“Six months?” said Tasha. “Could be five? I talked to Tony but I went home with a lawyer. That was a house, all the way in Oxnard, by the water, to get there we drove and drove and the air smelled all salty. I won’t give you his name no matter what you do because he was sweet. Sweet and old and lonely, his wife was sick in the hospital. Next morning he cooked waffles with fresh bananas and I watched the sun come up over the water.”

“Also a wannaboo?”

“No, he was a straight.”

“There were straights at the party, too.”

“Girls, wannaboos, straights.” Giggle. “Maybe kangaroos.”

“What was Tony?”

“Straight. I thought he was the gardener or a plumber or something. Came to fix the toilet.”

“He wore a uniform.”

“Sloppy,” said Tasha, as if it were a felony. “Wrinkled Dockers, sweatshirt that said Aloha. Very low-classy.”

“How’d you end up at the party?”

“Some girl asked me. Germania, that’s the only name I know. High-water but white, went back home a few months ago. Talked about her daddy having two wives in Utah, the stepmother was real accepting, but her own moth—”

“How many people were at the party?”

“Thirty? Fifty? People all over the house. The girls looking hot, the wannaboos like a buncha grammas, the straights trying to figure out what to do.”

“Who owned the house?”

“Never found out.”

“How’d you hook up with Tony?”

“He was sad.”

“And…”

“Everyone else partying, he’s sitting there complaining to this wannaboo. Wannaboo listens for a while then ups and leaves Tony all alone. Tony looks sad, I’m a nurturer so I sit down next to his poor self. He starts complaining to me, we take a walk. Up the road, but we heard coyotes. I got scared and we went back.”

“No coyotes in Fontana?” said Milo.

“Lots of coyotes, that’s why I got scared, sir. I seen what they done to the chickens.”

“Tony was complaining about…”

“What I said, sir. Le monee. He used to live in a nice place then his back discus made him all messed up and his mama wasn’t helping him no more, called him a bum.”

“He said all that to the other wannaboo?”

“I heard the word ‘money’ before I sat down. That word always gets my ears unfolded. When we were walking he got into his mama mistreating him. Said she pulled the rug out, he was the only child, why would she do that.”

“Angry?”

“More like sad. Depressed, even. I said you should try the Prozac or something. He didn’t answer.”

“When he complained to the wannaboo, did the wannaboo seem to be listening?”

“I guess… yeah, he was looking straight at Tony, nodding like I hear you, bro. Then all of a sudden he gets up, like he heard enough.”

“Bored?”

“No, no, more like… like it was too sad.”

“Describe the wannaboo?”