“No, he wouldn’t have,” Fellis said.

I gave a Yeah, okay look.

“He wouldn’t have,” Fellis said. “So shut the fuck up. And you better not have touched these cards while I was in my room.”

Fellis snuffed out the cigarette. It smoldered in the ashtray. We bet, and then Fellis dealt one last time. I peeked at my cards. Barely better than nothing.

“Next time I see him I’m going to say something,” Fellis said.

“You do that,” I told him. “I’ll watch you get beat up.”

“You fucking would watch, wouldn’t you?” he said. “You’d help him up after I beat him all to hell, probably bandage his face and bring him home. Bet.”

I bet once more, leaving me with no more money. Fellis matched, leaving him with no more either. Fellis cracked his knuckles and fingers. The pot was at sixty bucks.

“Christ, Beth will be bandaging your face,” I said, and I started laughing. “Look at those skinny arms of yours. You ain’t beating no one to hell.”

“Fuck you, Dee,” he said. “Flip your cards over.”

“You first, tough guy.”

He flipped his cards over. A king, a queen, a jack, a four, and a seven. “Wait,” he said. “What?” He searched the bottom of the deck.

I laughed and flipped my cards over. “A pair of twos beats nothing!” I said. I took the money and held out the four fives I owed him.

“I meant to keep these two.” He showed me. “Shit! If you weren’t talking my face off.”

“You lost,” I said. “Just like you’d lose to Meekew.”

With one sweep of his arm Fellis sent all the cards and spaghetti onto the floor. He snatched the fives from my hand and went to his room.

I picked up the cards and stacked them on the kitchen table. I cleaned up the spaghetti—some rolled under the stove, so I left it there—and I put what I could find back into the box.

Fellis’s door was open, his bedroom light bright like day. He sat on his bed, looking at the floor and rubbing the back of his neck as if something had struck him.

I leaned against his dresser. “You know how you can make the money back?” I said.

“I don’t want the money back.”

“But you know how?”

Fellis stood. “I don’t give a shit.” He opened his closet.

“We can go hunt porcupines and bring them to Clara.”

Fellis said nothing. He grabbed his jacket from the closet floor.

“Where you going?” I said.

“To the bar.”

I looked at the clock. “Last call’s in an hour.”

“Then let’s hurry,” he said.

My jacket was in the living room, draped over a box filled with old assignments that Beth always kept and filed away, like her young students would one day grow up and come looking for their old tests on fractions.

Fellis brushed past me and opened the front door.

“Hey,” I said. “Put that envelope in the mail for your mother.”