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time, thanks to a bad hand God dealt him. That’s the God you want me to turn my life over to?”
    The light is gorgeous — filtering down from big arcs on Orange Grove Boulevard, flowing out of the gallery and pooling on the crushed gravel. As Colleen paces, she kicks up a few leaves, and they somersault in her wake.
Turning over a new leaf.
    I slyly take out my camera. I don’t need to use the viewfinder. I can shoot from the hip.
    “I know I was wrong,” Colleen says. “How many times do I have to say it? And I harmed people. I know that drill.”
    I pan a little to the right. Half a dozen skinny poplar trees flank the pond. In the moonlight, the whole thing looks enchanted. It’s so pretty, it’s too pretty, and that’s what Colleen, in her dance-hall pants, does for that scene: she rubs it the wrong way.
    “No,” she says. “I’m not going to use. I’m better. I just had a bad moment and you said to call. Really, I’m fine. I’m at a museum. Seriously. Thanks.”
    I watch her dig in her purse again, this time for a cigarette. So I walk over and remind her, “You can’t smoke here.”
    “Are you kidding? We’re outside.”
    I shrug.
    She’s holding a cigarette, which she snaps in two, and tosses it toward the water.
    “This whole thing is really not my scene.” She waves her arm at everything. “The best part was when we came in and Marcie was cruising those two old guys by the gift shop. But then I have to stand by those snooty violinists who remind me I’ve wasted my life, and then Grandma What-a-Big-Mouth-You-Have has to come back and tell me what to listen for. I wanted to wring her scrawny neck.”
    I tug at her. “C’mon.”
    “I don’t want to listen to that classical shit. I want some guy with his shirt off to scream at me and then set his guitar on fire.”
    “We can’t do that right now, but maybe afterward, if you still want.”
    Then she turns to me. Or on me, maybe. “Don’t be too nice to me, Ben, okay? Just don’t. I know me, and I’ll just end up hating your guts. Understand?”
    “No.”
    She says, “You don’t know anything, do you?” Then she steps right up to me, pulls my face toward hers, and kisses me, shoving her tongue in my mouth and holding on to me so long that a guard finally comes over and tells us to cut it out or we’ll have to leave.
    An hour later, I’m in my bedroom, hanging up my jacket, and wondering where Colleen went after we got back from the museum. She drove away about a hundred miles per hour. Maybe she’s right and I don’t know anything, but I’ll bet she’s on her way to get high.
    Grandma knocks, then pushes the door open. She crosses the thick-as-tundra carpet, comes and stands beside me and adjusts some hangers so they’re all half an inch apart. She watches her hands like they aren’t hers. “Colleen never fails to upset me.”
    “I know. Me, too, sometimes.”
    “Has she asked you for money, Benjamin?”
    I shake my head.
    “Not even a little?”
    “It’s not like that.”
    “Well, I didn’t come in here to talk about her.” She wanders to my desk, lifts the ivory-colored keyboard, runs one finger under it, then looks for dust. “I came to say that I was chatting with Marcie tonight and I’ve decided that, in addition to the new camera, you may also have a Verizon account of your own.”
    That makes me get to my feet. Or try to. “All right!”
    “I’ll get a technician to come tomorrow afternoon. You should be here. If you have an engagement, cancel it. There may be technical things he’ll want you to know.”
    “Thanks, Grandma. I promise I won’t prowl the Internet looking for pictures of naked girls holding Roman candles.”
    She winces just a little. “Don’t promise. Marcie says boys your age can’t help themselves.”
    “Are you and Marcie kind of tight now?”
    “She likes you a great deal. She thinks you have enormous potential.” She comes over and pats me like I’m Ben the Wonder Dog. “Of