“That’s why, for example, Paul wants to get a tattoo,” Angie said. “So he can be just a little edgy out here.”

“Paul wants a tattoo?”

Angie glanced at me, realizing she’d broken a confidence. “He didn’t tell you?”

“No. Not yet.”

“You didn’t hear it from me, but he’s thinking about it. There’s a place, in the plaza, that’ll do them.”

“He can’t get a tattoo. He’s not even sixteen yet. They wouldn’t do it.”

Angie rolled her eyes. We were almost to the school. “Is there more?” I asked.

Angie was quiet.

“Haven’t you made any friends here?”

Angie shifted her chin around, a nod in disguise. “Not really. I had friends at Bannerman, like Krista, and Molly, and Denny, but I had to leave them because it wasn’t safe there, we had to move to a neighborhood where everything would be okay.” There was a mocking tone. “Well, so what if there was a flasher and a few hookers or some needles on the sidewalk? At least it was interesting.”

“You know you’re welcome to have your friends out here any time you want,” I offered. “Invite them on Friday or Saturday, do a sleepover thing in the basement.”

Angie looked at me as though I’d just stepped out of an episode of Ozzie and Harriet. “God, Dad, I’m not five. And, like, they just can’t wait to come out here.”

I stopped the car out front of the school. “I hate this place,” Angie said, slipping out the door and closing it behind her.

i swung by kenny’s hobby shop to see whether a model I’d ordered, of the dropship the Marines use to fly from the mother ship to the planet’s surface in the movie Aliens, had come in. I could have phoned, but going in person to check gave me an excuse to wander the shop and see whether any other new things had arrived. Kenny catered to a variety of hobbyists—model railroaders, slot car fans, fliers of radio-control airplanes—but his selection of SF-related kits was fairly extensive for a full-range hobby store.

My model hadn’t shown up. “Maybe next week,” said Kenny, who was leaning over the counter, mini-screwdriver in hand, trying to reattach a wheel to a metal reproduction of an old Ford Thunderbird. “You ever wonder,” Kenny asked, not taking his eyes from his work, “why men have nipples?”

I thought about that for a moment. Not about the question itself, but at the sorts of things that preoccupied Kenny. “Not really.”

Kenny bit his lip and held his breath, not wanting the tiny screw to slip from its hole. “It just doesn’t make any sense at all. They don’t do anything, they serve no purpose.” Then: “How’s the house?”