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I felt weightless in his kitchen while they kept dealing cards downstairs. The walls had so many photos I couldn’t see the paint. I was standing in another man’s dream. A skinny son laughed. A daughter with pistols for eyes looked dead at the camera. The Pollack had been left behind.

I lost interest and started going through his cupboards. Everything was cheap and mildewed. He didn’t have a sense of humor when he caught me stealing a sleeve of sesame bagels. “What is this?” he asked, wearing slippers.

I thought a photo was talking.

“What happened?” I asked, indicating the people on the wall.

“We didn’t last,” he said.

I thought about it.

“You’re lucky,” I said. Then I ran with the bagels swinging in my hand.

I hoped to leave through his screen door, but the wood was warped stuck. I looked over my shoulder and saw him considering me. He was casual, like a person on vacation. That annoyed me too.

I finally got the door open and we lost sight of each other as I passed over property lines.

The sidewalks felt too stepped on. I walked through backyards. I ate bagels. I looked through people’s windows and wondered if they could feel me there.

“Where were you?” she asked.

“At work, same as anyone,” I said.

She left the room.

And there it was. It sat on a chair spitting saliva into puddles, its clay-caked fingers tugging at its mouth. I tried to ignore it.

I stood in a slice of kitchen light. I drank soup from a can. The metal had dents. It sat so still as it snapped a tooth out of its flat-sided head, spitting blood out loud. “What the fuck are you doing?” I asked.

I leaned my head against the refrigerator. Tomorrow? This week? I thought. I walked to the sink. I put a damp rag over my eyes. I didn’t have to see; I knew the sound its body made flowing over chairs. It moved across the linoleum.

I walked out the back door and sat on the concrete steps. The sky was starless and my eyes adjusted. I saw the tunnels. I tried counting the dirt stacks and went past thirty. Our yard looked outer-spacey. The grass between the tunnels was turning to patchy straw. She sat down next to me.

“I think it’s sick,” I said.

“I know what it is,” she said.

It crashed through leaves on its way towards a hole. It got tangled in a garden hose and pounded its head against the lawn. It attacked the hose as if it knew the difference between life and death.

One weekend I took it to a department store. I stuffed its clothes with tightly rolled clothes of my own choosing. A security guard made a motion to stop us. He saw it and decided not to.

I went to the bank and tried to cancel everything. The woman working behind the glass repeated what she said four or five times to me.

“All right. All right. All right,” I said. I leaned up to the glass and whispered, “I don’t know what to do. Honestly, I don’t know.”

She looked at me and I could see my failure reflected there on her face.

“I’m just a teller,” she said.

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