“Can’t sleep?” I ask him, moving to lean against one of the decorative trees.

He lowers his phone and takes a drag. “Lifelong insomniac,” he says with a chuckle.

I nod and look around our courtyard, so quietly sequestered from the commotion of the Quarter, like a little cove of calm. “Have you lived here long?”

“A couple years, give or take.” He is smiling in the dark. I can tell because of the curve of his beard, but he never bares his teeth.

“Shouldn’t you be someone’s grandpa or something?” It is out before I can stop it, and I’m mortified at my impertinence. Mary is rubbing off on me more and more.

Butcher just chuckles. “I prefer living alone, I guess. I like the solitude. Most people can’t stop talking. They love the sound of their own voices. But you only hear things of value in the silence.” He drops his cigarette and crushes it beneath a shoe.

“I get that. It was just me and my grandmother before. Our lives were pretty quiet. I miss it.”

He smiles kindly in my direction. “Isn’t it just you and your mother now?”

I nod. “Yeah. But living with her is like living with a crowd of people all the time.”

“Loneliest place to be is in the middle of a crowd,” he tells me.

I think he is right. It makes me wonder how lonely my mom must be inside herself all the time. I point to his hand, the one with the missing fingers. “What happened?”

He looks down and turns it so that the nearby porchlight falls across his abrupt knuckles. “Occupational hazard,” he says.

“Really?” It would make sense.

“No. But it sounds good, doesn’t it? I lost them a long time ago. I grew up on a ranch in West Texas. There was an old vaquero who used to break horses for us. One day I was out by the pen, watching, when a colt got him down. I ran in to help but left the gate open. Old Bartolo was up on his feet, but the colt made for the gate. Like a fool, I grabbed the lead rope and wrapped it around my hand. Horse drug me four hundred feet before the rope slipped, taking my first two fingers with it.”

I swallow hard against the tension knotting my stomach.

“I lost my taste for ranching after that,” he says now. “Don’t feel sorry for an old man.”

“For what it’s worth,” I tell him as I start to walk away, “I like the real story better.”

I can hear him chuckling to himself as I turn and head up the stairs.