“And maybe you are.”

  I frowned. “That’s not what you were supposed to say. You were supposed to tell me I’m being silly and irrational.”

  “You aren’t being silly or irrational. You attract serial killers like a dumpster attracts rats.”

  “This is supposed to quell my fears?”

  “Let me finish. Yes, maniacs seem to always zero in on you. Like maggots to open wounds. Like flies to dog turds. Like White Nationalists to Facebook.”

  “I got the gist, Mom.”

  “But every time, you come out on top. Every. Single. Time. If, heaven forbid, the situation comes up again, you’ll be able to handle it. I believe in you.”

  “Thanks. I guess.”

  “Now find out if your creepy neighbor is single. I gotta go. Margarita Mondays.”

  “It’s Thursday.”

  “It’s margaritas every day, dear. This is a retirement home. It’s basically a vacation resort with diapers. Which, I’ll be honest here, isn’t nearly as embarrassing as everyone thinks it will be.”

  I didn’t like hearing that. “Are you saying that you—”

  “Bye!”

  Mom hung up. I stared at the cabinet I’d just finished, decided it needed a second coat, decided I didn’t want to do a second coat, and I moved on.

  That was my jam lately. Moving on and not looking back.

  Except when I couldn’t move on because I kept looking back.

  PHIN

  The difference between being a homeowner and being on a chain gang is that owning a house was a choice.

  Also, I had my suspicions that breaking rocks in the hot sun was easier than trying to put together this swing set/slide/playhouse, which came in ten boxes and had more parts than the space shuttle.

  It was also harder to put together than the space shuttle.

  “You look upset, Dad.”

  Sam had been trying to get Duffy to fetch a ball. Duffy only fetched treats. And only if they were thrown within a few feet of his nose.

  “I’m just a little frustrated, pumpkin. When we ordered this for you, we paid extra for the people to set it up. But because of the virus they just left it here.”

  “You can’t do it?”

  “I can do it. And I will do it. But it’s harder than I thought.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s a giant, stupid piece of shit, and the people that made it are buttlips.”

  Sam giggled. Buttlips is a particularly funny word for little girls. And for Harry McGlade.

  For the moment I gave up on attaching cup lock brackets to the 4’x4’ posts and turned my attention to digging some post holes.

  My lawn had other ideas. Apparently there wasn’t dirt under the grass, just rocks and tree roots. It took me two minutes of sweating and grunting to get a foot deep. I rechecked the instructions.

  Posts needed to be set two feet deep.

  I tried to relax my shoulders, and did a slow head roll, trying to loosen up my stiff muscles.

  “You look even more upset, Dad.”

  “I’m fine. Went a little too hard during my morning jog. Did ten miles today.”

  “How long did that take?”

  “About two hours.”

  “For your age, you should be averaging six miles an hour. You’re only averaging five miles an hour. Did you stop and walk for part of it?”

  So much for impressing my daughter with my speed and stamina. “Sam, why don’t you go inside and see what Mom is making for lunch.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “I’m very hungry. I’m so hungry I could eat a whole… eight-year-old girl!”

  I sprung at her scooping Sam up and pretending to bite her while making monster sounds. She squealed with joy, and I let her down and watched her run inside.

  “There’s no laws against that.”

  I turned and saw our neighbor Larry staring at me, his hands on the side of the cedar fence.

  “What was that, Larry?”

  “Laws against eating people. There are none.”

  “Maybe we should write our governor,” I suggested.

  The faraway glaze in Larry’s eyes, coupled with his half-smile, made me wonder how much sanity this man retained. The only way to seem more suspicious was if he started drooling.

  I went back to shoveling, aware of Larry’s looming presence, wondering what the rules of etiquette were for nosy neighbors. Did I tell him I don’t like being watched? To mind his own business? Or should I strike up such a bland, boring conversation that he decides to never leer over our fence again?

  Or maybe I try to learn more about this oddball to assess if he’s an actual threat.

  I grunted, standing on the shovel step, trying to wiggle it between the rocks. “What do you do for a living, Larry?”

  “Retired.”

  “What did you do before retiring?”

  “I was a hack.”

  “So you wrote thrillers?”

  “Taxi driver.”

  Interesting. “Being a hack means you did it without a permit, right?”

  “Didn’t need a permit at first. Town of Destiny didn’t require licensing. But then they did, and I went legitimate. Ran the only one in town. Did it for almost fifty years, until those goddamn rideshare apps forced me out.”

  “Bet you have some wild stories.”

  Larry smirked. “You could say that.”

  “Ever pick up anyone famous?”

  “A few.”

  He named some old pop stars, old TV personalities, old politicians, and a writer.

  “Jack Kilborn. Heard of him?” Larry asked.

  “No.”

  “There’s a hack for you. Wrote seedy thrillers, usually about crazy killers and cannibalism. Not very realistic, if I’m to judge.”

  Apparently cannibalism was a recurring theme in Colorado. I checked my hole, judged it to be deep enough, then used my measuring tape to find a spot three meters away for the next hole.

  “You live alone, Larry?”

  “Just lonely old me. Unless you count house plants. I’ve had the same Ficus since 2003.”

  “Never married?”

  “Never saw the need. First epistle of Peter: I urge you to abstain from passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. You a God-fearing man, Phin?”

  I dug into the ground. “I fear everything.”

  “You go to church?”

  “I don’t discuss religion or politics.”

  He guffawed. “You and your wife, both. We grew up, reading the Bible.”

  I glanced at him. “We?”

  “My sister. No longer with us.”

  I hit another rock and had to widen my new hole. “Sorry to hear that.”

  “She disappeared decades ago. Vanished without a trace. I’ll be honest, sometimes I can’t even remember what she looks like anymore.”

  “Do you have pictures?”

  “We were Amish. No photos. Violated the Second Commandment; no graven images.”

  “So you’re Amish?”

  “Up until I was a teenager. My sister was shunned. She left the community. I went with her. She needed… looking after.”

  He didn’t do a very good job looking after her if she disappeared. But I kept my mouth shut and kept digging.

  “We drifted, town to town, looking for work,” Larry went on. “Construction. Washing dishes. We were both coal miners for a stretch. Then we wound up with a bunch of groupies, hung around with them for a while, followed the Dead around.”

  I glanced at Larry again, surprised by the reveal. “You were a Grateful Dead groupie?”

  “We both were. Grew up Bible-thumping, then fully embraced sex, drugs, and rock and roll.”

  “What about the passions of the flesh?”

  He grinned crookedly. “Man is created in God’s image, Phin. But we’re not God. We all fall short. We all have moments of weakness.”

  Our odd neighbor was more nuanced and interesting than I had assumed. I stood on the shovel, giving it my full weight, trying to drive it in another few inches—

  —and then the ground opened up.

  I had no idea what had happened. One second, I was on the shovel. The next second, I was falling.

  I hit bottom, hard, landing on my ass, my teeth clacking together, and realized I’d fallen into a two-meter-deep hole that had suddenly appeared in my backyard.

  While I was freaked out and dizzy and trying to figure out what the hell just happened, Larry appeared above me, kneeling over the edge of the hole.

  “You okay?”

  I did a body-check inventory. Legs, arms, back, head, everything seemed to be working okay.

  “I think so.”

  “The ground just swallowed you up. Damnedest thing I ever saw.”

  He reached for me. I stood, finding my dropped shovel, throwing it out of the hole. Then I clasped hands with Larry.

  He tugged me up, surprisingly strong considering his age, and then we both backed away from the hole. Besides being over six feet deep, the circular depression was at least three meters in diameter.

  “Did a meteor hit?” I asked, still disoriented.

  “Sinkhole. Happens around these parts.”

  The realtor hadn’t mentioned that.

  “What are we supposed to do?”

  Larry scratched his chin. “Fill it with water, call it a pond?”

  I actually appreciated his warped sense of humor. I also appreciated how an old man could hop our tall fence that easily. Our neighbor Larry was full of surprises.

  Then came the realization that we were standing next to each other, neither one of us wearing a mask. I took a few quick steps sideways.

  “Thanks for helping, but we still gotta social distance.”

  “Right. Coronavirus.” He nodded, then went back to the fence, scaling it and vaulting over in a quick, fluid motion.

  I looked at the big stack of swing set boards only a few feet away from the sinkhole, wondering if I should move them.

  Then I figured I needed to talk with my wife. Our family had many contingency preparations for emergencies. While we weren’t extreme preppers with a fallout shelter full of pemmican and potable water, we did have plans in case of a fire, a tornado, a home invasion, a blackout, a blizzard, excessive bleeding, anaphylactic shock, a riot, a terrorist attack, being trapped in a car during a flood, and we even had a stockpile of potassium iodide in case of a nuclear or radiation event.

  But we had never discussed what to do if the ground ever opened up and tried to swallow the house.

  Time to have that discussion.

  LARRY

  A sinkhole, Rita! It’s like the past is repeating itself.”

  He gave the Ficus a nice, long drink from the watering can.

  “What’s the date?” Larry checked his watch. “The 8th of April. So soon. I suppose you’re hungry again.”

  “Star-ing!”

  The voice was faint and echoey, as if it was a thought instead of spoken words.

  Larry frowned. “I doubt that. But I suppose I don’t really know, do I? All I have to go on is what you tell me, and we both know you like to make up stories. Did you feel it when our neighbor’s backyard caved in?”

  “No.”

  Giggling. Mad, hysterical giggling.

  “The hole isn’t very deep. But it’s still a concern, for reasons that are obvious. I took some new photos of their little girl today. So bubbly and full of energy. Full of life. I know how much you love little girls, ever since… well, no need to dwell on the past, right?”

  “Oooooood!”

  “Yes. That. I’ll need to run to the store, get a few things. Shopping hasn’t been easy lately, Rita. Everyone is so paranoid about everyone else. Keeping their distances. Staying on guard, as if at any moment someone was going to grab them. Our normal routine has been disrupted. Everything is so much harder.”

  Larry smiled, thinking about Jack, Phin, and little Samantha.

  “It’s a good thing we have three fit, healthy people so close, to assist us during these difficult times.”

  JACK

  Some days I could lose myself while painting, shutting my mind off and entering an almost meditative state.

  But as I switched colors for the umpteenth time, I couldn’t get into the zone because I kept thinking about missing persons.

  So I finally made the phone call I’d been avoiding for the past few weeks.

  “Hiya, Jackie. Call me because you want to video chat while you’re having sex?”

  “I did not.”

  “Because you want to video chat while I’m having sex?”

  “Ick. No. I called because—”

  “Don’t tell me. I want to guess.”

  I needed a favor, so I kept my objections to myself and played along with his nonsense. I’d known Harry McGlade for what felt like several lifetimes, and I still wasn’t sure if he was my BFF, or that eponymous, annoying feline from the Cat Came Back song meant to torment me forever. No matter what I did, McGlade always seemed to wind up entangled in my life. For better or for worse.

  “Fine,” I sighed, getting started on the next cabinet. “Guess.”

  “You need to borrow an HDMI cable.”

  “What? You live in Los Angeles. How can you lend me an HDMI cable?”

  “It would be a wire transfer.”

  I groaned. “Do you just stay up all night thinking of bad jokes?”

  “Mostly I stay up thinking about nudity. Is that why you called? You want me to send you belfies?”

  “I don’t want to ask.”

  “A belfie is a butt selfie. I have two versions; shaved and unshaved.”

  “Hard pass.”

  “How about a delfie?”

  “I’m guessing here. A dick selfie?”

  “Got it in one.”

  “Another pass.”

  “But is it a… hard pass?”

  I saw what he was doing there, and smiled despite myself. “No thanks. And I don’t want a telfie, either.”

  “A telfie? I don’t know that one. Lemme think. A tit selfie?”

  “Nope. Try again.”

  “T… T… what begins with T? Wait… is it… a taint selfie!”

  “Nailed it.”

  “That’s awesome. Be tough to see what you’re doing, though. Unless… a telfie stick! I could invent one. Gen Z would go crazy for that. It also lends itself to a Name That Taint app. Wouldn’t that be fun? To try to guess the taint of everyone in your address book?”

  “I can’t think of anything more pleasing,” I deadpanned. “Now let me tell you why I called. Remember in New Mexico I asked for a favor?”

  “Let me guess. Was it a belfie?”

  “We’re not going through this again, Costello.”

  “We’re kind of like that, aren’t we? Abbott & Costello. Bob Hope & Bing Crosby. Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis. All of those great teams. Partners for life. Best friends forever. That’s you and me, Jack. BFFs.”

  “Martin & Lewis hated each other.”

  “What is hate, other than the strongest version of love?”

  “Hate is the opposite of love.”

  “Okay, scratch Martin & Lewis. But you gotta admit we’re best friends forever.”

  “I plead the fifth.”

  “Really?” He sounded kind of sad. “You want to leave your BFF hanging?”

  “We’ll revisit this topic at a later date. Remember when I mentioned I have a weird new neighbor?”

  “Right. You wanted me to do a background check.”

  “Yeah. But I also have another thing. I learned that my quiet little town has ten times the missing persons national average.”

  After a few moments of thought he said, “So you want me to confirm that by checking local police reports, and you can’t get into their database, but I can because I have mad skills and nefarious contacts.”

  “Correctomundo.”

  “Because you think your weird new neighbor is a serial killer.”

  “Not really. But it may have crossed my mind a few hundred times.”

  “That would be pretty funny if he was. What are the odds? You run to Colorado to get away from psychos, and you move next door to one.”

  “The irony isn’t lost on me. Can you do it?”

  “I can. But I want something in return.”

  “A belfie?” I winced. “A telfie? I don’t have a telfie stick.”

  “Tempting, but no.”

  I waited.

  “A bigshot streaming service wants to reboot Fatal Autonomy.”

  I sighed, big and dramatic. Fatal Autonomy was an old TV show based on Harry’s adventures. Years ago, during a moment of weakness I signed a release giving him permission to cast a character based on me. Said character was an embarrassing, unrealistic caricature that caused me untold humiliation over the years.

  “And you need me to sign away the rights to my life. Again.”

  “If you don’t mind. Or even if you do mind. It’s a lot of money, Jack. I could build a new house with this money. I mean I could literally glue the money together in stacks and make a house.”

  “Do I get any say in how I’m portrayed?”

  He snorted. “Of course not. Because of our current political climate of woke diversity, you’re likely going to be depicted as a transgender woman of color.”

  I considered it. “I actually like that. It’s pretty cool.”

  “Also, you’ll still be morbidly obese and wet your pants whenever danger arises.”

  So much for being pretty cool. “Won’t that reflect badly on transgender women of color?”

  “The opposite. The ultimate in inclusivity is to have minority actors play unlikeable, unpopular roles. People are people, and anyone can be flawed.”

  “Who’s playing you?”

  “Some really handsome white guy.”

  “How original.”

  “But he also has his demons. He’s a recovering sex addict.”

  “Of course he is.”

  “Also, he just had major surgery. His third penis reduction.”

  “His third. Nice.”

  “Because he keeps hurting people,” Harry went on. “With his giant cock.”

  “That poor guy.”

  “He’s a realistic hero with real-world problems, Jackie. One that the woke normies can relate to.”