“How’d I know your name?” he answers Simon’s unasked question. “Well, we don’t get a hell of a lot of Indians down here.”

He rocks back on his heels in obvious pride at his own acumen and hitches up his sagging pants with his thumbs.

“Besides, your parole officer called and warned me you’d be comin.”

Simon nods and starts to speak but Dougan claps him on the shoulder and pushes past him.

“So,” he bellows over his shoulder as Simon falls in behind him, “so, you’re a murderer, huh?”

Simon stops.

“Well, at least you’re not a thief.” He stops and glares at the hotel above. “Nobody’d give a damn if you knocked off some of the scum stay up there. But stealin the towels’d piss off the management plenty.”

He sets off again and climbs the metal stairs, Simon in bewildered and shameful pursuit. They pass the stairs to the laundry and Dougan turns the brass knob of a water-swollen door and kicks it open with his foot. It swings on blackened hinges into a cement room with a sink and plywood counter lit by a single bulb on a string. Nothing is in the room except a rust-colored mattress on a low steel frame, with the ticking molding like cattail down into the windless and dank air. Dougan turns sideways so Simon can view the interior and gestures expansively with his red-knuckled and callused right hand.

“As you can see,” he says grandly, “we’ve been expecting you. It ain’t much, but all you got to do is sweep down here and record the pressure gauges, the ones that work. Dress clean, take a shower once in a while. And, most important, only I get to drink on the job. Okay. Any questions?”

“Well—”

“Towels, sheets and pillows is upstairs. So’s the shower.”

“When do I start?”

“Now.”

Dougan turns to go. Simon squeezes past him into his new room.

“By the way,” asks Dougan, “who’d you kill?”

Simon looks at him blankly.

“My brother,” he whispers.

Dougan nods thoughtfully and turns to leave. As he passes Simon he gently touches his elbow and makes his way down the dim hall.

3

Back at the house Betty shuts the door and casts around quickly to the spare living room, the doorway to the kitchen. Pale winter light leaks through the gray windows. It wasn’t always like this. Life never seemed this long. So unbearably, so unshakably long and even and sad.