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wearing my underwear and using my downstairs toothbrush? I knew I should have got that key back. I forgot all about it.”
    “You want a sandwich?”
    “Yeah. There’s some chips in the cabinet.”
    “Left side?”
    “Yep.”
    Leonard got the chips down and another plate and made me a tuna sandwich with cheese, light on the mayonnaise, just the way I like it. He made his with mayonnaise and mustard, got the jug of milk out of the fridge, put it on the table and then the sandwiches. He got a diet cola out for me and sat down.
    I said, “Just for the record, you are the only one in the universe that has mustard and mayonnaise on tuna, and you don’t drink milk with a tuna fish sandwich. Starving people all over the world wouldn’t eat mustard on tuna.”
    “I like milk and mustard on tuna.”
    “I’m just saying that makes you an alien and universally wrong and you’re keeping me up.”
    He chewed carefully. “I figured since I couldn’t sleep you shouldn’t, so I came over. Your car, the hood was steaming from the rain. You went out recently. So my guess is you haven’t been sleeping so good either.”
    “Is that really your business?”
    “Of course.”
    I sighed and put down my sandwich. “You remember that dead cat by Mrs. Johnson’s house?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I buried it.”
    “You went out in the rain and buried a dead cat? Anyone see you do it?”
    “Don’t know, and don’t care.”
    Leonard nodded. “Cookie?” he said, pushing the cookie bag toward me.
    I took a vanilla cookie from the bag. Leonard moved the bag to his side of the table, and got up and removed a Dr Pepper bottle from the fridge, sat back down, and twisted off the cap. He took a long swig. “Man,” he said. “These are the good ones.”
    “Right from the warehouse where the originals were made,” I said.
    “You are the man. Have I ever told you that, Hap? You are the man?”
    “Whenever I have something you want me to keep having around, yes, you have told me that.”
    “Like Dr Pepper?”
    “Like that.”
    “And vanilla cookies.”
    “Yes.”
    “Then that whole ‘you are duh man’ bit has power?”
    “A little.”
    The rain was brutal now. It hit the house hard and the windows rattled. We got ourselves more to drink, turned out the lights, and went into the living room and sat in the dark.
    “Isn’t this where we say something like ‘Well, the farmers need the rain?’ ” Leonard said.
    “I suppose it is.”
    The file Marvin had given me was still lying on the coffee table. I glanced at it. Leonard glanced at it. We both glanced at it. Neither of us picked it up.
    “You ain’t been quite yourself for a while, Hap.”
    “Nope,” I said. “I haven’t. And you haven’t been all that hot since John has been gone.”
    “Guilty as charged. John’s brother is trying to convince him that God can make him straight. His brother says being gay goes against tradition.”
    “I don’t always have turkey on Thanksgiving. That’s a tradition. But the world keeps spinning even if I don’t eat turkey.”
    “Yep. It’s silly.”
    A peal of thunder made the house shake.
    “Okay,” I said. “That makes me think God is on the side of the traditionalist.”
    Leonard laughed.

12
    Here’s how it had gone down the day before.
    At the coffeehouse, Marvin took out his big folder and gave us each a small folder from inside of it. He had asked that the information be prepared, and Mrs. Christopher, with Cason’s help, had done just that.
    Marvin said, “Before we open them, let me lay some things out. General information that may or may not be important. Mrs. Christopher is a widow. She has been rich all her life. But not so it shows. She lives simply. Nice home, but nothing flashy. Drives a standard automobile. Inherited money from her husband, who died of a heart attack. She had a nervous breakdown after her son’s death, spent some time in a mental institution. Nothing severe. Just there to be watched and