smoking instead.” She stared at the money in her palm and then looked up at him, silent, shocked. “You drive a hard bargain,” he’d said, and handed her another bill. He gave her an appraising look. “That’s a good skill to have.” She nodded in agreement—to all of it.
She liked money, she guessed. Money was a thing you were supposed to like. But now Avery was a liar. Before this moment she was not a liar, and now, suddenly, she was one. Did he do that or did she?
In twenty years, she would date a man who smoked cigars. He was not good to her; the relationship was quite fraught, in fact. They snapped at each other, and argued about politics, about the man’s employer, how Avery couldn’t understand how he worked for him, about morals, about ethics, about capitalism. They stayed together much longer than they should have, and every time he smoked a cigar Avery hated the smell, but for some reason, with all the things she gave him shit about, she never said a word about it. After the relationship was finished, she realized: I should have started there, with the cigars. The whole thing would have been over a lot sooner.
As she approached the cabin, her bunkmates stretching and chattering on the front porch, she tried to land on a feeling. She knew there was something off about her grandfather. That at the very least she might be better off if he wasn’t around. But at the same time, she thought: Death is sad. No one should die. No living creature deserved to die. She knew it was nature. She knew there were cycles. Her other grandparents had died. (They were much better people than this grandfather, that she knew, too.) But someone, somewhere should be sad about her grandfather. And so, she cried.
When she got to her bunk, she lay back on the mattress and pulled out a pen. Next to all the other girls’ names she wrote her own. And then, next to hers, she wrote his. Victor.
5
Ten a.m., and the house woke Corey before he was ready. A foundation that rattled when trucks passed nearby on Claiborne. The freeway on-ramp a half block away; traffic seemed endless. An ex-wife who put her phone on speaker for every conversation, as if the whole world was interested in her business. Never mind the three children, one just out of diapers, everyone coming and going as they pleased. Corey crashed on a couch in the second room off the backyard, formerly the office. One kid or another was always marching through, on the way to play their shows on the extra TV when they all couldn’t agree on what to watch on the big one in the front room, or when his oldest, Pablo, a teenager, went to smoke cigarettes in the backyard. Plus, they liked to spend time with him, and he loved them all a lot, laughed with them, teased them, poked them. How could he argue with his children coming to see their daddy?
Otherwise, it was almost like a room of his own. He had moved in a clothing rack from which he hung his uniforms, his jeans, his T-shirts, all pressed, his shoes lined up underneath. A family portrait—minus Corey—hung on the wall. Three dark-haired children smiling, all with varying degrees of dental stability, no baby teeth, braces, braces-free, and Camila, with her glittering hoop earrings and rosy décolletage and tired eyes. She’d had the photo taken during the late stages of their divorce. He liked to look up at them all anyway, pretend he had been at his job that day instead.
He was willing to work with the situation. And it was their right to go where they wanted. But couldn’t they sometimes respect that he had a late shift?
Not my house, he reminded himself. Not my rules. He had landed there, debt-ridden, nine months ago. A few bad roommates in a row, lingering school bills, and of course, these children before him, who didn’t come for free. He couldn’t get out from under, no matter how hard he tried. Still, he was lucky to have ended up somewhere safe and solid, he knew it. The kids were in school, the house was clean. But he wanted more. He could not help but dream of living without any noise at all. He was not a quiet man, but he imagined he could become one if he had the right place to