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us.”
    I thought about trying a few themes out on them, such as: I’d been rich once too, had my own waffle house, say, but I wouldn’t pay off the Dixie Mafia so they burned me out; I’d been the number-seven middleweight contender until I got two detached retinas in a yacht fiasco you probably saw on the news; I was a kick-around mutt from Blue Knee, Arkansas, with a file number, on my own slow ramble throughout sincere poverty and various spellbinding mishaps.
    The fella spared me my breath. He read from my driver’s license. The tuxedo sleeves ran down beyond his fingertips and had to be shoved back every breath or two. He kept that pipe in his teeth and kept it hopping as he spoke.
    “Barlach,” he said, and he pronounced it with “lack” at the tail, which is how I say it, but lots don’t at first. “Sammy. He’s twenty-four, from the great state of Arkansas—which means he’s over seventeen miles outside his homeland—claims to be six feet two inches tall and to weigh one-seventy. Blond and brown.”
    “That’s helpful,” she said. “But it doesn’t tell us if he’s dangerous.”
    “Looky here,” I said. “I’m not truly that dangerous, I’m just sort of nutsy actin’, that’s all.”
    She and him both began to slowly move around me, studying me close. They went hmm , and mm-hmm , and uh-huh . It hit me that I stunk and stunk fairly high, and likely didn’t seem an affable figure at all. They each smelled nice and seemed cordial.

    “He could easily be remade to look dangerous,” the fella said. “It wouldn’t take much. Wrap him in a few he-man fashion clichés, give him a new hairdo.”
    “Yes,” she said. She sat on the arm of my chair then, and I saw she held a kitchen knife loosely in her left hand. The blade displayed a row of mean-spirited teeth. “Awfully, awfully dangerous. Oh, goodness gracious, yes, he could be made to pass for a mighty bad man.”
    “Do we trust him enough to cut him loose?” the fella asked.
    “A close call,” she said. “He’s still pretty sleepy but he is a housebreaker, a thief.”
    “I wouldn’t steal valuables ,” I said. “I’m not that way. I only take nonsense stuff. You know: household drugs, neckties that blink or wave or have hula girls on them, that sort of silly shit. Snapshots of your wife gettin’ undressed, maybe any ol’ rockabilly music or gut-bucket blues you accidentally still got layin’ around.” The vodka bottle sat on a table behind the pair of them, and I took note it was empty. “And, okay, I’ll drink your liquor too. But, all in all, I’m not actually an outright thief type.”
    The fella had wandered over to where I could totally see him, face on, in decent light, and how he looked—well, it ain’t easy for me to say out loud.
    He’s the kind of fella that if he was to make it to the top based only on his looks you’d still have to say he deserved it. Hoodoo sculptors and horny witches knitted that boy, put his bone and sinew in the most fabulous order. Dark-haired, green-eyed, with face bones delicate and dramatic both. If your ex had his lips you’d still be married. His size was somewhat smallish, but he was otherwise for certain the most beautiful boy I ever had seen. I’m afraid “beautiful” is the
only word I can make work here, and I’m not bent or nothin’, but beautiful is the truth.
    “God damn,” I said, looking at him.
    That comment probably sounded like a gasp.
    The girl grinned at me, looked at him, beamed, and giggled.
    “Isn’t he something?” she said. “Grown women at the grocery store toss him their panties with their home phone numbers marked on in lipstick.”
    “Quit it,” he said. “Don’t start in on me.”
    “ Tsk, tsk .” That knife was yet notably in her tiny hand, and not still. “Sammy,” she went, “I’m Jamalee, and this squire here is my baby brother, Jason.”
    I strained at my straps some, then nodded.
    “I’d shake, but . . .”
    She leaned her