MY MOUTH WAS PARCHED. Something metallic on the tongue, coppery. Blood on the pillow; bit myself in my sleep. I often opened my eyes with a start at 3:05 am, no matter what the next day was pregnant with, and try as I might, couldn’t coax forty more winks. In my university days I was an insomniac, the futility of sleep either fueled by high allostatic load or narcotic ambition. Sat at an all-night diner evaluating a cup of black coffee, sometimes a plate of waffles or Latkes, sausage and fruit cocktail. The scent and taste of fruit cocktail brought memories submerged back to the surface; a communion with the gods of Betamax in academy ratio low-res: Max Headroom and Atari 2600 fever dreams. A 1980s analog voyeur gazing into a black and white Sony monochrome parallel universe, swaddled in the warm tones of mag tape. The Challenger arcs a soft vapor cloud against a granular trinitron CRT perfect blue sky. A lone figure facing down a tank somewhere in China; Gandalf against the Balrog. Candy-striped chernobyl’s smokestack to cold war hubris, a crude child's grok of inevitable total nuclear annihilation just under the surface of my awareness. Now there was an old familiar word on people's lips: Recession. I remember it uttered under the soft incandescent haze of our Victorian house, where my Dad snaked Jazz records, Bebop and Blues.

On sleepless college nights I watched, through space age glass dappled with raindrops, escorts pulling on post-post-coital cigarettes, a jumble of pastel halter tops and screaming miniskirts lensed by the rain into blurs of colour not unlike what my budding eyes captured in Trinitron. Now and then I would invite the working girls to sit with me and warm their insides on my dime. All I asked for in return was a story.

"Tell me a lie and two truths,” challenge thrown and accepted. The idea was they could tell me three things, and I would have to guess which was true. My favourite was Bobby, with a ‘Y.’ The coy blonde from Witchita. With dental school textbook teeth she bit her fingernails, awash in glossy postmodern noir fluorescence.

"I used to work for the Feds, " she said, the laugh lines around her mouth dead giveaways for happier times, "I'm the youngest of nine kids, and I've been to France." Which of these was most improbable? It wouldn't have been entirely fair to assume any one of them was, based solely on her current occupation. People fall on hard times. Who we are today is no guarantee of who we'll be tomorrow. Judging the character and intent of others was always like a skating rink—slippery; something I chalked up to a nomadic childhood. When friendships are transitory the tendency is to take people at their word; bonds are formed on simpler terms. Surface considerations take on more value than perhaps they should; hobbies, tastes and pop-preferences engender tribes. Boundaries tended to ensure isolation. I flipped Bobby's answers over in my mind. Eight siblings wasn't far fetched; my Dad had four, my Mum had six. Unlikely that anyone with eight siblings would end up in the state in which she found herself. That would make at least ten people, parents included, who didn't give a damn about her. Unless she didn't have one to give about herself—she didn't seem to fit the masochist profile. I rested my chin on the palm of my 26 year-old hand, scanning her face for tells.

"I doubt you have eight siblings." Bobby was still as houses for an instant. She raised her upturned nose, beryl eyes gazing down at me, an owl considering taking a slow dive on a mouse. Her perfect cheekbones quivered, she flushed and unleashed a torrent of laughter that filled our booth.

"And I thought I was so subtle. How did you guess?"

"Once in awhile, even a blind squirrel finds a nut," Something I’d heard my mechanic say. I shrugged, re-upping our coffees, "It just seemed damned odd to me that eight people could knowingly leave their baby sister to the wolves. They would have to be eight absolute bastards."

"Four absolute bastards," she speared a sausage link from my plate, held it aloft with her pinky out. I pressed on, asking for names. She had nice hands, slender and unweathered by trial. "Oh, let's see. There's Dopey, Baldy," She counted them off on her fingers, "Beavis and Butthead." She bit into the sausage, sensing my bewilderment at her casual, easy talent for gallows humour. "Oh, I've completely come to terms with my situation. It's not so bad."

"Probably more honest than working for the Feds."

"Now you're catching on." She held her coffee with both hands, blew steam off the surface. I watched her sip, close her deep set eyes. She was somewhere else, some place warmer; maybe back in Witchita, laying on the flatbed of a truck in a sea of blue grass with the Sun caressing her face. I could see the tension ease in that vast space between her collarbones.

"My Dad always told me that blood is thicker than water."

"Lies are thicker than water. They're like quicksand," Bobby went for a waffle this time, tearing a ragged corner with the side of her fork. She took a bite, eyeing the drop ceiling in the manner of ponderers, "Actually, I take that back. Lies don't drown you like quicksand, not exactly. It's more like a hot bath; really comfortable at first, but after awhile the water gets lukewarm. You end up having to pour on more and more lies to feel the heat again." There is an inherent sexuality in conversation; intercourse between minds that demands skill, focus, consideration and no small amount of daring.

"You ever think of quitting?" I leaned back. She uncrossed and re-crossed slender and endless cowgirl legs, bought time pulling from her dwindling cup of coffee.

"I've heard that one before." I was sure she had; the ‘run away with me, baby’ routine.

"Then you'll have an answer."

"I can't do this forever, I know. Girls age out–retire by 40, usually not always. Some clients’ll pay for the girlfriend experience. I'll quit. Stick with one of them." She cleaned her plate, "They know what they're getting, so it's all above board. No bullshit."

"You're so matter of fact about it." I watched her move on to post-meal feminine rituals, performing lipstick chirapsia in clamshell compact. "Tactical, even." There was something comforting in her candor, like she was letting me peek at the sexual cipher.

"Just how the world works. Buyers and Sellers. Haves, have-nots," She heaved in a breath, breaking frame. Rising from the table reminded me how tall she was, "Thanks for the meal, and the company. Nice to be with a man doesn't want something from me." She fluffed her hair, coaxing it into a weir of golden willows against the black leather of her jacket. Where her peers were vociferous in their bearing, advertising an artificial hyperfeminine, Bobby embodied alluring in that subtle, 'girl-next-door' way men pine for. Unassuming, introspective, even hushful. I couldn't honestly say that, under a different set of circumstances, I wouldn't want her; but not in the realm of the transactional where phony desire was peddled; where people were commodities. No illusions of rescue beat in my chest. My desire was reserved for the genuine, the authentic. Commercial enterprise provided her a buffer from intimacy. Loose cannon axioms crashed through my awareness: she was never truly naked.

"I'm here all the time. Say Hello," A smile flickered on her face, so faint it could have been the Autumnal chill sending proxysms through her nerves. I watched her stride from the diner; neither the first nor the last woman to glide through the door and take a beat on the stoop to light a cigarette in neon rain. Her last words tumbled around my mind. "Doubt that'd be good for either of us." I never had the chance to find out if she was right.

I'd been back home in Portland a week, maybe two. Running the checklist. Making certain I had accounted for everything. Awaiting news from my driver that he had linked up with Margot and picked up my storage. Seemed simple enough, but that clashed with his radio silence. 30 boxes and a Les Paul guitar. It sounded like a bad Country song. I watched Justine sleeping naked beside me. Her sable hair cascading down china-doll porcelain skin luminous in the moonlight. The woman could sleep through a 50 kiloton nuclear blast. I ran my fingers over goosebumps on my skin, an artifact of exploding head syndrome—an ideated yawp that floods through the awareness just before waking, with a start, at oh-dark-thirty. It sometimes sounded like our dogs were barking. I wetted my lips, trying to rescue my dreams from the fog of conscious awareness. I don't know which was more futile. Something about a citadel of sand, the face of a sphinx weathered under unceasing high winds, faceless slender leather skinned creatures without eyes. They explored my Frank Herbert Desert robes with neotenous hands, hundreds of tiny bells jingling about their wrists, they whistled pop tunes through lamprey mouths, and tried to sell me CDs.

Rolling back onto my right side, bracing for a volcanic soreness that erupted from my pelvis. Whatever it was that had made itself known in Margot's shower wasn't showing any signs of settling down. Pushing the pain beneath the surface punctuated by a pneumatic hiss through my teeth, I heaved myself out of our bed, immediately stepping on one of our dogs. He woke as suddenly as I had, his ears folding back, his tail giving me a knowing flick as I apologized. The closest any human will ever come to unconditional love is the love of a dog. Naked, I knelt down in the moonlight, stroking his scruff, pushing through the simmering pain in my backside. He placed one beefy paw on my hand, licking it reassuringly. We named him Huckleberry Finn, Justine's idea. Most of our first year together, in 2016, went to weekly visits at the humane society, searching for a dog. It wasn't long before the staff knew us on a first name basis, even going so far as to set aside, from prying pedestrian eyes, dogs that might suit us.

You can tell a lot about a person through considering their taste in dogs, if they like dogs much at all. Justine was dead set on a Pit bull Terrier or an American Staffordshire. I wondered if owning a Pit bull was a reflection of how a person sees herself; Maybe not the best looking, but sweet on the inside, vulnerable. The misunderstood vagabond of American folklore in canine form. There was something to the underdog spirit Pit bulls embodied. They were the dogs of wayfaring strangers, and earth mothers. Suppressing my canine Jim Crowism, I attempted to adopt an open mind for the sake of my girlfriend's tastes. On some level I found her hankering for Pit bulls disappointing, she would be just another Portland Punk Rock Girl with a Pit-mix. It seemed clichéd; unimaginative even. She had regaled me of stories from her anarchist twenties. I knew the type; crusty conformists to their non-conformism. Punk Rock revolutionary khaki; the ripped black jeans, the tattoos, the gauged ears; chelsea cuts drenched in improbable manic-pixie manic panic. A Pit bull would complete the look—right out of central casting. By my reckoning, Punk wasn’t a look, it was a state-of-mind. I worried about such a dog living up to its notoriously bloodthirsty reputation—one thing when the owner is a pretty All-American female and can coax an iota of leniency. Quite another when my swarthy shade combined with such a breed might engender flashes of Michael Vick. They say it's not the dog, it's the owner, but that wouldn't do me any favours. I wanted a herding dog. It's what I was used to, preferring their energy, grace, and most-of-all their intelligence. It simply would not do to have a stupid or violent dog, so I let my bowwow-bigot flag fly. What would my dog preferences say about me? I thought, driving the two of us to one of our weekly dates to the Humane Society, That I was Loyal? Hard-working? Obsessive to the point of obstinacy? Perhaps a bit eccentric. Smart. Easily trained…

Once, We lay in Justine's bed, above the Speakeasy on SE Taylor, looking at Humane Society dogs. Her cooing over Pit-mixes each met my grumbling "meh." She paused on a photo of a Spaniel with one lip curled in Bronx cheer. The dog was actually sneering at the photographer.

"Now that dog just looks like an asshole." I could barely push the words out of my mouth before we erupted into convulsions of howling laughter. We were two fully realized human beings, with different preferences, and we found pleasure in our differences. Months dropped off the calendar as we searched. The way it would typically go, we'd take a stroll through the dog pods: Green, Blue, Yellow and Red. Each pod contained a given number of kennels, most a temporary home to a dog. A cursory meeting with each, seeing how they reacted to us through the kennel, yielded a short list of dogs we wanted to meet privately. Heather, the affable volunteer at the Humane Society, found our playful energy infectious; taking us into her hands each Thursday we turned up at the shelter.

"I fight my co-workers for you guys every time you come in," she exclaimed, taking us back to one of the private meeting rooms in Green Pod. We had picked out a four year old Australian Kelpie named Hurley. She sat us down in the pod, "I'm really excited for you guys to meet him. He's such a great dog." She was back through the door almost as fast as she had brought us in, "I'll be right back with him. Just sit tight." Justine beamed, her eyes glowed with excitement. Moments ago we had cruised by his kennel, and knew immediately we fancied a meeting.

"I have a really good feeling about this!" Justine was bouncy with anticipation, "Did you see how sweet he was? So responsive! I think he likes me," On the other side of the glass Heather was returning, Hurley in tow. As they entered he stopped in the doorway, tail wagging his whole body. He shuddered, let fly a cannonade of staccato howls, and wriggled his way up to us, acquainting himself with our scent, then proceeding to inspect the perimeter of the room. Heather gave us the rundown: He had been picked up as a stray, no ID, a little malnourished. He probably had people at one point but they hadn't neutered him—it may have been a bad situation and he likely ran away. He ate from our hands. The degree to which Justine was daydreaming the moment we would find our dog flew under my radar. As with all things, I was methodical. looking for every sign that the dog could be trained, conditioned, and trusted. Running thought-experiments about acclimating him to our new flat, calculating scheduling and walks. It didn't occur to me to just be present and enjoy the moment.

"I want to try something," Justine sprang up, treat in hand, "Hurley!" He came trotting over to her, attentive, thousand-yard stare, tail high and wagging. "Okay. Hurley, Roll over!" Hurley flattened himself on the ground, and executed a flawless barbecue roll. Justine covered her mouth, blushing "Oh my God! Did you see that? He's our dog!" There was nothing more to it. It was done. "We'll take him." I caught tears gathering in Heather's eyes as I said it, excitement washing over her and maybe a little bit of relief.

Later, we sat in front of Hurley's Kennel. The papers were being drawn up elsewhere. Hurley, soon to be Huckleberry Finn, contemplated us from the kennel.

"You wanna go home with us?" Justine said excited, "you wanna come home with us, Bubba?" He cocked his head at the word "home." Something he still does to this day. "You're gonna go home! Go home! With us." He sat, gracing us with his thousand yard stare, responding to Justine's elation with a Wag-Wag of understanding. She squeezed my arm, "He's our dog! He's so perfect!" Her face was wet with tears, "I must look like a crazy person. I'm such a mess right now. He's our dog!" Through all my numerous relationships I never took seriously the possibility of starting a family. I always felt secretly unlovable and kept one foot pointed at the door, expecting the axe to drop sooner or later; for lovers to become enemies. I'd had one other dog with a woman, and lost that dog to her before I moved to Portland. I was taking a huge step onto the tightrope of trust, and I hadn't communicated that to Justine. Having a dog with someone again was another risk taken; another connection I could lose; another way I could be hurt if things went pear shaped. I offered nothing of those thoughts in that moment, keeping them to myself in the inner sanctum of my being; a place defined by the solemn and private masculine--a habit that opened me up to allegations of emotional unavailability by others, to the projections of their fears. It hardly seemed necessary to make such a grave admission. Sat, on the floor of green-pod, waiting to adopt Huck on a wet mid-October day, as the remnants of a Japanese Typhoon slammed into the coast, life seemed possible. We called the day our "day of yes."

Earlier that same day, I had bought a new car with the insurance settlement from my accident a month earlier. A gaggle of underwriters, who I'd never met, ruled that I was not at fault. Damn right I wasn't at fault; I'd been sat at a red light when it happened. A couple in a Honda Civic blew a combination "right turn only" and "stop" sign at the cross street, T-boning a Mini Cooper in the oncoming lane. The Cooper's airbags deployed, stunning the middle-aged driver, and she hit me head on. Three cars totaled. It's true what they say when a crisis unfolds before you. Time dilates. Horrified, I watched the Cooper swerve under the impact and accelerate towards me, the driver blinded and stunned by a deployed airbag. In expanded time, I'm able to judge how fast she's approaching, with eternity to contemplate the inevitable collision. I see my car give way like the a bellows of an accordion, my knees exploding from the impact. Ever the eternal pessimist—blessed with that uniquely Jewish way of metastasizing a skinned elbow into a gunshot wound.

The Cooper plowed into me, throwing my car back, face-planting me into my airbag. Shaken but unscathed, I clambered out of my car and crossed the mixed debris field on unsteady feet. Possessed, I marched up to the Honda civic, seeing red, jumped-up on adrenaline and testosterone; on vicious autopilot.

"The fuck were you thinking!" I raged at the Honda, "That was a right turn only plus a stop sign you just blew!" I was pacing now, like a caged Lion, "Fuck you in a rush to go nowhere shmucks! You fucking imbeciles! I can't stand you egoistic knuckle-dragging creeps! Driving like you're the only motherfuckers on the road!" Behind the shattered glass the couple just stared back at me, through a haze of shock and fear. Neither one was even in their mid-twenties. Both twiggy and pallid in that way only vegans can be. The woman had been driving. The car was brand new. Temporary tags tacked to pristine glass. They were probably on a joy ride down from Seattle, basking in a frenzy of post adolescent possibility.

Nausea oozed in my guts; the adrenaline abandoning me. I dropped to debris strewn tarmac next to their car, a puddle of frayed nerves and heaving breaths. Marinating in horror. I felt like a beast. Like I had betrayed part of myself, proven that just under my veneer of civility lurked that half-mad, half-black part I was always in conflict with; the wild savage some secretly feared. I must have loomed monstrous over two people vulnerable in post-accident shock; bloodlust pouring from my mouth. Frothing rage emerging from nowhere. I hoped they didn't hear me, that the shock of the impact had dulled their senses; that the pure fury unleashed on them would feel indistinct from a dream. An uncertain amount of time passed while I stared at my shoes, my breath heaving-to, slowing to baseline. The distinct tang of urine invaded my flared nostrils. The twiggy woman was standing over me; she had peed herself. She was beautiful, gazing down at me with geisha eyes.

"I am so sorry," I rasped, shaking my head, recomposed to my usual gentility "I am so ashamed of my behaviour just now—" I wasn't sure what had rattled me more, the crash or my startling reaction to it. "Are you okay?"

"Nothing's broken," Inside It was a different story. I didn't know I was capable of such hysterics. It was only when the pain shot through my wrists that I realized my fists had been clenched. "Thank you for asking. You okay?"

"Same," she bit her lip, hoping I wouldn’t notice the stench of urine, "We were fighting," she thumbed her boyfriend still in the car, still bathing in shock, "I wasn't watching the road--we're not from around here. Just down for the weekend y'know?" she said, wrapping her arms around model slim hips.

"Forget it. Looks like we were the lucky ones anyway," I nodded to the crushed Cooper. A woman was climbing out of it, running a bloody hand through a shock of brown hair. She wrenched open the back door, calling to someone in the back seat.

"Graham! Graham!" She climbed into the wreck, leaving a sanguine handprint on the Cooper's silver fuselage, the rest of what she shouted unintelligible from within its oily black of the interior. "Maybe, stay with your boyfriend and catch your breath," I placed a hand on her shoulder, she didn't flinch. Surprising. I wouldn’t have blamed her if he had. "I'll see to it," I started for the cooper, turned back to the young woman, "I'm really sorry I acted that way. Completely improper." She threw me the briefest of 'it's fine' hand waves, uncoiling her arms and rubbing her almond eyes with one clammy palm. I returned my focus to the evolving crisis around the Cooper, the sounds of panic rising as I drew closer. A crowd had gathered. The middle-aged woman was lifting a small boy out of the back seat. The boy was bleeding from a gash on his forehead, but was otherwise okay. His clear blue eyes settled on me, I nodded. The woman turned to me, then to the couple by the Honda.

"What the fuck is wrong with them!" She started towards the couple on unsteady legs, ready to throw them a tongue lashing something fierce. "Where'd you learn how to drive, you assholes!" I stepped in front of her, stopping her power-gait in its tracks, hands aloft.

"Ma'am, I've berated them enough for the both of us and it didn't help me feel any better. Let’s check on your son?" Leading her back to the cooper, she glanced at Graham, then at the car. She exploded into tears, dropping into a swaying motion. It looked like she was dancing a slow hug-and-sway with grief.

"Oh God!" she exclaimed, through her fingers, "It's a 2006," she meant the car, "I'm never going to find one of these again—not in this colour!" Her eyes again found the young couple, acquired missile lock, "could kill that stupid bitch..." she locked back on to me, "did you see what happened? Oh, you were in the SAAB weren't you? I hit you," she grabbed my arm, "bitch hit me and I hit you and—" she shifted from bitter to bright, "are you okay? You're okay right? Graham!" Caterwauling panic and dissociation. I lead her to the sidewalk, catching a glimpse of the damage to my own car as I passed. Yep, Total loss… A money-pit anyway; always breaking down; stealing my options. I had paid cash for it after three months at my agency job. When they laid me off—with no warning or explanation, I held onto it out of a sense of fear that all I had poured into rebuilding it would be for waste if I let it go. I gambled that the sporadic, unpredictable expense would somehow be more manageable than the guaranteed burden of a monthly note on a new car.

"Julie!" A forty-something man appeared as we approached the sidewalk. Julie's husband. She somehow had the presence of mind to call him between fits of anguish and dissociation—they had been just about home when the crash happened. The couple stood, assessing the damage to their car. In the warm tones of magic hour I sat under the gnarled limbs of an Alder tree, waiting for the police to arrive. I felt breath on my cheek looking over past a growing headache. It was Graham, a gout of blood running down one brow, who had come to sit next to me. He had been forgotten in his parents' fuming over the totaled Cooper. He was holding Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker, complete with the green lightsaber.

"D'you like Star Wars?"

I smiled at him, amazed that he appeared unfazed before I remembered to chalk it up to shock. "I love Star Wars. Very much. Three of my favourite movies, really." Star Wars ended in 1983. I was there. Here I was, worried about keeping a solemn pact to proclaim my nerd-cred, even to a child. I chuckled at the absurdity.

"There's six. An' they're makin' a new one," He really was a different generation. I pointed to the toy.

"Can I see who you have there?"

"Luke Skywalker's my favorite," Graham declared.

"Me too. How old are you, Graham?"

"Six."

"I wasn't even half your age when my parents took me to the movies to see Return of the Jedi. You know Luke fighting the Rancor Dom in Jabba's Palace?” He nodded, “It's my earliest memory," Who cares? I had never been a natural with kids. They seemed so hard to relate to; pure emotion, unimpressed by subtlety, nuance or complexity. Unimpeded by reason. They were pure humanity. Sometimes thinking maybe I was just too vain to throttle things back to child speed, then remembering I’d hated when adults laid on the baby-talk. To me, it was odd that we had all been children once, but some of us couldn't remember how we liked be connected to when we were little. At six, I was usually on my own entertaining myself. "You have any brothers or sisters, Graham?" He shook his head, emphatically 'no.' "Neither do I." I watched his parents simmer over the wreck, talking animatedly. "It's just a car for fuck's sake," I muttered under my breath, judging from afar, forgetting for a moment Graham's virgin ears. Justine always said I would be a great dad.

"You wanna see him?" Graham was holding Jedi Knight Luke at me. I realized that I owned both the 1983 and 1997 versions myself.

"Sure," I took Luke with trembling hands, making that iconic FIZZ-WAAHMMM sound of a lightsaber ignition. I watched Graham watch his parents argue over the wrecked Cooper. Julie's husband was pacing, distraught. Whatever invective Julie was spewing through a face fire-engine-red with embarrassment wasn't helping. Neither broke their futile squabbling long enough to look up and see if their son was nearby, to ask if he was okay. This was a story I knew all too well. Parents wrapped up in the tangled web of status and material entombment. I was convinced being an only child somehow stunted my growth. Other people I knew with siblings seemed to have a better handle on life; to get on easier in the world. They knew how to claim space, how to self-advocate. I would hear the endless refrain, "oh, you're so lucky to be an only child! You never have to share things, you get your own room," which was ridiculous to me—the assertion that my upbringing was happier because I got more stuff. "Maybe," I once said to a girl who had been gushing her envy over my only child status, "but I have no one to talk to."

The fury I vented on the young couple echoed in my mind. In the blink of an eye I imagined Graham at my age, chasing the white whale of success; impaling himself again and again on the sword of self-imposed expectations just so that others—his parents—would finally see him. Berating a young couple, in town for a holiday, over an accident because things inside him were falling to pieces under an avalanche of failures; wondering when to shrug it all off and walk away. A slice of someone else’s life catalyzed inner reflection. My own parents were neither neglectful nor cruel, just uninterested. I lost a bike at a park once, and the next day there was a new even better one. Other kids had either NES or Sega Genesis; I had both. Every material desire was satisfied, whether I asked for it or not. What I wasn’t allowed were my own preferences. What should have been a natural human battle for Individuation may as well have been The Somme; the mere assertion of my own tastes so often met with “don’t be selfish!” or “try thinking of other people from time to time!” I watched others move forward in life, getting ahead. They showed no outward signs of deference to the whims or others. They identified their desires and grasped, unapologetically. Suppression transfigured my un-met hankering into rage—mostly turned on myself. When I was Graham’s age, I would lock myself in my massive walk-in closet, filled with the envy of other children and I would hit myself as hard as I possibly could with one tiny closed fist. When the dust settled, my ears ringing, I would emerge calm, collected and unsuspected. Such was my penance for individuation.

The crash had breached some barrier in me, brought me face-to-face with that deprivation; That I just wanted to have a day where nothing went wrong, where I wasn’t running myself ragged to measure up or meet anyone’s expectations. I wanted to hug the kid, clutch him to me; tell him that he was seen and heard, but it wasn't my place and I wouldn't lie. Mark Twain was right: History doesn't repeat, but it does sometimes rhyme. Dusk gathered, the shadows crept. It was soon time for Graham to rejoin his parents, claim his space. I couldn't be sure what the right move was—I spent my childhood playing referee for mine.

"I think your Mum and Dad need you to be their hero right now," I suggested, handing Luke back. It was nice meeting you Graham." Graham would be nine now. Time flies. I wonder if his parents finally see him.

"K. Bye." He waved, and ran back to them. Simple as that. As soon as he appeared in their umwelt, they stopped bickering. I pulled out my phone. I'd been sat on it awkwardly. I called Justine, who was just a few blocks away putting together our new home.

"Girlfriend," I always called her ‘girlfriend’ and she always called me ‘boyfriend.’ It was an inside joke that I doubted would change when we married. "I have some bad news... There's been an accident—"

Huckleberry Finn gazed up at me from his spot on the floor. It was highly irregular, him being in the bedroom late at night. Usually he slept in the living room with his sister. Each night, since I returned from wrangling my storage in Colorado, I would wake with a start and there was Huck, on the cold hardwood floor, leaning against my side of the bed, gazing at me with dinner plate eyes. I rose from the bed and Huck shifted on his haunches, keeping me in his field-of-view.

"Where are you going?" My rising woke Justine who offered me a sleepy challenge from the bed her naked back still turned towards me.

"Huck's in here again," I leaned down to place a hand on his head, wincing at the pain in my pelvis. "I'm going to check on Luna. Grab some water," My grunt had already given me away.

"He knows something's wrong." I let her remark hang in the air along with the truth. We both knew she was right, but I didn't know what I could do about it. “I’ve seen you writhing around in pain night after night, and frankly it’s keeping me up too.” No disagreement took root in my mind, but the facts were the facts: I was barely making ends meet as it was; what would it cost me to see a doctor out-of-pocket? If it was something serious a doctor was only going to tell me that I needed treatment I couldn’t afford. Every time I’d managed to crawl my way back into the black something would come out of left-field and slap me back down into the red. We needed answers, yes. I also needed time.

“I hear you, girlfriend. Just don’t know what to do right now. I’m on the razor’s edge as it is.” Huck sidled over to keep me in view—wherever I was going, he would be right behind me. Justine left it there. Huck followed me out into the living room, where I sat in my reading chair, pain burning through me, moonlight cascading in from the drapes, highlighting on the windowsills a thin coat of ash from the previous summer’s wildfires— I had never been able to fully scrub it clean. Huck watched me with dinner plate eyes. “If I just land a few bids soon, I can at least see a doctor,” Huck gave me a wag-wag, a tacit agreement between gentleman that I was doing what I could, seeing the situation for what it was. I was running myself ragged. Everything I made evaporated to living expenses. Living itself seemed like a luxury. For the first time, in a long time, I wept.