Fiona came to the door so slowly I almost gave up waiting. She’d gotten fat. I thought maybe it had something to do with the brace on her leg. She explained about the injury. A big metal sign had fallen off its hinges and crushed her, she said, with letters the size of bread loaves. Her friend had been opening a clothing store, and she’d been helping hoist the sign. He ran the store now, Fiona said, but she couldn’t help anymore. Her voice had an edge that hadn’t been around in Venice. Tower People. It was a store for tall folks. Her friend was a short man, but he had a tall wife for whom he would do nearly anything.

I asked if she was still knitting capes.

“That?” she said. “That was a lifetime ago.”

I paused. I wasn’t sure what to say next.

“You want to come in or not?” she said. “’Cuz I need to sit down.”

I followed her inside. She settled her body into a recliner and it made me sad to see how much relief it gave her. Like there was no greater pleasure she could imagine.

She wanted to know if I was looking for a place to stay. I hadn’t been, exactly, but there was a reason I’d taken a bus out of Reno—I wasn’t happy there either. I kept telling myself, This isn’t your real life. Not yet.

“Well,” Fiona said. “I’ve got a room if you need one.”

It had been built as a breakfast nook, she warned, but there was room for a bed. Maybe I could a run a few errands in exchange? She had a hard time getting around with her bum leg and some extra weight. “Let me explain a few things about this town,” she said. “Everything is out to fuck you over.” I thought maybe she was going to explain another thing, but then she didn’t.

She made me feel like I could actually do some good. I bought her pink carnations for her fold-up kitchen table, and twelve-packs of donuts to keep in her bedroom. She ate quickly, in secret—her pastries leaving a silt of sugar and crumbs across the sheets. I washed her endless supply of sweatshirts with their cheesy slogans: PMS stands for Please More Sugar!, or My Heart’s Locked Up in Lovelock. I bought little green pills to flush out the worms from her kitty’s belly, and a special kind of clear jelly she needed for a scab on her lips. It was an old wound that looked like a forever cold sore. She’d gotten it from chewing on a power cord when she was little. I tugged her shitty hose all around the trailer—it was knotted like a little girl’s hair and so rusty it trickled red—and tried to water her withered garden. Fool’s work. The plants wanted to die under all that sun. I finally let them.