“Well where were you?”

I told her what we did, but she had nothing to say about it.

“When are you coming back?” she said.

“Tomorrow,” I told her.

“Come home tonight,” she said. “I want to talk.”

I switched the phone to my other ear. “I have to watch Fellis. Why don’t you come over here?”

“I don’t want to go over there,” she said.

“They ain’t like that here,” I said. “It’s different in this house.”

“Please come home tonight,” she said. “I just want to talk. We need to talk.”

“Look, I gotta go, I’ll call later.”

“Dee,” she said. “Today’s our—”

I hung up and then removed the phone from the hook.

. . .

Beth got home four hours early. Fellis and I were on the couch, watching reruns of The People’s Court and sipping warm Arizona Iced Tea. The sun was still shining, and when I heard the car door bang shut I thought it was Tabitha and I got excited, but then I saw it was just Beth.

She came into the house and clunked her keys onto the table by the back door.

Fellis turned down the TV but didn’t take his eyes from it. “You quit?” he said nonchalantly.

I thought that shit was funny and I cracked up. Quit!

“I didn’t quit, dummy,” Beth said. “The whole store had to shut down for the day. Something’s wrong with the septic, and all the aisles smell like chagook. Worse than those caterpillars.”

“No way,” Fellis said, and he turned the TV back up. A new episode was starting. “Dun nun nun,” Fellis said. “Tktktktktktktktkt, dun dun dun DUN.”

I laughed.

“That show’s so stupid,” Beth said, and she left us and went into the kitchen.

While we watched The People’s Court, Beth baked chicken and made a green bean casserole, and while each cooked, she’d come into the living room and watch the show with us. Every case that came and went, Fellis would say, “Guilty!” and he’d slam his hand on the coffee table between us and the TV. “That motherfucker is guilty!” It didn’t matter if the people were innocent or not.

As the cases came and went—as Beth walked back and forth from the living room to the kitchen—Fellis and I said, Fuck Judge Milian. We’d deliver the verdicts. A young mother in a pink blouse and jeans was suing her neighbor, a tall pale man, for running over her daughter’s bike. When the judge pulled the young daughter up to the stand and questioned her, the judge discovered that the little girl had left her bike in the road on accident.

“Lock her up!” Fellis yelled.

“Give her life!”

“That young lady’s trouble!”

“Why’s the phone off the hook?” Beth said.

“Hold on, Beth,” Fellis said. “I need to hear all the facts to the case.”