Trevor wanted me to answer it this time. At first I didn’t understand why. I thought it might be because he didn’t want to hobble down the stairs on his cut foot. Or maybe he was trying to keep up appearances, intuiting that if a strange man was the only one ever seen coming to the door at Irene Petrie’s house, well-meaning neighbours might ask questions. At any rate, I was to go down and answer the door, and Trevor would, he said, “be right here,” leaning in the kitchen doorway where he could “keep an eye on Beaner.” This position had the added benefit of blocking the view of the kitchen from down there, the broken glass and white, jagged plate-fragments covering the floor like a layer of splintered bones. I swept my eyes across this glinting carpet before heading down the stairs, kind of amazed. Who had done that? Me? I had a feeling like I’d just been shaken awake. That’s when I understood why Trevor had sent me to answer the door. Because he knew if he hadn’t, I would’ve kept going — would’ve yanked open the cupboard door the moment he stepped away and kept right on smashing dishes.

I went down the stairs, wondering how I looked. Trevor hadn’t told me to straighten myself up, so maybe I wasn’t as mad-eyed and dishevelled as I felt. Then again, the doorbell kept ringing and perhaps Trevor was unnerved. Maybe he just wanted me to get down there and make it stop.

Noel was carrying a clipboard. “Oh — how ya doing,” he said when I pulled open the door, looking up from it, at me, over his bifocals.

“Good, Noel. Hi,” I said, thinking, See me.

“Didn’t catch you folks in the middle of your supper I hope?”

“No, no,” I said. “We just finished.”

“I try to time it that way.” Noel waved the clipboard at me apologetically. “Hate this door-to-door BS but folks along the street here are usually nice enough to put up with it once a year anyhow.”

I stared at him, trying to understand why Noel would be selling something door to door.

“Raffle season!” he said.

“Raffle season?”

“For the hospital. Lions Club holds it every year. Your mom always liked to put in.”

It took me what felt like a very long time to decipher these words. “Are you,” I said slowly, “a Lion?”

Noel closed his eyes and nodded. “I am a Lion.” He said this in a serene way that struck me as out of character. I was used to seeing Noel fired up, face in a pissed-off knot, ready to fight. “Going on about thirty years, it pains me to say.” He glanced up at Trevor. A neutral glance of casual dislike, obligatory acknowledgement. “How’s it going?”

“Good-good,” said Trevor.

Noel turned back to me. He was a big man — I’d noticed it before, had assumed his size was what made him so pugnacious. I’d figured Noel was a man who had gotten used, during his young-manhood, to being intimidating. He’d never had to develop debating skills, or learn to negotiate assholes like the rest of us. He plowed through the bullshit of life, as was the prerogative of the large and muscular. But he was old now, living the soft, lawnmower-riding life of a retiree. Putting on weight, only going outside to putter in his yard. He wore bifocals and had a bad hip. Or knee. Whatever it was that gave him that limp.