“You want to help, wash some of those dishes.”

Tub shrugged his shoulders at me.

“I washed last time,” he said, nabbing the dishtowel.

I rolled my eyes and took up my usual station.

“Oh, Jim Sturges!” Grandma cried. “Welcome, welcome. There will be cookies for all.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Dershowitz.”

“It’s so nice to have a man around the house.”

“Grandma!” Tub raised his palms in disbelief. “What the heck? I’m a man.”

“Yes, but Jim is older.”

“By three weeks, Grandma!”

To say the least, we’d been through this before. I plunged my hands into the suds. With one hand I withdrew a dirty measuring glass. With the other, I withdrew a small head with pointy ears and fangs. It hissed at me and I almost screamed.

“In the sink, Tub?”

The cat jumped from the water and landed on the counter next to me, shaking suds from its body. It was Cat #23. Tub had long since given up trying to remember the names of the fifty or so felines that had come and gone, and had therefore instituted a streamlined numerical system. Somewhere in his room was a highly valuable laminated list of their actual names in case of emergency, but Tub hadn’t seen it in a while.

“Cats aren’t supposed to be hiding in sinks,” I said. “They hate water.”

Tub shrugged. “One in a million doesn’t. And we have a million.”

He shooed Cat #37 from where it was curled up asleep in the drying rack.

I snatched the sponge from the faucet and began scrubbing the measuring glass.

“If you don’t help me, I’m going to have to tell my dad.”

Tub glanced at his grandmother, who was facing the opposite counter. With the stealth of a secret agent, Tub tiptoed across the linoleum, extended an arm toward Grandma’s ear, and succeeded in cranking down her hearing aid. He relaxed and sighed, then returned to the sink with exasperated slowness.

“Fine, tell your dad. You two can bond over it. No hugging, though, since you’ll both be in straightjackets.”

I held the medallion away from my chest. Tub took it and leaned in to give it a hard look.

“Looks fake. That language even looks fake. What’s it supposed to be, Chinese?”

“No.” I girded myself for mockery. “It’s Troll.”

Tub let the medallion drop to my chest.

“It was nice knowing you, pal.”

“Tub!”

He threw down his towel.

“I’m serious, Jim. You need to put this crap away. You walk into school on Monday talking to me, or anyone else, about the city’s pesky troll problem, and you’re not exactly going to get a lot of people saying, ‘Gee, thanks for the warning.’ It’ll spread faster than mono. You think things are tough for us now? Jim, this will be the end. I’m sorry if you had a crazy nightmare. I really am. But I can’t let you ruin our lives.”

Cat #31 sidled up to his leg and he shook it off.