“Al what? We can’t just use Al as your name on forms and such.”

“Al Farber, but you’re not putting my name on anything because I won’t do it.”

“We don’t need you to do anything. That’s why it’s such a sweet deal for you. We’ll hardly bother you at all. We just need your name and phone number and if anyone calls you to check up on us, say you’re the guardian. Or in the even more unlikely event someone comes to our house, you just run over for a very short time and pretend to be taking care of us. That’s it.”

“Forget it,” said Al.

“We’ll pay you,” said Fiona.

“How much?”

“Twenty bucks a week.”

“Twenty bucks a week?” Al started laughing. “I spend more than that on beer.”

“Jeez, how much beer do you drink?” asked Marlin.

“None of your BUSINESS,” barked Al. “You see, this is why I hate children. They’ve always got one nose in your business.”

“Do you know children with more than one nose?” asked Marlin.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you made it sound like one of their noses was in your business and one was somewhere else.”

“Mother of God,” said Al, dropping his head into his hands. “An editor!”

“Marlin, be quiet,” said Fiona. “All Marlin meant by asking you about your, er, beer-drinking habits was that we can cover your beer costs. If they’re not too exorbitant.”

“Well!” said Al, looking up sharply at Fiona. “Someone with a vocabulary. I’d give you points for that if you weren’t a child and I didn’t hate children so much. But you are and I do so that’s that.”

Marlin looked around at the filthy trailer with its open cans of baked beans all sporting forks as if he opened one, stuck a fork in, ate a bit, discarded it, and then forgot about it and then opened a new one, stuck a fork in it, and left that one in a new place. The trailer was decorated in open cans with forks sticking out of them on all the shelves and flat surfaces. In a certain light, she decided, it might look like a modern art installation. Their father was always bringing them to modern art museums when they were stationed near big cities and explaining installations, which no matter how many she saw always seemed silly to her. This, she thought, was as good as any she’d seen. Then she shook herself and got back on point.

“And we’ll bring you dinner every night,” she added with sudden inspiration.

“Dinner?”

“A hot dinner,” said Marlin.

“You can’t cook,” said the man, looking pointedly at the cake.

“THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH MY CAKE!” shouted Marlin.

“Nothing a garbage can couldn’t solve,” said Al.

“Besides, Fiona cooks dinner. She makes all kinds of tasty things, roast chicken and mashed potatoes, brisket with vegetables, vegetable soup, pork chops in mushroom sauce.” Marlin rattled off things their mother used to make.

Al got a strange dreamy look in his eye.