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Ha.
    Nate turns on his biggest, whitest, thousand-dollar-a-year-at-the-dentist smile. (Nate has a notorious sweet tooth, and we’re often treated to the sound of Mac screaming into his phone about “ what a fuckin’ racket ” the poor local dentist is running, and “ there’s no fuckin’ way ” he’ll ever get paid.)
    This is the smile he flashes at Lisa. “Anyone ever tell you that you could be a model?”
    “Creepy guys in bars tell me that all the time.”
    “You’re going to the wrong bars then,” says Nate smoothly. His timing, I hate to admit, is perfect. “I could show you where the cool people go.”
    “Oh,” says Lisa innocently, “and you would know that?”
    Damn, I might just be in love.
    This must not be the usual response to the Nate playbook, because I can almost hear the gears in his mind starting to grind, as if thinking were an exceptional activity in the life of Nate Cheney.
    A raspy voice calls from the now-defunct Pinto. “Do you boys mind giving me a push over to the side of the road?”
    We all look over, and a massive woman heaves herself out of the Pinto, carefully maneuvering the biggest platinum-blond beehive I’ve ever seen through the tiny car door frame, holding the top of it protectively. She wears bright pink polyester pants with matching candy-pink sandals, and a giant diamond-like brooch in the shape of a turtle is pinned above her white pleather jacket pocket. The impressive layers of caked-on makeup would be perfectly suited for, say, a drag queen audition.
    “Holy shit,” whispers Nate.
    For once, Nate has perfectly summed up the situation.
    The woman shakes a pack of cigarettes from a glittering studded purse and expertly slips one out, tapping the end of it on the plastic wrapper. I notice she smokes the same brand as Myrna, and that voice—why is it oddly familiar? It’s the way she flicks the lighter that makes the connection, because I’ve seen Myrna do that a thousand times before in the emergency stairwell of the Eagle . Maddy must be Myrna’s sister. Goddamn, there are two of them.
    “Sometime today?” she mutters, obviously annoyed. “It’s in neutral.” As she puts the cigarette to her pink-lined lips, I notice there are small white daisies painted on her hot pink fingernails. Lisa is trying hard to maintain an appropriately serious expression.
    Reluctantly, Nate and I go to push the car over. I wheeze more than I would like to admit.
    “Myrna was right,” she says as she watches us.
    No further explanation is provided.
    “Hon, who the hell are you?” she says, apparently noticing Lisa for the first time.
    Lisa swallows. “Lisa Bennet.”
    “You don’t look like a Bennet.” Maddy squints her eyes, staring. “Hmmm. I thought so.”
    Again, no explanation.
    “Well,” says Maddy, taking a long and serious drag on her cigarette. “Let’s get this shit over with.”

    The driveway is at least ten or fifteen miles long. Of course, my daily exercise consists primarily of walking across the street to the local donut shop, so I may not be the best judge of distance. But it is interminable, and for a time I wonder if we’ve entered a parallel universe or singular ring of hell, like I died and don’t realize it—cursed to spend eternity trying to find the Aspinwall mansion in the company of Nate, crazy Maddy, and Lisa. Not that I’m complaining about Lisa, but she strangely hasn’t said more than a few words, and it’s awkward between us, because we know each other by phone only. In person it’s different. I wonder if she’s disappointed. Which makes me trip over an overgrown root. Very manly.
    Finally the mansion comes into view and my first impression isn’t house of horrors—more like crack-den money pit. It looks as decrepit as one might expect for a five-thousand-square-foot Tudor that hasn’t been maintained for the past seventy years. There are gaping holes in the roof (Was there a war I’m unaware of? With bombs?), most—if not