“Aww, that’s really a shame. Terrible mistake. You should never sell off your childhood toys. You grow up, years later, you really regret it.” He sounded quite sincere.

“That’s true,” I said, thinking, Would a guy engage you in conversation about his Barbie collection if he was planning to kill you?

“You agree?”

“I’m a bit of a collector myself. Not of Barbies, but science fiction memorabilia.”

“Oh!” said Barbie Bullock, all excited. “You’ll love this one.” He grabbed a pink box off one of the lower shelves. “This is the Star Trek version of Ken and Barbie.”

He handed me the box. The dolls, still behind acetate and held in an upright position with small plastic twist-ties, were dressed for service aboard the USS Enterprise.

Ken was in a tan shirt and black pants, Barbie in a red minidress. “From the original series,” I said. “I recognize the getups.”

“Yes, yes!” He took the box back from me, returned it to its spot on the shelf.

Angie shifted on the couch, rested her head on the arm. She was watching us like we were part of a dream she was having.

In addition to boxed dolls, there was the pink Barbie Volkswagen minibus, and a pink Beetle with an open roof for sliding Barbie and her friends in for a spin. Barbie houses filled with Barbie furniture, Barbie cases, Barbie everything.

“Here are a few I’m most proud of,” Bullock said. I glanced at Pockmark, trying to judge from his expression whether he saw anything strange in all this. If he did, he was keeping it to himself.

“Here’s Splashin’ Barbie, with her own personal watercraft. And Winter Fantasy Barbie, Malibu Barbie of course, you couldn’t not have a Malibu Barbie. And Cheerleader Flex Barbie, you can move her arms and legs better, so you can put her in all these cheering positions, which of course is never going to happen because I don’t like to take the dolls out of the box.”

“Sure,” I said. “Makes them more valuable that way.”

“Of course. It’s nice, though, when you get the odd one that has been taken out of the box, so you don’t feel restricted. You can handle it, play with it, that kind of thing. Here’s my Barbie Romance Novel Gift Set, where she looks like one of those heroines on the front of a romance novel, not that I read those fucking things. And this here,” he held up a Barbie dressed in a skintight—or plastic-tight—black latex, wielding a whip, “is Catwoman Barbie.”

Something for Trixie for Christmas, I thought.

“And check this out.” He handed me another box. Inside, Ken was dressed in a tuxedo, and Barbie’s hair looked especially puffy and windswept. “That’s the James Bond 007 Ken and Barbie Gift Set.”

“I never knew,” I said. “I simply had no idea.”