In the first night he slept in the new home, he wrapped his fingers around the corner of his small bed and thought a little but not too much because he had to work in the morning, which he thought a blessing.

Loneliness suits some people, I guess. More than others, at least. I just think love and companionship and stuff, that’s for other people. It just is and there ain’t no use beating myself up over it, he thought to himself.

Within the year, he was married.

2019

Amelia had spent two thousand dollars during the last year putting various decorations and doodads into the windows of empty, closed storefronts for her “Armin Main Street Beautification Project,” something she had been attempting to pitch to the various city bureaucrats since the first businesses began to close in 2008. She would gather wicker, arrange plastic flowers, paint small advertisements for the businesses that were still open on small, polished oak signs, and arrange all of them pleasantly on white linen.

She didn’t have permission to do this. Most of the lots that the failed businesses were on were owned by out-of-town banks or property-grabbing LLCs that came in to scoop up cheap riverfront property in order to resell for a profit whenever the economy skewed north again. The city politicians she knew she called, and they just shrugged. Didn’t have the authority. Best they could do was make a phone call on her behalf. It was all pointless. The individuals or business entities that actually owned the buildings didn’t want any kind of liability for things going wrong on their property. Insurance-wise, it made everything real complicated. The safest option, financially, was the blanket no to all requests.

It was safer to ask for forgiveness than it was permission. The actual owners were hundreds of miles away. She used what social capital she could to get her way. Frankly, Amelia had to bully the locksmith into opening up the first abandoned store.

“This isn’t in any way legal, ma’am,” he told her.

“C’mon, Curtis. You known me for years. You think I’m asking you to do a bank heist?”

“If it ain’t your property, I ain’t popping the lock.”

“Nobody will even notice. You know my friend, Mary Ann? She teaches at the school. Before Rose went and closed up shop and moved up to, what was it, DeSoto, I think? You know, up where her son teaches at the college? English, I think? Anyways, she, Mary Ann, used to come see Rose after her classes got out. Have you ever met her?”

“Who? Mary Ann?”

“Yeah.”

“No,” Curtis said.