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Hector was still wearing his Jungle of Pets uniform—green khakis and matching polo—which meant that he'd driven here straight from work. His devotion boggled Dustin: he'd never had a friend like Hector before. In fact, he'd never had a friend whose parents were Mexican, or who had to work in a pet store to pay his way through night school. If any boy at PV High had said he
wanted to be a vet someday, he would have been jeered at in the halls. As Hector bent down to pick a tray of half-eaten breakfast off the floor, Dustin noticed something in his shirt pocket, a wad of fur. It looked alive. Dustin sat up in bed.

“What do you have in your pocket?”

“Ginger,” Hector said. “She's a sugar glider.”

“It's real?”

“Sort of like a flying squirrel.” He continued to clear things from the floor, as if carrying animals in your shirt were perfectly normal. “They're marsupials.”

Hector dumped some beer cans in the trash and pulled the tiny wad of fur out of his pocket with two fingers, like a dirty Kleenex. The wad of fur blinked. It seemed vaguely chipmunky at first, until you appreciated its striped head and gigantic eyes and uncannily human little fingers clutching Hector's thumb like a branch. It looked like what would happen if a bat and a possum could mate.

“They're nocturnal,” Hector explained.

“Uh-huh,” Dustin said. “Don't tell me you carry it around all day.”

“I had one before, a male, but I didn't spend enough time with him. If they're too depressed, their hind legs get paralyzed. They can't move and they die.” Hector stroked the thing's head. “They're illegal in California; this guy at Jungle of Pets—big-time gambler—got them for me in Vegas.”

Dustin didn't ask him why he felt obliged to own an illegal animal in the first place. He seemed to like to make his life difficult. For some reason, the bug-eyed creature made Dustin thirsty. “How about a Budweiser,” he said.

Hector slipped Ginger back into his pocket and went to get him a beer from the kitchen. In general, he did whatever was asked of him. Dustin had an image of himself as an exotic animal, his room a giant vivarium, Hector coming by to feed him and attend to his needs. He liked this fantasy and could find no problem with it.

Hector came back holding two beers poured into glasses. He didn't usually drink with Dustin before it was dark, but there was a first for everything. Maybe Dustin had driven him to it. “What's the occasion, Reverend?”

“My dad passed away today,” Hector said, handing him a glass. “Four years ago, I mean.”

Dustin stared at him. “You mean ‘died'?”

Hector nodded.

“Say that then. I hate ‘passed away.' It's like saying you have to ‘go powder your nose.'”

Dustin found the remote and muted the TV. Sometimes his own callousness made him sick. Hector grabbed some Tabasco sauce from the tray of old food sitting on the desk and shook some into his beer, as if it were a steak.

“What are you doing?”

“My dad drank his beers this way. Ever heard of a
michelada
?”

“Your dad was crazy,” Dustin said. He reached for his eye drops, making the movement seem more painful than it actually was. On cue, Hector rushed to do it himself, grabbing the little bottle from the bedside table and leaning over Dustin's face to squeeze a few drops into his eye before dabbing the tears with a Kleenex. “Dr. Akashi said three months. The lid's supposed to be shrinking back to normal. Does it look any better to you?”

Hector shook his head. “Not really. No.”

“You're the only person I know who doesn't tell me how great I look,” Dustin said gratefully.

Hector turned away, as though in pain. Any gratitude on Dustin's part seemed to make him miserable. Dustin had never met anyone with this particular quirk. He remembered the first time he'd seen Hector outside the house, parked by the curb in his pickup, his hands gripping the wheel as if he were stuck in traffic. He'd stayed there for nearly an hour. Dustin had enjoyed the spectacle at first, then finally took pity on him and went out to tell him that Lyle wasn't living with them anymore. He'd have to go stalk her in Palos Verdes. Hector had taken one look at Dustin and flinched, touching his own face without meaning to, as though he were looking into a mirror.

Dustin stared at the ceiling, where a bare lightbulb hung above his head. His father hadn't bothered to put the fitting back on; there was something wrong with the wiring and bulbs kept burning out after a week. “Taz called this morning.”

“Your girlfriend's little sister?”

“Girlfriend, right. Who visited me exactly once in the hospital.” Dustin took a swig of beer. “Anyway, Taz told me she has a new boyfriend. Some lacrosse player from Brentwood. Maybe her dad will finally have someone to talk sports with.”

“Did he know Taz called you?”

“You kidding? He'd have driven out here personally to skin me alive.” Dustin frowned. “She drives now, her parents' old Beemer. Can you believe that? She used to be all punk, and now she dresses like a Popsicle.”

Hector, who was dressed like an asparagus, sat down. “People don't change that much underneath. I mean, maybe it doesn't matter that much what she looks like.”

Dustin had to laugh. The idea that what was underneath mattered most, even to those who loved you, seemed hopelessly quaint. He'd read somewhere that ugly babies got yelled at ten times more than cute ones.

“Anyway,” Hector said, “she seems interested in you.”

“Right. As charity work.”

“You think that's why she called?”

Dustin shrugged. “Honestly, I wish she'd fuck off and leave me alone.”

More than anything, he did not want to become anyone's good deed. He put on his sunglasses, remembering how Taz could barely bring herself to look at him. On TV, Ethan and his adopted nephew were gathered around a campfire. Sometimes Dustin imagined their little heads bursting into flame, Technicolor faces melting like wax.

“How's everyone else?” Hector asked, changing the subject.

“Everyone else?”

“Your family, I guess.”

“Who cares?” Dustin said. He suspected Hector wanted to ask about Lyle but was too embarrassed. “I wish you could trade in your family, like a used car. I'd start with Jonas. Shouldn't be too hard to trade up. ‘Excuse me, do you have any kids who won't blow up your house?'”

“Maybe it wasn't his fault,” Hector said quietly.

“Houses don't fucking explode for no reason.”

“I'm just thinking of how . . . you know. Awful he must feel.”

“Why shouldn't he feel awful? He ruined my life.” Dustin drained the rest of his beer. “Besides, anyway, he's too much of a freak to care. We could all turn into brain-eating zombies and he wouldn't notice.”

Dustin asked for another Budweiser. He decided to get drunk. Being drunk was almost as good as being asleep. For one thing, it helped out with the itching. Also, other people stopped hav
ing much significance. They went from being agents of pain or pleasure to harmless Hollywood props. If you were at Taco Bell, for example, chauffeured there by your sister's ex-boyfriend, you could bow to the couple in the next booth and say,
Grateful to the hospitality of your rocking chair, ma'am,
before sitting down. You could ask the cashier with a cold sore how he got an STD on his face.

“It's pretty dark in here,” Dustin complained when Hector returned with a can of beer.

“Probably because you're wearing sunglasses.”

“That's why I wear them. You can pretend it's night. Like you aren't one of those losers who gets fucked up in the afternoon.”

Hector began to say something but then seemed to think better of it. He switched on the light—a flip of the finger, easy as pie—and the world exploded. A noise like a popped balloon. Something snowed on Dustin's face.

“Shhhh,” Hector said. “It's all right.” He grabbed the beer can from Dustin's hand. “The lightbulb exploded. Luckily you were wearing sunglasses.”

“I wet my pants,” Dustin mumbled, stiff with terror.

“No, you didn't. Just soaked yourself with beer.”

He began to pick the glass bits from Dustin's face, one by one. His fingers were gentle as bugs. Dustin felt like a bomb being skillfully defused. In the middle of cleaning his face, as if remembering something, Hector reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out Ginger, who seemed to be trembling. He stroked her fur with his thumb until she'd calmed down and closed her eyes. How wonderful it would be to crawl up into his pocket and fall asleep.

Hector put the sugar glider to his ear. He let go and the animal clung there, like an earmuff. “Her only trick.”

Dustin laughed. Hector grinned stupidly, the furry creature stuck to his ear, which made Dustin break up even harder. It was perilous laughter, shards of glass trickling from his Jobst shirt.

“You're my only friend,” he said.

Hector stopped grinning and tucked Ginger back to bed in his pocket, his face as miserable as can be.

Camille sat on the back deck, smoking a cigarette while the sun peeked over the desert. It was her favorite time of day, a moment's peace before she joined the endless caravan of traffic, before the smell of the dump had ripened in the heat. Below her, Mr. Leonard snooped around the dirt. The poor dog could barely walk. He could no longer climb the stairs to the deck; Camille had to carry him herself, his ribs pressing against her fingers like the springs of a mattress. Sometimes she felt closer to him than her own children. It was hard to explain, except that he preferred her arms and didn't want to be set down.

Now the old dog stopped at a creosote bush and stood there shivering, as though in pain. Camille realized that he couldn't lift his leg. Barefoot, she climbed off the porch and walked to his side, her toes turning brown as the desert. She knelt down in the dirt and lifted Mr. Leonard's leg as tenderly as she could. He wagged his tail, slow as a hymn. He'd long since given up marking his territory: the pee came out all at once, less of a hiss than a dribble. Camille held his leg while he finished, strangely moved. When he was done, she lowered his leg and watched him scratch confusedly at the dirt.

She wondered if they should put him to sleep. If possible, she would discuss the situation with Warren. They hadn't exchanged more than two sentences all week. At least when she'd suspected him of having an affair, there'd been something she could point to, a definable source. Now there was no beginning or end: Dustin's accident had robbed them of whys. Warren had turned old and strange and aimless, skittering around the house like a leaf.
Dev
astation.
The word sounded like a place. A station for dried-up things. Camille imagined a deserted depot, rickety with breezes, the man she'd married abandoned there like a husk.

She was so angry sometimes she couldn't bear to look at him. He'd uprooted them all to pursue his idiotic dream and now here they were, in the middle of nowhere, prisoners of his folly. If it wasn't for him, they'd still be on the lake in Nashotah, worrying about acorns clogging the rain gutter. Dustin would still be a beautiful, music-crazed boy, sneaking girls down to the boathouse. How many times had she fantasized about quitting her job and returning to Wisconsin with the kids, leaving Warren out here to fend for himself? But of course she couldn't: they needed her insurance, needed to keep Dustin here for his surgeries.

Now she wondered if she could leave Warren for real. So much time had passed, nearly a year since the accident, that the idea had begun to seem possible. Wisconsin wasn't an option, but she could find an apartment somewhere near her office—Torrance, maybe, or San Pedro. Scrape by on her meager salary. She would of course take Jonas with her; Lyle could decide for herself. What terrified her more than anything was Dustin. No matter how miserable he was, Camille knew that he'd never consent to leave with her: it was too safe an island, this house in the desert. A refuge from the world. If Camille moved out, he would see it only as betrayal.

She did not know if she had the courage to do this, to leave behind her disfigured, frightened, TV-addicted son.

Inside, Camille washed her hands for a long time, letting the hot water scorch her fingers. Her feet were filthy, and she washed these awkwardly in the sink as well, using the little sprayer that had started working again for no reason. She remembered when Dustin was in the hospital, still drifting in and out of shock, the way the nurse had washed his feet with a spray bottle to keep them clean. Because she couldn't hold his hand, Camille would sit at the end of his bed and clutch his bare foot instead. Sometimes Warren or Lyle or even Jonas would hold the other foot as well, trying to soothe him in his panic, explaining where he was or why he was in pain. In some ways, that first endless month in the hospital, they'd never felt more like a family. They'd slept with their heads in each other's laps. They'd huddled together, choked with tears. They'd made a list of Dustin's favorite restaurants and driven miles across town for meals he wouldn't touch.
They'd combed a record store at Old Towne Mall for the posters Dustin used to have at home, curating the walls around his bed. Exhausted, giddy with grief, the stench of charred flesh and silver nitrate steamed into their clothes, they'd even had bouts of laughter, hysterical, table-pounding fits, making scenes at Denny's or Pizza Hut while Lyle did impressions of the nursing staff. What had happened? How had they unraveled again, worse than before? The mystery of life was not how it started, Camille thought. It was how people with every excuse to be close could grow distant as satellites.

Heating some oatmeal in the microwave, Camille turned on the portable TV over the sink and watched a commercial about a boy shaped like a cigarette. “Don't be a butthead,” a man's voice intoned at the end. The commercial had the unintended effect of making her crave another smoke. She was pulling the pack out of her pocket when some footsteps behind her made her jump. Hector Granillo. He was cradling something in his shirt: a heap of beer cans, crushed into hockey pucks.