The instant he raps on door 9, the voices hush and the dogs bark. The TV volume goes unadjusted. When he knocks again, harder, someone inside goes, “Ssshhh.”

His patience is thinning. Before he knows it, he’s begun hammering at the door with the bottom of the Sprite can, pressing a cluster of waning moons into the cheap composite wood of the door, which now pulls back a few inches, a chain snapping it into place. In the narrow opening appears a strip of the dogmonger’s face. The column of light above his comb over sways with smoke. His eyes are bloodshot, his forehead glistening with a fresh coat of ammonia-smelling sweat.

“Changer mind, did you? Danny, fetch us the doggie.”

A woman’s voice asks which one.

“The wienie one, duh.”

The voice says but that’s her favorite, how come not the Shih Tzu or Labradoodle or—

“I didn’t come for a dog.” Henry presses his forearm into the door, leveling knuckles at the greasy hairline.

“We said eighty, right? Eighty a fucking steal, hoo-wee.”

Henry can’t tell whether this clown is trying to get a rise out of him or really is this stupid. Either way, he would love to watch him suffer.

“Listen,” he says. “All I want is for you to keep it down. The dogs, the TV, we can hear everything you’re—”

“Everything?”

“Everything.” Someone lowers the TV’s volume, then shushes the dogs or someone or some other people. Out of habit, Henry thanks whoever’s inside.

The shrunken face wrinkles, sniffs. “So,” the dogmonger says. “How’s about fifty?”

Henry yanks the door shut for him.

The can explodes with a burst of sticky fizz. Henry laps it up, and the sweet tickle soothes him, at least a little. First he pinky promises, then swears—cross his heart and hope to die—that if Junior drinks the whole can, his tummy’ll feel better. He’ll see.

The TV is playing a movie showing a real-life piglet talking to a group of ducks. The farmland behind them is lush, idyllic, which, based on his experience, strikes him as miles more implausible than language-exchanging livestock. He turns the volume up a few more notches to dampen any later disturbances from room 9.