She was five minutes late for her copyediting gig at the Open Door, and Lyle called her out for smelling like booze. But what was the point of working for an alternative paper if you were supposed to show up sober? She was told to start with the fourteen-page “community calendar” as punishment. “Join BodyWorks from 3:00–4:00 p.m. for a free workshop on mindful living and stress reduction. Kids and pets welcome!” Sounded reasonable. There was a bluegrass band at one brewery, “crafts for charity” at another, and a scandalously cheap happy hour at the new distillery. Kids and pets were welcome. A rap-metal band last heard from in 1998 was playing the Wilma. And yes, on Friday, “Drawings from Life” by Marcus Cull was being displayed in the basement of the Compound Eye as part of First Friday, 5:00–7:00 p.m. She considered using her copyediting powers for evil—dogs and firstborns executed on sight?—but Lyle had a tendency to check her work, especially when she’d been drinking. She changed her ex’s name to “Markass Krill,” hoping this might be subtle enough to slip through the censor’s net.

She got a text from Cal—“Gonna read chapter 8 good choice yes/no?” Was chapter eight the mine cave-in? The dissolution of the affair between the former slave and the alcoholic homesteader? Cal’s books tended to be quite—one might even say gratuitously—violent, and she hoped he wouldn’t read one of the many sequences of mangling or disfigurement. He’d gotten the idea, from movies and Cormac McCarthy, presumably, that the best way to depict “the past” was through unrepentant brutality, because that’s how it was. Maybe, she thought, better not to depict it at all, then. She responded to his text with an equivocal “yeh?”