Rick and Dan went in through the garage. The house was as big as any in Preston Hollow, a long scalene run of ranch that triangled back on itself to accommodate a white dye pool and an untrampled green lawn guarded by willows and cottonwoods that divided the property from the sixteenth green of a golf course. The house smelled like paint and drywall and felt to Dan like part of an elaborate movie set put up moments ago to convince him Plano really existed.

As the boys walked through the laundry room, they were greeted by a clattering of nails and dog tags. Ruby and Ozzie, sister and brother wire fox terriers, ran toward Rick growling and gurgling with happiness. They then spotted Dan and circled him while barking in piercing pizzicato squeaks.

“Shut the fuck up, Ruby. Get down, Ozzie.”

“Ozzie” was short for “Oswald.” Ruby and Oswald. Dan froze as Ozzie snuffled him for wolf scents. Clear.

“Boy howdy. The men of Jesuit return. Hi, Danny, what do you say?”

Standing at the kitchen island was Rick’s mother, Margaret, who waited for a peck on the cheek from her son. With wizened Scotch-Irish features, she looked a little like Loretta Lynn.

“You guys hungry? I’ve got chips and dip.”

Sitting at the far counter, grazing on her own separate stockpile of chips and dip, was Melissa, Rick’s sister, dressed in the yellow oxford and green tartan skirt for St. Paul the Apostle. The Dowlearns were easygoing Methodists who you might have thought had outkicked the coverage of good public schools this far up in Plano, but the truth was you couldn’t matriculate with more than a week of unexcused absences in the Plano ISD, and Rick was going to miss much more than that with his fledgling acting career. When he got cast as Spalding Gray’s son, Larry Culver, in True Stories, Rick enrolled in parochial school. He took the role, which amounted to a surreal dinner scene where he played tic-tac-toe with zucchini slices and Triscuits as Spalding Gray gave David Byrne a lecture on the coming disintegration of the modern workplace while punctuating his point with a cooked lobster. To this day, no one is sure what the hell is going on in that scene, but Rick got a closing credit, and St. Paul’s gave the Dowlearns a good sibling discount on tuition, so Missy went too.

“Missy girl, come help me with the laundry. And if you give me that face we can add ironing to it. Also, we have to sweep that garage.”

“Mooooommmm . . .” Missy was a world-class whiner.

“There’s enough leaves in there that if Daddy flicks one hot ash from those foul cigars, he will send this house up quicker than Farrah Fawcett.” Mrs. Dowlearn pulled the bag of tortilla chips away from her. “Come on, darling. Dan, can you believe these lazy children I have to live with?”