“Oh yes, drugs everywhere,” she says in a fake whisper. “This is the place for it. Vacation, no?” She has taken a silver ring out of her nose and is holding it up to the nose of a mannequin in yellow fishnet bodysuit. “She is better than the Emerald Buddha, no?”

“Did you like the wats?” asks Mike. “I wanted to see the one across the highway.”

Pierced Girl gives the mannequin a kiss on the lips. Skull Boy is rocking another of the plastic women on her heels and he calls out an idea to Pierced Girl and she laughs.

“What did he say?”

“He said we should knock one over and let them all fall on one another, how do you say it, like ah . . .”

“Dominoes,” says Mike.

Skull Boy is trying to impress her and she is rolling her eyes but smiling. He is going to do it. Mike instinctively looks to see if there is a guard or a cop, even though he knows there are none in the gallery. Skull Boy rocks and rocks and then the quiet of gallery is violated by a cacophony of crashing plastic women.

47

Lyle once disappeared for two days. It was August.

Mike had half awoken to shouting in the night. The next morning when he went downstairs he saw the antique kitchen mirror lying shattered on the floor, an unripe pineapple among the shards, as though thrown from the bowl of fruit on the counter. Lyle and one of the cars were gone all day. When Mike called his cell phone it rang in on the hall table. Mike was sure his brother was safe—Lyle was supremely competent and a good driver—but this was strange.

His father did not descend from his bedroom until late in the afternoon. Mike stayed out of the kitchen, and didn’t speak to his father until the mirror was cleaned up. His mother arrived back home in the evening, explaining that she had gotten up early and had been running errands all day. No one said anything about the mirror or the pineapple.

By dinnertime, Mike could see his parents were anxious about Lyle. But somehow not anxious enough. Like they knew what was happening. The big house felt hot and close. Mike took a long walk on the beach before he went home to bed, and just because he had always been curious and was feeling eerie and frustrated, he kneeled down at the shore and drank some seawater from his cupped hands, just to see what it was like.

The next morning, Lyle had still not come home. Mike’s mother called all of Lyle’s friends, who said they didn’t know where he was. By that afternoon, she was becoming hysterical, but Mike’s father calmed her down. Mike didn’t know how. They gave Lyle another day.