bed. She had a round face, moonlike, and full lips with a natural pout, the kind of lips that appeared at their best when placed near a microphone; she had big, round eyes of a startling pale color, almost gray, and lashes that curved extravagantly upward, fine and dark. When you saw her you had to look twice, and it was easy to watch her in general. She was big-boned, tall, not fat but rather rounded and full. He found himself appraising her, considering what he might think if he saw her on an album or on the cover of a music magazine. She had brought her boom box and the room throbbed with her voice, the harsh guitar � �Purple haze in a purple night,� she sang, repeated for the chorus.

He never thought of her as pretty, but if asked he would have said yes, she was, but not in any standard kind of way, with her moon face and pop eyes. He would have described her as if she were a doll with a bendable waist and long legs and a face that one wanted to watch; he would have spoken of her as though she were slightly disembodied. But he was not the kind of man who thought of kissing her or holding her.

He was the kind of man who thought of kissing and holding Winona�s boyfriend, a wooly headed man with olive-colored skin of a rich, smooth texture, muscles stacked on him in tidy patterns head to toe. What drew John James to the boyfriend was the usual � the fact that the guy was self-involved and cocky, judging from his walk and general bearing, his way of shaking his long, dark curls. Such precise, clean, planned appearance, perfect and regular as a bouquet of narcissi. John James first saw the boyfriend months before he moved into the building, during one of the visits he paid to Molly to buy pot from her. He had walked through the front door, past the mailboxes, to the middle of the house where a staircase climbed upward. The boyfriend was there, knocking on the door of the apartment that would one day soon belong to John James, the boyfriend wearing navy-blue gym shorts, the rest of his body snaky with muscle and skin, glowing in the dim light. The door opened and he stepped inside quickly. For one second the boyfriend looked at John James, eyes that swallowed the house, and asked, Are you watching me? Are you pleased? A moment�s rush, and then John James climbed the stairs.

But now he lived here. And in short: on Thursday, Molly packed her bags and the band�s sound gear and headed to the airport to fly to the Netherlands. She was having her moment. Wearing tight jeans and a fake fur jacket, leopard print. Smoking cigarette after cigarette, lips bright red, like a tiny pool of blood. John James helped carry her luggage and trunks to the battered Toyota, once yellow, now mostly rust. Away drove the future rock star.

Lorraine didn�t know who could be knocking on her door that sunny spring morning. It never ceased to amaze her how many people came knocking on a person�s door in the middle of the day. For most of her life, she had been at work from nine to five like all decent hardworking people, so she had no idea how busy a person�s doorstep could get during working hours. She didn�t miss her work, though, as being a secretary wasn�t exactly her dream job. But truth be told, Lorraine had never dreamed of jobs. She dreamed of husbands, and she had done very well for herself. Councilman Nathaniel Booker Hightower was primed to become the next mayor of Atlanta, and Lorraine was more than ready to glide into the role of first lady.

She shook her head and smiled at the wonder of it all. Being a �lady� at all was something of a triumph, considering where she came from. She�d graduated from Washington High School forty years earlier with nothing but good looks and a paper certifying that she could type eighty words per minute. And now look at her, home at eleven o�clock in the morning ironing the wool suit she would wear to the press conference announcing her husband�s mayoral run. Who could believe that she was once a fast-tail girl from John Hope Homes?

There was that knock again. It couldn�t be the Witnesses. It�d been a long time since they�d come knocking. It was a waste of their time, as Lorraine never answered the door. Most of them knew not to even bother her, but every now and then one of them liked a challenge. She turned her attention back to the Italian double-crepe wool skirt. She had made it herself. Nothing pleased her more than being asked where she purchased her clothes and she could say, This? Oh, I made it myself. Domestic science is what they use to call this sort of thing, back in Jackie Kennedy�s day, back when homemaking was still an art. The suit matched the soft lavender necktie that Booker would be wearing for the announcement.

Whoever was at the door wasn�t going to give up. The knock this time was the age-old shave-and-a-haircut. The Witnesses were never so lighthearted. Lorraine set the iron down on the ironing board, walked over to the door, and parted the curtain sheers covering the door window with her finger. She froze, then she snatched her finger back from the curtain as if she had mistakenly touched the hot iron she�d just been using. She stood still, holding her breath deep in her chest, hoping he hadn�t seen the movement of the curtain.

�I know you�re there, Raine,� a familiar voice sang. The low chuckle that followed was equally telling. �I hear the television on. You watching The Price Is Right like you always do �round this time. And I saw the curtain move. So you might as well open the door.�

Lorraine leaned her forehead against the doorjamb, more to balance her swirling thoughts than to still her needy body. This was the part of being a housewife they didn�t teach in home economics classes. She slowly opened the door.

�Jonathan, I asked you not to come check on me anymore. We can�t do this. We can�t, you know that. You know I�m��

�Yes, yes, I know you�re the wife of the future mayor of Atlanta. I understand that. You made that painfully clear.�

Lorraine�s breath quickened at the sight of Jonathan; she hadn�t seen him in six months. She only heard the steady whine of his mail truck as he drove from mailbox to mailbox. For a couple of months she made sure she was in the back of the house so she couldn�t hear his approach. The very sound of that vehicle trundling down the road caused a beading of sweat on her forehead and in other unmentionable places.

There was a time she leaped with joy at the sound of his mail truck. She first heard it when he was delivering mail to the houses on the opposite side of the street. That gave her enough time to be waiting for him at her own mailbox with a glass of cold lemonade in the summer or a cup of hot coffee during the cold winter days.

And Jonathan appreciated her kindness. He flashed the same gap-toothed smile he had as a boy. He was a man now, a far cry from the little boy who played Little League at Adams Park and sang in the choir at Mount Vernon Baptist. She even remembered when he used to call her Miss Lorraine.

The provision of refreshments to her mailman was innocent enough. She enjoyed talking to him and reliving their early years, even as he placed bills and circulars in her hand. It was amazing how much he remembered, seeing that he was twenty-five years her junior. Jonathan even began circling back around to her house a couple of days a week to have lunch with her. Lorraine looked forward to his company, as her husband traveled more than he was home.

One day they were talking in the kitchen after lunch together, just before it was time for him to finish up his route. She reached over to brush a few crumbs of the coffee cake they�d just eaten from his beard. Jonathan grabbed her hand and gently kissed her fingertips. Kissed fingertips quickly and easily became kissed lips.

It was all very romantic, very Postman Always Rings Twice, Lorraine Gets Her Groove Back � every clich� in the book. Lorraine figured she was entitled to a little extracurricular affection, as Booker was gone from home so much you would have thought he was a traveling salesman, rather than a city councilman. And was there not a long tradition of refined ladies who took on discrete lovers? Maybe even Jackie Kennedy herself took special liberties, if only in her deep secret thoughts. And this thing of beauty could have gone on forever, but Jonathan, young and dumb, wanted to take it to the next level.

�We could be together, Lorraine,� he said that night she told him the affair was over. �Like really be together. No more hiding.�

Lorraine smiled at him the way you would smile at a child who tells you he wants to be an astronaut. �I�m going to be first lady of Atlanta, you know that.�

�You�re not happy,� he said. �You know that.� Suddenly he snatched the satin sheets from the bed, leaving her naked and exposed. �You think I don�t notice the keloid scars, the bruises? The remnants are still there, even though you claim he only abused you early in your marriage. I can still see them. I love every inch of your body. How can I not see how much he�s hurting you?�

Lorraine pulled the covers back around herself. �It�s over, Jonathan. We had a deal: you don�t ask me about my life and I don�t ask about yours.�

Now he seemed like the boy she had known and fallen for. �But I love you, Raine. How can I love you and not ask questions?�

That was over six months ago. And here Jonathan stood now on her front porch with questions swimming in his beautiful hazel eyes.

�Jonathan,� she sighed, taking firm hold of the reins of her memories, of her desire for him, and resisting the urge to run her fingers through his curly hair that shone dark red in the sunlight. �You have to go. I just can�t do this anymore.�

�Not going before you sign for this mail,� he said.

�What?�

Jonathan shook the bright yellow envelope. �Mail. You have mail. I�m the mailman, remember? I deliver the mail, rain or shine.�

�You could�ve just left it in the mailbox,� Lorraine said, her voice more heady than it should have been. She took a deep breath just to calm herself. �Next time, just leave it there.�

Jonathan smiled. �Like I said, you have to sign for it. I have to do my job first. I have to love you later, from afar and forever.�

Lorraine signed her name, her hand shaking like a drug user itching for another hit. One more good time before quitting for good, her body whined. This was another experience she had shoved far behind her, though. Drugs, hits, pretty young boys, the angst of just about every sad movie on any given cable channel made especially for women. Now she was living a new life that stretched out in front of her like a yellow-brick road. All she had to do was stay on the path, and stay out of the dusty back rooms of her heart.

She shoved the clipboard at him. And it didn�t help that Jonathan was slow to possess it, taking the time to touch her shivering hand. His touch was like wind gently blowing on smoldering ashes, threatening to ignite them into the raging wildfire they once were. It didn�t help that the actual wind carried the scent of his aftershave straight to her head. She had purchased the same scent for Booker, but on her husband�s skin the scent was brackish and sharp.

Jonathan took the clipboard from her hands and backed away. �Thank you, ma�am.� He stood on the top step of the porch and looked out over the street. �You know I have my differences with your husband, but I have to admit that he gets things done. Just look here at these streets. Bricks instead of asphalt. If I didn�t know better, I would think this was a white neighborhood.�

�Permeable pavers,� Lorraine said.

�Say what?� He turned to face her.

�They�re permeable pavers. They solve the flooding problems in our neighborhood.�

Jonathan chuckled. �Solving problems. I guess that�s a good thing, that�s progress. Problems get solved when white folks start moving into the neighborhood, right?�

�Don�t say that. My husband represents all the residents of this neighborhood. That�s why he�s going to be the next mayor.� She wanted to say more, but she was suddenly captivated by the lone wiry gray hair in Jonathan�s beard. She�d snatched it out many a night with her own teeth.

As if he could read her thoughts, he stepped forward and snaked his arm around her waist. He pulled her close. �Long live the new mayor and first lady. Is that what I�m supposed to say?�

His voice was at a frequency so low that she heard it with her bones, rather than her ears.

�You don�t have to stay with him. Fuck high society. We could move to Birmingham, start over...� He released her and changed his tone back to ordinary mailman banter. �It�s gonna be eighty degrees today. Can�t beat that after it�s been near a hundred all week.�

�No, I guess you can�t,� Lorraine replied as she flipped the package in her hand. She watched a bowlegged Jonathan walk back down to his mail truck. She closed the screen door, but she didn�t close the house door until she saw the mail truck disappear around the corner.

Lorraine sat down on the sofa. She touched her finger where Jonathan had touched it. Was she imagining it, or was her finger burning hot? Oh, that man. She grabbed a tissue from the box on the end table and dabbed at the sweat gathering at her cleavage. He was a dear boy, but couldn�t he recognize when things were complicated? He, of all people, should understand. He had known her when she was living in the projects, sleeping on her grandmother�s foldout couch, when �success� was finishing high school and not getting pregnant. If he knew how far she�d come, why couldn�t he understand that she had to make sacrifices to keep what she had gained?

�Wonder if that girl won that car,� she said aloud to herself as she squeezed the large bulky envelope. It was too late to know now. She would find out when the big wheel was spun.

Lorraine flipped the package over and over in her hand and examined the writing. Her name was printed neatly in large print, but there was no return address. The postmark was metered, and showed that it�d been mailed from the post office over by the Atlanta Civic Center.

The package opened easily. Booker�s old wallet fell out onto the floor. �Well, well,� she said. �I guess miracles happen after all.�

The wallet had been stolen when Booker was robbed and beaten in Downtown Atlanta. He�d traveled all over the world without so much as a whisper of a problem, and yet he was robbed in the very city that he worked so hard to improve. It was so difficult to see her husband laid up in a Grady Hospital bed with his head bandaged and purple bruises dotting his swollen body. �God curse the man who did this to you, Booker,� she�d lamented as she fed him lukewarm soup from a small hospital bowl. �May God strike him down. May he reap what he sows a thousand times over.� Lorraine wasn�t much for religion, but religiosity was a second language to her.

She flipped open the wallet and glanced at the contents. Several credit cards were there, along with a plethora of business cards. There was also a picture of the two of them. Booker�s driver�s license and Social Security card were wedged behind the credit cards. It was like a DIY starter kit for identity theft, but here is was, untouched.

She stuck her hand inside the envelope, and pulled out neatly folded pages. They were yellow and lined, the top edges scraggly, like the sheets had been hastily ripped from a pad of some sort. She flattened the papers on her lap, and saw that it was a letter. She raised the reading glasses that hung around her neck on a thin gold chain to her eyes and began to read:

Lorraine stared at the letter for a long time. Then she looked up at the television just in time to see the girl on The Price Is Right lose her showcase. She had overbid by just a few dollars.

�Too bad for her,� Lorraine whispered.

Here�s a word: glorious. That�s how it feels for Blur to be back. It�s Friday! Folks standing around drinking in Uncle Card�s yard, some sitting at the picnic table, some gathered near the shedding magnolia. Bobby �Blue� Bland on the boom box, pickups in the driveway and on the shoulder in front of the house. After work for these dudes. Blur, first weekend out of jail in six months of fall and winter and now it�s springtime! Bobby �Blue� Bland! Snort! Because Blur and Uncle Card are of the Blue family and Blur is tired of the Prince music Joyce has been playing, and anyway for Blur this is like a family reunion. No relation to Bobby Bland, nobody thinks. Uncle Card and Blur, and Joyce, and Uncle Ron and Uncle Red who run the funeral home. Blur�s mama down the road. Uncle Card the so-called black sheep �cause he runs a liquor house. Ron and Red don�t come nowhere near here. Busy with the bodies and the respect. Joyce has been playing Prince nonstop. Dead Prince.

But Blur is not in the yard right now, though he can hear the music outside. He�s in Uncle Card�s dark kitchen rummaging through shaky drawers and pressboard cabinets for a lock Card wants for the cage out front for some reason. He called from Augusta a half hour ago. Blur doesn�t have any money to buy a lock, and he�d have to walk to the store, unless Joyce, his aunt, his mom and Card�s younger sister, lets him borrow hers. And it might rain. �Got a surprise,� Card said.

The kitchen has dark, fifty-year-old linoleum on the floor and dark, fifty-year-old cabinets and counters, and a couple of drawers that will fall completely out if you�re not careful when you open them. Some hardly open at all. He rummages, finds screws, nails, thumbtacks, Post-it notes, twist ties, cleaning products, rubber gloves, plastic bags, rags, paint cans. He finds an old combination lock, locked, with no combination code on the back. There�s a padlock with no key and that�s too small, anyway. He looks through the back door to the screened back porch. There might be something in the tool chest out there. No. Just wrenches, hammers, and sockets. Back in the kitchen, a brown roach runs up the faded curtain over the sink window. Blur was supposed to spray insecticide while Card was gone. He swats hard at the roach with a folded magazine from the dinette table and the curtain rod falls. He reaches to put it back. He�s cracked the pane. Maybe nobody will notice for a long time. The insecticide canister, like a big oxygen tank with a nozzle and hose, is on the porch, but first he�d better take a trash bag and clean up the empties out front, then figure out the lock � borrow money from Joyce, get a ride to the store. Or walk. After, he can spray the fucking roaches. Jail was full of them. And mold. And lice, which is why Blur is bald. It�s 6:05, according to the clock over the stove, and it�s still light outside, but getting dark soon, and the rain that could happen has dimmed things already. Patchy, itchy-looking clouds over the sun. Hopefully, Card is just now leaving Augusta, two hours away.

He takes a trash bag outside, maneuvers around the guzzlers gathered about, and grabs the empties off the picnic table. Then, just as Blur spots the doctor and his old drunk beagle walking down the road, Smack! A side glimpse and Blur sees Teddy fall like something big and heavy off a truck, or out of a tree. Thump! Facedown in the new grass.

�Shit!� yells Blur. �You just got knocked the fuck out!�

Big dumb-ass Wheatbread stands over Teddy, fist still clenched. Other guys whoop or don�t do nothing, keep standing around like only the wind is different. Which it is, a little. Teddy, knocked the fuck out. The doctor half drags his beagle, Poon, into the yard, which looks 80 percent better since Uncle Card put in some seed and planted red and yellow flowers here and there. Still some dirt spots.

�Dudes,� the doctor says, �help the man.�

�Could be dead by now,� old man Word in a lawn chair says.

Somebody else says, �Can�t help him, then.�

�Motherfucker, stop messing with me,� Wheatbread mumbles, pouting.

Teddy stirs down on the ground among tossed beer cans and pony-size liquor bottles. He scoots up on his hands and knees, huge yellow work boots trembling at the end of his wobbly pant legs. Might be having a seizure.

�You all right?� says the doctor, bending with his hand on Teddy�s shoulder. The doctor hardly ever stops by to hang out. Drinks at home. Does some kind of CDC work. Poon wanders the length of his leash, pees on a dead azalea at the porch corner. That azalea didn�t make it. Blur missed Poon. Old Poon. A lemon-squeeze dog. Face whiter than dumb-ass Wheatbread�s. First time Blur met the doctor he told him about his own sweet beagle he had years back. How if nobody could find Blur, like his old lady back then, all they had to do was follow his dog. Too good of a damn dog.

�God a�mighty,� Teddy says, like mud�s in his mouth. But it�s blood, where he got his lip busted or he bit his tongue or both. Tooth loose? He wags his head like a big sick cow. Teddy�s a thick brother. He lets the doctor hold his arm while he scrambles to his feet. Shakes himself, and the doctor stumbles back. Drops the dog leash. Poon is under the picnic table nosing the dirt. �Fuck you,� Teddy mumbles. To the doctor? Can�t tell. The doctor chuckles.

�Called me Whitebread,� Wheatbread says. �Too many times.�

Teddy swallows hard and frowns. �Hagh,� is the sound he makes next. �Fuck you, Whitebread.� Now he laughs and then throws back his head and growls like a lion. Or a bear. Mouth looks like he�s been eating an animal. Wheatbread�s ears go red. But the doctor is between them. Not the ears... but maybe. Maybe the only one besides Uncle Card who can stop a fight around here. Maybe Joyce. Blur without his taser today, which he could zap a nigga with if he had it. Growllll! Teddy with his shoulders hunched back and his face at the sky, eyes like he�s looking at something, but nothing�s there except a bird and a plane. Gray clouds. He staggers and lurches out to the road, Growllll! a few more times before he sits down on the middle line, legs stretched out in front of him. Gotta be free, Blur gets that. Blur can see him between Birdie�s black Ram and old man Word�s green no-name truck. Maybe two cars come by, each way, and steer around him. There�s speed bumps now, anyway. That happened while Blur was inside.

�Doctor,� Blur says, �buy me a beer!� shaking an empty OE waist high.

�Buy me one,� the doctor says. Ball cap pulled down low to his sunshades. Got on some mint-green cargo shorts and a Bob Marley T-shirt. Hundred-dollar tennis shoes, Blur bets. Blur already owes him money, or maybe he doesn�t. Hard to know if the doctor expects Blur to pay him back from all the times he�s bummed a couple of bucks off him. Doc doesn�t even look sorry anymore when Blur comes to his door and says his mama�s in the hospital and he needs bus fare to go see her. Last time he rolled his eyes and just gave Blur a five. Blur�s mama is all right, but she does get sick sometimes. Blur thinks, I guess Doc ain�t missed me while I was inside. Hard to tell if he really wants a beer, either.

�Let me borrow Poon,� Blur says.

�So you can sell him?�

�My little girl wants a dog. I�m gonna make her think I got her one and then say it ran away. You�ll get Poon back. Just a loan. It�s her birthday next week.�

�Shut up, Blur,� Joyce says. She pats Poon�s head over at the picnic table, where Wheatbread is now. �You always using shit that ain�t yourn.�

�You got a little girl?� the doctor says.

�Might as well be mine,� Blur says.

�Humph,� Joyce says. She has an arm sleeved with silver and copper bracelets to her elbow. Don�t know how she can stand that, Blur thinks. Reminds him of handcuffs. She wears a new big braid across her head like a basket handle. Joyce is his aunt but they�re about the same age, thirty-six for Blur. A little sweet on the doctor. A little sweet on Prince too, must be, in her satiny purple shirt. Been crying. Around last Labor Day, she spent days painting the picnic table all kinds of colors so she�d be outside whenever the doctor walked by with Poon. �Poon!� she�d sing. �Hey, Doctor, how you doing?� Took to taking her own walk early in the morning, but couldn�t go on pretending she was out for her health with Poon stopping every few feet to smell something in the ditch. Pee on something and take a shit. Her out there in leopard-print slippers and sexy sparkly tights. Had to just walk on and leave the doctor behind. The picnic table does spruce up the yard. Blue benches with yellow legs; red, yellow, and blue-painted planks on the table.

Joyce�ll never get no doctor, though, is what Blur believes, no matter how she smiles that gap-tooth mouth or slicks her side hair into flat sideburns. Wheatbread is on her case pretty hard, anyway. And the doctor�s got white chicks coming and going from his house like he�s running a coffee shop outta there. Funny, the doctor likes white chicks, or don�t mind them, and big dumb Wheatbread, looking as white as his dead white daddy, likes black-as-midnight Joyce, who likes the doctor, who happens to be one them pecan brothers. Most of the crowd is dark as Jamaicans, though. Maybe two or three straight-up Africans come by sometime. Since Katrina, way back awhile now, all kinds wash up here.

What does Blur like? Beer and pussy, and don�t care what brand, either one. They call him Blur because of his thick eyeglasses. Bottle bottoms. But he can see with them. He can see who is drinking what and he can spot possible pussy.

Beer is plentiful but pussy is scarce. Chicks come by on Saturdays, mostly, but with other dudes or dude-like chicks. And Uncle Card keeps strict inventory on the beer, with Joyce�s help. Stingy Joyce. Blur is the runner � he goes to the store and gets supplies � and Joyce and Uncle Card are the cashiers. Blur can�t even drink a free beer and he lives there, even though he�s the one that goes down to Kroger to get the cases Card sells to these fools. At least he got the job back after getting out, and at least he can still stay with Uncle Card in exchange for working for him. He can�t live with his mama, who�s bossier than Joyce and Card. A lot of these guys bring their own quarts and half-pints, and that�s all right because they run out quick and buy Card�s anyway before too long. Blur might get a beer off one or two of them, like a tip. He has to borrow Card�s truck to get to the store.

The doctor rounds up Poon. �Where you been, Blur? Ain�t seen you,� he says.

�Had to go away for a minute. Parole violation. You didn�t know?�

�Damn, Blur. Welcome back.�

�Thanks!�

The doctor takes Poon out to the road where Teddy is still sitting and laughing to himself as cars creep by, passengers looking at him like he�s a big bag of interesting trash. He tries to pull Teddy up again, from the armpits this time. Teddy starts laughing and growling at the same time. Wheatbread curses and swings his legs from under the table, over the bench, and heads to the road. Maybe to kick Teddy. Who knows why half-and-half Wheatbread will take that name but not Whitebread. Wheatbread can�t be his real name. Honors his black mama, Blur guesses. Basically, white ain�t quite right around here. Lots of white people have moved in, though, even before Blur got incarcerated. Pushing their babies in carriages. None gonna push past Teddy now, though. Go the other way. Blur�s seen signs stuck in the ground at the end of the road saying the East Lake Terrace community meeting is next Monday night. East Lake Terrace is a new name to him. Maybe folks trying to siphon some status from the golf club across the way. Used to be just Candler-McAfee, the intersection where the bus picked you up or dropped you off.

Wheatbread gets behind Teddy where the doctor was. The doctor stands to the side with Poon. Wheatbread hauls up Teddy, who laughs that private laugh he has, like he�s the most clever man ever to get knocked the fuck out. Teddy walks on down the road, must be to that house he�s squatting in. You can hear him howling and growling. The doctor turns down the side street with Poon, who don�t want to go. Wheatbread pushes his sand-colored hair off his forehead and brushes his hands on his jeans. Squints both ways on the road, and at the sky. Clouds thickening the west now, out across the street, behind those houses. Storm kind, which is what Blur doesn�t want �cause then everybody gets in their truck and stops spending, and stops tipping.

If Wheatbread won�t come back in the yard, Blur�s gonna finish his beer. Fuck Joyce. If he does come back, whatever. At least all the violence will be done before Uncle Card returns from Augusta. Been gone two days. If Card gets mad, no telling what job he�ll give Blur, like punishment, like making him crawl under the house to change the furnace filter, which he hates. Dirt and spiders, a cat carcass one time. Feels like a buried man trying to get somewhere in the dirt. Like everything is Blur�s fault. It ain�t his fault, for instance, that the white folks called the cops about the beer cans and loud music in the yard, that he got arrested �cause he had that taser under his shirt and the cops called it a concealed weapon, that some of Card�s azalea bushes didn�t take because Blur was in jail and couldn�t water them, that Wheatbread is such a sensitive dummy.

�Come here, Blur,� Joyce says, sniffling, teary-eyed again. It was last week when Prince died. Blur heard about it in jail. It was on everybody�s radio and TV. A shock, sure, but Blur tried not to feel it. He�d be getting out soon, is what he wanted to feel. Joyce, she even went to the concert at the Fox. Dude�s last show ever. A three-hundred-dollar ticket! That price pisses Blur off more than anything. She�s looking away, wet-lashed, to the old lantana bush at the border between the yard and the neighbor�s. Two little hummingbirds hover at one of the yellow-red blooms. �That�s sweet, ain�t it?� she says. �When�s the last time you saw a hummingbird? See the purple in the tail feathers? Even birds paying tribute to Prince.�

Blur can see they are hummingbirds, not big bees, but has he ever seen one, much less two together? You got to know they some free motherfuckers, he thinks. Them motherfuckers is just like me. Them motherfuckers like the springtime too. But they don�t know from Prince, he thinks. Do they know from death? Free or not when you�re dead? Ask Uncle Ron and Uncle Red, maybe. Son of bitch dying like that in the springtime sours the mood, all right. He�s the fuck out, all right. All the way the fuck out.