leather, and together we made the fifteen-minute walk to a peach-colored house at the corner of two streets dappled with geraniums and snickering with lawn sprinklers. Foley kicked off his shoes inside the door; barely recalling such rituals, I yanked off my boots. We padded silently over clean white carpet, around plush furniture, past frilled doilies and framed prints.
“Foley?” A woman’s voice hollering from another floor.
“Momma, my friend Joey’s here,” Foley called back.
“Oh, hello! There’s coconut cookie bars in the tin if you want.”
“Sweet,” Foley whispered, making a sharp right into a sunny kitchen.
Momma? Cookie bars? I had chocolate and coconut staining my finger-glove before I could make sense of it. Foley caught my tense expression and briefly held up his bowed finger. “Relax. I told her it was my fault. Wouldn’t be the first time I wrecked myself.”
Moments later we were down a flight of stairs and in his room. Metal was everywhere—a Sabbath tour poster, a clipped magazine photo of Vorvolakas, an Agalloch LP cover on display—but displayed with unflagging neatness, the poster framed, the photo sharply scissored, the album cover tacked above the exact center of his bed. There was also a TV, an Xbox, a stereo, a record player, and a computer hooked to several external drives. It wasn’t until Foley opened his closet that I saw the hundreds of burned CDs, all obsessively labeled and arranged alphabetically within steel towers. Foley paused and shrugged as if to say, Yep, here it is, my room, then grabbed his iPod and portable speakers and headed out the door.
He slapped a drawer on his way out. “Change into something and meet me in the laundry room across the hall.”
He had a band called Sig:ar:tyr wailing from the speakers when I walked barefoot into the laundry room wearing Hawaiian shorts and an old T-shirt advertising CHRISTIAN YOUTH CAMP 2005. Foley took the stinky wad of black clothes from my hands and held it for a few moments like he was weighing it. He tossed what was machine washable into the washer and dropped my coat into a large sink. My brimmed hat he set on a counter. He arranged before him an array of soaps and cleaners.
“You learn this shit when you have like four thousand little sisters,” he said. “Now get in the bath.”
Against the dryer: tap tap tap. “I’m sorry?”
He pointed upward. “One floor up. You’re gonna have to scrub that stink right out of you.”
The bathroom was crowded with women’s toiletries, so many pink, yellow, blue, and lavender containers that I found myself backing away until my knees struck the rim of the toilet. I fell onto the seat and tapped the porcelain until Foley showed up, sighed, ran the water, and picked out five or six products, repeating more than once which bottle was for which part—skin, hair, face, hands, body. I emerged a half hour later smelling like a rose garden and dressed again in Foley’s castoffs, and tiptoed downstairs, where Foley, his mother, and three of his sisters buzzed around the kitchen table munching on cookie bars.
Foley barked through the ruckus. “Momma. Hey, Momma! This is Joey.”
“Nice to meet you, Joey,” she said while trying to wipe chocolate from the face of a pugnacious five-year-old.
I felt paralyzed. Thankfully Foley kept things moving and soon I was dressed again in my own clothes, only now with every twitch I smelled flowers and fruit instead of sweat and putrescence. As I stepped out his front door, Foley handed me five burned CDs for the road: High Tide, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Minsk, Sleep, and Witchfinder General.
“Metal up, bitch,” he said.
Spring had overthrown Bloughton. The colors bewildered me. On the way home I banked to examine the extraterrestrial monstrosity of a sunflower and push the toe of my boot at an impenetrable berm of marigolds. Bees emerged and nipped at my fruity flavors. I let them escort me down the road. The BP’s sign read GOOD LUCK SPRING FLINGERS, while the McDonald’s shouted SPRING RING 4-EVER TREASURE THE MEMORIES. Hewn Oak at least provided respite from this farce. The bees traversing my exposed flesh felt not unlike Celeste’s sly tickles. I shook once. They flitted away.
Seconds after I entered the cabin, Harnett emerged from his room sleepy-eyed, his nose twitching. I made for the sink, hoping that a quick dousing would drown the cocoa butter and mango. But it was all over my coat, too, my shirt and pants, even my underwear. Somehow this pleasant odor