Loretta put a piece of pie in front of Brice. Brice nodded and finished his first cup of coffee.

“Yeast infection, huh?”

“What’s on your wrist?”

“I don’t know, nothing. I moved into that shed finally. It’s nice. I’m all out of the old place. I’m done with it. I won’t ever have to speak to Karen ever again.”

“Looks like you got bit.” Loretta pulled at his shirt cuff.

“Maybe it was Odile, she was always biting me.”

“Odie?”

“Odile. That was always the problem. Everyone thought her name was Odie. I should have thought of that before I named her.”

“I thought she got hit.”

“Yeah, a week ago. Before I moved.”

“But that looks new. It looks fresh.”

“She died last week.” Brice made a wheezing sound. “Damn dog. Stupid.”

“There’s blood—look, it’s coming through your shirt…. No open wounds in here, I said.”

“I don’t have to work anymore. Not for two years or so.”

“Yeah?”

Brice nodded. “You could come over to my new place and we could go on vacation. Get some plastic palm trees and call our love shack Hawaii.”

“Is that blood on your ear too?”

“I’ll maybe want another piece of pie today, it’s good today. Coffee’s good too. Maybe I should do that anyway, call my place Hawaii, I mean. Put A Bachelor’s Paradise in quotation marks. I should make a flag to make it official. I could hoist it when I was home like the Queen of England. That way if you were walking by you could just look and see the flag and know if I was there. You’d know to stop in.”

“Brice, I think you’re bleeding.”

He shrugged. “Probably when I was sleeping. Probably I was sleeping on my hand and got blood on my neck. I slept real well last night, Loretta. I slept better than I ever have. In my own space, with no one to get on me. My own silence. It’s great, you should come over sometime. It’s nice. I’ve got my whole stereo set up. The bed. It’s a twin, but it’s cozy. I like cozy. Can I get some more pie, Loretta? I swear. I’m hungry today.”

She didn’t tell him about how her daughter turned into a lesbian last night over the telephone. Loretta should have known when her daughter called her ‘Loretta.’ Instead Loretta said, “That’s new.” She had been referring to the noun, not the news.