There are levels, a lot of people don’t see that. You can live around here and still have self-respect, work a job. Have a good lawsuit going. But there are also people out here existing on a lower level. They no longer make any food. They eat tamales cold from the can. Or dinner can be Hershey’s Kisses. When the gas company shuts off their heat they burn wood in the old fireplace. The flue doesn’t work right anymore, so the living room is usually filled with smoke. And then on top of that they themselves smoke, cigarettes and weed and hash and crack and meth. Whatever’s around. I’m talking about Irene, of course.

You have to think of her as someone who’s going to be moving on; think of her heading for the West Coast, or Alaska. The leaving she’s actually doing is dying, but in a beautiful kind of slow motion. There’s a little less of her every day.

Where I see myself is a level or two up from her. I have regular work, nights at the Citgo. I can make a spaghetti dinner, with a salad. Plus, I am just stronger for being a man, and younger, and into drugs only recreationally, not as a total lifestyle. This is how I am able to help Irene, to push a soft pillow between her and the hard ground when she falls.

We are in bed in the back room of her place eating Halloween candy. Snickers from those good-looking babes in the run-down house. By now the mattress has gray, shiny marks where our bodies lie through the day. We fall again and again onto these reserved places. When it gets too gross, we’ll just bring in another mattress—the alleys are filled with them. If it’s full of bugs, we toss it and find another. This afternoon we are bug-free and happy under a pile of old quilts someone left behind. Things turn up at Irene’s, and also disappear. The quilts might be gone tomorrow, but there could be a new sofa (new to us anyway) in the living room. I have no idea about the flow of all this stuff. It’s like there’s a hole under her rug and a steady cargo comes in through it and then goes out again. We use a lot of what are scraps to most people. We haven’t gotten any help like education or rich relatives. We have to make our own help.

“Are you still with me?” she asks. She has just shot up. This has moved her to a space not really here. Near here. I watch her and eat a packet of candy corn.

“I’m staying under the covers until I can make myself get out and dressed. That might be about Tuesday.” We are on the near edge of November. Although we live in a city, we are also on the Great Plains. The fierce weather doesn’t care much about our little human constructions. And now there’s no rhyme or reason to the jumble of hot and cold, or the extreme ways they show up.

“I’ll check in with the Administrators. See if they can crank up the heat a little.” We have gas again, but Irene is stingy with it. She is joking about the Administrators controlling the heat, but she also fears and worships these personal gods. The Administrators are all women. Irene believes in them along with dark magic of all kinds. She thinks cards can tell your future and crystals can heal you, and that everything interesting is happening inside electric air that hovers around us. She thinks the dead have things to say to us, especially those who are dead by our hands. I have killed one man, and it was to make an important point. Irene has killed three people, at least that she has told me about. These were freelance jobs she did for money when she was younger and had her act more together, her hands steady. She’s long past that sort of thing now. She’s old and weak and lazy. Still, her past does make me keep an eye on her. Sometimes she will pull her gun from under the mattress and stick it in my shorts, and if it were someone else, I’d know it was just part of a game, but with Irene, I stop whatever we’re doing and say, “Baby. Put it away.”