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escorting me from room to room. I still only wore that peacock-blue robe and a high-toned smell, yet this scene came across like a job interview, more or less. They had recruited me to be “security.” I was to adjust my criminal insights around to where I could defend the mansion, and the family of the mansion, from anything else of my stripe that might come along. They’d flick on a light at each room for a short burst, then flick it off and say “piano room” or “the squire’s room,” “tea parlor,” “maid’s suite.”
    This place, even seen in short bright moments, was revealed to have double of everything worth having, just about.
    Looking at this place I could understand how tremendous a responsibility it amounted to, and I was thinking that probably I could work for folks with their pluses.
    Now these two had presented themselves as savvy youths and seemed that and more, even, because they’d been exposed to most of the world and studied on it from a lofty sharp angle. I knew the Delta up and down, and the Ozarks a good bit, Memphis of course, and had took a big taste of Houston once; but everywhere I knew, I knew only the
lower-priced, fewer-questions-asked parts of. They, though, ran down a few casual memories to me about Greece (the bright white islands and topless crowds), Tokyo (you needn’t wash your own self in the hot tubs over there, no sir), London (best bring an umbrella), and their second home, Paris (where the chefs all knew their birthdays and sprang parties on them with these delicate celebration foods I’d never come across and might not have the balls to eat).
    We came to a large window that had large panes at the end of the staircase, and there was a jumbo vase with some sort of plumes towering out, and over to the side of it was a black door that Jamalee pushed open and found a switch and lit the room. She looked at the olden bed with a posh canopy and at the walls coated with mirrors and artwork, and dear wooden furniture.
    “This,” she said, “will be your room, Sammy.”
    I gave that room a once-over and had a flush dart up to my head, out to my ears.
    It was as though I had busted into a dark mansion and somehow woke up inside the dream I should’ve been dreaming my whole life long.
    Jason slid from the room and down the hall, and I said to her, “For real? This room is really, really choice. A choice fuckin’ room.”
    Her eyelids had shadow laid on so heavy it seemed she peered at me from two blue knotholes. Her face, Jamalee’s face, had already plopped down into my mind like a hook.
    “Now,” she started, “if in any way it’s not—”
    That’s when Jason jumped into the room, blew out her candle and his own, and said, “The law is out there with flashlights. Time to choo-choo, Sis.”
    Jamalee’s response was she laughed wide open. Her sound vibrated the blackness. She beat my back and laughed
toward my ear. She enjoyed this moment, the moment when danger has arrived and I’m revealed as a cranked-out dipshit. It’s for the best that I couldn’t see her expression.
    “That’s never goin’ to be my room, is it.”

4
    Don’t Fun Me
    PANIC PUT WINGS on our feet. The flashlights of the law beamed behind us and not far. I had my hands in my cowboy boots up to the elbows and my true clothes were pinched in my armpit. Their true clothes were in a tote bag; they’d been prepared for this event. Mud grabbed at us up to the ankles. My feet were bare. Our six feet flew through the fresh mud, and the mud tagged along in flecks and speckles on legs, hands, faces, hair. At this speed that bathrobe flapped wide and exhibited me. Each step down into and up out of the mud emitted a sound like something starved chased one step behind, smacking its lips.
    Mist hung in heavy drapes and made every direction a question mark to me. Jamalee and Jason knew where we were and how to exit and I did not contain that knowledge. Jamalee set the style, leading us in a furtive-monkey