“What are you doing here?” asks Sam, and then sees the carton under Joey’s arm and looks up in a kind of sudden, frozen fear and shakes his head slowly. “Oh, I don’t know, Joey…”

“I got nowhere else to go…”

“I don’t know. We seen you on the news…”

“They let me go,” says Joey.

“Don’t mean you’re innocent,” says Sam.

Not knowing how to respond, Joey just repeats, “I got nowhere else to go.”

Sam Richter looks again at the carton, again at Joey. Holds the door open wider and gestures with a nod to come on in.

Sam and Joey in the dark hallway.

Sam calling out, “Irma, I got a surprise here for you.”

“What kinda surprise?” The voice from the back of the house, even darker than the hallway, is strong in contrast to Sam’s reedy voice. And it does not sound at all receptive to any kind of surprise.

A wheelchair rolls up out of the darkness.

“Guess who?” says Sam to Irma, with no joy, no surprise in his voice.

“I know who,” says Irma, looking up at him from the wheelchair. “Well, well, you’re back.” A statement of fact. Nothing more. She looks at the carton. “You can stow it in the front closet for now. Just keep it out of the way of my chair.”

They explain quickly enough. Diabetes for her that’s put her into the wheelchair. Prostate cancer for him. Debilitating for both of them but only slowly, the doctors say. So this existence in this dark apartment is open-ended, interminable, unpredictable.

So fucking dark in here. No wonder he can’t remember anything from childhood. He couldn’t see anything the whole time.

The piece of cake they serve him is stale—but it’s cake. Obviously she doesn’t care much about her diabetes.

They don’t know what to say to him but they don’t much care, it seems.

“I got nowhere else to go,” he repeats, not knowing what else to say either. It’s a mantra. He kind of likes saying it; he likes the simple truth of it.

Until finally Sam responds to it.

“Well, what does that tell you about your life, Joey, if you got nowhere else to go? Except to your old, sick parents who you don’t even remember and who barely remember you.”

To which Joey says, “Can I stay here?”

His dad shrugs. “You can stay here tonight. You can stay here tomorrow. Then we’ll see.”