Marino hasn't bathed or been to bed in at least twenty-four hours. When I move past him, I smell Chandonne's hideous body odor and am stabbed by nausea, a burning wrenching of my stomach that locks my brain and causes me to break out in a cold sweat. I straighten up and take a deep breath to dispel the olfactory hallucination as my attention is drawn beyond the windows to the slowing of a car. I have come to recognize the subtlest pause in traffic and know when it will become someone parking out front. It is a rhythm I have listened to for hours. People gawk. Neighbors rubberneck and stop in the middle of the road. I reel in an uncanny intoxication of emotions, one minute bewildered and then frightened the next. I swing from exhaustion to mania, from depression to tranquil-ity, and beneath it all, excitement fizzes as if my blood is filled with gas.

A car door shuts out front. "Now what?" I complain. "Who this time? The FBI?" I open another drawer. "Marino, that's it." I gesture with a fuck-you wave of my hands. "Get them out of my house, all of them. Now." Fury shimmers like mirages on hot blacktop. "So I can finish packing and get the hell out of here. Can't they just leave long enough for me to get out?" My hands shake as I pick through socks. "It's bad enough they're in my yard." I toss a pair of socks in the tote bag. "It's bad enough they're here at all." Another pair. "They can come back when I leave." And I throw another pair and miss, and stoop over to pick it up. "They can at least let me walk through my own house." Another pair. "And let me get out in peace and privacy." I put a pair back in the drawer. "Why the hell are they in my kitchen?" I change my mind and get out the socks I just put back. "Why are they in my study? I told them he didn't go in there."