“Who makes the rules?”

“I wish I knew.”

I accepted defeat and the condition of ownership. She returned to the coat rack, saying she didn’t trust me to not look at it right now, and slipped the picture inside an interior lapel pocket of my leather jacket.

She said, “If I catch you fishing around in there later tonight, I’ll remove your spleen and put it in the same jar with your uvula, which I keep in my dresser. Did you find that last night, by the way?”

As she victory-marched back to the couch, the skin on my face and neck and everywhere else flashed red and I attempted to melt between the cushions. Instead of stammering an awkward apology for taking apart her dresser or an equally cringy joke of acknowledgment, I summoned the courage to return us to the basement of my house on Echo Ave with a pointed question.

“Do you remember the last photo you shot of me?” I asked. “Not counting the one you put in my jacket, obviously.”

I expected obfuscation and denial. Mercy was direct. “Oh yeah. You were home recovering from surgery, or your first surgery, and I’d snuck into your basement. Man, that was a scary-ass basement.” She sat on the couch and continued. “I was, like, halfway up the stairs and trying to talk you into letting me in the house. You were still mad at me, I guess, which was probably fair, and I was still mad at you.” She spoke carefully, as though the wrong word or phrase might virus out and infect everything, turn this new basement into my old one. She wasn’t lying, but she was leaving stuff out. The most important stuff. “Then you opened the door, and I snapped a picture. You slammed the door shut and I couldn’t see and almost bought it going down the stairs. I knew it was wrong that I snuck in there like that, but I thought you’d appreciate the effort. I know that sounds so dumb now. Then I got extra pissed you shut the door in my face and left me in the dark, so I stole a box of Corn Pops off your shelves down there. I think it was Corn Pops. I felt bad about that after.”

All I said was “Oh yeah?”

“I knew how you loved your sugary bullshit cereal.”

“If you’d taken Honeycomb, I never would’ve forgiven you.”

Mercy said, “My turn to ask the true confessional question. What the hell were you doing creeping on me in my sleep and with my camera the night I crashed at your house? That was fucked-up, Art.”

She sounded sincerely upset and angry, and it was so unexpected and out of character, like your favorite doting elder relative suddenly yelling at you. It threw me for an infinite loop, and I couldn’t decide if I should beg for forgiveness or feign innocence, even though I was innocent and there was nothing to feign. Was there? Was I sure of that? (At that moment, I wasn’t sure.)