The Summer of Our Foreclosure

by Sean Boling

  Chapter Thirteen

  When the party burden started, right around the time school and jobs ended, some of our dads thought it would be fun to have an event that was based on father-son teams, and decided the best game for it would be Strikeout, since it worked well with two-person squads. Our house ended up as the venue for it, so Dad made a strike zone out of painter’s tape on our garage door, with the groove between the driveway and the sidewalk serving as the pitching area. Hitting the tennis ball across the street on a fly was a home run, making it across on the ground past the lone fielder was a triple, over the pitcher’s head and in front of the fielder a double, and past the pitcher on the ground was a single. The loser of each game would throw a buck into the pot, we would keep track of the standings, have a regular season and a playoffs, and the championship team would win the money.

  It was immediately clear, however, that our league had a problem with parity. There were a couple of dynasties and a bunch of doormats. None of us saw it coming because we kids had never played any form of baseball before that summer, and our fathers had just assumed baseball was one of the things we had been doing with all of that free time we had. We knew how to swing a bat, since we had swung them for destructive purposes many a time, and throw a ball, thanks to all the rocks we had thrown at each other, but making contact with a thrown ball and catching one with a glove only came naturally to a few of us. So the games featured a lot of frustrated coaching by the dads, and constant grumbling by the fathers stuck on the doormats about breaking up the teams, which was resisted by the fathers who had lucked into a dynasty with their sons. The doormat dads, which included mine, then suggested that the losers stop putting money into a pot, that we just play for fun, which was greeted with jeers and mockery by the dynasty dads. Then one of the dynasty teams left, since the dad’s vacation was almost up and they needed to spend some of that time moving out of the house they no longer owned. That left us with one team that had no rival: Nub and his Dad, mostly because his dad was so good while Nub was just competent enough not to undermine his dad’s performance. The rest of the dads threatened to boycott their remaining games against the clear favorite. So Nub’s Dad claimed he could still take the title while batting left-handed the rest of the way, and the others agreed to that handicap. He did prove to be just as good from the other side, as though he had been waiting to play that trick on everyone the whole time, and he crowed and trash-talked all the more because of it, all the way to the championship game.

  My Dad and I were the last doormat standing, so we were stuck providing the platform for Nub’s Dad’s moment of glory. The other teams and a few other friends, including Shay, came by to watch; not so much to see who would win, but how the dad dynamic would play out. The innings alternated between sons pitching to sons and fathers pitching to fathers, and after my Dad gave up a few runs in the top of the first, the expected blitz was on. When Nub took the ball for his side and I stepped up to the garage door, I noticed Nub giving me a slight grin and a weary gesture behind him, where his dad was launching into his rapid-fire chatter, loudly encouraging him to dominate me. Nub and I had decided to get this over with quickly, so I was planning on swinging at just about anything close to the strike zone. Nub had agreed to do the same when he was batting, but apparently had come up with a pitching strategy that he didn’t share with me beforehand.

  The first pitch came in so nice and easy that I was way out in front of it, hitting it almost directly to my left into the driveway next door. “Way to fool him, son!” yelled his Dad, not suspecting anything yet. “That’ll keep him guessing!”

  But the next pitch came in just as straight and true, not too slow, not too fast, and I hammered it over his dad’s head for a home run. And every pitch after that was just as easy to hit. If I was a better hitter, I could have had a home run practically every time. But I was able to get enough hits to keep it close, and keep Nub’s Dad on a path towards insanity.

  “What are you doing!?” he would bellow.

  “Sorry, Dad. My arm hurts.”

  “Well do you have to throw it right down the middle!?”

  “You’re just gonna have to be on your toes out there, Dad.”

  And he did chase hard after everything I hit, at one point even diving forward on the pavement to try to catch a ball before it landed in front of him for a double, skinning the length of his forearm in the process.

  “Godammit!” he yelled. “This is NOT happening!”

  But it was happening. My Dad seemed enthused enough by the events to retire Nub’s Dad often enough so that we started to pull away. He wasn’t striking him out, but was getting him to chase bad pitches as his frustration built, swinging at them too hard, hitting weak pop flies to me in the street and high bouncers to Dad on the driveway.

  “Fuck this!” he finally screamed in the final inning. “I’m batting right-handed!”

  “Oh, so who’s wussing out and changing the rules now?” Dad taunted him.

  “It was never a rule, I was just giving you limp dicks a chance.”

  All the kids laughed at that line, while the fellow parents winced, especially Nub’s Mom.

  “Go ahead,” Dad said, enjoying the opportunity to come across as cool and collected. “It’s too late now, anyway.”

  “Bullshit!” he barked. “Pitch!”

  His wife told him to watch his language, but he didn’t seem to hear her amongst the children’s laughter and his fury.

  Dad threw him a pretty neat breaking pitch, and got him to hit the ball into the ground and bounce high into the air. As soon as it happened, Nub’s Dad slammed the bat into the ground and it careened into the garage door, leaving a small dent. Dad took a few steps back and let the ball land in front of him, and kept backing up, letting ball bounce lower and lower until it almost came to a stop, at which point Dad picked it up and showed it to him. “Game over. You owe me a garage door.”

  “What do you care? It’s not even yours anymore.”

  That shook Dad out of his role as the calm one. “Oh, and yours is, asshole?”

  “What did you call me?”

  “You heard me.”

  They started walking toward each other and the surrounding adults stepped in. I walked over to Nub, who was near our side gate, the same place he had been standing to watch the last at-bat.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I suggested to him.

  “Good idea,” he agreed.

  I led the way into our backyard.

  “Can I come?” said Shay, catching the gate before it closed.

  “Sure,” I said, walking through our yard to the back fence.

  “Where we going?” asked Nub.

  “I need to get off The Ranch for a while,” I answered, grabbing the top of the fence and vaulting myself over. Shay and Nub followed, and we walked toward The Barrio.

  “Thanks for the fat pitches,” I said to Nub.

  “No problem. It was my plan all along, no matter who we played. I like seeing my Dad rant and rave. It’s funny.”

  “You’re not embarrassed?” Shay asked.

  “I got over being embarrassed about anything a long time ago.”

  “Around the time we started calling you ‘Nub’?” I posited.

  “Before that. Why would I pee on the fence in the first place?”

  We laughed at the memory and decided to stop by Miggy’s house. He answered the door and was glad to see us. I looked past him and saw his grandmother in her chair upholstered with cat hair, but no sign of Lourdes. She had taken a job in High School Town over the summer, catching a ride with her dad and brother in the mornings, so she wasn’t home very often. It appeared today was no exception, so I had no mixed feelings at all when Miggy said he wanted to get out of the house and suggested we walk over to the factory.

  “Funny, we were just talking about that place,” Shay teased Nub, as if that was possible.

  Nub laughed, always the good sport, and said, “We’d invite you over to Ranch Ra
nch, but it’s a little bit crazy right now.”

  “Miggy doesn’t come over anymore, anyway,” I said as we started to make our way toward the tree line.

  “I don’t blame you,” said Shay.

  “Like you come over here,” Miggy addressed me.

  “I had to cut down,” I defended myself. “I get all these questions about when I’m coming home, and what we’re going to do, and they say I shouldn’t bother your family so much.”

  “They put you through all that when you go over to someone’s house in your neighborhood?”

  “I know what you’re getting at, and no. They don’t. But it’s because they can see me over there. And even if they can’t, the place is crawling with parents. It’s like a big daycare facility.”

  “Run by drunks,” Shay chimed in.

  “What Shay said,” Miggy laughed. “I wouldn’t go over there if everyone was named Rodriguez and Gomez, either. I was just messing with you, Nick.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m a bit jumpy.”

  “Relax, man,” Nub patted me on the shoulder. “You’re the Strikeout champion. We should be celebrating.”

  Miggy asked what the deal was, and we told him about the championship game and its aftermath. It was the first time any of us had a chance to tell the story, the event was only ten minutes old, and we were already embellishing it: making up new dialogue loosely based on the original, adding some rollovers by Nub’s Dad and run-ins with parked cars as he tried to reach every single ball I hit into the street, exaggerating the moment between me and Nub before he threw the first pitch, touching up the sounds and visuals to a point where I was already wondering how much of what we shared was true.

  “That was cool of you, Nub,” said Miggy. “So cool I’m feeling bad about calling you ‘Nub’.”

  “Ah,” Nub shrugged. “I did it for myself more than anything. My Dad was a hot shot jock when he was young, and he’s always been disappointed that I got my mother’s height and suck at sports. Not that he ever says it, but it’s pretty obvious.”

  He may have been trying to be funny, but there was just enough sincerity in his assessment, whether he supplied it with his voice or we projected it with our minds, that we didn’t laugh.

  “Let’s stop here,” Shay suggested as we were about to pass through the tree line. “We’ve stared at that factory forever and still don’t know what it is. I want to feel like we’re out in the woods somewhere; someplace far away.”

  “Everybody’s full of good ideas today,” I said, and sat down with my back resting against the trunk of a tree. Miggy and Shay also found trees nearby to support their backs, while Nub lied on the ground staring up at the sky through the branches.

  “This reminds me of Outdoor Ed in fifth grade,” Nub said, keeping his gaze skyward. “Did any of you guys do that in your old schools?”

  “I was always here at our crappy little school,” Miggy said. “So no, I didn’t.”

  “Yeah, we did that,” Shay said.

  “Us, too,” I added.

  “So what is it?” Miggy asked. “Who’s Outdoor Ed?”

  We cracked up.

  “It’s not a who,” Shay explained. “It’s a what. Outdoor Education. It’s like going to camp during the school year. For a week, right?”

  “That’s how long ours was,” I said.

  “Mine, too,” said Nub, who then continued. “And I never went to summer camp, so it was the only time I had been to one. But I remember that it seemed like I finally found the coolest people to hang out with at the end of the week.”

  “That’s what happens at summer camp, too,” Shay said. “Even if it’s two weeks, or a month, you find your best friends toward the end.”

  “So is this the end?” Miggy asked no one in particular.

  We all seemed to either be thinking about our answers or waiting for someone else to respond first. Nub went first.

  “We’re out of here in a couple days. We probably should have left earlier, but Dad wanted to win the Strikeout league.”

  Shay was next.

  “I give us about a week, maybe longer. I doubt we’ll make it to Fourth of July.”

  Which seemed to make it my turn, but I didn’t want to say out loud what I had suddenly realized. Miggy prodded me.

  “So what about you, Nick? We gonna make it to high school?”

  All I could do was shake my head and avoid looking Miggy in the eye.

  “Did they tell you that?” Miggy asked.

  “There’s just no way,” I admitted to myself out loud.

  “But they haven’t said anything,” Shay joined in, trying to be encouraging.

  “Of course not. They never do. We don’t talk any more now than when they were gone all the time. Well, we talk, but it’s about nothing. And it’s pretty obvious the plan is to trash this place and leave it, like they’re rock stars in a hotel room or something.”

  I got a few chuckles out of my last line, but still didn’t feel like looking at anyone. So I followed Nub’s lead and slid onto my back and looked up at the branches getting tossed around by the wind. I was sad, but not in a way that made me feel like crying. It was a new kind of sadness, an empty kind, where the emotion was just out of reach, on the other side of the emptiness. Nobody said anything for a while. Shay and Miggy joined us on the ground, on their backs. We listened to the wind cast aside the leaves on its way through the trees, and to the hum of the factory. Eventually the sound of a car engine distinguished itself from whatever was throbbing inside the enigmatic building, a car coming from the hills, growing louder as it closed the distance, finally passing by our hidden spot in the trees on its way to the freeway, already driving at interstate speed. Its volume lowered for several seconds and then disappeared. The familiar sounds from before once again whispered in our ears, as though the car had never existed.

  “Has anyone seen Blaine lately?” I asked, all of us still looking up.

  “You haven’t?” Shay asked back.

  “Nope.”

  “Hmm. Weird.”

  “Lana’s seen him,” Miggy offered.

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I see her walking over to the tunnel.”

  “So that’s what he’s doing with that empty house,” I said.

  “Are they staying, then?” Nub asked.

  “There you go, Miggy,” Shay said. “You can at least go to high school with Blaine.”

  “No sign on their front lawn?” Miggy asked.

  “No sign of them at the block parties, either,” said Nub.

  “They’re not staying,” I said.

  “How do you know?” Shay asked.

  “I heard some things when we were still hanging out,” I replied, not wanting to give away my nighttime hobby, no matter how close I felt to the three of them at that moment.

  “Where do his parents go all day?” Nub asked.

  “Beats me,” I answered. “Work, maybe. But I know they’re not going to be in that house much longer than anyone else.”

  “So I guess his sister is still living with that dude and his family in High School Town,” Miggy said.

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “That dolt.”

  “You met him?” Shay asked.

  “Yup. On the one day they took out the boat.”

  “Then they’re perfect for each other,” Shay said.

  “Man, we could be having some great parties in that house,” Nub speculated. “Separate from the adults.”

  “That’s Blaine,” I said. “Always looking out for himself.”

  “I don’t blame him this time,” Miggy said. “I never thought anyone would get to Lana.”

  “Lana…” Shay sighed. “Do we have to have that conversation again?”

  “I didn’t bring it up,” I reminded her before turning my attention to Miggy. “Shay has some pretty strong opinions about girls like Lana and Kelsey.”

  “Oh, you mean hot girls?” Miggy piled on.

  Shay sat up and glared
at him.

  “Who’s Kelsey?” asked Nub.

  “Blaine’s sister,” I answered.

  “Oh. That fits.”

  “Anyway,” I continued, “it’s between me and Shay. Don’t worry about it. And leave them alone, Shay.”

  “So how do you feel about Chris and Dulce, then?” Miggy asked Shay.

  Nub laughed, and I tried unsuccessfully not join him. Shay remained focused.

  “It’s the same thing,” she said.

  The three of us sat upright and spluttered variations of “What?”

  “Absolutely,” she defended her point. “He obviously isn’t dating her for her personality, either. Lana’s a beautiful zero and Dulce’s a bitch. Can’t you guys come up with a longer list for what you’re looking for in a girl? Longer than one thing?”

  “You guys…” Miggy said. “Are you lumping us together with Chris?”

  “I’m lumping all guys together.”

  “Maybe we should talk about girls’ taste in guys,” Miggy smiled.

  “Okay,” Shay parried. “Chris would jump at the chance to be with Lana, just like the rest of you. Do you think I would want to be with Blaine?”

  “Yes,” said Miggy and Nub.

  She looked over at me.

  “Probably not,” I admitted.

  She smiled at me. “And that’s the difference between boys and girls,” she said, holding her gaze long enough for Miggy and Nub to notice.

  “Is there something else between you two?” Miggy asked. “You know, besides that conversation you keep having?”

  “I’ve tried,” Shay said. “Lord knows I’ve tried. But he’s a guy; one of those typical guys.”

  There was a pause, and all I could do is look down at the ground, at the fallen leaves. Miggy then took mercy on me by making fun of me:

  “So what you’re saying is girls are more willing to go for dorks like Nick instead of popular guys.”

  Shay sighed, but I was grateful for any chance to squirm into a lighter tone, even if it meant having to acknowledge my lower social standing compared to Blaine.

  Nub piled on. “I’d go for you too, Nick,” he said. “Piss on Blaine.”

  We cracked up and started asserting ourselves further into comfortable territory. Shay wasn’t quite ready to surrender completely, mumbling another something about boys, but came around soon enough to offer her opinion on whose parents were most likely to hook up with each other out of wedlock, if we had ever visited anyplace more dull than our development, if any of us had been anyplace truly beautiful, where we wanted to live when we grew up, what the most grisly way to die would be, and we made plans for a Ranch Ranch reunion ten summers hence, when everyone would be graduating from college more or less, or starting their first careers. Initially we thought of holding it in some restaurant in High School Town, or even the truck stop, but considered how tenuous those businesses were, how likely they were to shut down or turn over, and how unenthusiastic people may be to go to all the trouble of reaching such bleak regions they would maybe rather forget. So we decided on the coastal town I had described to them that I had been to with my parents, since it was more convenient and prettier, while still allowing for a trip to our old childhood wildlife preserve for those inclined. We vowed to adhere to our plan, hypothesizing that doing so would provoke us to do whatever it took to return triumphant, and see The Ranch as something we overcame rather than something that held us back.

  The breeze started to cool as the sky made the move from blue to orange, and we figured it was about time to head back before it went from orange to purple. The Strikeout league barbeque would be well underway by now. Nub and I wagered whether our dads would still be at odds, or bro-hugging and saying I-love-you-man. We had nothing to bet but our dignity, as I didn’t expect to see my share of the Strikeout winnings, so the loser had to give his Dad a big hug in front of everyone and thank him for the Strikeout league because it taught us so much about life. We added the incentive that if the loser could manage to shed some convincing tears while expressing his gratitude, then the winner would be forced to do likewise with his dad.

  I cast my lot for bro hugs, while Nub bet they would still be mad, each of us wagering on our fathers’ respective strengths: my Dad’s diplomacy and his Dad’s competitiveness. Miggy was intrigued enough with learning the outcome to stop by the party before going back home, so he hopped the fence with us and was visibly surprised by the scene when we reached the front of our house: the dozens of cliques of adults and kids milling about the street, the garage doors open of the houses still inhabited, grills blazing in several of the driveways, music from our parents’ high school days blaring from some speakers parked in the one of the open garages. All it needed was some booths selling leather goods and ceramic pots to look like a street fair.

  “Is it like this every night?” Miggy gaped.

  “Pretty much,” I told him, then spotted my Dad and Nub’s Dad across the street with some other parents, trading tales from their sporting days, re-enacting past events while keeping their beer bottles upright. I looked at them until I heard the signal from Nub that he had seen them, too:

  “Dammit.”

  “Pay up,” I told him, and he obliged, clearly not that upset about having to take the stage.

  “I’m glad you won,” Shay said. “Nub will be much better at this.”

  Miggy and I chuckled and agreed, and Nub lived up to expectations.

  He stepped in front of his Dad and faced him for a melodramatic couple of seconds before clutching him as if he was going to war. His Dad lifted his arms to make way for his son’s tackle. He looked stumped as Nub then leaned back to proclaim his love and appreciation. Nub then buried his face in his Dad’s chest and started quivering. We assumed it was thanks to his crying act, so Miggy managed to say to me in between his spasms of laughter, “Looks like you’re next”

  But then it became obvious that Nub was trying to conceal his own laughter.

  “Thank God,” I said.

  “Aw,” groaned Shay.

  A few of the surrounding adults who for a second thought they were witness to a heartfelt moment playfully turned on Nub, and his Dad gave him a pantomime kick to his backside as he made his way back to us to confirm his payment. So Nub didn’t get to see his Dad fall over behind him as the mock kick made him lose his balance and spill his beer all over himself as he hit the ground.

  Nub looked confused as he saw our laughter shift into an extra gear, and then was inspired to turn around by the sound of the adults also convulsing into hysterics.

  His Dad was lying on the ground laughing along with everyone else, spread eagle on the pavement and covered with beer.

  “How is it that you and your Dad both end up on the ground covered in yellow liquid?” I asked.

  “At least his dick isn’t sticking out,” Shay added.

  And the four of us hit the driveway and rolled around as though on fire with laughter.

  It took us longer than the adults to recover, since they didn’t hear Shay’s line, and wouldn’t have understood it anyway, so by the time we caught our breath and regained awareness, the parents across the street were already composing their re-enactments of the incident, filing away their version for future re-writes. Once more we found ourselves sitting on the ground together. We watched the parents trade imitations for a while, then looked at one another, and seemed so satisfied with how the day had progressed and with being friends.

  “I’d better go,” Miggy said at last.

  “Come on,” I said. “Stick around.”

  He surveyed the block and found nothing to change his mind.

  “Thanks, but I need to make sure my grandma doesn’t burn the house down.”

  We said our see-yas and he exited through our side gate to use the fence.

  The three of us remained seated, preferring to take everything in rather than join it. We watched the adults gesture and flirt and one-up one another, and watched the kids do the
same. It was the same thing every night, and I wondered if it was possible to have fun when all you ever tried to do was have fun.

  Something different happened then. One of those four-wheel drive Subaru station wagons pulling a U-Haul trailer turned onto the street and crept through the party. All conversations stopped, and the only people who moved were those who needed to get out of the car’s way. A young man in his twenties drove and a woman around the same age rode shotgun. Their waves and tight-mouthed grins seemed to apologize more than greet. They pulled into the driveway of the abandoned house a few doors up from ours, which was one the homes that had never been lived in, that we had assumed was in foreclosure, inevitably due for a sign.

  The young couple stayed in the car for a while after they parked. The anticipation built. They must have been just as surprised to see all of us as we were surprised to see them. Someone turned off the music. I imagined them in the car discussing how to make their entrance. And I imagined all of us were reminding ourselves that the proper reception was “Welcome to the neighborhood” rather than “Why in the hell would you move here?”

  When they finally emerged from the car, a second blow to our perceptions wiped out any speeches anyone may have prepared. As soon as the woman got out, she opened the backseat door and revealed a baby strapped to a car seat. The halted block party let out a collective gasp, and then started to randomly coo and aw as she unbuckled the baby and it started to cry.

  It dawned on us that nobody had ever brought a baby to The Ranch.

  “It makes sense, though, now that I think about it,” I said as we watched the adults drift toward the mother and child. “This is no place for a baby.”

  “It’s no place for kids and teens, either, but that didn’t stop our parents,” Nub countered.

  “Babies are different,” Shay said. “Parents freak out about them more easily. They want to be near family or a hospital when they have a baby around so they can freak out a little less.”

  “So what’s up with these people, then?” Nub asked.

  “Maybe they’re really laid back,” Shay offered.

  We watched the man skulk around to the passenger side of the car and shift back and forth on the outskirts of the adoring crowd.

  “Or they’re really weird,” I suggested.

  The man caught sight of us kids keeping our distance and gave us a “what’s up” nod, first to our trio, then another in general to the kids scattered in various parts of the street. He then attempted to bond with us by gesturing to the hubbub surrounding the woman and the baby and shrugging.

  We found out they were his wife and daughter, which was foreseeable enough, but the way we found out was peculiar. When he would come outside to take a walk with the baby in a stroller, he was clearly more comfortable with us kids than he was with the wives who would invite him in for coffee or iced tea so they would have an excuse to hold the baby. Like most of the adults in Rancho Hacienda at that point in the summer, he was always around, but didn’t need to take time off to do his hovering. He was a stay-at-home dad and his wife worked as a nurse in High School Town, which is perhaps why they weren’t too worried about being isolated with a baby, since she understood the statistical rarity of infants dying, and she knew how to handle a crisis should it come up.

  But she didn’t seem to be taking into account what a doofus her husband was. The man who was charged most days with looking after their baby girl seemed more interested in sharing tales of his business ventures with a bunch of adolescents than caring for his daughter. His philosophy for building wealth had already failed, but he spent a lot of time blaming uncontrollable circumstances and unscrupulous people for its performance, insisting that it would still be a viable plan when his second act started.

  And I didn’t have to hide in their bushes at night to hear this; he would share it with us in mid-walk, rolling the stroller back and forth to appease his protesting baby while we shot baskets or hung out in a garage drinking soda waiting for him to shut up. We imagined he spun his yarns for us rather than the adults because he believed we would be more impressed by his schemes and less inclined to understand them, much less call him out on their flaws. If only he knew what I had learned about the aspiring moguls in our neighborhood through their windows, he would probably try to use them for his re-birth. But he preferred the company of people he presumed knew less than he did. He thought he could sculpt his story of fortune gained and lost in such a way as to mold a heroic image of himself in our minds, so when we grew up and went out into the world we could spread word of this misunderstood genius, the one they call Soren.

  The stripped down version appeared to be that he leveraged the good living earned by his wife into a miniature real estate empire, and their investment home on The Ranch was the only piece left. It was also the cheapest one, and since her job had mobility, she was able to find work near the one holding they hoped they could afford to keep. Or at least that’s what I was able to cobble together from those arbitrary moments that I found myself paying attention to what he was saying.

  Soren’s arrival did catch the attention of Blaine and his Dad, and drew them out of hibernation, as though they found it necessary to impress the new neighbor who had yet to experience their impressiveness. They didn’t necessarily come outside, but instead invited him inside to show him their things: their appliances, their furniture, their sculptures, their hot wife, pictures of their hot daughter, and the hot girlfriend, Lana, who apparently was not invited on the boat.

  They took Soren and his wife out on the boat, while Blaine’s Mom looked after the baby. I observed all of this without Blaine ever acknowledging me, as he greeted Soren at the door almost every day, or rode past us in the passenger seat of his Dad’s car, or loaded up the boat in the driveway.

  Soren would tell us how cool Blaine and Steve were. I tried not to laugh every time he used Yuri’s American code name. And I tried not to argue with him about their character, for I really did feel sorry for them. Their situation more than any other made me feel good about my nightly reality checking, allowed me to rationalize my snooping as having value, as I imagined I would be a lot more angry and frustrated about being shunned by Blaine had I not understood what motivated it. I still thought they were shitheads; I just didn’t dismiss them as shitheads.

  Casino Night was the perfect vehicle for them to ingratiate themselves back into the community: a celebration of gambling. (Though I was positive that the irony was lost on them.) It was typically them in so many other ways, too. The invitations were mailed, rather than hand-delivered or extended in person. The large, square envelopes made the hundred-mile trip each way from the regional post office where the mail was sorted and sent back to complete the ten-foot trip from their mailbox to ours. And the contents within were designed to dazzle. The card was a tuxedo coat and bow tie that opened to a tinny version of the James Bond Theme emanating from a small chip inside the fold. The dress code was black tie preferred, but business casual accepted. No actual money would be wagered, but those who built highest upon their initial pile of allotted chips could claim prizes, courtesy of Yuri’s company, whatever that was. The prizes themselves sounded familiar, like things I had seen around their house back when I was allowed inside; items touted as rare, valuable, imported, hand-crafted, artisan, but which ultimately struck me as things they were unable to pawn or auction online, and since a yard sale conflicted with the image to which they were clinging, this was a personal narrative-friendly way of unloading them. Their move-out date was clearly coming soon.

  The only mild surprises about the event were that it was kid-friendly, since the parties they had previously thrown were adults-only, and that my family received an invitation, in light of kids being allowed and their kid having developed some sort of problem with me. But I reminded myself that Blaine had stopped talking to everyone else, too, other than Lana, and wondered if he would even be there, if he would instead be holed up in his room with her.