Houston Noir

Tangled by Anton DiSclafani

Tanglewood

Tangled in Tanglewood, Lisa thought as she glanced at her watch and stepped out onto her back porch.

The heat overwhelmed, because it was July in Houston and everyone who could go was gone, out to Galveston or Clear Lake or even farther. The Blue Ridge Mountains. The Great Lakes. The Olsens would leave first. Then the Ramirezes. Then the Maclains.

Lisa had not left not because she didn’t want to leave — she did, very badly — but because she had a few things to set in order, first. And then she would leave for good. Or, if not for good, for a very long time.

She stood on her porch, protected from the mosquitoes and no-see-ums by a thin layer of screen. She glanced at her watch again. It had been her grandmother’s, was what she told people. A slim Cartier with a face encircled by diamonds. No one wore watches anymore.

Lisa did.

In short order, Lisa’s history: Born to a father who worked the oil rigs in Midland, a godforsaken place. A mother who, when Lisa was young, tried to keep the dust out of their house without the aid of a vacuum cleaner. Only the rich people had them.

Even now, or especially now, Lisa closes her eyes and can so easily see her mother with her broom. The sweep, sweep that will haunt Lisa until she dies.

Lisa married a boy who lived in a two-story dustless house. At the time, the house had seemed a sign of great wealth. They were both sixteen. A shotgun wedding, nobody happy but Lisa and her new husband. Moved to La Porte so Gary could do something related to the ships. Then Pasadena. Got closer and closer to Houston, inch by inexorable inch.

Victoria was born in La Porte. Lisa thought her daughter’s name sounded regal. Like old money. Or old enough for Texas, anyway.

By the time they moved to Houston, Lisa had shed her mother and father and their dust. Her father had left when Lisa was eight, gone out west, and her mother became a recluse before she died of lung cancer. It was easy never to tell a soul about them.

So, her parents were dead when she landed in Houston in the early eighties, in a bland, nondescript neighborhood. Solidly middle class. Gary was loyal, dull except for his terrible temper, and the victim of early-onset balding. She knew it wasn’t nice, but his hair, or lack thereof, repulsed her.

They divorced when Victoria was ten. Victoria was so sensitive then, she might as well have been a tuning fork, and for a while Lisa worried the divorce had ruined her. For years, Victoria slept with her mother at night, the child’s warmth a comfort. Most days, Victoria came home from school in tears, disturbed by the minor cruelty of one girl or another.

The divorce didn’t ruin her. Neither did Lisa’s second marriage, two years later, to a cardiac surgeon who owned a home in Tanglewood. To the contrary, that marriage seemed to harden Victoria, laying a chitin over her creamy, adolescent skin. She’d never gotten pimples like other girls. That Victoria felt betrayed by her mother — it had been just the two of them for two years — was to be expected. But Lisa knew better. The marriage meant neither she nor Victoria would have to worry. About college, about paying for the wedding Victoria would eventually have, about any of life’s requirements. And Lisa was lonely. She didn’t want Victoria to grow up thinking this loneliness, this all-female household, was normal. And, most of all, there was the house.

Tanglewood: it felt like the center of things, yet the lots the houses sat on seemed enormous to Lisa. It wasn’t privacy she craved, nor space, but she knew, the moment she saw the house, she would accept Lance’s proposal. It was one of the older houses, with black shutters and a wide wraparound porch. Lance hadn’t proposed yet, but he would. Men were as readable as books.

Tanglewood did not smack of carpet and coupons. It was not one but five steps above where she’d lived with Gary. Not River Oaks and not Shady Side — places she’d once dreamed of — but close enough. Her entire life defined by an exhilarating momentum. Lately, it was also tinged with exhaustion.

How different her mother’s life would have been, had she owned a vacuum cleaner, Lisa thought whenever she saw hers.

Mornings, she liked to go outside and look at the other houses. She could just barely see them from her screened-in back porch. Flashes of stucco and brick through the neat row of sky pencils that bordered the backyard.

Lance opened the sliding-glass door. Lisa didn’t turn or give any sign she’d heard her husband as he brushed her forehead with his dry, hot lips. She sat in the porch swing as wide as a bed and held her coffee carefully so it wouldn’t spill.

“Bye,” he said on his way out, and waited for her response.

“Bye,” she said, and he was gone. They had not met each other’s eye.

Victoria opened the porch door a minute later, as if she’d timed it. She’d told Lisa, when she was twelve, that she’d never think of Lance as a father, and she never had. There was no love lost between them. She held a cup of coffee from her own home, a street over. She had large, capable hands. Lisa had always admired them.

Lisa and her daughter had coffee together most mornings. Victoria held Lisa at a distance, and had since her mother remarried, but still, they were close. There were other mother-daughter pairs in Houston, of course. It was a big city that felt like a small town, especially in Tanglewood, where everyone gathered at the Houston Country Club for cocktails on Saturday evenings, where everyone’s child went to Kinkaid, where everyone’s husband left for work before the worst of the heat started and came home after it ended.

“Hi,” Lisa said.

A pause. “Hi.” Victoria seemed distracted. She was wearing the sleek lounge pants women her age favored. She was tall and fleshy but not fat; prettier than her mother, but not as confident. Victoria knew how to plan and host a five-course dinner party, invest in the stock market, and get the yardmen to edge the grass in a way they considered fussy, but she didn’t know how to move through a room sexily. It was a quality that couldn’t be taught, Lisa supposed.

“You sound sleepy,” Lisa said carefully. She wasn’t a religious woman, but she found herself praying lately that Victoria wouldn’t get pregnant. Lord, she thought, let her be smart enough to take the pill. Her husband wasn’t the kind of man to want to prevent a pregnancy.

“I am. Tired,” Victoria said.

“Did he do it again?” Lisa tried to keep the tremor from her voice.

Victoria shook her head. “No.” She sounded annoyed, dismissive.

“It’s just—”

“Mom. It was a one-time thing.”

Lisa nodded. She hated that word: Mom. Mother was unwieldy, old-fashioned. She would have preferred Mama, but Victoria hadn’t called her that since she was a little girl, still losing baby teeth.

Lisa tried to look as if she believed her daughter. Her plan depended, for the moment, on her willingness to believe.

“So hot,” Victoria said, which seemed to be an olive branch.

“Yes,” Lisa murmured, “yes.” She was eager to agree.

Victoria pulled a chair away from the table and slumped into it. Lisa was often struck by how young she still seemed, even though her daughter was thirty, married to a corporate attorney, in charge of a house. “Speaking of which, the yard is dry as a bone. The water restrictions.” She sighed. “I’m tired of this drought.”

Lance had returned, was plucking his phone from the counter. He lifted his hand in a silent wave; Lisa returned it. Victoria tilted her head but otherwise did not acknowledge Lance. They had never fought, but they had never loved each other, either. Lisa supposed she should be grateful that their relationship, if not intimate, was peaceful.

Lisa took a sip of her coffee. It was cold. Victoria seemed lost in thought. Well, Lisa had plenty of her own to think about. Her daughter who was beaten. Abused. When her own husband would sooner cut his hand off than lay it on Lisa.

Lance was cheating on her. With, Lisa was almost certain, Patsy Olsen. Patsy had thick, bluntly cut silver hair. She was pretty and a decade older than Lisa. It was the way things had gone in their marriage for a very long time. But it wouldn’t go on for much longer.

Victoria was now talking about volunteering and a woman they both knew who headed a committee. “Can you believe it?” she asked, her voice mildly outraged.

“No,” Lisa said, though she didn’t know what it was she couldn’t believe. Their rhythm, long established, was off today. She glanced at her watch.

“We better get moving,” Victoria said, smiling. Lisa was amazed at her daughter’s happiness. Or if not happiness, light-heartedness. That she could grin, her big, pretty teeth flashing against her dark lip gloss. That she could utter such meaningless platitudes: “Mom.” Less a name than a command. “It was only the one time. I promise.” When Lisa knew for a fact she was lying. And anyway, it was never just the one time. Not in life. Not in any part of it.

Lisa patted herself dry after her shower. Her hair, her face, her throat. Lingered on her stomach, which grew softer and softer as the years passed. She wasn’t a vain woman, which was lucky, because age had loosened the skin at her throat, creased her forehead, freckled the backs of her hands.

Victoria was vain, and so was Lance. Vain men were easier to be with. Easier to understand and anticipate and stay ahead of. So were women, for that matter.

Victoria’s vanity had propelled her to her mother’s house the week before, to borrow a pair of diamond earrings for a fund-raiser that night. She hadn’t wanted to miss the annual Azalea Trail opening party. Black tie, and Victoria was going to wear her strapless dress and the ruby drop earrings. She and Lisa had talked about it. That was one of their favorite things to do together — shop. Plan their clothes, as they called it.

But then Victoria had to change her outfit, and thus her earrings, at the last moment. “It doesn’t look good,” she’d said, which Lisa didn’t believe for a moment. Because she’d seen the dress — it was flattering — but also because of the catch in Victoria’s voice. Victoria’s voice so rarely caught. The new dress featured an elaborate yet modest neckline.

The old dress was strapless.

Lisa glided through the day. She’d been squirreling away money for years, which wasn’t as hard as it should’ve been. Now it didn’t pay to be a cardiac surgeon, but when Lisa first married Lance, eighteen years ago, it had. A surgeon rarely touched a heart anymore, unless performing a transplant, and those, too, were rarer and rarer. Now cardiologists tended to the heart, with highly technical, nearly mundane procedures that had robbed cardiac surgeons of both money and fame. Houston had always been so famous for its heart surgeons, and now correcting an arrhythmia was as simple as threading a line through a groin to ablate the errant piece of the wildly beating heart. Denton Cooley had lived in River Oaks, of course. He must be turning over in his grave. Lance had trained with him, long ago.

It had happened to Lisa last year: an ablation, due to an arrhythmia that would not correct itself. The most painful part of the procedure had been the shot that numbed her groin.

Lance had been fucking someone else while she was at the hospital. An outpatient procedure. It killed Lance, that handling the heart had become so ordinary.

But Lance didn’t cheat because he was no longer considered a god who cracked open human chests and held beating hearts in his hand. Who knew why he cheated? Lisa only knew why he didn’t, and the distinction was important to her, if no one else. He didn’t cheat because of her, Lisa. He did it because he was an animal. And for years, Lisa had looked the other way. And she would’ve continued to look the other way had Victoria not shifted at a certain angle that morning, allowing Lisa to glimpse the nasty bruise covering her daughter’s armpit.

Such a strange place to hit someone. She knew immediately what it was. She’d raised Victoria to be better than this, the victim of such a cliché. It was like something out of the movies. He was beating her on private places, so no one would see.

And Victoria — she was so strong. Just last week she had forcefully but somehow gracefully made a hostess sit them by the window at Brennan’s. Lisa had followed her daughter through the restaurant, feeling proud. It was difficult to reconcile the two halves — the Victoria who moved through the world with such authority, and the Victoria who allowed herself to be hit. Lisa felt like her brain was splitting in half. Seeing the bruise, she’d cried out, as if in pain.

She, not Victoria. She’d wanted to kill him.

Victoria had watched her mother. She’d seemed unsurprised by her reaction.

Lance came home for lunch, which he did sometimes. He liked to surprise her.

“Busy morning?” he asked while assembling two sandwiches. One for him, one for her. He was thoughtful.

He was good with his hands. Spread mayonnaise on the bread deftly, in one neat motion. Pulled out Lisa’s chair while holding both plates — wide, white — in his free hand.

“Remember, we’re going to Lake Austin,” she said. “The spa.” Lance nodded. “For a week. Will be so nice to get away.”

“You deserve it,” Lance said absently. He ate slowly, methodically. He would leave part of the sandwich on his plate. Lisa would not have married Lance if he hadn’t owned this house, this house she would be sad to leave. Built in the thirties, updated every decade. It was the perfect house, both old and new, charming and convenient. Heart pine floors, sunrooms attached to every bedroom, a porch that went on for miles.

Nobody deserves anything, she thought.

She went for her regular walk at dusk. Homes in Tanglewood were expensive, expensively kept. She passed the Spanish-style villa with the red-tile roof, the white Tudor, the new three-story brick that looked like a university in miniature. Tasteless, but she saw the appeal. Building something bigger, bolder. More.

She saw the outlines of her neighbors in their kitchens. Mothers, nannies, maids. Lisa knew no one very well, though she’d lived here for years. It wasn’t the kind of neighborhood to host block parties. Even if it had been, she wasn’t the kind of woman to attend them. She and Lance were nominally social, but her husband’s proclivities made things thorny. She was never sure who he’d fucked. Or wanted to.

She had Victoria. Victoria who had gone to the University of Texas and pledged Tri Delta even without the benefit of a mother — or any family member — who was a legacy. She was a first-generation college student, but no one who met her would ever guess. Victoria didn’t even think of herself that way, because Lisa had never let her. Money had paved the way, to be sure. Lance’s money. But Victoria knew how to move through these crowds, even though this — these gilded houses, these manicured lawns — was not her birthright.

In a month, it’d be too hot to walk at night. Lisa would have to get up with the chickens. A saying of her mother’s. It was too hot now to walk. She did it anyway. She tripped over a piece of crumbling asphalt and looked up at a window, just in time to see someone — a nanny, a mother — grabbing the outline of a child by his or her arm.

She shivered, though it wasn’t cold. There was violence everywhere. Dogs barked, disrupting the quiet. Insects buzzed, voices carried, cars flew through streets, ignoring signs telling them not to. Lately, she braced herself when Lance touched her. Or perhaps she’d been bracing herself for years.

After half an hour of walking, slick with sweat, she’d wound back to her street, to her daughter’s street, and climbed the steps to Victoria’s sprawling ranch. She wasn’t winded.

Victoria opened the door before Lisa knocked. Handed her a glass of wine. Smiled.

Lisa entered her daughter’s house. Remembered to smile back.

Sometimes it felt as if she were moving underwater. She went to the bookstore near Rice and bought books with covers featuring faceless women: their heads turned or severed at the eyes. Those were the kind of books she liked: preferably set in the past, about women and their troubles. Dropped into societies and marriages and families that didn’t understand their desires.

She went to the grocery store and bought two loaves of the ciabatta Lance liked. Stood in the deli line and sent the turkey back, apologetically, when it wasn’t sliced thinly enough. Went to the salon and luxuriated in what would be her last appointment for a long time. When her hairdresser massaged her scalp with a drop of oil, Lisa nearly wept with pleasure.

Other times — like now, at home, in her white-tiled bathroom, staring at her new bob — she felt thrilled. Titillated. An electric current running from her brain to the tips of her fingers. She now had brown hair, for the first time since she was a child.

Her plan was simple. She’d heard somewhere that simple plans were the best plans. She hoped it was true.

Her makeup had been disturbed at the hair salon, by the hair washing and the heat of the dryer. She took a pad soaked with astringent and drew it across her face, starting at her chin, moving upward in quick, deft strokes.

It had always been her nature to be gentle. When Victoria was a little girl, Lisa was good at untangling knots in her daughter’s hair. Her instinct was to move slowly, to solve with patience instead of force.

A less patient woman would’ve left Lance. He wasn’t flagrant with his affairs, but still there’d been a nurse who’d driven by their house too many times to ignore. And then, abruptly, stopped. A smear of lipstick on the back of one of his collars, hidden from his sight. Late nights at the hospital, even when he wasn’t on call.

Lisa hated to think about the fight Lance and the nurse — she wore sunglasses, drove a Honda with an empty car seat in the back — must have had. Lance challenging her, invoking... Who knew what he invoked? Did he threaten her career? Her marriage? Did he say he loved his wife?

Lisa dabbed at the delicate skin beneath her eyes. Imagining the sex didn’t bother her. It was the fighting that disturbed her — the intimacy that accompanied conflict.

Lisa lived in a beautiful home. Liked her life. Loved her daughter, who she was lucky to have living close by. She hadn’t ever thought seriously of leaving Lance. Or demanding that he stop. She knew he wouldn’t.

But the bruise. And then the photographs. One day, Lisa let herself into her daughter’s house — a ranch, yes, but totally gutted and restored — with the key hidden beneath the stone turtle out back. Found the Polaroids. It undid something in Lisa, holding them in her hand, stacked in a neat square. She guessed that David checked Victoria’s phone. That something physical, in this digital age, felt safer.

The photographs were lurid. The bruises against the pale skin — Victoria had always had such beautiful skin — reminded Lisa of tie-dye. Multiple variations of the same hue. An irregular pattern that somehow made sense.

She had put the photographs back into Victoria’s trunk. The same trunk in which she’d hidden her secrets since she was a little girl: notes passed by friends, treasures dug up in the creek that ran through the backyard of their first home. A letter from her father, who was barely in Victoria’s life.

Lisa startled back into the present: her white-tiled bathroom, with the dormer windows to let in the light. The light was not flattering, but it was useful for applying makeup.

It was Lance, opening the door in his firm way. He never hesitated. Lisa caught his surprise in the mirror’s reflection; he rarely saw his wife without makeup.

She felt naked.

“You’re home early,” she said, resisting the urge to drop her head. Let him look at her. Let him see.

He shrugged. “Thought I might go hit some balls.”

“We have the thing at Deb’s tonight.”

“I know.” He made to go, raising his hand in a sort of half wave, but then he paused. “You look nice like that. You look nice without all of the—” He ran a hand over his face, as if removing a mask, before he left.

She was moved. But she shouldn’t have been. It was Lance’s instinct, always, to make women feel good about themselves.

It was only later that she realized he hadn’t noticed her hair, brown for the first time in years.

Victoria met David three years ago, while walking through the neighborhood with her mother. She was twenty-seven. He was a partner in a law firm, recently divorced, Victoria’s senior by a decade. Lisa didn’t like the decade part, but she liked David. He was quiet and seemed kind. The rumor was his wife had left him for her high school boyfriend, breaking David’s heart. Now, of course, Lisa wondered why the woman had left. They had no children. And he adored Victoria.

When they’d been dating for a few months, Victoria had fainted, and David had taken her to the emergency room, calling Lisa on the way. When Lisa arrived, David was in a quiet fury, demanding that his wife be seen that instant. And she was.

David was quiet, but he was forceful. Taller and larger and less handsome than Victoria, with a weak chin and sandy-colored hair. Victoria had worked at a marketing firm when she met him. Not her passion, perhaps, but a good enough job. A way to get out of the house, at least. She’d gone to part-time after they married, then quit altogether. You don’t work, she’d said to Lisa, and you’re happy.

That was true, or true enough. But sometimes Lisa felt the world had passed her by. Especially once Victoria left for college. She had no purpose, had never had a purpose, except for her daughter.

But then Victoria moved to Tanglewood, and her presence brightened Lisa’s life. They were each other’s purpose.

The first surge of sickness, when Lisa was sixteen years old — she’d known what it was. Who it was. And everything after that, all her moves — up, up, up — had been for her daughter. She knew people — Gary’s mother, for one — thought she’d gotten pregnant so she could escape Midland. But it’d been the other way around, entirely. She doubted she would have left if not for her child, her child who had made her life possible.

Lisa would’ve lived a lifetime with Lance. He would’ve retired, eventually. He was reluctant to leave work, said he didn’t know what he’d do with his time, but Lisa and he both knew that the office and the hospital provided good cover for his extracurricular activities.

They still had sex. A few times a month. It was nice enough. She’d told him once, after the nurse had driven by, that if she ever got an STD, she’d kill him. They had been eating dinner on the porch. She didn’t look at him when she said it.

“Okay,” he’d responded after a moment, and they’d never spoken of it again.

Lisa’s first plan had been violence. Lance had a gun — Lisa would use it to kill David. She’d stare him in the face and pull the trigger. She knew how to handle one; it was Texas. She’d grown up among men who hunted. She’d be arrested and spend the rest of her life in prison. Or maybe not. Maybe a good lawyer could prove self-defense, on her daughter’s behalf.

But the risk of leaving Victoria — abandoning her — was too great. Victoria hadn’t needed her mother in such a long time.

Her daughter had arranged an enviable life for herself. Talked about having children soon. Liked to cook elaborate meals from old French cookbooks. Was developing an interest in wine. Was — Lisa had thought — happy. She loved her mother, but didn’t seem to need her, not as she had when she was a child. But perhaps that was what it meant to be a parent: your child needed you until she did not. That’s what Lisa told herself.

But then the bruise. And then the photographs. After seeing them, Lisa had left her daughter’s home and vomited into a camellia bush.

She didn’t know which part she found more alarming: that Victoria was being beaten, or that she hadn’t told her mother.

A few days before they were to leave, Victoria dropped by the house with a book. Lisa was on the patio — she would miss this patio — drinking a glass of wine.

Victoria rested the book on the table, raised her eyes at the wine. “Cocktail hour somewhere?”

Lisa nodded.

“In that case... ” Victoria went to the kitchen and returned a moment later with her own glass.

Lisa was so grateful her daughter wasn’t pregnant, she nearly cried.

“The stuff you drink is shit,” Victoria said. “All tannin.” She wrinkled her nose. “But whatever,” she said, and took another sip.

Lisa studied her daughter. She had a solid look about her: firm cheekbones and big hazel eyes. Her eyes had always been her best feature. “You look pretty today.”

Victoria seemed startled. “Is something wrong?”

Lisa shook her head. Victoria picked up the book, flipped through it idly.

“Is it good?” Lisa asked, her voice fraught. She was near tears.

Victoria shrugged. “I hope so.” She knew something was amiss. She did not know what.

They were going to run away. To a little town in Mexico where Lisa and Gary had vacationed once, years ago. They would come back once the dust had settled. Lisa had been to see her lawyer — a man with an underbite and a thick head of silver hair who’d come highly recommended — four times in the last week.

They would each — Victoria and Lisa — file for divorce in Mexico. Victoria had a prenup, of course (everyone did these days), but the attorney was certain they could void it, as long as Lisa got the pictures.

Victoria would sign the papers in Mexico, Lisa knew. In Houston, she had no interest in leaving David, but things would be different once they were elsewhere. Once they weren’t in Tanglewood. Victoria thought, like Lance, that she and her mother were going to Austin, to a spa. Mexico would be a surprise. Victoria loved surprises, had since she was a little girl.

In Mexico, Lisa would take Victoria’s phone so David couldn’t reach her, and she’d explain their future to her daughter. She could imagine the words, what exactly she would say: You’re fooling yourself. He will never stop. You’re too young to throw away your life like this.

Platitudes, all of them. And all of them true.

Lisa knew Victoria would listen, once they were away from all this. It would be easier, for both her and her daughter, to be gone. To absent themselves from the lives they were going to destroy.

“Mom,” Victoria said, “stop looking at me like that.”

But she, too, seemed close to tears.

Her love for Victoria was the purest thing she’d ever felt, even now, thirty years later. Or especially now. She’d never loved another person so deeply, so obsessively. With anyone else she’d loved — her mother, a boy before her first husband whom she’d loved an unreasonable amount — there was a desire underpinning it all. There would have been no love without it. She wanted to touch, she wanted to be touched. She wanted to be made to feel a certain way. That want made her feel like an animal.

But there was none of that with Victoria, of course. Lisa’s attachment to her drew from some well that had previously been unknown to her. She wondered, when Victoria was tiny, more a collection of scents and sounds than a human, if all parents, all mothers, felt this way. It didn’t seem possible.

Victoria asked Lisa about her own mother once, when she was a child: “Did she love you like you love me?”

The pronouns confused Lisa for a moment. “Yes,” she’d said, but not because she believed it.

They were leaving tomorrow, and it felt too easy. Victoria had come over that morning and talked about what she’d packed. Swimsuits. Sundresses, for dinner. She described a new one so vividly — striped, off the shoulder — Lisa could almost see it. And then she could almost see Victoria in their house on the beach, standing ankle-deep in the water. And a surge of something — happiness, excitement, some combination thereof — threaded itself through her brain.

Victoria seemed worried. Lisa thought she understood why. Her daughter had found herself trapped. She didn’t know how to escape. Lisa would help her.

Lance didn’t suspect a thing. Lisa had rented a storage unit and put clothes into it and a few small pieces of furniture Lance wouldn’t miss. Things she didn’t want him to have.

Her jewelry and important papers went into a deposit box at the bank. One last trip to the lawyer’s office.

She went into what had once been Victoria’s room and lay on the bed. But no, that didn’t feel like enough and, though she wasn’t a woman given to melodramatic gestures, she took off her shirt and pants and lay on the floor. The wood was old heart pine. It bore many years of tiny, almost invisible scratches. A map of scratches.

She could feel her bones through the floor. The wood was cool, solid.

She would miss this house.

Lance was at the hospital. Victoria was at the gym. She was of the younger generation, which considered working out, beating the body into submission, as natural as brushing one’s teeth.

Lisa went to the stone turtle, then let herself in Victoria’s front door. David wasn’t home. He worked insane hours, but she could feel his presence as she walked quietly through his home. It still felt like his, even though Victoria had added her own touches: paintings, antique furniture. But still, David’s masculine leather furniture dominated.

She took the Polaroids without looking at them. And yet, the feel of them in her hand was a comfort. Thick and sturdy like an object, not a stack of flimsy photographs.

The pictures gave her hope. The past would be the past. The future, theirs for the taking.

She felt excited, despite the circumstances.

As she passed the guest room door, she heard a knock within. Then another. Some part of her thought it was David beating Victoria, though she knew that was impossible. David was at work. Victoria was at the gym.

She opened the door out of some sort of maternal instinct, her other hand clutching the square of pictures.

Lance looked at her first. For all his indiscretions, she had never seen him with another woman. Certainly not on top of one, as he was now, a look of pleasure slowly morphing into pain upon his face.

“Mama,” a voice said from underneath Lance. The pictures slid from Lisa’s hand.

Victoria had not called her Mama in so long.

One in the Family by Adrienne Perry

Museum District

“You have some experience with food prep?” asked Angus, the owner of Taco Heaven. He wore snakeskin boots and his jingle-jolly gut stretched a Clutch City T-shirt. Dad’s age or a little older. For this informal interview, we sat outside Black Hole, next to the laundromat, so that Angus could smoke. Rancheras played on the laundry’s radio, and I knew enough Spanish to get depressed by what those sisters were singing. Through the open door, the floral, pastel perfumes from detergents and dryer sheets mixed with Angus’s smoke. Toxic, but when was the last time I’d done laundry in actual machines, not secretly in the Y’s showers? Finals week. Now it was full-on June.

I said, “I washed dishes in the dining hall.”

Angus watched me attack the iced coffee and Southwest quiche he’d offered at the interview’s start. Raggedy, but dignified. Hungry. I knew how I looked. Trying to figure me out, Angus’s wide forehead wrinkled. It looked like kind confusion.

“I had an uncle who taught history at your school.”

“For real?”

“He’s retired now. It’s a good school.”

I nodded without smirking. “For most people.”

“What makes you special?”

No comment. I pushed my finger onto the crumbs and eggy bits on my plate. I’d eat whatever wasn’t strapped down.

“Would you say you’re any good with people?”

“I’m great with people.”

“Re’s an interesting name. Where’s it come from?”

I knew what Angus was getting at and I wasn’t going to make it easy for him. I showed him the backs of my hands. R (right hand) e: (left hand). “A nickname. Pronounced rey.”

“Like a ray of light? Like shafts through clouds? Like the Virgin Mary?”

“Like a king. I have to send money home each month. Can you remind me how much the pay is?”

Angus hired me because he felt sorry for me.

That was fine.

Summer in Houston is like the dead of winter in Easthampton, Massachusetts, only hot instead of cold. In both places, weather traps the lucky people inside. I tried to explain this to our dad, but he’s from Mississippi, so he already knew. End of my sophomore year and I talked about the heat because I didn’t want to talk about why I wasn’t going back. Not to school and not home. Macy had just returned from Afghanistan. When I say just, I mean a year. Staying in Houston was my way of pretending that everything would work itself out — for all of us.

The fusion-taco food truck was pitched to Dad as a paid internship. Small business administration, hospitality, team building, and sustainable food. Workday’s end, I would wring sweat from my Taco Heaven T-shirt and pocket fifteen wet dollar bills in tips. End of the month, I had saved enough to send home four hundred.

Dad said inquiring minds want to know: Were my supervisors nice? What was I learning about bookkeeping and advertising, about how to run my own business? I’d look at Wikipedia and memorize the difference between budgets and actuals in small business accounting. Make shit up — factoids about the history of tacos. Or Angus. I’d tell a story about my boss, say he was a felon who’d miraculously turned a corner in his life of crime, was mentoring me, showing me how to transform an idea into three edible dimensions. That was the summer I started telling grown-up lies. When your father launches a Kickstarter campaign to finance his oldest daughter’s Sip-N-Puff, he doesn’t want to hear that his other kid pays for a student membership at the downtown YMCA just to take showers and use the free Wi-Fi. He doesn’t want to hear they’ve been stalking their ex — financial aid officer, or that they’re sleeping on the street. No father wants to hear that. So I spared him.

Angus and I worked together five days a week. Taco Heaven employed no one else. Lemons and limes, edible flowers, and fruit dominated my workstation. Grilling and marinating meats, heating tortillas — Angus handled all that and chopped cilantro, whipped together salsas and fresh chutneys from mangos and allspice. I took orders and ran the register, cranked out a green-and-white awning, and, underneath it, set up an outdoor Ikea table plus two chairs for ambiance. Both of us cleaned. A winged hot-pink taco flew on the truck’s black side.

Every Tuesday, Taco Heaven camped out at the Museum of Fine Arts, between the parking lot and the sculpture garden. A small man-made hill sloped up to a mini plateau behind the truck, where a magnolia and ponderosa pine threw shade. On the grass beneath the tree branches, during my breaks, I would stare out at the sculptures, watching the guards on their breaks. We echoed each other.

A bronze man made of rectangles ran down a slope near a sick-looking naked boy riding a horse. The horse had a tiny head on a wrestler’s neck. The Pilgrim, the artist named the horse and boy, and I thought, That’s just like white folks. Not the sculpture, but the value of things and how they’re just for certain people. Gardens are green prisons and if I could steal that horse and sick boy and sell them to solve our money problems, I would. Without regret. If that’s racist or wrong or something, right about now I just don’t care.

A Tuesday was my first official day on the job, though I worked with Angus Mondays through Saturdays. The cicadas in the sculpture garden sounded like sirens for the buses and cars barreling down Bissonnet. A museum security guard sweating through his uniform leaned on the parking lot sign. The atmosphere inside the truck — how can I describe it? Stainless steel can hold onto heat with a death grip. A fluorescent light beat down like a tin hammer on the top of my head.

“Feels like a grown man tap dancing on your chest, doesn’t it?”

“Something like that,” I said, studying Angus’s map. Every food item or utensil had a home. Angus had systems and, within the first hour, I fucked those systems up. I’d read the map upside down.

“If you weren’t a girl... ” Angus shut himself up. I’ll give him that. He knew when to quit about that aspect. That first day, Angus didn’t know what to make of me. But by early July, he was talking about his favorite butch cousin from Chicago, full-sleeve tattoos on her arms, big diamonds in her ears, girls practically throwing their panties in front of her. He said, “If you weren’t a girl, you’d be toast.”

Before Macy came back from Kabul, this would have gotten to me. I would have licked the counter to apologize. But Macy put the world to scale.

“Good thing I’m not really a girl.”

“All right,” Angus chuckled, “have it your way. I’m just saying: awareness. So nobody gets hurt.”

I thought: That is my fucking way. I said, “I’ll be more aware.”

Angus cocked his head, searched my face, and waved a hand in front of his nose. “You’ve got what my nephew calls an ice grill, you know?”

“I have a decent sense of what my face is doing.”

“You ever been in?” Angus pointed to the museum. A fat line of schoolchildren snaked through the doors. “It’s an ugly building from the outside, but don’t judge a book. Am I right?”

Museums don’t intimidate me. Entering the MFAH lobby for the first time, I saw a Warhol self-portrait and a negative of myself, in the same moment. Against a black background, Warhol was pink, his hair stuck up like feathers in an Easter Sunday hat. A death mask expression on his face, like Macy’s when we picked her up at the Hartford airport. How much would a Warhol like that go for? What gave Warhol value? If I could figure that out, I’d start throwing paint on canvases.

These were not observations to share with Dad and Macy on our video calls on Thursday nights, when the museum was free and stayed open until nine p.m. Pessimism would only confirm that I was in a bad way. They wanted to know what I had seen: Greek vases, gold leaf — topped linguist sticks, Mary with the Christ child, silver, photographs, capes made of Technicolor bird feathers. As their tour guide, I led them through the corridors and into the galleries, narrating what I saw, and I felt close to them. Like last summer.

Each Thursday, we ended the call with three or four passes through the Turrell tunnel. Dark platform above and, below, the hot-pink and red and violet and blue changing walls. The thin, lighter outline that passed to other dimensions. Macy would moan so loudly through the passage, I learned to put the phone on mute.

The ends of these calls were often awkward. Dad might ask, “You headed back to the dorm?”

One lie required another: “Yeah. I’ll take my time walking back.”

“What classes did you register for, again?”

“I don’t think I said. I have neurobiology and art history. Still figuring out the other two.”

“Financial aid is all straightened out, then? We haven’t got anything in the mail.”

“I’ll double-check.”

I’d stopped going to school since the spiritual nut-kicking of trying my fob on doors to my dorm, to the gym. Instead, I decided to walk down Graustark to Mr. Larson’s house and stare at his condo from across the street. He didn’t live far from the MFAH, and even closer to the Menil. Lights on timers, the pool’s motor circulating lazily. No mail delivery as far as I could tell. On Mondays, a cleaning woman might come by. Polished concrete, a window like an icicle going from the first to the third floor. I was waiting for them to come back.

Near the Rothko, I sprayed heavy-duty insect repellent all over and lay beside a fence, out of view, using my backpack for a pillow. Same routine every night. At first, I couldn’t sleep. The A pitch of mosquitoes. The fear of frightening someone. Kids who looked like me were treated savagely. Routinely. I wanted to trust the people who lived this close to Rothkos, but that was too generous. In the early morning, when it was cooler, I calmed down and slept. I dreamed that Angus had installed a grill inside the Turrell tunnel and I had shrunk to fit the grill. The kitchen setup didn’t bother the guards. Angus seared my back, browned my front. Poked my thighs with a spatula to make sure I was done. Then he chopped me up, slid me into a corn tortilla, and handed me over to Larson with a wedge of lime.

Ninety-nine degrees and 100 percent humidity. A gray haze all around and pollen and ozone advisory warnings. Droning on Montrose and Bissonnet and Main. I have never been in a desert, and I know Pakistan is not the desert, but I saw a photograph of Pakistan in a Washington Post left at the Y. There were cypress trees shaped like wizard hats. Distant mountains. A small gray swimming pool with, I’m estimating, a few hundred men. Pants on in the water. Hottest day on record in Pakistan. A scientist quoted in the article said these heat waves pushed people to the limits of their thermal comfort. Absolutely. Brains cook at that temperature, just like the brain of a customer standing in the Taco Heaven line in Houston in July. Just like our brains inside the truck. The men in the picture looked shocked, as if standing in front of a body that had just collapsed in the street. But I was probably projecting. They might have been having a great time.

Tuesdays were usually slow, but the week of July 4 meant family time at the museum. Angus hustled on four orders of Indonesian tacos and three fried chicken tacos with waffle casings. I wiped down the counters and refrigerator, then hopped out front to double-check the customer experience. “Order up!” I delivered the tacos to a couple with their in-laws. The mother handed me ten dollars to bring more Topo Chicos. How did she know handing people cold drinks was my favorite? I loved to hold bottlenecks covered in condensation, to feel the glass slip through my fingers. I’m the Red Cross, I thought. I’m saving people. I was bettering the lives of people who hate. In Houston, people were friendly on the surface, happy on the surface. But they hated their lives, themselves, each other, same as back home. Same as everywhere.

I went behind the truck and put cold fingers on my face.

“Do you know how to cook?” Angus asked.

“I can boil water.”

He was being nice, making conversation, but I didn’t want to talk in that metal animal mouth reeking of onions and garlic and meat.

“You could learn to do a little more than that. Based on what I’ve seen, you could do short order most places and some besides.” That was nice to hear. “Not that you’ll want to, when you get back to school.”

I got up and went inside the truck, paired plastic forks with plastic knives, wrapped them in their paper napkin blankets, and put them to sleep in a plastic tub. Angus kept talking and I saw it coming — a sermon — whether I wanted it or not.

“Food was waiting for me. My uncle Ross married this woman Cecilia. There’s this picture of her from the seventies wearing a tight Astros T-shirt, and I always think, That woman changed our diapers and spanked our butts! She was sweet, Cecilia, but she had a temper.”

“Are you following me, Re?”

Where had I been? Thinking money, thinking Macy. “Why are you telling me this?” Angus looked hurt. I laughed, to play it off. “I’m never going to eat your food again.”

“If I didn’t feed you, you’d fly away.” Angus wiped his face with a rag and threw it in the day’s laundry. He handed me two limes. “Work. It’ll make you feel better.”

I destroyed the lime’s skin on the mandolin, making zest and a citrus smell I loved to hold to my nose. Finished that and started with the inventory. Angus took a pencil from behind his ear and checked the inventory sheet. “You mean to tell me you don’t have an Aunt Cecilia in your family? Come on, you know you do.”

What he meant by that, I don’t know.

March of sophomore year, I made an appointment to discuss my financial aid package. A day of cold rain hushed campus, the raindrops pressing down tender leaves, new flowers. I walked through puddles just to hear the swish-glub, to remind myself of walking through puddles with Macy when we were small and both mobile.

On my floor, a sister-girl from Kentucky described Brandon Larson as a fat, bitchy Mark Twain. She said I should see if I could meet with someone else. As gray light came through his office window, I could see the resemblance to Twain, mostly in the hair and mustache.

“What are we here to discuss?”

“Did you get my father’s letter?”

Larson turned to his computer. “Give me your student ID number. Ah, René Garraway.”

“I go by Re.”

Click. No eye contact. “Yes, I see the letter here.” Click.

“Like my dad said in the letter, we can’t afford to pay that amount.” I pointed to the aid award letter. “The amount listed here.”

“Now that your sister is so ill.”

“Yes. My father had to leave his job to take care of her.”

“What your father is doing is noble, I commend him, but your financial aid is based on the previous year, and your mother’s earnings were significantly higher last year too.”

“My mom won’t give anything. She doesn’t have anything.”

“Her income is modest, but she and your stepfather have a significant amount in assets. Your parents have joint custody?”

They did, but we’d lived with Dad exclusively since we were four and seven. Mr. Larson’s cell phone rang. “Sorry.” He stood by the window, facing the crush of gray and green just beyond the glass. I wanted to draw back the curtain of leaves and push him into it. I thumbed through notes for my women’s studies test without gaining any traction. I was too busy eavesdropping on the conversation.

“What would I like?” I looked up, thinking he was talking to me. “Janine. I expect you to do everything you can for her. I mean, yes, that’s what we’re asking, what we’ve been asking. For how long now?” While he listened, he hummed. “What kind of surgery? I understand. I understand it costs. Everything costs. Haven’t I been? Right. We’re prepared. Yes, she agrees.”

His daughter or his wife? Maybe a sister or a niece. Was it cancer or heart disease? Something rare? A brain injury? Something like Macy? Mr. Larson was going through troubles too. That we might share a pain warmed me like hot pudding.

“Sorry,” he said, sitting down. He checked the applications on his computer with shaky hands.

Should I or shouldn’t I ask? I found myself asking: “Who’s Janine?”

“Our bichon frise. The vet has been trying to figure out what’s going on. He was half suggesting I put her down, but the money we’ve already poured into medical costs... If we do this gallbladder surgery, she might have another year. That’s worth six thousand. We’re probably throwing good money after bad, but... Sorry about that,” he said again, though nothing about him seemed sorry for me. I doubted he had any idea what six thousand dollars would do for our family. I’d never heard people talk so lightly about so much money before I came to this school.

“Maybe I could speak with someone else?”

“They’re just going to tell you the same thing. You always have the option of a loan.”

“I can’t take out any more in federal loans.”

“I was suggesting a private loan.”

“My dad doesn’t want me to... We don’t want to do that.”

“I appreciate that. That position, and it’s a special one to take. It’s your education, after all. College is an investment and, I understand, an expensive one for many families. All families have sacrifices to make. You don’t have to decide this second.” He handed me his card to end the conversation.

It was easy enough to get his address. Where could I send a Get Well card for his dog?

A grackle floated off the bus stop. An Oxford-blue suit, European cut on a big man, approached Taco Heaven. Dad called suits this nice revenge suits, purchased after a first paycheck or on the occasion of a breakup. But this was probably one of many revenge suits. Did the suit’s owner have a face? Sure. But all I saw was a smudge where eyes and a mouth should be. God had licked his thumb and rubbed this man out from the neck up. White hair and a bushy mustache came slightly into focus.

For the last ten minutes, an older woman with a light shawl had struggled with her order. She was peering at the menu when the suit cut in front of her. He gave me the up-and-down, the same look I get in bathrooms. Angus was on break.

“I believe the lady was first,” I said to the suit.

“She doesn’t look ready to order.”

I recognized Larson, back from vacation. I should have placed him right away. Did he recognize me? I was wearing gloves, so he couldn’t see my name.

The woman raised her eyebrows. She said, “Actually... ”

“Give me a Jamaican jerk taco, a bahn mi taco, plus an agua—”

I said to Larson, “Let me grab her order and then I’ll take yours.”

“But I just told you what I want.”

Ice cracking over a thin puddle — that was the expression traveling across the woman’s face. “I’ve lost my appetite.” She put a five-dollar tip in the jar and walked away.

When Larson placed his order, he spoke slowly, insultingly. It was the kind of voice kids used to mock Macy last summer.

“I heard you twice the first time,” I told him.

Angus came back inside, scraped down the grill. “Everything good here?”

“Maybe you want to think about who you have up front,” Larson said.

“Or,” I said, “maybe you want to think—”

“Why don’t you take your break now?” Angus interrupted. “I can take this one. You’re so wet you’re shaking, Re.”

I was sick of it. So sick. Of the cutting in line. The looks people like Larson gave people like me and Macy. My school. The heat and the rashes on my arms from sleeping on the ground.

A bronze sculpture of a ripped man walking with no arms and no head. Who knew where? The sorry bastard. A giant had pinched off his limbs and left him to wander around with no strength. The bubbles in the Topo Chico popped in my mouth. I hadn’t changed. My shirt clung to my binder.

“I thought you said you were good with people,” Angus said when he came out, throwing a dry Taco Heaven T-shirt on my shoulder.

“That guy wasn’t people. He works at the college.”

“Do you know him?”

“He didn’t even recognize me. What a dick!”

“Can’t you avoid him at school?”

I shook my head. “I don’t even know. I don’t think I can go.”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

We sat beneath the magnolia, suffering. I took out my phone, went to the gallery, showed Angus two pictures of Macy. A before and after.

“I’m sorry for your sister.”

“Maybe I should go home.”

“You never know,” Angus said. “I knew a kid like your sister. We were all out together in Austin, off the Greenbelt, and people were diving, drinking. It was getting dark. You had to know where to jump and he didn’t know. Broke his neck.”

“My sister’s neck isn’t broken. What do you know about my sister?”

“Nothing. I’m just saying.”

The guards let us use the bathroom on the first floor. I wanted to cry in private, to change clothes and rinse my face after. As I walked into the men’s room, Larson came out. He looked at me with the same cocked head Angus had at my interview and that day he said I was lucky to be a girl.

In my stall, the same stall I always used, I changed shirts. Just outside the door, a pair of shiny brown leather shoes came into view. There was a knock and I heard Larson’s voice: “René Garraway?”

I didn’t respond, hardly breathed.

“Is that you, René? I think you’ve made your point.”

I put my face down in my lap so he couldn’t see me through the space near the hinges.

People like Larson make life harder. They hang around asking questions, making assumptions. They think I’m trying to make a statement when I piss. I’m not. I just want to piss. Is Larson trying to make a statement when he pisses? No. How much time lapsed, I don’t know. The glare off his polished shoes disappeared. I heard a faucet, then the door opening.

“Miss. Please use the other restroom.” The voice of a security guard from the door.

I wondered, as I sat there, waiting for them to go away, what Cecilia was thinking when she put the poison in Uncle Ross’s chicken cacciatore. Not enough to kill him, but enough to make him think.

Dad always said that in the fall, men either want to fuck something or they want to kill. Fall was two months away, but I had the urge.

At the Y, I did a search for cyanide. This led to a search for tasteless poisons. A stunning catalog of horrible deaths people had imparted to their wives, animals, coworkers, lovers, and rivals greeted me. In England, a man made ricin from castor beans and used it to kill his boss and another business partner. Cyanide came in powder form and the gas worked just as quick. Uncle Ross should have died. She just wanted to scare him, because she could have killed him easily. Arsenic, for instance. No taste, no odor. For many murderers, those qualities weighed heavily in arsenic’s favor. Antifreeze. In one article, there was a picture of a green street gutter. A tabby cat tipped its face down to drink its death. How small a dose would I have to give to hurt without really hurting? The information on wikis and websites contradicted each other. Two teaspoons for a child. So, a tablespoon for an adult? I wouldn’t do it. It wasn’t real. A curiosity, that was all.

On my day off, I walked to H-E-B to buy a money order. Four hundred dollars to send home. After the money order, I walked the aisles, imagining what I would buy to eat when I had money someday. I grabbed a sample tortilla at the bakery — warm, oily, and salty — and ate it while touching fruits and vegetables. Pink salmon and frozen scallops and lobster tails. Waters. Milks in the dairy case. In the aisle for home goods and insecticides, a yellow antifreeze bottle. I left the aisle for a sixteen-ounce Mountain Dew, went back for the antifreeze, and paid at the self-checkout.

On Friday nights and weekends, bands played on a small outdoor stage to the right of the grocery store’s entrance. When there were no bands, it was shaded and a good place to sit. The Mountain Dew’s cold and sugar hurt my teeth, but the flavor... Delicious and weird. Mountain Dew tastes like nothing but itself — just like me. When the Mountain Dew was gone, I walked to the edge of the parking lot and poured antifreeze into the empty bottle. I left the antifreeze jug tucked behind a grassy bush sprouting hard white flowers. Clouds stacked like skyscrapers pushed south toward the gulf.

Did I really want to hurt people? No, not badly. Actually, yeah, just a little. But not seriously. Just a fright to make them appreciate life, just as I had been forced to do through Macy.

I walked through several neighborhoods. I passed bungalows and brick homes, but also construction sites. In Houston, if something is old, people want to rip it down, put in a condo, a steak house.

I needed a hat but didn’t have one. The sun swarmed like bees around my head. I went into the Rothko and pretended to meditate until six, when they kicked everyone out.

I was feeling lost until I saw Larson’s house. There was a dog with curly white fur in the yard. This was Janine. She looked sluggish, like me. I could help her. Larson stepped out onto his stoop and called her in. The two crepe myrtles in front of his house had scattered the ground with pink confetti.

It took a few days of going back at dark, to wait and to watch. He let her out at ten, but didn’t come out with her.

I took a small Tupperware from the food truck and filled it with the poison. I pushed it through the gate, standing back in the hot dark, to watch Janine drink. Forced myself to watch her finish.

I waited for Larson. I knew he would come. It wasn’t fate so much as tacos. The next Tuesday at the MFAH, he appeared. The longer line forced him to wait. I told the next customer I’d be right back. The Mountain Dew bottle was warm in my backpack. I scooped ice into a plastic cup, poured in a tablespoon of the antifreeze, and covered it with limeade.

When it was Larson’s turn to order, I said, “Sorry I was so weird the other day. It took me a second to recognize you.”

“I knew it was you right away, René.”

“How’d everything work out for your dog?”

“Not great. Did I see you the other day, on my street?”

“I like to walk. Do you live nearby? What can I get you?”

The limeade, I told Larson, was on the house.

I watched him eat two Thai chicken tacos at the Ikea table. I watched him drink a plastic cup of water while some feeling, like hair in a drain, clogged my gut. Fucking with a dog was a bullshit thing to do, right? I tried to imagine what Macy would say if she could speak. As Larson stood up, he shook the limeade to say thanks and goodbye.

“Let me make you a fresh one,” I said.

“This one’s fine. When they’re too cold, it hurts my teeth.”

He waited at the crosswalk for the westbound traffic to pass. I told Angus I had to pee. By the middle of the crosswalk, Larson had sucked down the limeade. I followed him into the museum. Near the Islamic art galleries, he rested on a bench. Should I say something to a guard? I could have said something to Larson, but Angus was expecting me back at the truck. I walked outside into thick air.

Within thirty minutes, an ambulance arrived.

“What’s going on over there, I wonder?” Angus said.

A customer with a broad, flushed face leaned on the truck. “I was just coming out. Some guy fell down. They’re trying to help him.”

“Who was it?”

“Search me. Guy wearing a suit. Lots of thick white hair.”

Angus turned. “Do you think it’s the guy from your school, Re? What did he have?”

“A couple of tacos and a limeade. And a glass of water.”

“Let me go see,” Angus said. “You never know. It could be something. Hold down the fort.”

I am still too close to the feelings. To describe them. I remember my heart pounded when, a few minutes later, the police cruisers parked behind the ambulance. I remember my hot and sour mouth, my curiosity. Another part of me, the part that could move, tucked the Mountain Dew bottle back into my bag and grabbed the cash out of the register before leaving.

August brought Hell’s furies. Walking over asphalt hot enough to melt, I became a blister. Red, shiny, and taut. Between the Y’s water aerobics classes, I slipped into the pool. Cold and chemical, it stripped away my skin, my cells. Given enough time, I would be stripped to bones.

In the locker room, I shook a bottle of shaving cream and rubbed the foam over my head. My own face was a blur, a smudge in the mirror, like Larson. I’m sick. No, I’m not. I filled the sink with water and pulled the razor in straight rows across my scalp. After each pass, I cleaned the blades, and it reminded me of shoveling snowy walks. I missed snow now, though I hated it then. The old men shuffled in from the sauna and turned cool showers onto their curved backs. Their loud voices were a comfort. They didn’t mind me. Called me a nice kid as I hand-washed my boxers and binder in the sinks.

When I was done, I sat on a chair outside of the locker room and stared at the picture Dad had sent earlier that week. It came with a text: Remember the pool? Wish we could see you before school starts.

We’d all gone to Walmart to buy an aboveground pool. I’d pushed Macy in her chair into the clothing section and rubbed different fabrics softly along her cheek. In the overgrown backyard, Macy watched us put the pool together and I filled it with the hose. We let the water warm for a day. Then it was ready and I stood in the pool.

“Light as a feather,” Dad had said, lifting Macy from her chair and setting her in my arms. Macy gasped at the feel of the water, let a long moan out of her faintly purple mouth. The inside of a mussel, the sea, Macy’s thin brown legs twigs scissoring in the water until my shhhhhh calmed her down. Behind me, I could hear Dad saying, “You’re good to your sister. You’re good.”

Standing in the museum’s shadow, I watched Taco Heaven from across the street. Angus had hired someone to replace me, a tall and lanky man who would have trouble standing in the truck all day. I waited to see Angus come out, but there was a small line and he always liked to stay ahead of a rush. Another half hour and I would go. At the sculpture garden’s edge, the bamboo waved as squirrels crawled up and down its narrow green trunks. In the middle of the Montrose and Bissonnet intersection, a man wearing a neon vest wove through the traffic, holding a cup. Veteran. Spare change. Anything helps. I waited the first half hour and then another and wasn’t surprised that, the whole time, no one gave the man anything. He was fast with his cane. Maybe he’d been hit, like Macy. Eventually, the line at Taco Heaven disappeared.

I took a drink of water, thinking I would give it another half hour, when the replacement walked across the street to use the bathroom. He scooted across the crosswalk holding something in his hands. Maybe trash? Maybe Angus had seen me and this guy was bringing me something to eat. I looked away, bent down pretending to tie my shoe. I saw the man’s raggedy New Balance sneakers and stood up to look at his face. Fortyish, but younger-looking than Dad. He had a gap between his front teeth and wore his Taco Heaven T-shirt small.

“You look just like he said you would.”

“Who said I would?”

“Angus. He says don’t come back around here.”

“Who are you?”

“Vaughn,” the man said. “I’m the new you.”

“Why did he send you? Why won’t he talk to me?”

“I don’t know. I got nothing against you, but you got to get.” Vaughn peered at me hard, sweat pouring off his face. “You been through some things, huh? Well, I don’t know nothing about it, but you look young and smart enough to pull yourself back from that edge. I got to get back.” Vaughn handed me five dollars. “You know how Angus do.”

“Tell him I’m sorry,” I said.

The truck wobbled as Vaughn slipped inside it. The cicadas sounded like buzz saws and I dug a finger in my ear to get rid of them, but that only made the buzzing stronger. After noon, the shadows moved like ships on gray water. The heat held me close. But Angus would come out soon. Angus would come out. I was sure he would, once Vaughn told him I was sorry.

The Use of Landscape by Robert Boswell

River Oaks

Imagine that thieves move into a house while the owners are away, and the first thing they do is mow the yard, trim the hedges, tend to the landscape — make it seem that they belong while they plunder.

This was Cole’s plan precisely, only the house was Madelyn’s body.

The Criminal Element:

Tariq, who owed Cole.

Herta, who loved Cole.

And Cole, who loved no one.

Why Tariq Owed Cole:

Cole, out of the goodness of his heart (and with the idea that it might be useful to have Tariq in his debt), drove a stolen 1998 Chevy Camaro over Tariq’s friend-turned-snitch Sunny, while Tariq, snugged away in a holding cell, possessed the state of Texas as his alibi.

Why Herta Loved Cole:

He was handsome, decisive, clever, lively, and heartless.

Why Cole Loved No One:

He didn’t know how.

“The girl is the center of the group,” Tariq explained. He bartended at the Azure Lounge, an upscale tavern with divey pretentions on Westheimer just below River Oaks Boulevard. In Houston, River Oaks equaled royalty: money to make Rockefeller envious, mansions to make Gatsby blanch. “They show up three, four times a week — after gym, before dinner, late at night. Rude bastards who tip for shit. Usually three or four of them, sometimes five. Ordinary looking, except they’ve got that sheen that comes from money. You know that sheen?”

Cole had lived in Houston all his life. He knew that sheen.

Herta said, “You can’t spend sheen.” She was not from Houston. She was not from anywhere.

“Not to worry. Madelyn lives with her dad right on River Oaks Boulevard,” Tariq said. He, too, was a native Houstonian, by way of Lahore. “They’re loaded.”

“Money with a pedigree,” Cole said.

“Yeah,” Herta agreed. “Not just any mutt can move onto River Oaks.”

Cole and Herta shared a house two neighborhoods east, in Montrose. They sat at the kitchen table and passed around the covert photos Tariq had taken at the Azure: Madelyn Glancy in tennis gear, in yoga pants, in a gold lamé dress that bunched at her neck.

“That dress fits her body,” Herta said, “the way a newspaper fits a fish.”

Cole fingered the picture, tracing the woman’s head. Madelyn Glancy had a rather long face.

“Don’t say like a horse,” Herta said, reading his mind. “It’s not accurate. People just say that.”

“More like Virginia Woolf,” said Cole.

“I hated To the Lighthouse,” Tariq put in. “Why do they force that mopey white woman on every English major?”

“Here we go,” said Cole.

“Because she was a genius?” Herta suggested. “Because she was the best writer of her generation?”

“I got a black eye reading that book,” Tariq went on. “Fell asleep and hit my beer with my face.”

“You may get another,” Herta said. “I have a first-edition hardback that’ll crack your skull.”

“Don’t argue with her,” said Cole. “She reads.”

“I gave up reading after college,” Tariq said dismissively. “Even before.”

Cole raised one finger to make them focus. “Let’s see the other photos.”

Tariq speculated that Madelyn was sexual with a boy in the group, a pudgy wide-butt with a hipster haircut. “They don’t seem like a real couple,” he said, “but I think they do the nasty sometimes.”

“I can distract Pork Chop,” Herta said.

“How?” Tariq asked. “They ignore everybody.”

“Use a little personal landscape.”

“Am I supposed to understand that?” Tariq asked.

“I will show him my buttocks,” Herta said. To Cole, she added, “This is why I don’t like adding partners.”

“You can’t show your ass in the Azure,” Tariq said. “It’s a respectable bar.”

“Stand up,” she said.

“Here we go,” said Cole.

Tariq obeyed.

“Good boy,” Herta said, rising but losing her balance, catching herself just before her face hit the floor.

“I didn’t know girls actually wore those,” Tariq said.

“Every woman under forty wears a thong.” Herta righted herself as she spoke. “Haven’t you ever gotten laid?”

“Pakistani girls don’t wear them.”

“Yes they do,” Herta said. “Mormons wear them. Nuns wear them.”

Tariq turned to Cole. “So after Butterball breaks up with Madelyn, you move in? Catch her on the rebound?”

Now it was Cole who glared.

“You guys are so touchy,” Tariq said.

“Look at this picture.” Cole indicated Madelyn. “Elaborate haircut, plucked brows, painted nails. Wearing gym clothes but also makeup and mascara. If she’s screwing fat boy—”

“Pork Chop,” Herta said.

“—that’s good news. Think she’ll hesitate to dump him for me?”

Cole got up from the table to pose. He had a casual, alluring way of standing, as if he were about to tip over backward. A child looking up at him wouldn’t see his head, just the promontory of his chest. Adults would note eyes the color of an overcast day and the delicate purse of the lips, as if he were considering extraordinary things. He was clean-shaven, free of sideburns, and carried the retro odors of Lucky Strikes and Old Spice.

“Here’s the kicker,” Cole went on. “She’s vain enough — and rich enough — to believe I might actually be attracted to her.”

“I think she’s kind of good looking, anyway,” Tariq said.

“That’s only ’cause she’s bitchy to you,” Cole explained.

“Have you even read Mrs. Dalloway?” Herta demanded.

The Azure Lounge was cool but close, like mentholated smoke. Heavy drapes the color of a bruise shut out the world. Through slits where the curtains failed to overlap, yellow blades pierced the room. Tariq stationed Cole and Herta near the entrance, where the drapes parted a sliver.

“Incoming,” said Cole, and Herta moved into position.

The group arrived boisterously, Madelyn leading, with three boys trailing. Herta, who’d situated herself perfectly, dropped her leather wristlet between the passing of the first lug and the arrival of Pork Chop, permitting only him to see the length of her legs as she bent. Then she jumped up and into him, as if he’d goosed her.

Pork Chop uttered a series of wha, wha, wha sounds, as if suddenly transformed into a helicopter.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, patting his chest and dropping her purse again. “I’m such a klutz!” She started to bend once more, but stopped herself and crouched demurely, offering an exaggerated frowning-smile for Pork Chop alone.

Simultaneously shocked and smitten, the fat boy could manage neither expression nor locomotion until the trailing boy of their group prodded his shoulder, and Pork Chop reluctantly hoofed it to their table.

Herta handed Cole a copy of the Houston Press, taken from the stand by the door — the presumptive reason for her stroll. Wrapped within the tabloid’s pages was Pork Chop’s wallet.

Cole went into action, aiming himself at Madelyn’s group. He paused on his way to swoop down, pretending to snag the wallet from the floor. The periphery of his vision flashed red, as if a trigger in his head were half-depressed — a sensation he understood as pleasure. “Hi there.” He copped a pose and smiled, eyeing Pork Chop. The group circled a table but were not yet sitting. “When my sister inadvertently tackled you—” he paused to laugh and roll his eyes; he hated eye-rolling, but rich people loved it, “you dropped your billfold.”

The three males self-frisked, dogs with fleas. This was their greatest worry, and they had to lay hands on their money.

Cole handed the wallet to Pork Chop, who riffled through his cards and cash, saying, “She’s your sister?”

Cole and Herta did not look anything like siblings except that each had a cunning nature that lent a cast to their eyes and set their heads at an angle, and these shared traits were easy to mistake for familial bond.

“Thank the man,” Madelyn Glancy told her portly pal. Her eyes never left Cole’s. “Can he buy you a drink? Your whatever — sibling — too. Have I seen you here before?” To Pork Chop, she said, “Put your money away. Where are your manners?” She rolled her eyes for Cole’s benefit.

Cole had rolled his first. He couldn’t hold it against her. He said, “You guys have room for two more?”

Tariq’s First Words to Cole:

“This is supposed to be funny, right?” They’d exited a classroom at the U of Houston, Tariq brandishing The Importance of Being Earnest. “Funny ha-ha?”

“It’s funny,” Cole assured him. “I can tell. Want to help me boost a car?”

“I don’t know ’bout that.”

“From the faculty lot.”

“All right then.”

What Cole Speculated about Tariq:

That he never thought twice about anything, and this was his greatest asset.

Herta’s First Words to Cole:

“Oh, is this yours?” Her hand was on his wallet. His hand held her wrist. Anvil was happy-hour crowded.

He leaned close. “How many billfolds in that purse of yours?”

“I don’t have a bookkeeper,” she replied.

He led her to a booth where, after a few drinks, he discovered that her skills were hard-earned. Her résumé included a six-month stint in Shakopee Women’s Prison in Minnesota, but she’d never been arrested in Texas, and never anywhere under the name Herta Oberheuser.

Cole had no criminal record. His ID was legit, if odd — his whole name was simply Cole. His mother insisted it was all he needed.

“What about your dad?” Herta asked.

“He was in Kuwait when I was born.”

“They still alive?”

“They were the last time I saw them.”

“Which was?”

“Five years ago,” he said. “Maybe six.”

“Where’d they move?”

“Nowhere.” He named the address of his childhood home.

“That’s like a five-minute drive.”

“Without traffic. It can back up there because of the off-ramp.”

“I’ve never met anyone like you,” she said.

To which he replied, “Let’s steal something together.”

She counted it as the most romantic moment of her life.

“What’s your actual name?” Cole asked before they left Anvil. “Nobody is really named Herta Oberheuser.”

“It rhymes with something found in nature,” she said.

“Belephant?” was his only guess.

What Cole Speculated about Herta:

That she must have attended college — you couldn’t do anything without a degree these days — but not in Houston, which was the only place he knew.

And that she loved him, which meant she’d be loyal. Up to a point.

What Cole Speculated about Himself:

That his only gifts were his looks and charm. And his ruthlessness, he supposed, but this acknowledgment made him feel immodest.

“Vodka tonic,” said Cole. “Stoli.” To impersonate the wealthy, one had to be picky, but when Tariq returned to say they were out of Stoli, Cole couldn’t think of another brand. “Whatever your house vodka is, I guess.”

“It’s absolutely barbaric,” Madelyn interjected. “From reject potatoes grown in Oklahoma or Kansas. Without the best potatoes, you get inferior vodka. Russia has the best. Or Idaho. Which is why the capital of Idaho is Moscow. Oh, don’t just stand there, Tark, get the man a Cirôc and tonic — and use your best tonic, Fentimans, if you’ve got it, or Schweppes from a bottle. A small bottle, freshly opened, not from that abominable squirter.”

She continued her monologue after Tariq departed, extolling the virtues of several liquors, many of which Cole knew for a fact were indistinguishable from one another, but he listened and nodded, feigning interest.

Well, he was interested, so he was feigning something else.

“This is just what I need,” he told her when she finally paused, “someone to give me a clue.” He showed as many of his teeth as he thought she could handle, then asked if she knew the way to a person’s heart.

“I don’t know the way to anyone’s heart,” she said, as if it were an unattractive organ like the bladder or rectum. “Most people I know aim a little lower.”

Did that mean they aimed for simple affection? Or the groin? She was hard to read. In any case, she kept talking. Across the table, Herta already had her hand in Pork Chop’s hair. A priest sat in the next booth, drinking whiskey, talking to a woman in a dark dress. She might be a nun. Cole wondered if she wore a thong.

“Get me another of these,” Madelyn told Cole. Tariq was working both the bar and the tables, which made him slow. “And don’t let him forget the lemon peel. I like a good peel, and these guys, you have to watch them or they cheat you.”

By these guys, Cole wondered as he walked to the bar, did she mean workingmen in general or Pakistanis in particular? Whatever else one might say about Cole, he was not racist. He disapproved of all humanity equally.

According to their research, Madelyn Glancy was amply wealthy now but also heir to the family’s money, and her mother had recently kicked. Her father was the only stumbling block, and he was off in Europe — a grieving tour, Madelyn called it. The term would trouble Herta but did not interest Cole.

“You want her drink extra strong?” Tariq asked. “Yours extra weak?”

“Just regular,” said Cole. “You know the priest and nun?”

“The priest, sure, Father Silverman. I don’t think that lady’s a nun.”

“Silverman? He’s a Jewish priest?”

“What do I know from Jewish?” Tariq deadpanned. “The woman, take a look when she gets up. She’s got a tattoo on her leg.”

“Still could be a nun.”

“Like it’s a Jesus tattoo?” Tariq set the drinks before him and waved away payment. “Add it to my share.”

Prior to this scam, Cole had only ever worked one rich woman, a good-looking widow in her fifties. She gave him a watch that he hocked for $750, but the real money came from her checkbook. Herta copied the woman’s penmanship perfectly, and they paid off their debts and bar tabs. Cole sent money to a handful of phony businesses that Herta set up online. By the time the woman cut him off, he’d stolen close to twenty thousand dollars. Yet she didn’t have him arrested. She could afford financial loss better than embarrassment.

Tedious Madelyn Glancy was worth a great deal more than the Rolex woman. Cole girded his sensibilities and headed back to the table. His was hard work, but it was the life he’d chosen.

“I want you to take this back,” Madelyn said after a single sip. “Tell him I can taste. I have a discerning tongue and a developed palate. This is not Cirôc. He’s charging you for the good stuff and pouring rotgut.”

“Sorry,” Cole said, “I didn’t think to track that.”

“They’re always looking to cheat you,” she went on without pause. “Especially to cheat me. They think I can afford it, and, big whoop, I can afford it, but I don’t let it happen. My eyes are like an elephant’s memory: they never forget.”

That makes no fucking sense, Cole thought, rising, smiling.

“She says this isn’t Cirôc.”

“She’s a piece of work,” Tariq replied.

“Pour it into a different glass. Add a dollop of the cheapest shit you’ve got,” Cole said. “Vodka’s vodka.”

“There you go.” Tariq nodded to a departing couple, the priest and woman. The tail of a dragon descended her leg, its body vanishing under her skirt. “Lucky dragon,” he added.

“They have forked tongues,” Cole replied. “In the Chinese tradition, at least.”

“You’re a fount all right.” Tariq slid papers onto the bar.

“What’s this?” Cole asked.

“The report you fucking made me write. I know you can’t take it now, but tell Herta.”

Cole examined the pages: Virginia Woolf’s Use of Landscape in Mrs. Dalloway. He shrugged apologetically. “It was the only way to shut her up.”

“I want a full third.”

“It’s three pages.”

“Single-spaced.”

“Fine, Christ, give me the drink. Wait, did you get this off the Internet?”

“Fuck you. I was an English major.”

“She’ll know, and she’ll have your balls.”

Without looking down, Tariq wadded the papers and threw them away. “I still want a third,” he said, delivering the drink.

“Then do your work,” said Cole.

The party moved to River Oaks. Madelyn’s house was not big by neighborhood standards — barely the size of an ocean liner. White columns divvied up the front. Sycamores and live oaks shadowed either side. The living room was roughly the size of a Walmart. Not a Walmart Supercenter, Cole noted, just the ordinary store. They aimed themselves at a cow-colored leather couch as long as a limo.

“A whole herd of Holsteins committed hari-kari to be this family’s sofa,” Herta said.

“The wealthy have that effect on cattle,” Cole replied. “It’s why they’re forever running for office.”

Cocaine on a silver tray passed from lap to lap. “We have different dads,” Herta was saying. “I’m an Oberheuser, he’s a Cole.”

“Herta Oberheuser?” one of them said. “Wasn’t there a Nazi with that name?”

“Probably,” Herta said. “Our family has long history of betting on the wrong nag.” She changed the subject: “Isn’t it funny we say lose our virginity?” When in doubt, talk sex. Boys loved girls who talked sex. “Like it’s a rowdy dog that got off its leash? Should’ve kept that damn virginity in a kennel.”

“How else could we say it?” Madelyn pressed.

“Whopped my virginity upside the head,” Herta said.

“Poisoned it,” suggested Cole. “Murdered that twit.”

Pork Chop’s face reddened at the grinding of wheels inside his thick head.

Herta adopted an accent. “Give me virginity da boot, I did.”

“Hanged it from a mighty oak,” offered Cole.

“I let someone else have it!” Madelyn said, thrilled to contribute. “I let him or her have it!”

Herta smiled and leaned to whisper in Cole’s ear. “This is like filching marbles from first-graders.”

“Yeah,” said Cole. “Fun.”

“Did I tell you what happened at Affirm today?” Madelyn asked. Affirm was her gym. She described the day’s activities in excruciating detail, a saga that lasted nearly twenty minutes. Summary: she exercised.

They waited until one a.m., then drugged everybody.

Herta helped Cole carry Madelyn upstairs, her arms looped around the girl’s knees. They dropped her onto a wide bed in a girly room with Madelyn’s name spelled on the wall in seashells.

“Jesus,” Herta said, tugging on Madelyn’s skirt. “What a narcissist.”

“Not narcissism,” said Cole. “Egomania.” He unbuttoned Madelyn’s blouse. Tariq was right: Madelyn was long in the face but attractive nonetheless. Especially unconscious. Not that it mattered. Cole recognized beauty but could not comprehend what it was supposed to do for him.

“Self-absorption is a classic symptom of narcissism,” Herta argued. She tossed the skirt aside and tugged on the woman’s panties.

“Narcissists have a delusional sense of grandeur,” said Cole. Her bra was the type that hooked between the cups. He unhooked it and pulled one cup free. “Egomaniacs operate from a deep sense of self-doubt and anxiety. She blares her horn so people won’t examine what’s under the hood.”

“Ooh,” Herta said, “I like that.”

“Don’t think I didn’t notice the underwear.”

“Granny panties,” Herta acknowledged. “Don’t tell Tariq. It’ll undercut my authority.” She crossed her arms and studied. “Leaving the bra on is a nice touch. Maybe I’ll have Pork Chop’s boxers hanging from one ankle.”

“That’s cliché,” Cole said. “It’s beneath you.”

Herta poked at the woman’s exposed breast to measure the wobble. “Enhanced, but nicely done. Top-notch work.”

“You can tell by the angle of the nipples,” said Cole. “They aim too insistently up. No need to touch.”

Downstairs, they separated Pork Chop from the other unconscious saps and lugged him out the door in the direction of the car that answered his key’s beep — a Mercedes the blue of an unobstructed night sky.

“I hope we never drop the term horsepower,” Herta said. She had Pork Chop’s feet. “Have you ever wondered how people who live in countries without horses make sense of it?”

“This fat bastard is heavy as a horse.” Cole’s arms were wrapped around Pork Chop’s chest. He had to waddle to carry the lump. Cole did not like waddling. “There aren’t any countries without horses.”

“Ethiopia, maybe. The Sudan,” she said. “Do they have a conversion to wildebeest power?”

“I don’t think wildebeests are found that far north,” said Cole. “More likely to encounter a horse than a wildebeest in the Sudan.”

“You’re being intentionally pedantic to squelch my conversational gambit,” she said.

“Tariq will want to drag Pork Chop across the yard to your bed,” said Cole. “Don’t let him do it. Make him lift. Mr. Chop’s got to think he walked into your bedroom on his own. He can’t have gravel in his sneakers.” Pork Chop’s sneakers looked to be made from the pelts of endangered animals.

“I can handle Tariq,” she said. “Don’t you fret.”

Headlights appeared up the boulevard, a couple of cars approaching slowly. Cole and Herta ducked beneath the hedge. Sour sweat from Pork Chop’s underarms reminded Cole that humans were merely stinking animals, which led him to think about meat. “She really should have provided snacks.”

“Tacky,” Herta agreed. The headlights of the first car swept past. “I think we enjoy this — even though it involves tasks like toting this human tuba — because our shady intentions darken the things we do, and that darkness lends them weight. Which is to say—”

“Here we go,” said Cole.

“Our objectives mascara the activities.”

“Too girly,” said Cole.

“You wear mascara.”

“Only when I’m working.”

“I’m talking about work,” she said. “I’d like to hear you do better.”

Cole sighed. “Each of the stupid things we do with these rich turds is bearable because the promise of money cuts through the odor of shit.”

“That’s bad in so many ways, I can’t count them all,” she said. “It’s vulgar without being funny. And you can’t literally smell money.”

With gentleness, Cole set Pork Chop’s head on the ground. He took a quarter from his pocket, rubbed it vigorously between his palms, and offered a palm to Herta, saying, “Smells like blood.”

It did smell like blood, and something about this made her happy. The effort he made, she supposed. “You’re not the perfect boyfriend,” she said. “For instance, I know sooner or later you’ll decide to kill me.” She raised her hands to still his protest. “I’m not perfect either.”

The second car turned onto San Felipe and Cole said, “Lift.”

“We were going to, obviously,” said Cole with a soft laugh, “but you were just too drunk. It didn’t feel right. Then we passed out.”

Madelyn, who’d wakened naked with her head on the Cole’s chest, said, “I don’t remember... Well, I do, of course I do, just not every detail.”

“You recall what you said to me?” His full smile was a chasm few heterosexual women could safely navigate.

“Oh god, was I crude?” Madelyn asked, delighted. “Sometimes I can be crude. Crude, crude, crude. Oh, my head, opening my mouth to talk is all I need to send a shuddering pain right through my temples. Here.” She touched a temple. “And here.” She touched the other temple. “It really hurts and my stomach... ”

“Let me see your head.” Cole massaged her temples.

“Oh my,” she said of his touch. “Where was I? My stomach... ” She prattled on.

As it happened, her stomach impressed Cole. The plan called for her to vomit on his chest, putting her in his debt, but she managed to rouse herself and make it to the toilet. The hangers-on — they might still be on the cow-couch downstairs — got knockout drops, but Madelyn and Pork Chop were given extra doses to make them toss. Cole wondered about Herta, confident Pork Chop upchucked on her. She was good with a plan.

“Your hands are so yummy,” Madelyn said. “Where was I? Oh, yes... ” The blather renewed. So far, Madelyn’s stomach was the only thing about her he found impressive. “Okay then,” she said, monologue running down, “what’s this terribly clever thing I said?”

“You said, I covet you.”

“I said that? I love it! I just adore it! And it worked, ’cause here you are.”

“Here I am.” His fingers worked her skull.

“I hate it when people are always worrying about money,” Madelyn said, brushing her hair, attired now in a peignoir that hazed her body like smog. “Money is overrated.”

The brush, he noted, was gold-plated.

He and Madelyn had sex the first time in the shower — a tiled stall the size of a car wash. Afterward, he massaged her back and butt and legs, her head and legs and soles. The second go was on the bed, and — for almost a minute — she lost herself in the act, he could tell. It was noon now, and Cole needed to see his partners. “Can I borrow your Volvo for an hour?”

“It’s not a Volvo,” she said. “Do I look like a mother of snot-nosed toddlers? It’s an Audi RS 7 — not a TT or an S5, but an RS 7 — a car built for the autobahn. Have you ever driven the autobahn? Texas thinks it knows something about speed, but the autobahn, my god, would you believe I cruised at two hundred miles an hour? And it felt like fifty? Smooth as silk.”

He did not believe two hundred miles an hour, and smooth as silk was a cliché. “Smooth as thirty-year-old Scotch,” he appended, teething at her still.

“My dad has fifty-year-old Ardbeg, the peaty stuff, which is what he likes. If you like it smooth, we can go to Richard’s Liquors on Kirby... ”

“Dick’s Liqs?” began Cole, but she talked over him.

“... a two-minute commute, tops. I’ve timed it. Why don’t you wear a watch, anyway? As for car privileges—”

“I just want to get clean clothes,” he interrupted. “I’ll be right back.”

The driver’s seat of the Audi was softer than his bed, but what difference did a car make, really? Cole was not materialistic. He just liked money.

“How’s Miss Bend-n-Squat?” Herta asked before Cole shut the front door. “Off contorting at the gym? Paying to crook her expensive thighs?”

“You’re too sedentary,” said Cole. “You don’t like to think of people exercising.”

“Exercise is for people who don’t read,” she said. “They do nothing of consequence, so they lend meaning to planking. The term pretty much sums them up.”

“You’re formidably sedentary.”

“I’ve never seen you in a gym.”

“There’s no money in them,” said Cole.

“What you guys talking about?” Tariq entered from the kitchen, dressed for the afternoon shift at the Azure Lounge: white shirt, dark pants, thin black tie.

“Work,” Herta said. “Madelyn.”

“She performs in bed like a porn star,” said Cole. It was not a compliment. “Makes stupid faces, ridiculous sounds, speaks absurd banalities.”

“Pound me down like ground round?” Herta suggested.

“It was the boringest sex I can recall.”

“I hate when you say things like that,” Tariq said.

“At least she performed,” Herta said. “Pork Chop came in my hands. Not that I’m complaining.”

Cole produced a single, folded page, and they moved to the desk. Herta scanned the page. She had a talent for forging documents, imitating signatures, pickpocketing, disguising herself, adopting accents. Cole was just good at taking things — like the statement page from Madelyn’s bank account, which held $73,987. They would use its corporate logo and page layout in the letter they sent Madelyn, and include her account number, phone number, address, and Social Security number. The letter would announce a security breach. Do not change your password online. Do not access your account online at all until you have changed your password. Call the automated system to make the change. Speak clearly and follow the prompts. Calls must be made from the number associated with the account. Cole had already attached a recording device to the phone in question — the pink number in Madelyn’s room.

Her father’s study, Cole informed them, was locked. Neither he nor Herta knew how to pick locks. He made a mental note for Herta to learn. “When the old man gets back from Europe, he may be in the market for a trophy wife.”

“I can do trophy,” Herta said.

“We need money now, though,” Tariq said. “Didn’t you skim their wallets?”

“Those clowns track each penny like bloodhounds after a scent,” Cole said.

“Did you mean that to be funny?” Herta asked.

“We have to be patient,” Cole said. “See how much Madelyn’s good for, and the same with Pork Chop.”

“Even he’s calling himself Pork Chop now,” Herta said. “That’s how much he loves me.”

“I have needs,” Tariq said. “Like finding a boring sex partner of my own. And, you know, food.”

“There’s pastrami in the fridge,” Herta said. “Jerk off. Make do.”

“Anyone in this country motivated by anything but the accumulation of wealth is a chump,” Cole said. “Every piece of the culture makes the argument.”

“What about that movie we watched?” Herta said.

They’d streamed Love Actually. Her choice.

“The cinematography was adequate,” Cole said.

“It would’ve been better with more nudity,” Tariq chimed in.

“You didn’t see it,” Herta accused.

“It’s something you can say about any movie.”

“It was about love,” Herta insisted, “not the preeminence of money.”

“Yet they all had thousand-dollar haircuts,” said Cole, “cute lofts, beautiful clothes. The real message: money matters.”

“You’re going to wind up cynical if you’re not careful,” Herta told him.

“Sex is a sucker’s game.”

“You’ve really got to think more about your metaphors,” she replied.

“It’s a means to an end.”

“There you go again.”

Cole didn’t do drugs and drank only in the line of duty. He didn’t get music. He didn’t really get sex, either, although he would now and again condescend to screw Herta. What he liked was theft. That and money, but not for what it could buy, most of which did not interest him — simply for the sake of money itself.

Herta liked first-edition books by authors she loved. Ideally with signatures. She also liked good food and nice clothes. She wouldn’t mind a BMW.

Cole took one of her books from a shelf. “I do not understand how this brings you pleasure.” He waved a first edition of The Optimist’s Daughter. “You’ve already read it. Yet you buy a fantastically expensive version because it has a scribbled name that maybe the writer put there. It’s a fetish.”

“How would you rather I spend my money?”

“Give it to me,” said Cole.

At the same instant Tariq said, “I’ll take it.”

“As for you,” Herta said to Tariq, “I read what you call an essay. At least you understand it’s a great book.”

Tariq shrugged. “Not my very favorite, but decent.”

“What’s your very favorite?”

“Pet Sematary,” Tariq said.

“Here we go,” said Cole, but his phone quieted them — a text from Madelyn: Let’s eat at Uchi!! And then head back to my place for private fun!!!

“I’d like to shoot her in the head,” Herta said. “One shot per exclamation point.”

“If you shoot her in the head,” Cole said, “there’s no point in multiple shots.”

“Uchi is major bucks,” Tariq said, adding: “Get the gyutoro yaki.”

“She’ll expect me to pay,” said Cole. “How can we redirect her?”

Herta took his phone and wrote, No to Uchi!!! Can’t wait that long to hop into your giant hooter!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cole erased the message. “That she doesn’t understand irony doesn’t make her a bad person.”

“Yes it does,” Herta replied.

I’ve ordered pizza for delivery, Cole typed. So we won’t have to get fully dressed when the food arrives.

“It’s not a cheese knife,” Madelyn said that night, after sex but before pepperoni slices, “it’s a rocker knife.”

“Ah, yes,” said Cole. “Of course.” They stood at the kitchen counter with the pizza box and a round of cheese from her refrigerator. She was unhappy with the pizza. Everyone in Houston with a palate orders from Pinks, she’d said. “Anyway,” Cole went on, “it’s the perfect knife for the Brie.”

Madelyn huffed. “It’s not Brie.” Her head quaked with emphasis. “It’s Camembert.” She rolled her eyes.

Cole plunged the rocker knife into her neck. Madelyn’s eyes rolled all the way around until they were, at last, staring inwardly.

“She talked too much,” Cole explained. He was on the phone with Herta.

“Boy howdy,” she said. “Let me tell Tariq. He’s scrounging the fridge.” Cole heard her call out, “Change of plans!”

A moment later, Tariq’s voice at a distance: “Well, crap.”

Herta returned. “And now, o wise one?”

“The backyard is the size of an airport,” Cole said, “and wild in the way back.”

“We’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Don’t park nearby.”

“Twelve minutes.”

“There’s pizza.”

“And Camembert,” Herta said.

“It’s spattered with blood,” he said, “but I can carve around it.”

“There’s something in those bushes,” Tariq whispered. They labored near the back wall of the estate, shoveling by moonlight. “I swear to god.”

“But you’re an atheist,” Herta said. “So that means nothing.”

“It’s an expression,” Tariq said, “that indicates sincerity.”

“Not if the expression itself is a dishonest representation of who you are.”

“Dig,” said Cole. “It has to be deep.” He dropped a stack of pavers at their feet.

“Look over my shoulder at those bushes,” Tariq said. “There’s something in there.”

The back wall of the estate held dense ground cover and a mad scatter of hawthorns, live oaks, and sweet gums. Cole lifted one of the pavers and flipped it at a pocket of myrtle. A white-faced creature hit the ground without so much as a squeal.

“Eww,” Herta said.

“A ghoul!” Tariq whisper-screamed. He jumped from the hole and behind a tree. “What is that?”

“Opossum,” said Cole. “I didn’t even hit it.”

“It’s playing possum?” Tariq asked.

“Opossum can’t play possum,” Herta said. “It’s just doing its thing.” After a moment she added, “I don’t like knowing it’s alive. So close and all.”

“Then we should hurry.” Cole yanked the shovel from her hand and headed for the creature.

“Don’t kill it,” Herta said. “I changed my mind.”

Cole sighed. “Sentimentalist.” He gave her back the shovel. “This is why you tolerate coarse commercial tripe like Love Actually.”

“What are we doing with those bricks?” Tariq asked.

“The paving stones go over the body to deter animals from excavating,” said Cole. “I’m going to check our work inside.”

“It’s good,” Tariq said. “I’ve cleaned maybe a dozen crime sites, and except for one, my record’s perfect.”

“That sentence makes no sense,” Herta said, digging. “You can’t say perfect except for. It’s either perfect or it’s not.”

“What did you miss at the imperfect site?” asked Cole.

Tariq shook his head. “I prefer not to talk about it.”

Simultaneously Cole and Herta crossed their arms.

“Yeah, fuck, all right,” Tariq said. “I got up all the blood and skull chips and brain goo, but I left one item I shouldn’t have, that’s all.”

“Which was... ?” Herta asked.

Tariq shrugged. “The body.”

“I think that’s called a significant oversight,” she said.

“It was wrapped in black plastic, and I got used to seeing it, you know? Like it became part of the landscape. I cleaned the holy fuck out of that place.”

“But forgot the body,” Herta said and laughed. Cole, who rarely laughed, smiled broadly. Herta turned to him. “You ever think how oversight has opposite meanings?”

Cole pointed behind them. The opossum was gone.

E-mail from Madelyn to her father:

“I think you’ve slipped into parody,” Cole said.

“I’m the one who studied her e-mails,” Herta replied. They strolled through the Plaza de Mercado in downtown Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville. “Some stuff you can’t parody.” She wore Madelyn’s big floppy hat, scarf, and sunglasses, as well as one of her blouses — a distinctive polka-dot number. She stood in the shade of a palm tree to take a selfie.

Cole examined the photo and shook his head. “Make the face,” he suggested. “Move deeper into the shadows.”

In her passport photo, Madelyn offered a moue — not to seem pouty, in Cole’s analysis, but to give her face more shape. Whenever Herta showed the passport, she was careful to make the same expression.

“That’s her sexy face,” Herta argued, “not for her dad.”

“He’s seen it a lot, though,” Cole said. “He’ll assume she’s sending the pic to her friends too.”

“I guess.” Herta moved farther into the shadows for the next photo.

In texts to her friends, Madelyn would say that Cole broke her heart and she needed travel. They were spending from Madelyn’s bank account, using her credit cards. They had transferred her money to accounts Herta set up, which was how they’d given Tariq his share. “And what if Pork Chop, who’s nursing his own broken ticker, texts to say he wants to join Madelyn down here?”

Cole thought for three seconds. “Tell him to bring a lot of cash.”

Text from Madelyn to Pork Chop:

“Going to Can in?” Cole asked.

“That’s what autocorrect gives you for Cancún,” Herta said.

“Nice touch,” Cole conceded. “You’re kinda dicking with ole Pork Chop.”

“I know.” She laughed. “It makes me so happy. I’ve got an even better one coming up for Dad.”

“Don’t make me read it,” said Cole. “I trust you.”

Madelyn’s text to a girlfriend included a photo that showed Herta-as-Madelyn nuzzling Osvaldo Cuevas, who cleaned the pool at the Hotel Alameda de Matamoros, where Herta was staying. He’s so ethnic!!!!!

Cole stayed across town at the Best Western. He didn’t want the inevitable investigator to hear that Madelyn had come to town with another gringo. “The problem with Mexico,” he said, “is I don’t know how to steal from people here.”

“We don’t need to steal from anyone here,” Herta pointed out. “We have all we need stealing from Madelyn’s rotting corpse.”

“Exactly,” said Cole. “It’s boring.”

The plan called for Madelyn to rent a car and drive all the way to Cancún. There, she would e-mail everyone about a jungle trip she was planning with a guide whom they’d make absurdly sketchy. Then the e-mails and texts would stop.

“Juan is not a sketchy name,” Herta said. “Adolph is a sketchy name.”

“You can’t name a Mexican guide Adolph,” said Cole.

“It’ll be the one odd detail that’ll convince them,” Herta insisted.

“Whatever. You’re the one who likes to think.”

“Are you depressed or something?”

“I’m never depressed,” said Cole. “Just bored.”

“Here’s something that might interest you. What if Adolph holds Madelyn for ransom?”

“Hmm.”

They were walking on the beach and the setting sun caught in the waves’ curls, shining white within them like oceanic smiles.

“How much do you think we could get?” asked Cole. He took her hand.

Facebook post on Tariq’s page: