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While I’d been chasing geese, the 101 had been filling up and overflowing, backing up cars onto the entrance ramps. There were stoplights that let only one or two cars merge at a time. It was supposed to alleviate gridlock. It did not.
    Chuckles was standing on the worktable and raised his smooshed nose toward my neck when I bent to pet him. He sniffed and turned his face. He disapproved of the perfume.
    The answering machine blinked the number 4 at me. That was four more messages than were usually there when I got home. I poured what was left of the Jack Daniel’s bottle into a juice glass and pressed the PLAY button.
    Carla’s voice came out of the speaker all four times, each time angrier and more desperate than the last. She threatened to call Jenny. She threatened to sue me. She did call Jenny. I hit DELETE after all of them then stripped naked and dumped the clothes in the overflowing hamper after first pulling the ones from that morning out.
    I put my gray denim work apron on over my tank top and jeans and went to mixing acrylics. I made up a dove gray with a little blue, the same color as the guard’s uniform. I mixed a lot of it and chose a good-size brush and started at the bottom of the canvas. I laid it on heavily and blended upward. Darker at the bottom and feathering until it disappeared into the gesso white. It wasn’t enough. I added a little black and blended it into the mix on the palette. Blend, blend, blend. I loaded my brush and went at the base again, brushing up toward the center. I added some dark, dark green and blended. I brought the color up higher and higher until only a strip toward the top stayed white. Then I started a new mix, blending more blues this time. I started at the top and painted down, down, down. The bristles of the brush scratched at the canvas surface as the paint deposited and left the bristles dry and unlubricated.
    I took a step back and then forward and mixed again, yellow this time, using my brush to pull some of the blue and gray mixes from before into it, making it murky and dirty. I started in the middle where the two colors already on the canvas met and became one. Beginning on the left, I made long strokes up and down, blending in both directions at once. One-third of the way across the canvas, I stopped and left it.

27 Days
    Chuckles was yowling inside his carrier as if all the vets in California were after his testicles. I put him in the backseat and went to toss my bag into the trunk.
    Mrs. Epstein, who was nearing Aunt Trudy’s age, was standing in front of her own trunk unloading cases of soda and oversized bottles of dishwashing detergent and toilet paper. She stared at me out of the corner of her eye. I had not been forgiven for the teapot incident, nor should I have been. I did, after all, lack remorse. I was a hardened criminal.
    â€œYou going on a trip?” she asked, looking at my bag as if it might be full of venomous snakes.
    â€œYep.” I avoided eye contact, closed the trunk, and opened the driver’s door, which unmuffled the sounds of brutal torture coming from inside the carrier. It was possible Chuckles was throwing his body against the metal door. Soon he’d start expelling fluids from every orifice. I hoped to be at Richard’s house when that happened.
    â€œWhere are you going?”
    â€œTijuana.”
    â€œYou can’t just drive to Tijuana.” She dropped her detergent to the concrete floor with a thud, barely missing her off-brand tennis shoe. “You could be kidnapped and turned into a drug runner.” She pointed at me. Her finger was weighed down with a large silver and turquoise ring. “I saw a program on CNBC where women were forced to be prostitutes and carry cocaine in their lady parts.”
    I hadn’t considered exactly how I was going to smuggle the tranquilizers back across the border. That was an interesting possibility.
    â€œThanks for the warning,” I said,