“I wanted to see you,” I said, looking over his shoulder at the people waiting outside the ER. “Can I come in?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s ugly.”

“That’s okay.”

He didn’t insist I leave. He wasn’t hiding the situation, exactly, as it turned out. He just really hated Floella.

He didn’t know where she came from, he told me—Texas someplace. Only ten years older than Roland, she’d met his father in Vegas and married him when he had about a year to live. His father had left her the bungalow in Roland’s old neighborhood, but Floella had problems. Liquor was the least of it; she never could’ve blown everything on liquor. The real money-suck was Vegas. She’d get on a junket to the desert and come back broke. His father had gambled too, it was true, but he’d been a lucky guy. In just a few years, Floella lost the house, and that was the last Roland had heard of her.

“I never should’ve looked her up,” he said. “I only did it out of loyalty to my dad. She was really good to him after the stroke, when I couldn’t be there. The least I could do was check in when I came back. He would’ve wanted that.”

Roland had asked after Floella in the old neighborhood, and the new tenants of the bungalow informed him that she was last seen in the Tomahawk, the poorest district of Arcade. She didn’t have an address, they added, but he could try looking for a blue Chevrolet Celebrity.

He wasn’t prepared for what he found down there. Poverty in the Tomahawk had always been bad, but for the first time in Roland’s life, his hometown had seemed unfamiliar, like one of the combat zones he’d been sent into, armed to the teeth. It didn’t matter whether a bomb blew up your house or the landlord kicked you out, the stooped shuffle of the homeless was the same in every country.

He spent the afternoon asking anyone who’d listen about Floella. When he finally got someone to talk, he heard she’d been bitten by Cristóbal’s dog.

“I pictured like a little terrier chewing on a postman’s leg,” he said.

We were standing outside Floella’s room, which was locked. With a cross expression, the nurse said she’d have to ask the doctor for clearance.

“But you can’t stay for long,” she said.

“We don’t want to,” Roland said.

“Dr. Massengale might be busy.”

When it was clear we wouldn’t leave, she finally went off.

Cristóbal was a dealer in the Tomahawk, Roland finished. Everyone down there knew him, and everyone knew not to cross his pit bull. The way Roland said it, you’d think Floella was just too stupid to internalize such basic information.