She started crying when I laid her down and I had to stay in there with her and pet her a while. I guess her legs hurt. She finally went to sleep. Betty won’t even get up with her at night. I have to. It doesn’t matter if I’ve worked twelve hours or fourteen hours. She can’t even hear an alarm clock. You can let one go off and hold it right in her ear. She won’t even move.

She was smoking the last cigarette I had when I went back in the living room. She said that kid hated her and I told her she just didn’t have any patience with her. I picked up the empty pack and asked her if she had any more. She said she was out. I just looked at her. She’ll sit in the house all day long and won’t walk a half block to the store and get some, then smoke mine until she makes me run out. Then I have to go.

I got my jacket and told her I guessed I’d have to go get some. She told me to bring her some beer back. I told her I didn’t have enough money to buy any beer. I wanted some too but I was almost broke. She told me to just write a check. She says that shit all the time. I told her we had enough to pay that doctor bill and that was it. Then she said something about the saw I bought. It was eighty-nine dollars. But good saws cost good money. And if I don’t have a saw, I don’t have a job.

She wanted to know when I was going to marry her. I told her I didn’t know.

I went by the building supply the next day, after I got off from work. I priced the locks, but they were almost twenty dollars apiece. I decided to see if I could use the old locks on her doors and save her that much anyway. I signed for the doors and the trim, the linoleum.

I didn’t want to go straight over there. I wanted to go home for a few minutes and see Tracey and get Betty to fix me something to eat. I’d asked Leon to let me borrow ten dollars until Friday, so I stopped at the store and got a six-pack of beer. You can’t just go through life doing without everything.