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“You startled me,” Camille said. She checked the clock: six-thirty in the morning. “You spent the night with Dustin?”

“On his floor. I'm just cleaning up a bit.”

“Those aren't all Dustin's, are they?”

“I drank some, too,” Hector said unconvincingly.

A slither of fear moved up Camille's back. The idea of his sleeping in her son's room made her oddly jealous. That this stranger had had sex with her daughter and now insinuated himself into Dustin's life seemed somehow outrageous. “If you're buying my son beer,” she said angrily, “then I could have you arrested.”

He looked mortified. “It was there already. In the fridge.”

Hector stepped around Mr. Leonard's snoring body to dump the crushed cans in the trash. Camille felt bad for accusing him. Perhaps Warren was right to buy Dustin beer: anything to feel less helpless.

Timidly, Hector took a bag of cookies out of the cupboard. The bag was labeled
HIGH PROTEIN MONKEY BISCUITS
. “They're for lab monkeys,” he explained.

“Oh.”

“Ginger loves them.”

“Ginger?”

“My pet sugar glider.”

Camille, who'd been imagining a homeless girl with terrible breath, was too relieved to care what this was.

“She's asleep in Dustin's sock drawer.”

“Wouldn't it be better off sleeping at home?” Camille asked.

“My mom won't let me leave any pets there unattended. I was keeping some Madagascar hissing roaches, you know, in a little terrarium, but I left the top off by accident one night and they escaped. Now they've bred and they're all over the house.”

“Oh my God,” Camille said.

“Luckily they only hiss when they're mad.”

“Mad?”

He nodded. “Or frightened.”

“Are they as big as regular cockroaches?”

“Bigger,” Hector said. “More like mice.”

Camille laughed. Once she got started, she couldn't stop. She bent over her bowl of oatmeal, eyes blurring with tears. Her nose was running, and she was having trouble catching her breath.

“Are you all right, Mrs. Ziller?”

“I don't know.”

“Would you like some water?”

She nodded. Hector filled a glass in the sink and handed it to her.

“How's Dustin?” she asked.

“Asleep.”

“No. I mean generally. Is he . . . okay?”

Hector looked at the floor. “He told me about a dream he had, on Monday night. He was lost somewhere and wandering around. He kept walking into different houses and trying to turn on their TVs, but couldn't find the on button. Finally one of the TVs woke up—an alien, I guess maybe—and said, ‘This world is not your home.'”

“I'm going to be late for work,” Camille said, glancing at the clock. She pulled the pack of cigarettes out of her pocket, unreasonably dejected to find it empty. “Damn it. I thought I had one left.”

“Hold on,” Hector said.

He went outside to his car and returned with a plastic grocery bag. He reached in and handed her a pack of Camel Lights, her favorite brand.

“I can't take your cigarettes,” Camille said.

“I don't smoke,” he said without smiling. “I bought some things for the house yesterday.”

It took her a minute to realize he was talking about this house. He'd bought the cigarettes for her. There was something very strange about it—possibly even creepy. She did not want this twenty-year-old Dr. Dolittle sleeping in her house and buying her cigarettes. But what could she do? He was Dustin's only friend, the one person who didn't seem to find visiting a burden. Also, pursuing the matter would mean having to give back the cigarettes.

Camille got her things together for work, treading lightly so as not to wake up her family. Lyle. A husband she didn't speak to. Her tragically wounded son. She peered inside Jonas's room on her way to the garage, shocked to see him sleeping in bed with his clothes on. He hadn't even bothered to take off his shoes. Camille's throat swelled with guilt: for never being home, for stranding him out here in the desert, for being so stung by Lyle's hatred those months before the accident she'd all but forgotten he existed. Then there was the slight suspicion she had sometimes—more a tinge of uncertainty, something she worried like a tooth—that he'd burned down the house on purpose. To be noticed. An actual flare, impossible to ignore. Thinking such a thing—and the fact that she could barely look at him sometimes, her own son—made Camille sick to her stomach.

She entered Jonas's room and gently tugged off his shoes. His face, tan as a gypsy's, seemed inconceivably young. Camille went to the garage and lit a cigarette before backing the Volvo down the driveway. The glare of the sun made her squint. She shifted into drive and headed away from the house, filled with a mortifying sense of relief.

Warren's heart sank as soon as he saw it. He'd tried selling knives in condos, apartments, even the army barracks in Lancaster—but never a trailer park. He pulled off the freeway and passed under the Mahogany Views sign, creeping past the ferocious, airborne barks of a rottweiler chained to someone's pickup. The name's similarity to Auburn Fields did not escape him. In better spirits, Warren might have savored the irony. The Librojos, the Szelaps, the Medinas—all of his appointments had come to nothing. Not so much as a nibble. This was his last chance, do or die, and so far it didn't look good.

Warren stopped the Oldsmobile in front of lot 27 and stared at the curtained windows of the trailer. A row of giant sunflowers, bowing under the heat so you couldn't see their petals, had been planted out front. He did not want to pester these people or enter their tidy, curtained lives. But the idea of returning to the house—where Dustin lay simmering with hatred, where the closed door of the office reminded Warren he no longer slept with his wife—appealed to him even less.

Glumly, he gathered his courage and knocked on the screen door of the trailer, mentally rehearsing his pitch. A woman cracked the door enough to peek out. Her face scowled through the crack, about as welcoming as a gun. Warren asked if Mr. Ingram was in.

“Taking a nap,” she said.

“We're supposed to have an appointment.”

“What kind of appointment?”

“I have some knives for him to look at.”

“Christ. Last week it was Norman Rockwell plates. Limited
edition. He ordered twenty boxes on the phone.” Warren's face must have betrayed something, because the woman looked at him carefully, opening the door a bit wider. She was wearing tight jeans and a T-shirt that said
VIVA LAS VEGAS
. “Was it a long drive?”

“Thirty minutes.”

“You look thirsty.”

“I am a bit, um, parched.”

“Would you like some water?”

Warren nodded, following her into the kitchen. The Mr. Coffee had a measuring cup underneath it instead of a pot. The woman filled a glass from the sink and handed it to him, apologizing that the ice maker was broken. Her eyebrows were as thick as caterpillars, so at odds with the daintiness of her face that they seemed like the remnants of a disguise.

“Melody,” she said, introducing herself. “La la la.”

The woman watched him drink, as if she were waiting for him to leave. She was wearing something around her neck: a shard of broken pottery, white as bone. Warren looked closer and saw that it had the texture of bone as well, grainy and rugged. To avoid staring, he looked at a photo on the refrigerator, a shot of Jesus with His right hand poised in the sign of the cross. Someone had signed “Jesus Christ” at the bottom of the picture. Warren had seen all manner of Jesuses in the houses he'd entered, including a holographic one that ascended from the cross—but never a photograph.

“That's my brother,” Melody explained.

Warren nodded. He put the glass down on the counter.

“He's a Jesus impersonator,” she said.

“A Jesus impersonator?”

“Parades, videos, that sort of thing.”

“Wow,” Warren said.

“He's in Salt Lake right now, doing a gig for the Latter-Day Saints.” Melody nodded at the picture on the fridge. “That's a joke. Anyway, his idea of one. He doesn't really do glamour shots.”

Warren might have laughed, but he was too dejected. Things were not looking promising. Nevertheless, he plunked his case on the kitchen table and began to unzip it.

“I'm sorry my dad got you all the way out here,” Melody said casually. “But we don't need any knives.”

“Do you mind if I just go through my pitch?”

“Won't do any good, I promise.”

“This is my first day,” he lied.

“I've got to fix the antenna before Dad wakes up. He can't get his shows.”

“I could really use the practice.”

She studied him resentfully and then sat down in a chair, fiddling with the shard of pottery dangling from her neck. Warren guessed she was in her mid-thirties, a pretty much hopeless demographic when it came to moving knives. The hopelessness was compounded by the fact that she still lived with her father. Warren tried to forget these things as he threw himself into his sales pitch, withdrawing a tomato knife from his case and describing the “patented edge” that never touched the cutting board, only the tomato, thereby requiring no sharpening at all. Contrary to popular opinion, dull knives were much more dangerous than sharp ones. “Did you know that more people lose their fingers every year from cooking with old knives than from working in factories?”

“All of them?”

“What?”

“‘Fingers,' you said. I'm picturing someone with no digits.”

Warren looked at her. “Fin
ger
. Sorry.”

“Since you're practicing.”

He passed her the knife so she could feel the patented, form-fitting grip for herself. She did not seem particularly impressed. He explained that BladeCo's patented handle was guaranteed to withstand temperatures of up to 850 degrees Fahrenheit, more than twice as hot as the average flame. It was the same material, in fact, that was developed for the space shuttle.

“Are you sure you want to mention the space shuttle?” she said.

“Why not?”

“I mean, it blew up.”

“That's true, but the knives were in perfect condition.” He took the tomato knife back, feeling sick to his stomach. “Sorry. A little joke.”

“I don't think that's appropriate. To joke about a disaster like that. Personally, I'm not offended, but it's not going to endear you to the customer.”

Who was this woman? She had something in her hair—a twig—
as though she'd just emerged from a tent. Warren wondered if she was insane. “What do you suggest I say instead?”

“You could mention a factoid.”

“A factoid?”

“A factoid's a small, insignificant fact. Kind of like your thing about fingers. For instance, were you aware that bats always turn left when exiting a cave?”

Warren shook his head.

“I don't know how you could work that in—to your pitch, I mean—but it might liven things up.”

Warren could see that the first-time angle wasn't working but did not know how to cut short his pitch. He found a cutting board by the sink and asked for something to chop. Melody brought him a carrot, which he began to slice into perfect orange poker chips. He'd practiced this many times and was secretly proud of his knifemanship. As he was blazing through the carrot, flourishing the knife like a chef—trying, for some odd reason, to impress her—the blade slipped and caught his finger. A deep gash, just above the joint. It closed up almost immediately before beginning to pool with blood.

Warren pressed the gash with his thumb, trying to staunch the flow. The amount of blood surprised him. He grabbed the cutting board with his uninjured hand, hoping to dump the bloodied carrot down the disposal.

“What is that?” Melody said from her chair.

“There must have been ketchup or something on the cutting board.” Warren's finger had begun to throb, pulsing a half beat behind his heart. He wondered if he should go to the hospital.

“My father,” she said, shaking her head. “You should see what he eats. He puts margarine
and
butter on his English muffins. I'm always, like, one's a butter substitute, it defeats the purpose, you can't substitute a butter that's already there! If you're coaching a basketball team, do you put in a player without taking one out? But he likes the taste.” She leaned forward, squinting at Warren's hand. “Hey, look. There's blood running down your wrist.”

“It's nothing,” he said.

“Did you know that Attila the Hun died from a nosebleed, on his wedding night?”

Warren pressed his tie against the wound, hoping the absor
bency would help. The blue tie bloomed purple, a broad stain creeping upward like a thermometer.

“Wow, that's nastier than I thought,” Melody said. “Sit down. I'll get the first aid kit.”

Warren did as he was told, slumping into a chair. He was feeling a bit woozy. When Dustin was a kid, he'd get excited over the smallest bruise or scratch, barging into the house and demanding a Band-Aid like a biker ordering a drink. Warren could picture the euphoric swagger of his walk. Returning to the kitchen, Melody unbuckled an old tackle box and pulled out a gauze pad and pressed it to his finger hard enough to hurt. She lifted his arm above his heart, to “elevate the wound.” Despite the twig in her hair, she seemed to know what she was doing. The shard of pottery around her neck dangled near Warren's face.

“What's on your necklace?” he couldn't help asking.

“My skull. A piece of it, I mean. The doctor asked if I wanted to keep it, you know, for a memento.”

“Doctor?”

“Surgeon, actually.”

“You had an operation?”