He drops his hand, and I realize he’s holding a straw cowboy hat that looks well-worn. I don’t trust people in hats. They seem ostentatious to me, even the broken-in ones like this. His plaid shirt has pearl snaps and is tucked neatly into a pair of dark, starched jeans. A pack of cigarettes fills the left front pocket. “Your mother has told you about me?”

“Not really,” I confess. “Butcher mentioned you,” I say.

Gary nods knowingly. He seems uncomfortable, stiff. He is still standing in the middle of the room as I drop onto my sofa bed.

“How long have you known my mother?”

“We met a few years ago.”

It’s my turn to nod knowingly.

“Do you like it?” he asks, indicating the sofa bed. “I can swap it out for another if it’s not comfortable.”

“It’s fine.” I look up at him. He has wide-set eyes and a lot of wrinkles, like someone whose face has seen too much sun. His hair is ginger, peppered with white, and his belly bulges over his belt buckle, indicating a healthy beer habit. But there is kindness in the slope of his shoulders and the thick pads of his fingers. It gathers in the crow’s feet radiating from the corners of his blue-gold eyes and the coarse, overlapping hairs of his beard.

“I know this may not be ideal,” he says now, his eyes rolling around the apartment. “But we’ll figure something out in time.”

“It’s your place, isn’t it?”

Gary finally finds a seat across from me. “I own the building, yes.”

“So, they’re all your place?”

He nods and looks away as though this fact embarrasses him. “You could say that.”

“How did you meet my mom?”

Gary laughs to himself, his smile indicating a fondness for this story. “She read my cards in a bar a few blocks from here. She’s not like anyone I’ve ever met before. Her smile outshone the Corona sign behind the bar that night. She’s more alive than most people.”

I can’t help but roll my eyes. I am tired of people describing things in ways that are softer or more colorful—more acceptable, perhaps—than the truth. People die; they don’t pass. My mother is mentally ill, not more alive. “She must have been off her meds,” I say.

Gary doesn’t say anything. He is a simple man. He says things like “beau” and “pardon.” He drinks beer instead of wine. Gary does not match the image of a real estate mogul. “You don’t look like someone who would own property here,” I tell him.

He chuckles. “You mean I don’t look wealthy?”

I shrug. “That’s the long and short of it, yeah.”