We trailed Chance through the hallway and down to the kitchen, a two-headed snake following the charmer’s horn. His shoes clicked on the wood floor like cartilage snapping.He wanted to tour the house, to see what I had in mind.

Paddy tapped nudged my elbow, whispered, “You alright?”

“Fine.”

“Don’t look alright. Look like you just lifted up a skirt and found some balls.”

“I’m just hungover.”

The sun bled through the exposed window over the sink. Bars of light caught dust motes, swirling like we were standing in a Billy Wilder movie. I examined the pattern of splattered cement on my boots.

“So, Cole.” Chance stood in the middle of the floor, arms extended like Christ. His suit looked cut from fresh cloth, but crescent moons of dirt darkened his fingernails. Wrinkles like cracked leather. Two brown lines on his neck where he cut himself shaving. The past two years had blown like sand over his crystalline sense of propriety. “Please enlighten me.”

I surveyed the kitchen, walls a muddy shade of human heart, moving to different angles to see how the color of the adjacent rooms changed the hue. Amy would’ve said to keep the dining room the same, because green meant energy and if you painted it red that would stimulate your appetite and you’d end up looking like a walrus. It made me nauseous, though, the way it contrasted the kitchen. I would’ve painted it a sterile white, then she’d argued with me, saying the kitchen shouldn’t look like a surgeon’s auditorium.

Chance clucked his tongue. “So, Cole?”

“Speak up, son. Man’s asking you something.” Paddy shifted his weight from foot to foot.

“Don’t touch the dining room, it’s fine. Paint the kitchen walls white to brighten the room and replace these cabinets.”

“What’s wrong with them?” Chance said.

I sidestepped to my right, yanked the door off an open cabinet. A splinter tore my fingertip. “Replace the cabinets.”

A smile began to creep across his face. “What would you suggest?”

“Rosewood.” My assertiveness surprised me.

“And the appliances?”

I sucked at my fingertip. “They’ll work, but stainless steel would look better.”

He pulled a silver case from inside his jacket and lit a cigarette. The smoke smelled of acrid perfume. “Rosewood and steel. Rosewood being cultivated and used by numerous Amazonian tribes during religious ceremonies, juxtaposed with the sterility of Western-man-made steel. Beauty and death. The yin and the yang. Both sides of the Force.” He twisted the tip of his mustache. Paddy looked around the room, utterly bewildered.

“‘Yeah, something like that.”

“I always thought those theories were bullshit.”

I shrugged, drew a dusty arc with the toe of my boot and flicked a glob of blood on the floor. “I liked hallucinogens when I was in Art School.”

Chance smiled, opened his mouth as if about to speak, then spun and disappeared into the next room, heel-clicks fading like static Morse code.

Paddy smacked my arm. “What the shit was that?”

“Dunno.” I wiped my nose on the inside of my shirt. Pine trees and burning insulation. The scent of Amy’s salve clung to my chest like a ghost.

“Say, Cole.” Chance’s voice echoed like the Wizard of Oz. “Let’s save the basement for tomorrow.”

Paddy answered for me. “That sounds great Mr. Miller. We’ll have some plans drawn up for you right quick.”

“Care to join me for a cup of coffee?”

“Why sure,” Paddy said. “Sounds great.”

“Not you.” Chance came around the corner and pointed at me. “Let’s take a ride.”

–Paragraph Break–

“What the fuck is on your face?”

Chance slid his Jag in front of a city bus, cutting it off by inches. The bus bellowed like wounded cow.

“It took a while to grow.” He drove with one hand on the mahogany wheel, the other primping his moustache. “Doesn’t it make me look like Orson Welles?”

“You look like Rollie Fingers,” I stifled a yawn, “if he was a pederast.”

My stomach caved in, tentacles of fire in the shape of a hand spreading through my chest. My lungs shriveled to raisins. I never saw him move.

“We grow up a windy piss away from Fenway and you’re going to talk about that Oakland asshole?” He shook his head, tsk tsk tsk, curled his moustache. “Anyway, of all people, I thought you would appreciate the perks of a revisionist personality.”

Air filled my chest like water through sand. I squeezed the plush leather seat until my breath was more than a gasp. If I had that fucker’s hand, I wouldn’t have needed a hammer ever again.

The dashboard panels could’ve been pilfered from a space shuttle. Potholes littered the asphalt like trackmarks on the city’s veins, but the Jag floated over them as if it was the carpet from Arabian Nights.

We stopped at a red light. A rap on the window. Next to us, a man rattled a cup of change. One leg was gnarled like a dog’s chew toy. The other used a chunk of wood for prosthesis. A rusted nail jutted from what would’ve been his calf. Without thinking, we waved our hands, said this is not the car youwant. A thread of nostalgia, maybe nausea, snaked through me. Chance pulled through the red light.

“So, really,” I said. “Why are you here?”

He smirked, tapped the steering wheel to the beat of a Madonna song on the radio. Black dots on each thumb, like rolling a five with dice.

“Don’t you Southerners believe in Dunkin Donuts? Christ, I’ve only seen two since I’ve been here.”

“I wouldn’t call Baltimore southern.”

“Well, look who became Dixie-fried all the sudden.”

“I’m not Dixie, Chance.”

“Housing,” he said, guiding the car into a Royal Farms parking lot.

“What?”

“The market in Baltimore. I came down here to buy every house and turn the city into full-scale replica of Endor for us.”

I muttered Jesus Christ and slid out of the car. Saltwater in the air. Gasoline vapors and sewage run-off. The harbor shimmered, green in the mid-morning sun.

“Remember the Ewok village the three of us tried to build in your backyard? And your dad tore it down because we’d taken all the fire wood.” Chance opened the door, gestured for me to enter first. Floor wax and grease, sausage. Dusty flannels and sawdust. The fluorescent lights flickered, buzzed like hornets.

“You know, I never really forgave him for that.” I handed him a paper coffee cup. “Though it wasn’t as bad as your mom and that ounce.”

“That we got from the Jamaican guy Delilah knew from the Square? That Mom flushed?” He whistled as if impressed, poured coffee for the two of us.

I breathed a laugh. “I think that was the first time I saw you cry. Only time, actually.”

“Fuck yeah, I cried.” He shook his head when I tried to pour cream in his, said he took it black now. “You remember the size of the crystals on that? God, I could’ve still been high today.”

“I thought you’d kill her.”

“Should have.”

The cashier wedged the phone between his ear and shoulder. Bleach blond hair with skin like aged caulk and Mongol eyes. Pulling a few bills from his pocket to pay for the coffee, Chance squinted at some invisible point in the air. I said thanks but he wasn’t listening. Steam rose from my cup like fog. When the cashier gave our change, Chance just stood there, hand extended. The cashier looked at him. Chance said something guttural, motioned with his thumb. The cashier’s eyes twitched and he recounted the coins, laid a nickel and two pennies in his palm, clasped his hand and gave a slight bow. Chance nodded, said, “Do svidaniya” and left.

I leaned against the car, sipping coffee. “Was that Russian?”

He smiled, pleased. “The Force is strong with this one.”

“Since when the fuck do you speak Russian? And get tattoos?”

The horn bleated and startled me. “Wrong button,” he said, and opened the car.

We drove down Eastern Avenue, headed towards the sun. Every ten seconds, he’d change the radio station, finally settling on a Public Radio news show. Reports of tragedy and warfare from anonymous foreign lands filled the car. He flipped it to the salsa station.

An awkward blanket fell over the car and for a moment, I thought he’d spiked my drink. Warmth settled in my body. The same houses and buildings I’d walked past a hundred times were oddly unique. My brain wasn’t racing in a thousand directions and I found myself falling into a contented trance. Like the first few months with Amy, but not. Like waking up and seeing her face, but not. Like eating at our favorite Thai diner we’d heard had closed, but not. A faint ticking; a ghost scratching its fingernails on the back of my skull. I glanced over at Chance. Uneven ears and squinting eyes webbed with crow’s feet. Thin white thread of a scar starting at his temple then disappearing into thinning hair. He stared out the front window, head resting on a fist, the other hand on the wheel. He didn’t seem to be looking for anything, just looking.

“So when did you get married?” I said.

He laughed. “Cole, you of all people should know I have no use for that.”

“Paddy said something about you and your wife.”

He turned the wrong way on a one-way street. A dog with fur like a stained mop ran between cars.

“Chance,” I said, pointing behind us. “The house is back there.”

“Mmhh,” he said, lips forming a smile like a maggot molting into a fly.

Something not right about them two.

“Where the hell are you going?” A woman lay sprawled on his front porch, one sleeve rolled above her elbow.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Hotshot and his wife.

He licked the edge of his teeth. “I need to make a quick stop.”

“I’m out, Chance. I’ve got a family. I’m done.”

“Breath into a paper bag or something. It’ll only take a second.”

Turn the city into Endor. For us. Us.

“Shut the fuck up,” I said. Goosebumps seized my body as he pulled over. I ground my palms into my eyes.

The back door opened. A thousand nails scraping glass.

“How goes it, sister?”

“Everything is good.” A voice like mercury in the palm of my hand.

“Everything is cut and ready to be disposed of?”

“Like a coat-hanger abortion.”

I bit my tongue until copper filled my mouth.

“Cole,” she said. “You never returned my calls.”

“Long time, Delilah.” I opened my eyes. “Long time.”