"Even if she's your sister?"

"Les said it's standard."

I watched the turkey buzzards. "Seems like Miranda could've made it unstandard."

He shrugged. I couldn't tell whether he cared or not. I wondered what conversations Allison had had with him about that.

"Les ever stay at the ranch house?" I asked.

He nodded reluctantly. "Once. I was following him back from a gig one night, he run himself off the road from all the drink and pills. Had to convince him to come back here and sleep it off. He wasn't a happy fella. He talked a lot about selfdestructing that night."

"How'd you handle it?"

Brent played a chord. "Told him I'd been there."

He sang another song. I drank more. My feet were pleasantly numb and I was enjoying the sound of Brent Daniels' voice. I felt easy and comfortable for the first time in days.

Not thinking about whether I wanted to become a licensed P.I. or a college teacher or a neon blue bearded lady for Cirque du Soleil.

Brent and I talked some more in between songs. It was like having a bilingual conversation—shifting in and out of singing and talking until there stopped being a difference. After a while Brent started doing other people's music—"Silver Wings" and

"Faded Love" and "Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground." Stuff that reminded me of my dad's record collection. God forbid maybe I even mumbled along with Brent as he sang.

Things got blurry after that, but I remember during one of the silent places saying, "Les hasn't played straight with anybody this whole time. He wouldn't be worth protecting."

I wanted to look at him, see his reaction, but my eyes were closed and I was enjoying them that way.

"I gave up on protection a long time ago," Brent said.

His voice was a sad sound, the chords bright and airy behind it.

43

The last thing I remember, he was singing something about a train.

I woke up with the feeling that somebody had hooked me to a reverse IV. All the fluid had ^r drained out of my mouth and my eyes and my brain. When I moved my head everything turned white. I realized, belatedly, that I was feeling pain.

I sat up on the metal cot and rubbed my face where it had pressed itself into the texture of the rayon. One of the yellow curtains was open and light was pouring directly onto my chest.

Other things came into focus—a folding card table with a bucket of silverware on it. A wooden bunk bed, the bottom bunk stripped to the springs. A Playboy wall calendar that was still stuck on Miss August. The walls were the same inside the little tractorshed apartment as they were outside—rough wood, painted red. What few pictures there were hung from bare nails. Brent's carving knife was stuck directly into the wall above the tiny sink. There was no oven—no kitchen to speak of. Just a hot pad and a coffeemaker and a minirefrigerator.

It was possible that a woman might've lived here once, but you couldn't've proved it.

I tried to get up.

I tried again.

When I finally succeeded I realized where all the fluid in my body had drained to. I looked around for the rest room.

It was a tiny closet behind a shower curtain. Everything was close together. The sink overlapped the toilet tank and the shower drained directly into the tile floor so you could, conceivably, use the toilet and take a shower and brush your teeth all at the same time.

I only tried option number one.

It wasn't until I rummaged in the medicine cabinet, hoping for aspirin, that I found some reminder of the woman who had once lived here—orange prescription bottles, at least ten of them, all typed faintly with the name Maria Daniels. Insulin A. Prenatal vitamin supplements. Glucophage. Several other names I hadn't ever heard of. Some were open, as if she'd just taken her prescription this morning. As if nothing had been touched in the cabinet in two years. In the corner, behind the container of white Glucophage tablets, was a baby teether still in its plastic wrapper.

I picked it up. Little glittery shapes—diamonds, squares, stars—floated through the liquid inside the plastic ring, sluggish and sterile.

Behind me Brent Daniels said, "You're up."

I closed the cabinet.

When I turned Brent was trying his best not to notice what I'd been doing. He fingered the edge of the shower curtain.

His hair had dried, and his face was cleanshaven. Except for the eyes, he didn't look like a man who'd been drinking as heavily as I had.

"Miranda called," he told me. "Said Milo was going to be mixing for the rest of the afternoon and did I want to pick her up early. I could, or—? "

"I'll drive up."

Brent nodded, like it was bad news he'd been expecting. He gestured behind him with his chin. I followed him out into the apartment, which was just big enough for the two of us.

Brent opened a cabinet above the little refrigerator and retrieved a bag of flour tortillas and a can of refried beans.

"Hungry?"

My stomach did a slow roll. I shook my head no.

Brent shrugged and cranked up the hot pad. I stared at the picture that was taped inside the pantry door—a black and white of a woman with short brunette hair, a slightly moonish face, an almost uncontainable smile, like she was being tickled.

"That Maria?"

Brent tensed, looked around to see what I was talking about. When he realized I meant the picture he relaxed.

"No. My mother."

"You were how old?"

He knew what I meant. "Almost twenty." Then, like it was something he was obliged to add, something he'd been corrected on many times, "Miranda was only six."

Brent threw a tortilla directly on the hot pad. He watched as it began to puff up and bubble. The tortilla was probably old and flat but after a minute on the grill it would taste almost as good as fresh. The only correct way to heat a tortilla.

"Willis might not be too happy with you driving to pick Miranda up," he speculated.

"But you don't mind."

He flipped the tortilla. One of the air bubbles had cracked open and the edges had blackened.

"Maybe I will take some," I decided.

Brent made no comment, but got another tortilla out of the bag.

"I don't mind," he finally agreed. "Dad ..." He trailed off.

"He's got an unpredictable temper, doesn't he?"

Brent was staring at the picture of his mother.

" 'Billy Senorita,' " I said. "The only song Miranda wrote herself—it was about your parents."

Brent stirred up the refried beans. "The fights weren't as bad as that."

" But scary to a sixyearold."

Brent stared at me. He let a little anger burn through the dead ash. "You want to think about something— think how Willis feels, hearing that song every night. Put him in his place, all right. Worked like a charm."

I did what Brent said. I thought about it.

Brent added a little pepper and a little butter and salt to the beans. When they were smoking he spread them on the flour tortillas, folded them, and handed one to me. We sat and ate.

I stared out the side window into the tractor shed. An enormous orange cat was sleeping on the seat of the rusty John Deere. A couple of doves were in the rafters above. My gaze shifted over to the ceiling above me.

"What's up there?" I asked.

"Attic now. Used to be the sewing room."

"Sewing?"

Brent looked at me, a little resentful that he had to say anything else. "Maria."